"Re-election Drill" - In the last quarter the US produced six million barrels of conventional and unconventional oil a day.

                                            Photo By pp cam/ks/AFP Graphic.
       Oil demand down for North America and Europe, must be the economy "DOING FINE"



"Re-election Drill" - In the last quarter the US produced six million barrels of conventional and unconventional oil a day.(Yahoo).The United States is seeing a dramatic surge in oil and gas production and could overtake the world's biggest producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in another decade, a US official said. "Some of the numbers are eye-popping," Daniel Sullivan, commissioner in Alaska's department of natural resources, told a panel of experts at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal. In the last quarter the US produced six million barrels of conventional and unconventional oil a day, he said, adding: "We haven't done that in 15 years." Since 2008, the US added 1.6 million barrels of additional oil, and in 2011, the US registered the largest increase in oil production of any country outside of OPEC, he told hundreds of participants. In Alaska alone, the potential off the coast was viewed as the largest of any country, about 40 billion barrels in conventional oil, according to the US Geological Survey. US President Barack Obama has indicated that offshore oil resources could help mitigate global disruptions in supply, and his administration has tried to craft an energy strategy that balances business interests with environmental concerns, especially in the Arctic. In November the Obama administration proposed a new plan for offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, including the environmentally sensitive Arctic. But it did not open up for exploration the politically sensitive Atlantic or Pacific coastlines, or the eastern Gulf of Mexico along the Florida coast. The chairman of the World Energy Council drew a more somber global picture. Pierre Gadonneix said the economic crisis meant energy demands had slowed down, even though they were starting to grow again, and that oil prices remained high. "Future growth is threatened by the prospect of climate change and the drain on our natural resources," he said, adding the main challenges would be to improve the security of energy supply, to improve competitiveness and to struggle against "energy poverty."Hmmmm.....Why the sudden increase in the last quarter?Trying to lower the Gasprices for Election day?Read the full story here.

Obama Administration Propaganda Machine Lies ."There will be Oil" only who's oil and at what cost?

Obama Administration Propaganda Machine Lies About Domestic Energy Production.(BigPeace).
WASHINGTON D.C. — The interior department announced Tuesday that oil and gas lease sales on public lands increased 20 percent in 2011, generating more than $250 million in profits for taxpayers. The fact, however, is that oil production on federal lands, lease sales, and revenue have drastically declined during the Obama administration.
“The American people need only to check their electric bills or the price they are paying at the pump to see just how well the Obama administration’s energy policies are working. Today’s announcement by the interior department that lease sales are increasing is misleading and disingenuous. The president promised to make energy prices “skyrocket,” and so he has. The American people deserve the facts about this administration’s anti-energy agenda, not more propaganda from Ken Salazar,” said IER Senior Vice President Dan Kish.

The Institute for Energy Research released the following facts to set the record straight:

Obama Claim: The administration is increasing lease sales on public lands. Total leases issued on public lands were up 20 percent in 2011.

FACT: Lease sales on public lands have steadily decreased over the last 25 years.

FACT: Oil production on federal lands is down 13 percent in 2011: 97,721,813 barrels in 2011 versus 112,124,812 barrels in 2010.

FACT: Offshore lease sales have plummeted more than $9.4 billion since the Obama administration took over. This means that Americans collected 258 times less revenue from offshore lease sales than they did during the last year of the Bush administration.

2008: $9,480,806,620
2009: $1,181,075,491
2010: $979,569,294
2011: $36,751,111

Obama Claim: The administration is increasing the amount of federal lands available for domestic energy production.

FACT: The average annual leases issued during the Obama administration is down 35.5 percent from the George W. Bush administration, down 50.7 percent from the Clinton administration, down 69.5 percent from the George H.W. Bush administration, and down 78.9 percent from the Reagan administration.

Hmmmm..........."There will be Oil" only who's oil and at what cost?Read and see the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                        Afternoon Posting.

• Syria Live Blog - May 14. Here .(Al-Jazeera).

• Libya Live Blog - May 14. Here (Al-Jazeera).

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan  today 4.7 activity. More info here.

• Japan - Latest official Situation Update No. 109.Source : Here .

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

• Watch Live: Army Corps of Engineers to Open the Morganza Floodway at 4:30 (ET) to Ease and Direct Mississippi River Flooding in La.Here.

• Gingrich : Obama ‘food stamp president’.(WashingtonPost).MACON, Ga. — Newt Gingrich opened his presidential campaign here Friday night by introducing a jobs plan that would slash taxes and repeal an array of bureaucratic regulations.Returning to the state where he launched his political career more than three decades ago, the Republican former House speaker presented himself in sharp contrast to President Obama, whom he derided as a “food stamp president.” Gingrich sounded a hopeful tone as he pledged that a Gingrich administration would reaffirm American exceptionalism.“My theme is going to be: Together we can win the future. The right policies lead to the right results. And I’m going to argue that President Obama will lose the future because the wrong policies lead to the wrong results,” Gingrich said in a dinner speech before hundreds of activists at the Georgia Republican Party’s annual convention. He also signed his official statement of candidacy at the event.Gingrich, who has written more than a dozen non-fiction books — he plugged his latest, “To Save America,” on bookshelves now — opened his 30-minute address with a long rumination on American history. He predicted that the 2012 presidential election will be the most consequential since Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860.“We’re at the crossroads,” Gingrich said, repeatedly sniffling from allergies. “Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.”Central to that promise, he said, would be eliminating the capital gains and estate taxes and reducing the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 12.5 percent. Those tax cuts, as well as freezing the personal income tax rates at their current Bush-era levels, is critical to creating jobs and spurring innovation, he said.“The most important social welfare program in America is a job,” Gingrich said.Gingrich sought to lay blame for the recession, as well as the economic and social upheaval in Detroit, on Obama and his policies. “President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history,” Gingrich said. “I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.”Less than two weeks after Obama led a successful raid on al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Gingrich said Obama “does not have a clue” about foreign affairs.Gingrich said the United States should reevaluate its diplomatic ties with Pakistan since bin Laden was found to have been living there for several years.“I was trying to figure out what the word ally meant,” he said. “I know what the word sucker meant. How stupid do you think we are?” Hmmmm......Dictatorship or Democarcy.Read the full story here.

• IMF boss Strauss-Kahn pulled off plane, arrested in oral sex probe.(NYPost).The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid today — getting hauled off an Air France flight just moments before takeoff from Kennedy Airport, police sources told The Post.Three Port Authority detectives pulled Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the plane’s first-class cabin just two minutes before it was due to depart for Paris, the sources said.Strauss-Kahn, 62, was turned over to NYPD officers from the Midtown South precinct, and the case is being investigated by the Special Victims Unit.The trouble began around noon today, when a housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel on West 44th Street.Strauss-Kahn was in his bathroom, said sources. He emerged from the bathroom naked, said the sources, and grabbed her.Then, Strauss-Kahn allegedly threw the housekeeper on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said the sources.Strauss-Kahn let the maid leave — and soon afterward, headed off to Kennedy Airport for his flight to Paris.The NYPD’s special victims unit is investigating the case, the sources said.His arrest tonight could force him to postpone a planned meeting in Berlin on Sunday with German chancellor Angela Merkel.Strauss-Kahn, a leader of France’s Socialist Party, is the leading rival to President Nicholas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.Sarkozy was said in a news report yesterday to have begun a smear campaign against his rival that focused on his lavish lifestyle — including Strauss-Kahn’s purchase of suits from the same tailor who clothes President Obama.But Strauss-Kahn seems able to find trouble on his own. In 2008, he publicly admitted to "an error of judgment" for having an affair with an IMF subordinate.Hmmmm......Talk about getting a 'raise' in hard currency?Read the full story here.

• Misreading Obama.A must read!(EmergingCorruption).By Jack Cashill.From the moment Barack Obama took center stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the world has been busily trying to decipher the man. No one has been more busy reading Obama in the years since than the chair of the Harvard History Department, the esteemed Dr. James Kloppenberg. At numerous symposia, on both sides of the Atlantic, he has shared his distinctive insights on our 44th president.In his new book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition, Kloppenberg has assembled his insights into a misreading of Obama so sincere and so profound that it causes one to doubt the entire academic enterprise. In the heat of the 2008 campaign, a book like this would have been understandable. No one seemed to know much about Obama. Two years into the presidency, one marvels at how much information the author, his readers and editors had to ignore to allow this book to go to press.Working from Obama’s early articles, his later columns in the Hyde Park Herald, his key speeches, and his two books, the 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father and the 2006 policy brief Audacity of Hope, Kloppenberg finds in Obama a philosophical pragmatist with a “firmer grip on America’s past” than any president since Woodrow Wilson.To arrive at this understanding, Kloppenberg had first to convince himself that Obama actually wrote his own material. This was not difficult, at least not for the good professor. “But since I began investigating Obama’s ideas,” he observes, “no one who knows him has expressed any doubt to me that both books are his work.” For Kloppenberg, this was proof enough. Immured in his academic keep, he apparently sheltered himself from the 20,000 or so words I had already put into cyberspace establishing that Obama had substantial help with everything good that he has ever said or is alleged to have written.Kloppenberg’s enthusiasm leads him to overlook the cautions of his own ideological allies as well. This was most evident in his discussion of Obama’s March 2008 Philadelphia speech, “A More Perfect Union.” As the reader will recall, Obama delivered this stem-winder to distance himself, without exactly disowning, the suddenly toxic Rev. Jeremiah Wright.For the Philadelphia speech, according to Kloppenberg, Obama “did not need the assistance of his speech writer Jon Favreau.” This one he wrote from the heart. Jonathan Raban, the esteemed British travel writer and novelist, suspects otherwise. Although once as blind to Obama’s limitations as Kloppenberg, Raban was “disconcerted” to learn that Obama used a speechwriter at all. He was more troubled to learn that the speechwriter in question, Favreau, was a video-game whiz whom Obama had recruited in 2004 when the lad was just 22 years-old.Raban traces his awakening to Obama’s 2009 inaugural address, one that, in his words, suffered from “moth-eaten metaphors,” “faux-antique dialect,” and jarring semantic errors like Obama’s use of the word “forbearers” when he meant “forebears.” Raban felt even more “let down” upon discovering that the “More Perfect Union” speech was “a joint Obama/Favreau production.” Kloppenberg apparently has not yet made this discovery.Read the full story here.

• Eager to recuperate votes Obama shifts on domestic drilling.(TheHill).The White House will take a series of steps — including expediting drilling plans on government lands in Alaska — designed to show that the administration is serious about expanding domestic oil production and lowering gas prices.President Obama announced Saturday the government would hold annual onshore lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve; extend the life of leases in the Gulf of Mexico and in some areas off the coast of Alaska for one year; speed up ongoing Interior Department testing in the mid- and south-Atlantic to gauge the level of resources; and establish an interagency task force to coordinate permitting for offshore drilling in Alaska.The White House is making the policy shifts after taking intense criticism from Republicans in recent weeks over energy policy as gas prices have topped $4 per gallon in some parts of the country.Many of the proposals are incremental expansions of existing policies and had been set in motion prior to Saturday’s announcement. It’s also unclear by how much the plan will increase domestic oil production.In his weekly radio address, Obama said his administration is working to “increase safe and responsible oil production here at home,” while also pushing his previously stated support alternative fuels and eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies.The president acknowledged that there are “no quick fixes” to high gas prices and stressed that price spikes “are often temporary,” but he outlined a series of steps meant to show that the administration is taking action to help consumers.Hmmmmm.....Once re-elected all these measures can and will be turned back,so that i can finish my electric car dream?Read the full story here.

• You're Nuts !Federal gun legislation would greatly expand who qualifies as mentally ineligible from owning a gun.(DailyCaller).Recently introduced federal gun legislation would codify and greatly expand the definition of those barred from owning a gun because they suffer from broad, umbrella-like definitions of mental health problems. Mental health advocates, however, say legislators reacting to “deranged” people going on shooting sprees are “completely missing the point.”Last week, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy introduced the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011, a nearly-identical resolution to that introduced in the Senate in March by her New York colleague, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. Both bills include a section dedicated to further codifying in federal law what it means to be “adjudicated as a mental defective.” The proposed change would label any person a “mental health defective” who appears to “lack the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs,” or is “compelled” to receive counseling or medication.Other, seemingly more obvious, definitions of a “mental health defective” include anyone who has been found criminally insane, found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of mental deficiencies.According to the legislation, decisions of whether someone is of subnormal intelligence, competency and/or mental illness are to be decided by a “court, board, commission, or other lawful authority.” No medical qualifications or background in psychological sciences are specified as necessary for such lawful authorities.Read the full story here.

• Bill Clinton: Create Internet agency.(Politico).Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet. And he thinks the United Nations or the U.S. government should create an agency to do something about it.“It would be a legitimate thing to do,” Clinton said in an interview airing Friday on CNBC.The agency, Clinton said, would “have to be totally transparent about where the money came from” and would have to be “independent” because “if it’s a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the internet.”“Let’s say the U.S. did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn’t think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out,” Clinton said.“That is, it would be like, I don’t know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors” he said. “And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake. Somebody needs to be doing it, and maybe it’s a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money.”At the same time, though, political figures in other countries “will be careful what they say to America’s representatives around the world for a while because they’ll have bad memories of the, you know, the leaked memo,” he said.Stressing the dangers of putting some information online, Clinton said that he and his wife keep hard copies of their living wills that can’t be tampered with.Hmmmm......."Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet" one name:Monica Lewinsky.Read the full story here.

• Osama Bin Laden porn Movie titles released.Here.

• "Change" there was a time the best qualified got the job offer.Chicago Ordered to Hire 111 Black Firefighters.(NYTimes).CHICAGO — The City of Chicago must hire 111 black firefighter applicants who were passed over for jobs years ago and pay tens of millions of dollars in damages to about 6,000 other black candidates under a ruling issued on Friday by a federal appeals court. The decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is only the latest in a legal battle that began with a written employment test for firefighters more than a decade ago, wound its way to the United States Supreme Court by last year and remains a matter of division and concern among the city’s firefighters. “For some of the people involved, this is a very emotional moment,” said Joshua Karsh, a lawyer who represented black applicants who accused the city of employment discrimination. “The city could have cleared this up a long time ago.” In 1995, 26,000 people took an employment test to become firefighters. The city said anyone who had scored above 65 was considered “qualified,” but chose its initial hires from random sets among candidates who scored 89 or better, a group it deemed “highly qualified,” court documents say. But after complaints were filed, the city conceded that the 89-point cutoff created a “disparate impact” against black candidates — 6,000 of whom had gotten qualified scores — compared with white candidates, the documents show. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 last year that despite claims by the city, the group of black job candidates had not waited too long to file its lawsuit. Still uncertain on Friday was precisely how the court’s decision would be carried out. Among the 6,000 black candidates who sought jobs, 111 of them — it is unclear for the moment which ones — will be given jobs after receiving physical tests and training. Those who do not seek the jobs will split back pay that would have gone to the 111 had they been hired years ago. Jennifer Hoyle of the Chicago Department of Law estimated that cost to be $30 million. Mr. Karsh said he expected that the amount would be larger.The costs come at a difficult time for the city, where some people are predicting a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars next year. A spokesman for Rahm Emanuel, who is to be sworn in as mayor on Monday, declined to comment on the ruling.Hmmmm......The end of 'common sense as we know it'.Read the full story here.

• UN: Iran, N.Korea traded technology.(YNet).Diplomats say technology exchange, which violates UN sanctions, was enacted through China.North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of UN sanctions, according to a confidential United Nations report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.The report also said that the illicit technology transfers had "trans-shipment through a neighbouring third country." That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The report was submitted to the UN Security Council by a UN Panel of Experts, a group that monitors compliance with UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after it conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. The UN sanctions included a ban on trade in nuclear and missile technology with North Korea, as well as an arms embargo. The UN measures also banned trade with a number of North Korean firms and called for asset freezes and travel bans on a number of North Korean individuals. "Prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Islamic Republic of Iran on regular scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air," the report said.Several Security Council diplomats said that China was unhappy about the report. Beijing has prevented the publication of expert panel reports on North Korea and Sudan in the past. Earlier this week, Russia took similar steps to suppress an equally damning expert panel report on Iran.Hmmmm.....Sanctions that 'Byte"?Read the full story here.

• Tenerife beheading victim is retired female, British Norfolk County Council road safety officer.(edp.)Jennifer Mills-Westley, a retired Norfolk County Council road safety officer, was brutally killed whilst holidaying on the island.Her family paid tribute to her and said they were devastated by her death.Her daughter Sarah said: “Mum retired a number of years ago and was fully enjoying her retirement travelling between Tenerife and France where she spent time visiting her daughter and grandchildren, and her other daughter in Norfolk.“She was full of life, generous of heart, would do anything for anyone.“We now have to find a way of living without her love and light and we would ask at this difficult time for some privacy as we try to come to terms with our loss.”The 60-year-old was originally from Norwich, Norfolk, before retiring from her job as a road safety officer with Norfolk County Council and leaving the UK.A spokesman from Norfolk County Council said: Our deepest sympathies go to Jenny’s family and friends following this terrible news. “Jenny was a popular and well respected member of staff, who during her time with Norfolk County Council worked as a Road Safety Officer - working with many schools and children to teach cycling training and make Norfolk’s roads safer.”She had two daughters and five grandchildren.She died horrifically yesterday when a man attacked her in the Valdes shopping centre on Avenida Juan Carlos in Los Cristianos.Witnesses spoke of their horror and disbelief after she was stabbed and decapitated in a supermarket.The suspect, who was arrested. was named in reports as Deyan Valentinov D - with Spanish police only providing the first initial of his surname.He is believed to be 28 and a homeless Bulgarian with a police record.Police are investigating the man’s movements leading up to the killing and studying CCTV and witness statements to establish precisely what happened.The suspect was alleged to have carried Ms Mills-Westley’s head outside and was reportedly saying “God is on earth’’.Hmmmmm......Islam is the largest minority religion in Bulgaria. According to the 2001 Census 12.2% of the populationis Muslim.Most of the Muslims in Bulgaria are Sunni Muslims as Sunni Islam was the form of Islam promoted by the Ottoman Empire during their five-century rule of Bulgaria.Read the full story here.

• Is Bahrain the fuse in the Middle Eastern "Powderkeg"?Malaysia offers to send troops to Bahrain.(Al-Arabiya).Prime Minister Najib Razzak of Malaysia has offered to send his country’s troops as part of a peacekeeping force to help “de-escalate tension” in Bahrain. Mr. Razzak also backed Saudi Arabia’s efforts in resolving regional unrest, according to Agence-France Presse. Bahrain was rocked by protests in March when demonstrators took to the streets demanding greater personal liberties in the Shiite majority kingdom ruled by Sunnis.In March, at the request of the Bahrain government, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent their troops to quell the protests and restore calm. “Malaysia stands ready to contribute peacekeepers to Bahrain, if invited to do so by the leadership,” Mr. Razzak said in a statement late Friday following a meeting in Riyadh with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.“Malaysia will consider it a great honor to offer assistance in this noble effort,” the prime minister said.He said his country, where Malay Muslims dominate a population consisting also of Chinese and Tamils, “supported the national dialogue process launched by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa in a bid to de-escalate tension in the country,” reported the AFP.Hmmmm.....Something tells me this will just escalate.Read the full story here.

• According to Al-Jazeera Bahrain is targeting Shia religious sites.(Al-Jazeera). The Bahraini government has destroyed a number of mosques in continuation of its aggressive crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, a special Al Jazeera investigation has revealed.At least 28 mosques and Shia religious institutions have been destroyed in the Gulf state since the crackdown on Shia-led protests began in Mid-March, the opposition group, Al Wefaq, told Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford.The Justice Ministry, however, said it was tearing down the mosques because they were not licensed."It is a war against identity," one man told our correspondent. "This Sunni government of Bahrain is fighting the Shia, destroying their places of worship and holy places."Adel Al-Moawda, deputy chairman of the Bahraini parliament, denied the report that mosques were being destroyed."The mosques that have been demolished, most of them are not mosques," Al-Moawda told Al Jazeera. "There were only expansions of mosques in some private territories. Very few numbers of mosques, which are illegally built, have been demolished."He said Sunni mosques were also among these few that had been demolished. "What is happening in Bahrain now ... everybody is following the law and order, that is all," he added.Earlier, Al Jazeera revealed that medics who worked to assist wounded protesters have been targeted, with hundreds facing arrest and investigation by the regime.Bahraini police also carried out raids on girls' schools, detaining and beating them, during its crackdown, secret filming by Al Jazeera's Stratford revealed.The government denied this report. "The allegations made by Al Jazeera English are totally baseless and without credibility," sources quoted by the Bahraini news agency said.Al-Moawda repeated the denial, saying "there is a big exaggeration in some of what I have just heard now about torturing doctors and nurses".Hmmmm....."We must cut off the head of the snake"?Read the full story here.

• Arabian Gulf or is it Persian Gulf?Prominent UAE businessman urges UN to identify the Gulf as Arab.(Al-Arabiya).If prominent UAE businessman Khalaf al-Habtoor has his way semantics will be the next battleground in escalating tensions between Iran and the Gulf states.Mr. Habtoor has asked United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts, Amr Moussa and Abdullatif Al-Zayani, in a letter obtained by Al Arabiya to officially refer to the Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.In making his request, Mr. Habtoor appears to be seeking to rekindle a long-standing dispute between Iran and the Gulf states over the correct reference to the region. The dispute has persuaded much of the world over the years in deference to the controversy to back away from calling the region the Persian Gulf and instead simply referring to it as the Gulf.Mr. Habtoor argued in his letter that reference to the region as the Persian Gulf was obsolete. “I think most members of the council agree about this,” he wrote. “We rely on present facts and realities that reflect history. The vast majority of Gulf people are Arabs, both from the Arab countries overlooking the Arab Gulf or from the areas controlled by Iran,” he added in a reference to the Iranian province of Khuzestan that is predominantly populated by Iranians of Arab origin.Mr. Habtoor’s proposal is likely to be politely rejected by Mr. Ban. The United Nations has enough Middle Eastern issues on its plate, including Iran’s nuclear development and the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in various Arab states, to want to take on another hot potato.GCC leaders like Mr. Habtoor are well aware that terminology in the Middle East almost always reflects a political view. If the identification of the Gulf is controversial so is the naming of Palestinians territories: to Palestinians the West Bank is occupied territory and part of Palestine; to many Israelis it’s Yehuda and Samaria, names that indicate that Israel too has Biblical claims to the land.As a result, GCC leaders despite their charges that Iran instigated the turmoil in Bahrain and ran a spy ring in Kuwait may not want to expand their dispute into the realm of semantics.In his letter, Mr. Habtoor argues, however, that that is the very reason why the GCC should take semantic action. It would constitute a response to “Iranian ambitions that exceed the bounds of reason,” he says. Mr. Habtoor argued that identifying the Gulf as Arab was “necessary to confront Iranian ambitions and reveal some truths and intentions of Iran to control the region and interfere in Arab countries’ domestic affairs and damage their social fabric.”Mr. Habtoor’s suggestion certainly taps into a widespread emotion across the Gulf. Yet, if adopted, it is unlikely to persuade Iran to change its views or policies. If anything, it would spark a war of words that would more likely than not clutter debate about the real issues that divide Iran and the Gulf states. The Gulf has sufficient burning issues that need to be resolved and is better off without distractions that may produce a feel good effect but no real solution.Hmmmm......The 'ball' is now in the Iranian camp.Ahmadinejad speech in 3....2....1?Read the full story here.

• Erdogans buddy and 'reformer' Assad breaks promises as more blood of pro-democracy protesters is spilled in Syria.(Al-Arabiya).President Bashar al-Assad of Syria keeps on breaking his promises to be conciliatory as more pro-democracy protesters fall dead because of the authoritarian regime’s brutal crackdown. On Saturday, fresh blood was spilled in the western border town of Tall Kalakh, close to Lebanon. A witness told Agence-France Presse that troops fired into a swarm of demonstrators, killing three people and wounding several others.“The security forces, who had been encircling Tall Kalakh since the morning, fired machineguns. At least three people were killed and several were wounded,” the witness told AFP.On Friday, at least six people were killed in protests in cities of Homs, Damascus and Deraa on Friday.A leading human rights activist told the Associated Press that three people were killed in Homs, two in Damascus and one in a village outside Deraa, the southern city where the revolt began two months ago.“At first they opened fire in the air, but the people continued on their way, and then they shot directly into the crowd,” an eyewitness said by telephone from Homs.Activist Louay Hussein said President Assad’s adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told him in a phone call on Thursday that “definitive presidential orders have been issued not to shoot demonstrators and whoever violates this will bear full responsibility.”Mr. Hussein was among four opposition figures that saw Ms. Shaaban this month and presented demands that included an end to violent repression of protesters and the introduction of political reform in the country, ruled by the Assad family since 1970, according to Reuters.The meetings were the first between the opposition and senior officials since demonstrations calling for political freedom and an end to corruption erupted in the southern city of Deraa on March 18.“I hope we will see (no firing at demonstrators) tomorrow. I still call for non-violent form of any protest regardless of the response of the security apparatus,” Mr. Hussein said in a statement sent to Reuters.Read the full story here.

• Woman held for wearing 'tight' pants ... even under a gown.(Emirates247).Police ran after woman to arrest her as she walked in a park in Dammam.Saudi Arabia’s most feared Islamic police arrested a woman while she was doing a walking exercise with tight pants worn under her gown, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stopped the woman as she was doing her regular exercise in a park in the eastern town of Dammam.“At first she ignored them when they shouted to her to stop,” Sharq Arabic language daily said. “They then ran after her and arrested her for wearing a tight pants under her gown.”Hmmmmm........Feel free to fill in the dots,it's getting beyond words!Read the full story here.

• Cairo, take two: Chairman President Obama to deliver second major Middle East speech.(DailyCaller).The president will deliver a second major speech on the Middle East to reset his foreign policy following the changes that have swept through the region since his much-lauded June 2009 Cairo speech.The contents of the planned Thursday speech are being closely held by administration officials, who only offer generalities, both off and on the record. “I’m sure that it will be a fairly sweeping and comprehensive speech about what we’ve all been privileged enough to witness since January,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday. “I’m not going to say too much because I obviously want the president to have the field,” he added.The timing of Obama’s address is puzzling, because turmoil in the Arab countries — dubbed “the Arab Spring” — may rapidly invalidate any speech, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the president of the GOP-affiliated American Action Forum, a libertarian-minded think-tank. “We’re still in spring, we’re not even in summer — why do you really want to talk in the middle of that?”The rapid pace of change was underlined Friday, when the president’s envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resigned, citing personal reasons. The envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, announced he was stepping down shortly before the president’s scheduled meeting with Israel’s visiting prime minister.The president is the chief author of the policies and words that will go into the the speech, which is to be delivered at the U.S. Department of State, said administration officials.He “has really been the central intellectual force in these decisions, in many cases, designing the approaches,” Thomas E. Donilon, the White House’s national security adviser, told the New York Times. The same article reported that the president “often surfs the blogs of experts on Arab affairs or regional news sites to get a local flavor for events … [and] has sounded out prominent journalists like Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and CNN and Thomas L. Friedman … [and] ordered staff members to study transitions in 50 to 60 countries.”The president should use his official staff to gather needed information, said Holtz-Eakin, who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005. “That’s why they’re there. [He should] ask them, and they’ll go find out,” he said.Obama’s emphasis on his personal role creates political risks. For example, Obama overrode his advisers and pushed for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, partly because he wanted to aid Westernized activists, including Google executive Wael Ghonim, the New York Times’ report said. But Ghonim has since been sidelined by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group, and has signed a contract to write a book.Hmmmm....Sounds pretty dictatorial to me ...one man deciding a country it's future?Chairman Obama hasn't done such a good job so far,what's the next Obamination recognising the Palestinian state?Read the full story here.

• U.S. imams arrested for alleged Pakistani Taliban links.Miami (CNN) -- Two South Florida imams and a third family member were arrested Saturday on charges of providing support to the Pakistani Taliban, the Justice Department said.In addition, three others in Pakistan were also indicted on the same charges.FBI agents arrested Hafiz Khan and his son Izhar Khan in South Florida, the department said. They are expected to make their initial court appearance in federal court on Monday.Another of Hafiz Khan's sons, Irfan Khan, was arrested in Los Angeles and will appear in court there.Also charged are three Pakistani residents: Ali Rehman, Alam Zeb, and Amina Khan. Amina Khan is Hafiz Khan's daughter, and Zeb is his grandson.The four-count indictment alleges that all six defendants conspired to provide material support to a conspiracy to kill, injure and kidnap people abroad, and that they provided support to the Pakistani Taliban.Hafiz Khan is the imam at Flagler Mosque in Miami. Izhar Khan, is an imam at the Jamaat Al-Mu'mineen Mosque in Margate, Florida."Despite being an imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace. Instead, as today's charges show, he acted with others to support terrorists to further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming," U.S. Attorney Wilfredo A. Ferrer said. "But for law enforcement intervention, these defendants would have continued to transfer funds to Pakistan to finance the Pakistani Taliban, including its purchase of guns."The indictment describes a number of occasions where Hafiz Khan transferred money to Pakistan, and where money was withdrawn once there."Khan solicited and distributed funds for the Pakistani Taliban, both personally and on behalf of others, and worked with the co-defendants and others to support the Pakistani Taliban's jihad," the indictment states.The elder Khan also built a madrassa in Pakistan's Swat Valley that provided shelter for the terrorist group, the indictment states.The Pakistani Taliban represent a confederation of Taliban groups in northwestern Pakistan, where they are based, said Bill Roggio, military-affairs analyst who is managing editor of The Long War Journal.Those fighters attack targets in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan.The group, which is headquartered in Quetta, is different from the Afghan Taliban, which has been focused on re-establishing the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan.Both groups swear allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and have close ties to al Qaeda, he said.Hmmmm....Two years After the Cairo speech the Middle East is even more negative towards the US than before!No More 'outreach'.Read the full story here.

• Russian sects: from Rasputin to the 'Jesus of Siberia'.(Telegraph).Russia has spawned a number of bizarre sects since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union as ordinary Russians have struggled to make the transition from state-sponsored atheism to a society where the Russian Orthodox Church is again in the ascendancy.Experts say there are as many as 700 sects in Russia attracting between 600,000 to 800,000 followers. The latest sect to make the headlines is an all-female group, which believes that Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, is a reincarnation of early Christian missionary Paul the apostle. Read the full story here.

• Cops increase security for Bintan bikini beach party.(JakartaPost).Police will deploy extra security measures for a so-called Bikini Beach Party on Bintan in Riau.Islands on Saturday that will be broadcast by Fashion TV, following protests from hard-line Muslim groups.Police said the theme of the event did not violate the anti-pornography law as alleged by opponents.Bintan Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Dwi Sulistiyono told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the event, which would be held at the Nirwana Garden Resort in the Lagoi International Tourism Zone, would go on as scheduled.“In response to objections by a number of groups, the police will increase security for this events,” Dwi said.He added that it was normal for people to wear bikinis on the beach.“Furthermore, we were told that the event is not open to the public. The large signboards [advertising the party] are just to enliven the event,” he said.Dwi added 100 police officers would be deployed at the event.The head of the Riau Islands branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Tengku Azhari Abbas, told the Post on Thursday that the MUI was shocked to learn the event would be held on Bintan, despite the fact that the ethnic Malays in Bintan and the Riau Islands are mainly Muslim.He claimed the event would have a negative effect on the public, so the MUI was strongly opposed to it.Event organizers expressed confidence the event would take place as scheduled despite the protests. They said the exclusive nature of the venue was added value as it prevented disturbances.Event organizers expressed confidence the event would take place as scheduled despite the protests. They said the exclusive nature of the venue was added value as it prevented disturbances.Nirwana Garden Resort general affairs and administrative director Anton told the Post that those invited to the event had been told the dress code was white bikinis.Fashion TV booked all 400 rooms at the Nirwana Garden Resort. The event is expected to draw 800 people. Fashion TV had requested a venue that could hold 1,000 guests.“All the rooms are fully booked for tomorrow’s event. Guests who are not accommodated here can stay in other resorts in Lagoi,” Anton said.Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• UN to help Lebanon with sea borders for gas finds.United Nations official says organization will help Lebanon demarcate maritime border with Israel in order to ensure its gas reserves remain protected.A United Nations official says the international body is willing to assist Lebanon demarcate its naval border with Israel to protect the country's gas reserves.Michael Williams says Lebanon has every right to benefit from its potential off shore oil and gas resources.His comments in Beirut Monday followed a request by Lebanon for the UN to protect the country's gas reserves along the maritime border with Israel, after a huge gas field was discovered off the coast.The appeal was part of a growing dispute between the two warring countries over natural resources beneath the eastern Mediterranean. Lebanon has accused Israel of drilling in fields that extend into its waters, an allegation Israel denies. There is no official naval border separating the two countries.Read the full story here.

• HT:DougRoss.Curious: Rep. Giffords' Official YouTube Channel Subscribes to Only Two People: Rep. Ike Skelton and... Jared Lee Loughner.Perhaps Sheriff Dupnik could take a few moments away from his busy television schedule to investigate the following odd connection between the Giffords campaign and her accused shooter?An anonymous tipster writes:Don't know if you saw this or not.Her [Giffords'] Youtube page has only two subscriptions, one links to the shooter's page (lower left corner, name classit10)Now, her own political page links back to this youtube site, so it must be hers.I don't know if someone has hacked this page or what. Strange to say the least.Indeed. But I'm sure Sheriff Dupnik is well ahead of us and is actively attempting to figure out the tie.Hmmmm....I'm still saying he shot her for being Jewish.Since when was he subsribed to her you tube channel?Read and see the full story here.

• HT:Matzav.Clinton Dismisses Outgoing Mossad Chief’s Assessment About Iran Nuclear Program.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed on Sunday Israeli assessments of delays in the Iranian nuclear program and called for more work on sanctions to bring Tehran to heel.Clinton, on a tour of Gulf Arab countries to shore up support for pressure on Iran, arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. She will also visit Dubai, Oman and Qatar on the five-day trip.Global powers are preparing for another round of talks with Iran this month over its nuclear program.Clinton said a recent assessment by the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service that Iran would not be able to build an atomic bomb until at least 2015 should not undercut international determination to keep the pressure on Iran through sanctions and other means to come clean about its atomic work.“The timeline is not so important as the international effort to try to ensure that whatever the timeline, Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons,” Clinton told reporters on her plane as it arrived in Abu Dhabi.“I don’t know that it gives much comfort to somebody who is in the Gulf, or who is in a country that Iran has vowed to destroy, that it’s a one-year or a three-year timeframe.”Hmmmm.....Sanctions?What sanctions?You have a so called "Ally" Turkey working closely together with all the ennemies of both the US and Israel.That three year timeline is only correct if sanctions work,as it is now it's a joke.Read the full story here.

• HT:BarracudaBrigade." Unabomber/Oklahoma City Bomber's Lawyer, requested by AZ. authorities; for Gabby's attacker--wtf !!!This morning I don't have the magic pill, I don't have the Scripture... I can't wrap my head around this," said the church's Rev. Mike Nowak, his strong preacher's voice wavering. Authorities weren't saying late Sunday where Loughner was being held, and officials were working to appoint an attorney for him. Heather Williams, the first assistant federal public defender in Arizona, said they're asking that San Diego attorney Judy Clarke be appointed. Clarke, a former federal public defender in San Diego and Spokane, Wash., served on teams that defended McVeigh, Kaczynski and Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman who drowned her two sons in 1994. Loughner is charged with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. More charges are expected.Hmmmmm......Why do i still have that bad gut feeling?Read the full story here.

• Flashback !Nov 05 2010:Mark Penn Says Obama Needs ‘Similar Event’ to Oklahoma City to Reconnect with Voters.Mark Penn, Democratic strategist and former chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, let out the kind of doozy, on last night’s Hardball, that must be seen to be believed. Comparing Obama’s current situation to the aftermath of the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” Penn noted that it took the Oklahoma City tragedy in order for President Clinton to “reconnect” with the American people.He then stepped off the cliff by saying that President Obama needed a “similar event” to achieve that reconnection following his party’s midterm losses.Hmmmm............"SAME LAWYER"both cases.Read the full story here.

• HT:RefugeeResettlementWatch.Is there a conspiracy by NGO’s to bring asylum seekers to US borders?Last March (March 16th to be precise) I attended the 30th Anniversary “celebration” of the passage of the Kennedy/Biden Refugee Resettlement Act (signed by Jimmy Carter) at Georgetown University with Human Rights First! in Washington, DC. This is just one post I wrote at the time.Note there are a few lines in that post that have been rattling around in my mind on and off ever since.Expressing gratitude for being granted asylum in the US an African young man from Sierra Leone described how he somehow (mysteriously) got a plane ticket to the US and ended up in NYC. He was placed in detention for 4 months, but also mysteriously was visited by a lawyer from Human Rights First who helped him through the asylum process.I was also struck at the conference by how much emphasis the pro-refugee, pro-open borders activists and speakers were placing on our asylum program. They wanted to educate more asylum lawyers and hire more asylum judges (apparently the refugee program itself wasn’t bringing immigrants in fast enough!). One speaker even said that the original idea behind the program was to rescue the odd ballet dancer seeking asylum from some repressive regime, but had now expanded to thousands every year.Last night as I began reading all of my backed-up articles on refugees, two jumped out at me, both are about Somalis arriving at our borders and being granted asylum. Both stories involve young Somalis, supposedly running from Al-shabaab and who mysteriously had the resources to trek across the world and just happened to end up on our borders where they then knew enough to immediately ask for asylum. Come on folks, we all know that some poor third worlder who knows only an obscure African language could not manage such a thing without enormous amounts of help.Where are they getting their help? I don’t know but maybe that’s where Mr. Foster, the RICO lawyer could help.Below are the stories I came across that set off my warning bells. Both, of course, are meant to be feel-good stories. The first article is from the Las Cruces Sun News and it highlights a Somali woman recently granted asylum:Asha Omar, a native of Somalia, spent almost a year looking for safety, away from the Islamic militants who murdered most of her family.Late last year, she found it in El Paso.In November, a federal immigration judge granted Omar’s application for asylum based on her fear of being persecuted in her home country.At least two other Somalis are in El Paso seeking asylum, said Louie Gilot, executive director of Las Americas.Nationwide, more than 300 Somalis requested asylum in 2009. Almost 200 were granted their requests.Now this is the sentence that jumped off the page:She managed to make her way to Cuba and then flew to Mexico. At the San Ysidro port of entry in California, she requested asylum, and she was taken to the El Paso Immigration Detention Center while her application was processed.She MANAGED! She MANAGED to make her way to Cuba and then flew to Mexico! Some 19-year-old shy third worlder MANAGED to get to Cuba! How many of you adults reading this could manage to get yourself to Cuba!But there's more !Now go and read the full story here.

• Video :Rep. Michele Bachmann: House Republicans Should ‘Fully Defund Obamacare’ Under Congress’ ‘Power of the Purse’. Given that House Republican efforts to “completely” repeal the health care law will face hurdles in the Democrat-controlled Senate or a presidential veto, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told CNSNews.com that Republicans should use Congress’ “power of the purse” to “fully defund Obamacare.”CNSNews.com asked Rep. Bachmann whether she agreed with Rep. Steve King’s (R-Iowa) proposal to include specific language in appropriations bills passed by the GOP-led House to prohibit the funding of the health care law.Read and see the full story here.

• Fears of higher petrol prices as major BP pipeline in Alaska is shutdown after leak.Motorists could face even higher prices at the pumps after the shutdown of a major BP pipeline in Alaska that carries around 12 of America's oil output.The Trans-Alaska pipeline system, which transports oil from the Prudhoe Bay field, was closed on Saturday following the discovery of a leak.This morning shares in BP - the largest shareholder in the Alyeska Pipeline Service company which runs the pipeline - fell 2.5 per.Prudhoe Bay is America's largest oil reserve, producing around 630,000 barrels of oil a day – equivalent to around 40 per cent of the UK's daily consumption.The leak occurred at a pumping station at Alaska's North Slope, and forced oil production to be cut by 95 per cent. With the price of a barrel of US crude oil rising by almost one per cent to $89.92 in early trading, motorists could soon pay the price on garage forecourts.A BP spokesman based in America told the Guardian the leak was "a significant event" and it is not clear how long it will take to restart production.The shutdown is the latest setback for the 33-year-old pipeline , which is becoming more expensive to maintain as it ages. It currently handles less than a third of the oil it did at its peak in the 1980s..BP Pipelines owns nearly 47% of Alyeska, with ConocoPhillips Transportation owning 28%, ExxonMobil Pipeline owning 20%, and smaller shareholders controlling the remainder.There have not been any reports of environmental damage because of the leak. Alyeska said yesterday that around 10 barrels of oil had been recovered from the basement of a booster pump room, and that around one barrel of oil remained.Alyeska president Tom Barrett said: "Our goal is to engineer and implement a solution so that we can safely return the pipeline to service as quickly as possible."Hmmmm......Now just try to imagine if America was completely depending on foreign oil,something Barack Hussein Obama might just do one day.Read the full story here.

• Iceland summons US envoy over demand for MP's Twitter details.Reykjavik calls for explanation of Justice Department's move to access account of politician caught up in WikiLeaks inquiry.The American ambassador to Iceland has been summoned to explain why US officials are trying to access the Twitter account of an Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks collaborator.Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, revealed last week that the US justice department had asked Twitter to hand over her information. The US authorities are trying to build a criminal case against the website after its huge leaks of classified US information."[It is] very serious that a foreign state, the United States, demands such personal information of an Icelandic person, an elected official," the interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, told Icelandic broadcaster RUV. "This is even more serious when put [in] perspective and concerns freedom of speech and people's freedom in general," he added.Iceland's foreign ministry has demanded a meeting with Luis Arreaga, the US ambassador to Reykjavík. No one at the US embassy in Reykjavík was available for comment.She said she was talking to lawyers at the Electronic Freedom Foundation and would attempt to stop the justice department's move.Read the full story here.

• Related : US subpoenas Wikileaks tweets, and why this could affect you.Mark Stephens on the BBC News also makes clear that the court order will also cover the “600,000 odd followers that Wikileaks has on Twitter“.The order asks specifically for names of those attached to selected accounts, user and screen names, and any registered mailing or postal addresses. It also asks for email addresses, credit card details where possible, and even content relating to connected mobile phones.The server logs which could identify the computer and geographical location of where even private messages were sent from have also been ordered to be handed over.Twitter is in a difficult position. Considering their stance during the Iranian elections supporting the freedom of speech, it will appear as if the company is backtracking or giving into pressure by handing over details of its users to its government.Jónsdóttir retweeted a message purporting Twitter’s efforts, however, in bringing this subpoena into the public domain.This case should resonate with younger users especially, as prolific social network users, that US law can apply to users of social networking sites to users outside the United States, as seen in this case.Though datacenters are held worldwide in different locations to allow network load balancing, locale reliability and data backups, the organisations which provide these services are based mostly in the US. Both Twitter and Facebook are based in California, as are many startup and social media companies.For example, if one publishes a threatening tweet from the UK to a service based in the US, this can be used in a UK or US court of law if the company is subpoenaed.Hmmmmm....."Policestate or Big Brother in overdrive"?Read the full story here.

• HT:ElderOfZion.Egyptian TV: "Roman Wars against Cleopatra Instigated by the Jews".Following are excerpts from an interview with Wael Ramadhan, creator of an Egyptian-Syrian TV series about Cleopatra, which aired on Egyptian TV on November 18, 2010:Wael Ramadhan: The [Roman] war against Cleopatra was Jewish in essence, and history repeats itself. The Romans had no territorial aspirations in Egypt in those days, and this is ignored by history and by many historians. The Romans were at war with the Parthians and the remnants of the Persian Empire, but they had no intention of waging war against Egypt.But the Jews harbored resentment and pain, because of their expulsion from Egypt – when they were still called "Hebrew" – and they wanted to return to Egypt by force, in order to establish their presence there, but they did not have an opportunity to do so until that moment. So they recruited the help of the Romans.This part of history is not mentioned in any Arab history book, but is the outcome of research I conducted myself, and this is my own perspective, which is unique and true. Interviewer: Especially since it is based on sources that are...Wael Ramadhan: On very important sources. [The Jews] financed the Romans, distracted them from their wars, and diverted them to Egypt. They failed in their attempt to get Julius Caesar to defeat Cleopatra. They failed to get Mark Antony to defeat Cleopatra. They had also financed the Mark Antony campaign. They failed in their efforts to completely control that region.To this moment, they continue to try. History repeats itself. That is what should have been called the history of Cleopatra, and this was my approach when I made the "Cleopatra" series.Hmmmmm....You got to be kidding?Next they're going to say Attila the Hun and the Black Plague was their doing also?Read the full story here.

• South Sudan: 20 Police Die in Attack by Arab Tribe.Arab tribesmen accompanied by a Khartoum-backed militia killed 20 policemen in Sudan's disputed region of Abyei, a southern military spokesman said Monday, raising concerns of violence as the south carries out a weeklong independence referendum.A tribal leader, though, said that police had killed 10 herders in the area. The reported attacks came Sunday, the first day of Southern Sudan's self-determination vote, which is widely predicted to break Africa's largest country in two. The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended two decades of civil war.Jubilant voters flooded polling stations for a second day on Monday. The seven days of balloting are likely to produce an overwhelming vote for independence, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said he will let the oil-rich south secede peacefully.But Abyei is still a major sticking point, and officials from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to Sudan activist and actor George Clooney have warned that Abyei holds the potential to send the north and south back to conflict.Abyei, which straddles the north-south divide and holds oil deposits, had been promised its own self-determination vote, but now its future will be decided by north-south negotiations that have so far made little progress.Col. Philip Aguer, the spokesman for Southern Sudan's army, said that the Misseriya -- an Arab tribe that moves its cattle herds through Abyei -- attacked the village of Maker-Adhar on Sunday with anti-tank weapons and artillery. Aguer said he believes the attack was planned."They were not with cattle, they were coming for (an) attack," Aguer said.Independence won't be finalized until July, and many issues are yet to be worked out. They include north-south oil rights, water rights to the White Nile, border demarcation and the status of the contested region of Abyei, a north-south border region where the biggest threat of a return to conflict exists.Most of Sudan's oil is in the south, while the pipelines to the sea run through the north, tying the two regions together economically.Read the full story here.

• UK: Sikhs, Hindus say girls are targeted by Muslims for sex,conversion.UK: Sikhs, Hindus say girls are targeted by Muslims for sex, conversion.Unlike previous discussions on this topic, they blame Islam.A day after UKs' former home secretary Jack Straw blamed some Pakistani Muslim men for targeting "vulnerable" White girls sexually, UK's Hindu and Sikh organizations also publicly accused Muslim groups of the same offence.Feeling emboldened by Straw's statement, UK's Hindu and Sikh organizations have also come in open and accused some Pakistani men of specifically targeting Hindu and Sikh girls. "This has been a serious concern for the last decade," said Hardeep Singh of Network of Sikh Organizations (NSO) while talking to TOI on Monday.Sikhs and Hindus are annoyed that Straw had shown concern for White girls and not the Hindu and the Sikh teenage girls who have been coaxed by some Pakistani men for sex and religious conversion."Straw does other communities a disservice by suggesting that only white girls were targets of this predatory behaviour. We raised the issue of our girls with the previous government and the police on several occasions over the last decade. This phenomenon has been there because a minority of Islamic extremists view all 'non believers' as legitimate targets," said director NSO Inderjit Singh.Targeted sexual offences and forced conversions of Hindu and Sikh girls was not a new phenomenon in the UK, said Ashish Joshio from Media Monitoring group."This has been going on for decades in the UK . Young Muslim men have been boasting about seducing the Kaffir (unbeliever) women. The Hindu and the Sikh communities must be commended for showing both restraint and maturity under such provocation," he added.Read the full story here.

• Azerbaijan - Higher fines for people who meet to pray or read religious texts.Azerbaijan has increased fines for religious believers who meet to pray without authorisation. Six Jehovah’s Witnesses are sentenced to prison for practicing their faith.Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev on 29 December signed into law a bill adopted by parliament on 8 December without public debate. The new legislation increases fines for offences related to the right to exercise religious freedom as described in Articles 299 and 300 of the country’s Administrative Code. Under the new rules, anyone involved unauthorised religious activity is punished. This includes leading unregistered religious groups, meeting for prayers, and importing and distributing religious texts or documents not approved by the country’s rigid censorship board. Foreigners who visit the country to speak about their faith are also severely punished. Proselytising and teaching children catechism also require an authorisation.Although prison is excluded as a form of punishment, fines are increased between 16 and 20 times. This means that offenders could lose their property or be thrown into poverty.Eldar Zeynalov, head of the Human Rights Centre of Azerbaijan, told Forum 18 that if a peasant family of five is found in possession of “illegal” religious literature, each member could be fined 2,000 manat, 10,000 for the whole family (US$ 12,500), representing “the entire value of the family's assets, including their home”.“These Articles punish what can be considered as normal religious activity," Zeynalov explained. “Any religious activity, however small-scale, such as meeting for worship in a private flat, talking about one's faith on the street, or handing out a book or even a leaflet, is subject to prosecution.”At the same time, the new rules are very vague about what constitutes illegal religious activity, which gives police and the authorities a great deal of discretionary power. Although the government appears be motivated by a fear of Islamic radicalism, the new rules apply to every religion. In fact, on 18 December, police burst into a private home in Gyanja and took into custody about 50 Jehovah’s Witnesses who were brought to a local police station.Hmmmmm.....Art 18 of the Charter of Human Rights "Freedom of religion" an empty statement.Bashing Israel is off course much more popular at the Islamic United Nations. Read the full story here.

• South Sudan: Emancipated Nation.Most people can think of a day that changed their lives. I can think of two. The first happened twenty four years ago, when at the age of seven I became a slave; the other is coming up in less than a month. It is a day when my people will be free.On May 15 of 1986, when I was seven years old, my mother sent me to a marketplace in the town of Nyamlell, South Sudan to sell peanuts and eggs. The market was filled with people, sounds, and smells, with half naked children running, smiling, pushing each other. I was happy; I wanted to make my mother proud by selling as many eggs as possible. Suddenly, something happened. We looked up to see cloud of smoke rising from the direction of Gourion, my village. I heard gun shots and stomping of horses’ feet coming fast from the distance. Everybody around me began running in all directions. A wall of dust preceding their arrival, an Arab militia stormed the market.What followed was a scene of panic, terror and confusion. The Arabs, some on horses, some on feet, were mercilessly killing all the men, shooting some and decapitating others with a single swipe of their swords. Children around me were screaming and crying in horror; the market place was filling with the bodies of the dead. I tried to run but one of the Arabs grabbed me and loaded me into a basket on his donkey. I was soon joined by other kids. A little girl, who looked no older than twelve, was executed by a point blank shot to her head in front of my eyes. Her crime? She could not stop crying. After the loading was over we began riding into darkness.That was the beginning of my journey into slavery where for the next ten years I was forced to serve a family of a wealthy Arab Muslim living in North Sudan. Giemma Abdullah, his wife and his children made my life hell during these ten years. They not only made me perform hard labor and sleep with animals, but they also tried to destroy my identity as a Dinka, my tribe. I was given an Arab name and under the threat of death was forbidden to speak the Dinka language. I was forced to perform Islamic prayers and was constantly taunted as “abeed,” Arabic for “black slave.” After two unsuccessful attempts, I managed to escape and made my way to America. A year later, I joined the modern-day abolitionist movement.On the day I escaped I did not become a free man. Images of other children still serving masters chained me to my captive nation.Read the full story here.

• The case for Israel.Op-ed: Our roots here traced back to 13th Century BC, 3,350 years before PLO’s creation.Since Oslo, 1993, the case of the Jewish State has highlighted Israel's pursuit of peace and security, while downplaying the right/deed of the Jewish People to its historical homeland. A resounding rebuke of David Ben Gurion, the Laborite Founding Father of the Jewish State and its first prime minister, who stated: "He who abandons his past forfeits his future.” The claim of national sovereignty and the level of steadfastness in face of adversity are derivatives of the attachment to the territorial cradle of history and national security requirements.Nations which highlight their non-conditional attachment to their territorial cradle of history (irrespective of diplomatic, security and economic considerations) enhance steadfastness and gain strategic respect. On the other hand, nations which consider their cradle of history a negotiable-real-estate may gain short-lived popularity, but undermine their attachment to the land, lose long-term strategic respect and erode their own posture of deterrence.A nation which negotiates away its cradle of history is giving away its future.Prof. (emeritus) Menasheh Har-El, a leading expert on the history and geography of the Land of Israel, a recipient of the Israel Prize and author of 13 books, documents national Jewish roots in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as early as the 13th century BC: 2,000 years before the appearance of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, 3,200 years before Arabs from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon migrated to the Land of Israel and 3,350 years before the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization. According to Professor Har-El's 55 years of research, the Jews were the first to coalesce the various regions of Canaan into a unified country. They settled in the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria rather than along the coastal plain, introducing agricultural innovations into barren, rugged mountains, developing irrigation systems, establishing stone and metal shops, ushering advanced architecture and construction, building roads from the Mediterranean to Jerusalem, which became the crown jewel of the Jewish people.Read the full story here.

• 'Attack a Teacher Day': Six schoolgirls aged 12 and 13 arrested for encouraging friends to sign up to group on Facebook.Six schoolgirls have been arrested after students were invited to sign up on Facebook for ‘Attack a Teacher Day’.The twelve and thirteen-year-old girls all attended two middle schools in Carson City, Nevada.One was accused of sending out messages asking 100 classmates on the social networking site to target teachers.Police questioned the other five girls over specific online threats they made against particular teachers.The girls – all A-grade students – claimed it was all a joke, but they were arrested before the event that was planned for last Friday.‘School shootings really happen. That's why we took it seriously,’ said Dan Sadler, principal of Carson Middle School attended by five of the girls.‘It's not OK, and it's not funny in this day and age if you're going to make a threat against a teacher.’He pointed out that last Wednesday – on the day of the arrests – a suspended 17-year-old pupil in Omaha, Nebraska, shot dead an assistant principal and wounded his principal.Eighteen students accepted the invitation to participate in the attacks at the two schools, which had been set to take place from 7am to 9am last Friday.A parent brought the posting to the attention of authorities, Sadler said.Classes took place Friday without incident at both schools after students were earlier notified of the arrests and parents of the students who were arrested or accepted the invitations were contacted by authorities.
  Hmmmm.....Where will this mad world stop?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Video : Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim, Self-Proclaimed California University Toxicologist: Multiple Sex Partners Make a Woman's Immune System Crash; Eating Pork Weakens One's Ability to Think.Hmmmm....Is there any insanity in your family?Read and see the full story here.

• Iran bans "tight jeans", tattoos at some universities.TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has enforced a stricter Islamic dress code at a number of universities including a ban on female students wearing long nails, bright clothes and tattoos, a local news agency reported on Monday.The semi-official Fars news agency published a list of universities around Iran that were given a note outlining the code but did not say on what basis they were selected.The new rules ban women from "wearing caps or hats without scarves, tight and short jeans, and body piercing", except earrings, Fars said.It said tattoos, long nails, tooth gems, tight overcoats, and bright clothes were also banned.Iran has been waging a country-wide campaign against Western cultural influences. Under Islamic law imposed after the 1979 revolution, women have to cover their hair in public and wear long, loose-fitting clothes.The new code also bans male students from dying their hair, plucking eyebrows, wearing tight clothes, shirts with "very short sleeves" and jewellery, Fars said.The authorities usually intensify efforts ahead of hot summer months when women tend to wear lighter clothes and brightly coloured scarves, often pushed back to expose hair.The authorities usually intensify efforts ahead of hot summer months when women tend to wear lighter clothes and brightly coloured scarves, often pushed back to expose hair.In recent years crackdowns have extended into winter fashion as well including a push against women's trousers seen as too tight, as well as men with spiky "Western-style" hairstyles.Hardliners have pressed for tighter controls on "immoral behaviour" since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005 promising a return to the values of the revolution.Young women, particularly in wealthier urban areas, often challenge limitations by wearing tight clothes and colourful headscarves that barely cover their hair. The rules remain less challenged in poor suburbs and rural regions.Hmmmm........."Temporary Marriages "Yes -  fashion No?Read the full story here.

• 'Band of Brothers'Dick Winters dies. WWII hero commanded 'Band of Brothers'.Dick Winters, a decorated Army officer whose World War II service was recounted in the best-selling book and HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers," died Jan. 2. News reports listed his age at 92.Based on the 1992 book by historian Stephen E. Ambrose, the HBO mini-series came out in 2001 and was produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.The story follows the tragedies and triumphs of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion, E Company.To Mr. Winters, these citizen-soldiers came to be known as the men of Easy Company -- paratroopers who jumped into combat on June 6, 1944 above Normandy, France.According to Ambrose's account, Easy Company suffered 150 percent casualties throughout the war.One of the soldiers who served in Easy Company, David Webster, once wrote that among his colleagues the Purple Heart "was not a decoration but a badge of office."Mr. Winters, who separated from the Army at the rank of major, and his men fought together through D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and later occupied Adolf Hitler's mountainside retreat, the Eagle's Nest, near Berchtesgaden.A charismatic officer who led by example, Mr. Winters received the Distinguished Service Cross, the country's second highest decoration for valor, while conducting combat operations on D-Day.A true American patriot and here passed away.Read and see the full story here.More here.

• HT:IslamInEurope.Netherlands: Situation of Turkish youth is alarming.The position of Dutch-Turkish youth in society is particularly worrying, according to a letter published in Dutch newspaper Volkskrant by ten Dutch-Turkish professionals, researchers, teachers and policy advisers. The sharp social climate and the lack of leadership in the Turkish community, lead the youth to apathy and to feel less connected to Dutch society. They are therefore more susceptible to crime and Muslim radicalization."All in all, there's starting to be a growing group of youth who are feeling out of place," according to the writers of the manifest. "they don't feel welcome in Dutch society. Some withdraw into their own (religious) community, others isolate themselves and are at threat of becoming lonely, developing seriously psychological problems or becoming susceptible to the seduction of radicalism or crime."The ten professionals call the government, industry, educational and Turkish organization to give higher priority to the youth problems. "they should get the feeling that their future is in the Netherlands," they say.The Alliance of Turkish immigrants in Holland (Inspraakorgaan Turken in Nederland) says it generally agrees with the manifest. "What they say is mainly right," says policy adviser Harm van Zuthem. "The analysis that many youth will turn their backs on society and will thereby lack opportunities, is right."According to the recently published annual report on integration by Statistics Netherlands, Turkish-Dutch youth are behind in many fields. In the 2009-2010 school-year, 80% of the Turkish youth in their 3rd year of secondary education were in the vocational track. 20% were in the academic track.In 2009, 18% of Turkish-Dutch aged 15-25 were unemployed. 40% of the Turkish youth aged 12 in 1999 were suspected of a crime between 1999 and 2007.Turks are the largest immigrant group in the Netherlands. In 2010 there were 384,000, 49% of which were 2nd generation.Hmmmm....." The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers".The schools are our downfall?Read the full story here.

• Asylum seeker who claimed to have been gang-raped and witnessed family's murder in Somalia exposed as £250k benefit fraudster.An asylum seeker who claimed she had been gang-raped in Somalia was jailed today for swindling more than £250,000 in a 'professionally planned' benefit scam.Amina Muse, 38, also conned Swedish authorities out of £50,000, spending the money on luxury living and holidays in Africa.While she claimed asylum in the UK based on 'appalling atrocities' committed against her in Somalia, investigators found she was living in Sweden at the time.Handing her a four-and-a-half-year prison term at Harrow Crown Court, in north London, Judge Stephen Holt told her: 'One of the most serious aspects of this case is your cynical, dishonest manipulation of the whole system of asylum.'Muse, a mother of six, who also went by the name of Ayan Abdulle, sought refuge in Britain after moving to Sweden in 1995 where she was granted citizenship and enjoyed a 'comfortable' life.On her UK asylum application, disclosed today, she claimed militiamen stormed and looted her family home in war-torn Somalia on December 1, 1998, because she was a member of a minority group.'They opened fire at us and then broke into our house by force,' she said. 'They shot dead my brothers Asad and Burhan. They died instantly in our presence.'But investigators, who suspect the Muse to be of Kenyan descent, found this to be the date on which she gave birth to a child in Sweden.Between June 2004 and May 2010, Muse, from Neasden, north-west London, claimed a total of £261,358.14 in income support, disability living allowance for one of her children and carer's allowance for herself. This included child benefit, child tax credits and housing benefit from various local authorities.She received a total of £112,985.51 from the borough of Camden where she lived in a four-bedroom property.Condemning her deceit, Judge Holt said: 'In my view it was fraud from the outset. It was professionally planned.'Read the full story here.

• Eight arrested in Hong Kong in connection with the smuggling of young Chinese man disguised as an old white man. Hong Kong authorities have arrested eight people suspected of helping to smuggle a young Chinese passenger onto a flight to Canada wearing a Hollywood-style disguise of an elderly white man.The man, believed to be in his 20s, sought asylum after arriving in Vancouver on October 29.He is suspected of traveling to Hong Kong with genuine Chinese travel documents, then swapping them for fake papers and donning the remarkably detailed silicone mask to change his appearance before boarding the Air Canada flight.Canadian authorities said the man removed the mask in a washroom mid-flight.Hong Kong officials arrested five men and three women in connection with the case, Elly Au Yeung, an information officer for the Hong Kong Immigration Department, told The Associated Press on Monday.She said a member of the Hong Kong International Airport ground staff and two former employees were among the arrested suspects.The eight are suspected smugglers who supplied the passenger with his new travel papers at the Hong Kong airport, Au Yeung said.Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different.Indian bride discovers husband is a woman.Indian bride lived with her husband for a year before discovering the painful truth.Her beloved he was really a she.Minati Khatua, aged 26 old, of Orissa, India, and her family were completely fooled by the groom, Sitakant Routray, who received a substantial dowry as is traditional in India composed of an Indica car, gold ornaments and more than £350 (about US $575) in cash.“He had impressed everyone in my family and they willingly agreed to our marriage,” said Khatua.No matter how much she wanted to believe her new husband, she grew more and more suspicious after the wedding when he constantly avoided any physical contact with her using the pretext of a religious vow.“I would try hard to find out and confirm his gender but failed repeatedly… One day I managed to force open the bathroom door when he was having a bath and my worst fears became true. He was a woman,” she told the press.Local police are investigating the most bizarre case.The bogus groom is nowhere to be found at the present time, having absconded with a car and a jeep, which were bought with loans acquired from an account in Ms Khatua’s name.Hmmm....So they were sleeping separately for a year?Read the full story here.