Can you find the cat in this picture? Yes, there actually is one!

Twitter member @DealSpaceIN asks:

Bored?? Let’s play a game… Find the CAT in the picture…
Share it if you find & Comment if you didn’t http://t.co/plDp1vvN

Click for full-size view.

Curious Snow Leopard Cub Steals Camera Trap

By Katie Scott, Wired UK

A camera trap set on the Afghan Border has captured images of a leap of elusive snow leopards, but also the moment when one of the cubs made off with one of the cameras.

The cameras were set up in the Zorkul nature reserve close to the Afghan border in Tajikistan at the beginning of August, and left there until October. Dr Alex Diment is the Capacity and Development Manager for the Eurasia Programme for the charity Fauna & Flora International (FFI). He told Wired.co.uk that the FFI and Panthera team set up the camera traps to cover an area of around 15 sq km, which stretched across eight separate valleys.

The 11 cameras photographed five separate snow leopards living in one of these valleys, and this included a family with two cubs — one of which took a shining to the cameras and carried one off.

Diment says that the camera traps have made a huge difference in conservationists. “Camera traps have been an amazing piece of technology, and are really maturing as a technology, becoming reliable and giving great results. They are giving us the ability to research animals, which were previously almost entirely unknown.”

More here.

If this censorship takes effect, it would apply to everyone using Google Blogger, Google Orkut, Google+, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, and the other sites mentioned, whether residing in India or not.

‘Clean up your website’: Indian court orders Facebook and Google to remove ‘anti-religious’ content

(h/t: Nilk via GoV)

Social websites including Google and Facebook have been ordered by an Indian court to remove all ‘anti-religious’ and ‘anti-social’ content within six weeks.

On Saturday a Delhi Court ordered 22 social networking sites, including Yahoo and Microsoft, to wipe the objectionable and defamatory contents and file compliance reports by February 6, 2012.

The order will raise serious questions about how users’ posts and opinions will be edited, censorship and freedom of expression.

On December 22 Judge Kumar had issued summonses to the social networking sites, demanding they remove photographs, videos or texts that might offend religious sentiments, the Hindustan Times website reported.

The order comes a day after a criminal court issued summonses to the sites for facing trial for allegedly webcasting objectionable contents.

Santosh Pandey, appearing for complainant Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, told The Hindu Times after the court hearing that the websites have to submit a report to the court by February 6 describing the action they had taken to remove the contents from the websites.

Representatives of Yahoo India Pvt Ltd and Microsoft told the court that they had not got copies of the order and complaint against them, but Qasmi’s counsel told the court that he would supply the relevant documents to them, according to the Hindustan Times.

The order comes at a controversial time as IT minister Kapil Sibal had recently discussed with representatives of some of the companies ways to guarantee the offensive contents are not posted.

India Today quoted him as saying: ‘There were some demeaning, degrading, clearly pornographic depictions of gods and goddesses which no reasonable, sensible person anywhere in the world would accept, on any site.

The minister insisted he was not smothering free speech but was suggesting screening possible ‘incendiary’ material.

The Hindu Times reported Facebook India, Facebook, Google India Pvt Ltd, Google Orkut, Youtube, Blogspot, Microsoft India Pvt Ltd, Microsoft, Zombie Time, Exboii, Boardreader, IMC India, My Lot, Shyni Blog and Topix were all given the order.

A Google spokesperson told the website: ‘We comply with valid court orders wherever possible, consistent with our long standing policy.

‘We’re yet to receive the details of this order and can’t comment on this specific case.’

Additional Civil Judge Mukesh Kumar passed the order on a suit filed by Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi seeking to restrain the websites from circulating objectionable and defamatory contents.

More comments/photos here.

Warns MsBlue at Blazing Cat Fur:

As a hindu, I laugh at the naivety of the left who think the ground zero mosque is not a victory mosque. here is a link about the thousands of victory mosques in india, built over the destroyed remains of hindu temples.

By Sita Ram Goel [et. al.]:
Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them

Islam center’s eerie echo of ancient terror

Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero? In fact, what is proposed is not a mosque — nor even an “Islamic cultural center.”

In Islam, every structure linked to the faith and its rituals has a precise function and character. A mosque is a one-story gallery built around an atrium with a mihrab (a niche pointing to Mecca) and one, or in the case of Shiites two, minarets.

Other Islamic structures, such as harams, zawiyyahs, husseinyiahs and takiyahs, also obey strict architectural rules. Yet the building used for spreading the faith is known as Dar al-Tabligh, or House of Proselytizing.

This 13-story multifunctional structure couldn’t be any of the above.

The groups fighting for the project know this; this is why they sometimes call it an Islamic cultural center. But there is no such thing as an Islamic culture.

Islam is a religion, not a culture. Each of the 57 Muslim-majority nations has its own distinct culture — and the Bengali culture has little in common with the Nigerian. Then, too, most of those countries have their own cultural offices in the US, especially in New York.

Islam is an ingredient in dozens of cultures, not a culture on its own.

In theory, at least, the culture of American Muslims should be American. Of course, this being America, each ethnic community has its distinct cultural memories — the Iranians in Los Angeles are different from the Arabs in Dearborn.

In fact, the proposed structure is known in Islamic history as a rabat — literally a connector. The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.

The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word “raid”). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.

After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat — or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias. Later Muslim rulers used the tactic of ghazva to conquer territory in the Persian and Byzantine empires. After each raid, they built a rabat to prepare for the next razzia.

It is no coincidence that Islamists routinely use the term ghazva to describe the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington. The terrorists who carried out the attack are referred to as ghazis or shahids (martyrs).

Thus, building a rabat close to Ground Zero would be in accordance with a tradition started by the Prophet. To all those who believe and hope that the 9/11 ghazva would lead to the destruction of the American “Great Satan,” this would be of great symbolic value.

More here.

No, I am not claiming that anybody is required by law to supply me with caviar. (Don’t I wish!) We’re not talking about that type of sturgeon at all.

Instead, we’re talking about a rule of thumb, to wit…

Sturgeon’s Law

Sturgeon’s Revelation, commonly referred to as Sturgeon’s Law, is an adage derived from quotations by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author. While Sturgeon coined another adage that he termed “Sturgeon’s Law”, it is his “Revelation” that is usually referred to by that term. Commonly cited as “ninety percent of everything is crud” or “ninety percent of everything is crap”, the phrase was derived from Sturgeon’s observation that while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, it could be noted that the majority of examples of works in other fields could equally be seen to be of low quality and that science fiction was thus no different in that regard to other art…

More here.

Theodore Sturgeon knew a thing or two about identifying crud:

Theodore Sturgeon vividly recalled being in the same room with L. Ron Hubbard, when Hubbard became testy with someone there and retorted, “Y’know, we’re all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!” Reportedly Sturgeon also told this story to others.

I just now happened upon a blog called India Uncut by the libertarian blogger, columnist, and poker player, Amit Varma. Among other thought-provoking essays, including a fine paean to the blogosphere, I found this:

Does Sturgeon’s Law Apply To Human Beings?

Sturgeon’s Law states that “ninety percent of everything is crud”. This is certainly true in many fields, and I myself have invoked it in the context of blogging, but today I’m wondering, is this true also of human beings? Are 90% of us stupid? Like, really stupid? Consider this news story by Reuters in Istanbul:

Turkish police donned white coats and stethoscopes to disguise themselves as doctors, then knocked on people’s doors to see how easily they would fall for a confidence scam.

The undercover police officers told residents of the southeastern city of Gaziantep they were screening for high blood pressure and handed out pills, according to Turkish media.

They were alarmed when residents at 86 out of 100 households visited on Tuesday swallowed the pills immediately.

Apparently this was the actual modus operandi of a gang that got people to pop sedatives and then robbed them. But this isn’t all.

Officers in Adana in southern Turkey last week called at houses, announcing through the intercom: “I am a burglar, please open the door.”

Police said they were stunned at the number of people who opened the door, the Radikal daily newspaper reported.

Read the rest; it’s funny.

I can imagine what some of you are thinking:

“1389′s nom de guerre recalls a date in history when the Serbs fought the Ottoman Turks to a standstill. Old 1389 is just taking another cheap shot at the Turks by showing how stupid they can be.”

Guilty as charged. But then, considering that everybody, including the Turks, takes cheap shots at the Serbs, I claim the right to take them at everybody else.

And I do mean everybody. If you think you’re so much smarter than those human fish who eagerly took the bait in Amit Varma’s article, then take a long and careful look at Wikipedia’s List of cognitive biases. See how many of them apply to you!

Yeah, I thought so. Welcome to my world!

At first glance, Anthony Weiner’s use of the Internet as a vehicle for long-distance flashing might seem to be off-topic for a hard-news counterjihad blog. (No pun intended!) Other sources, such as Andrew Breitbart and Robert Stacy McCain, have already provided ample coverage, and yes, the jokes just keep on writing themselves.

But it turns out that there’s more to the story than that. Much more.

Politically incorrect comedienne Julia Gorin mines Weinergate for some new comedy gold:

Strauss-Kahn’s Weiner

June 08th 2011 10:41:56 PM – Posted by Julia Gorin

So it turns out that Anthony Weiner’s wife is a Muslim who works for Hillary Clinton. This explains a lot. He must have figured that if she likes Hillary so much, then — like Hillary — she wouldn’t mind if he showed his pee-pee to others.

Given that the man who married them was Bill Clinton, their fate was pretty much sealed right there.

(Ever notice how people will often marry people who look exactly like them?)

Now, I haven’t been following this story or the one about the other prominent Jew and his Muslim. That would be IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the devout West African Muslim hotel maid he allegedly tried to rape. First, I must explain that it wasn’t his Jewishness that made him force himself on the woman, but his Frenchness. Jews don’t tend to be rapists, just perverts.

Not that French tend to be “rapists” per se; it’s just a hazier term there since declining sex isn’t normal or common, and so “rape” as such isn’t common.

Regardless, the news of the Jew trying to rape a Muslim should at least satisfy this woman, who won an award from Hebrew University for arguing that IDF soldiers NOT raping Muslim women is a form of racism.

In other words, Strauss-Kahn may be a rapist, but at least he’s no racist!

My main objection to Anthony Weiner is not his having tweeted his genitalia; it’s his role as point man for policies that are profoundly destructive to the US. For that, the blame belongs to the ignoramuses in his district who elected him.

From the viewpoint of US national interests, the real EPIC FAIL here is all about Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, and her connection with the Clintons. It has been going on for a very long time, and it has largely escaped notice in the press.

I find it problematic that both a prominent US Congressman and the current Secretary of State are, literally as well as figuratively, in bed with a Muslimah.

Talk about sleeping with the enemy!

If Hillary Clinton had a lesbian affair with Huma Abedin then everything in Weinergate fits

(h/t: Sparta)

By Kevin “Coach” Collins

People are motivated to follow their darker instincts by lust for money power or sex.

In mid 2007 rumors started to circulate about Huma Abedin a stunningly beautiful staffer working for Hillary Clinton. The wagging tongues of Washington asked logical questions about Huma. “If Hillary is bisexual (as had long been thought and occasionally uttered in public), what is the nature of her relationship with the dark eyed enchanting Abedin, a young lady from a strict Muslim family?”

“Is the fact that Huma was never seen twice in the same designer outfit and lived in a $649,000 condo explainable because she was trading sexual favors with Hillary for a fabulous lifestyle?” “If so what does that make Huma?”

“How did Huma, whose government salary was listed as $9,999, live as she did?”

“Is Hillary Clinton a lesbian?”

Is Huma Abedin her lesbian “kept woman?”

In 2007 Michael Musto a Village Voice columnist who writes about gay issues commented that Hillary might be “Gayle King-ing” Huma, that is getting her a higher profile in order to head off media scrutiny about her and why Clinton would be “hiding” Huma and the true nature of their relationship.

In her tell all book about her affair with Bill Clinton Gennifer Flowers wrote that when she asked Bill if Hillary is a lesbian he laughed and made reference to her being more experienced with women then he is.

The purpose of this essay is NOT to prove Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are lesbians, but to raise the question: If they are daughters of Sapphos wouldn’t it have been a good deal for Anthony Weiner to become Huma’s beard or faux husband?

Killing any rumor of a lesbian relationship between Hillary and Huma would be very helpful to Hillary’s drive to be elected president, and a “President Hillary Clinton” would be enormously helpful to Weiner’s long held dream of being elected Mayor of New York City.

The coverage of Weinergate has nibbled around the edges. The reports have carefully avoided mentioning the scandal’s “third rail”: the relationship between Huma Abedin Congressman Anthony Weiner’s wife and her former boss Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, if this is the root of the relationship between Huma and Weiner the whole ugly affair falls into place.

Bill Clinton understands all to well what it’s like to live with a women like Hillary. He knows what it can drive an ordinary man to do. Anthony Weiner’s tweets to a porn star may be motivated by more than mere curiosity.

The biggest motivators driving human behavior are money power and sex. This one has all three.

To contact your Congressional Representative use this link: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Much more here.

Zimbio: Hillary Clinton’s Lesbian lover Huma Abedin?

(h/t: Sparta)

The August issue of American Vogue featured an article on Huma Abedin, the traveling chief of staff for presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton. As observed on Gawker http://gawker.com/news/huma-abedin/, the Vogue article is lengthy but lacks substance similar to the Observer piece in April. Huma is characterized in short as a control freak, beautiful and a force to be reckon with. Yet, there isn’t much evidence of her intellect and capabilities outside of showing composure in designer clothes and accessories and having a keen understanding of political dynamics in the Middle East having lived there until her teens and raised by parents who are professors and of Indian and Pakistani descent. She has worked for Clinton as an intern/aide since graduating from George Washington. I just don’t see how she can be sought out for her expertise in matters related to the Middle East when she hasn’t worked in an objective international capacity outside of being Clinton’s aide. If she has, the authors of the artices in Vogue and the Observer should have pointed that out rather than rely on just the opinions of others. How about demonstrating the woman’s true smart rather than focusing on how smart and polish she looks in an Yves Saint Laurent suit?

It is worrying too that high power people in Washington like Senator Clinton is heavily relying on the advice of people who haven’t had extensive professional experience in international politics. Even if she grew up in the Middle East, I think that things have changed drastically in the 12+ years she has been away in Washington at college and working for Clinton. Somehow I don’t think that growing up in Saudi Arabia was so bad.

I’m sure that Senator Clinton have some very smart people working for her which makes me surprise that they allow such articles to be printed. Not so much the fact that the articles has a lot of fluff painting Huma as a super-woman, a wonder-kid. By putting forth the image of Huma and Hillary has dynamic, stylish, professional women, they are widening the gap between Senator Clinton and middle America, a weakness of her campaign. I would hope that America is ready for a woman president. However, I’m not sure if America knows how to relate to a woman presidential candidate and the fact that she’s an accomplished lawyer/politician woman makes it even worse. There’s no need to paint a perfect picture of these women to give the average Joes and Janes out there more reason to stay clear of Hillary Clinton…

Much more here.

Also see:

• Hillary’s Lesbian Affair with Muslim Aide?
  (h/t: Sparta)
• The missing woman in Weinergate
  (h/t: Sparta)
• Like most Americans, Rep. Anthony Weiner can’t afford to quit the DC day job
  (h/t: Speranza)

But wait, there’s MORE:

Saleha Abedin, Huma Abedin’s mother:
Will Huma look like her in twenty years?

Anthony Weiner’s mother-in-law, Saleha Abedin, is connected with Muslim Brotherhood

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A War With Libya?

Introduction by Vladimir Frolov 03/25/2011

The UN Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 1973 on March 17, authorizing “all necessary measures” against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the establishment of a no-fly zone, which includes the possible use of military force, against pro-Gaddafi forces. Ten UNSC members voted for the resolution, including the United States, Great Britain and France, while Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India abstained. Is Russia right in tacitly accepting the use of force by not exercising its veto power in the UNSC? What does Russia gain by taking a position that opens the door for intervention without fully pledging its support for the West?

Here is the contribution by James George Jatras:

James George Jatras
Director, American Council for Kosovo,
Deputy Director, American Institute in Ukraine,
Washington, DC:

From an American perspective, almost as dismaying as the fact that president Obama has now mimicked his predecessors and blundered into his very own ill-advised foreign intervention, is puzzlement about the decision of Russia (and of China, which presumably followed the Russian lead) not to veto the Security Council resolution authoring force in Libya.

To address the Russian question first: it didn’t take a “Kristol ball” to guess that the Western powers would immediately exceed the UNSC’s mandate, in effect treating Resolution 1973 as a carte blanche to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Perhaps president Medvedev didn’t want to disappoint his “reset” partner, president Obama. Or perhaps Moscow was applying some geopolitical judo in facilitating America’s tumble into yet another sand-trap, and then criticizing us for it. (For all of Paris’ and London’s grandstanding and Riyadh’s and Abu Dhabi’s prodding, accusing fingers again will be pointed at the United States for lots of dead Muslims served up for Al-Jazeera’s cameras).

Evident disarray at the top militates against the likelihood that the Russian move was calculated. Prime Minister Putin castigated the Western campaign as reminiscent of a “medieval crusade” –an inapt characterization, first because the Libyan operation (as will be seen below), far from being anti-Islamic, instead is furthering the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and their ilk.

Secondly, Putin should appreciate that as a historical matter, the real Crusades were a legitimate if flawed Christian counterattack against centuries of jihad aggression, not an episode to be used as a term of opprobrium. Then, to further tangle things, Medvedev criticized him just for uttering the word “crusade,” the mere sound of which offends delicate Muslim ears and aggravates the “clash of civilizations.” In short, what the Russians really have in mind is not at all clear.

But the muddle in Moscow pales beside the latest outbreak of imbecility along the Potomac. The report is that Samantha Power, National Security Council special advisor to Obama on human rights and one of Obama’s campaign advisors on foreign affairs, was primarily responsible for convincing her dithering boss to proceed, with support from U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and, of course, from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Power became an obsessive advocate of “humanitarian intervention” during her stint as a journalist in Bosnia and advocates a philosophy called “responsibility to protect” (RTP), with military intervention ostensibly to protect human rights raised to a cardinal principle of American foreign policy. She outlined RTP in her 2003 book “A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide,” that Richard Holbrooke of Balkan infamy commanded his underlings to read. Power’s militarism is boundless. For instance, at the height of the Second Intifada in 2002, she advocated military action against Israel to create and protect a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the other hand, nobody’s holding his breath waiting for Power to demand we bomb Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates over Saudi and Emirati abuses against Bahraini Shia protesters).

In any case, the Power-Clinton-Rice triumfeminate was sufficiently potent to squelch cautionary advice from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough.

The U.S.-led action follows calls by the international Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, whose members have long been suppressed and killed in Libya, for Gaddafi to be overthrown by the Egyptian army, and for his assassination by a leading figure of the Muslim Brotherhood active in the successful Egyptian revolt. As an indication of the likely beneficiaries of Western help in overthrowing Gaddafi, a 2008 West Point analysis of a cache of al-Qaeda records discovered that nearly 20 percent of foreign fighters (actually, mainly suicide bombers) in Iraq were Libyans, and that on a per-capita basis Libya was nearly double Saudi Arabia as the jihadis’ top country of origin. Almost all of them were from the eastern region of Cyrenaica (Benghazi, and especially Derna), a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda and, not coincidentally, of the anti-Gaddafi insurgency.

While the spectacle of the Western powers and Islamic militants, including al-Qaeda, acting effectively as allies, may come as a surprise to some, it shouldn’t to observers of U.S.-led interventions since America supported Afghan mujahidin against the Soviet Union. Not only did Washington help create al-Qaeda itself during the anti-Soviet war, the pattern was set for subsequent “pro-Muslim” interventions: in Iraq (twice, under George H.W. Bush in 1991 and George W. Bush in 2003), in Afghanistan (Bush in 2001), Bosnia (Bill Clinton in 1995), and Kosovo (Clinton in 1999). In each case, an armed intervention justified as “rescuing” or “liberating” Muslims paradoxically resulted in greater Islamic rage against the United States. In each case, the hoped-for “democracy” – at least recognizable to Western eyes – eluded us. And in each case the resulting social order was more oppressively Islamic, as measured by treatment of women and non-Muslims.

For example, in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Islamic militancy was suppressed (along with other opposition forces) and women went unveiled. Now, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, half of Iraq’s Christian population has fled in terror from Muslim militants and women had better cover up if they know what’s good for them. Similar patterns can be discerned in the venues of other interventions, notably the near-eradication of Orthodox Christian Serbs in areas of Kosovo under the control of Muslim Albanian drug, slave, and organ-traffickers. Already in post-Mubarak Egypt constitutional “reforms” favored by the Muslim Brotherhood have been approved by referendum, and fears are rising for the future of Coptic Christians – the largest remaining Christian population in the Middle East. Aside from the serendipitous fact that Libya has few Christians to persecute, prospects for a post-Gaddafi “democracy” in that country are decidedly slim.

However, in Western thinking, the repeated failure of a policy evidently is considered insufficient grounds to abandon it. With respect to Libya, perhaps policy-makers in Washington, London, and Paris calculate that this time for sure the Muslims will love us, no matter how many of them get killed along the way. This time for sure, when Gaddafi is gone, Islamic “democracy” will look a lot like Switzerland. (Just as it has in Gaza, where “democracy” has empowered Hamas, or in purple-fingered Lebanon, now under a Hizballah-led coalition). Each time we are surprised and disappointed, but we never learn. When the Muslim Brotherhood takes power in Egypt – and in Libya, in Yemen – Power and company will also be very surprised and disappointed.

http://russiaprofile.org/experts_panel/34077.html

I have never had a Facebook account, chiefly because Facebook fails to protect the security of its users. For those of you who do have a Facebook account, I suggest that you let the admins know that Facebook is being abused as a tool for jihadi propaganda and recruitment.

The Jawa Report: Facebook Terrorist Propaganda/Recruitment Continues

One of our commenters, Anna Warren, has asked for help:

It is time to shame facebook for their continued inactivity in preventing terrorists from using their platform! It is time to publicly call them out. There are many of us who spend our individual free time “reporting” pages, to no avail. Facebook must do a better job of keeping terrorists and their supporters from using facebook to promote their agendas and activities! Please help.

Here is a SMALL list of sites that I regularly “report.”

Ummah’s Jihad
Taliban in Afghanistan [Official Voice of Jihad..ed]
facebook.com/arrahmahcom [Indonesian]
Ansar Correspondent
Alkataib Channel
Islamic Resistance Hezbollah
Supporters of the Resistance Movement
Ummah al-Jihad
Al-Jihad [Has link to donate]
Network Media Correspondents
Pakistan Mujahideen Voice of Islamic Resistance
Islamic Emirates of Kashmir
Global Islamic Front 2 [Gone]
Quran and Sunnah
Kataibul Iman [shows ID of kidnapped? Afghan National Army person]
Abdullah As Saif
Islamic Media Network [shows al-Qaeda’s Russian arm propaganda via their mouthpiece, Kavkaz Center)
Kataibul Iman for Statements
Islamic State
Jihad Nasheeds
Network of Global Jihad [Interesting tidbit: Video posted today shows former Emir of Revolution Muslim Joseph Cohen (aka Yousef al Khattab)
Supporters of Chechnya terrorists
Revenge

Groups/pages above ‘likes’ lead to more interesting pages/groups. Have a Facebook account? Please flag, thanks in advance.

Previous ‘Facebook Jihad’ posts here. Note, first one was in 2007, 4…years ago…

View the original and participate in the comments here.

More here:

Facebook is being used to schedule some more evil for May 2011:

Facebook Jihad: Tunisian & Egyptian Third Palestinian Intifada 5-15-2011

Originally posted on 2.0: The Blogmocracy

Islam may be harmful to your health…

Back in February, 2008, I blogged about Islam and Brain Damage. I offered evidence that the Islamic custom of proving one’s piety by slamming one’s head into the floor is dangerous to one’s mental and physical health. That blog post continues to draw occasional comments and considerable traffic.

The unwisdom of this activity should be so obvious as to need no explanation, but apparently those who have already spent their lives bashing their heads into the floor may be impervious to further attempts at reason.

…and to the health of your offspring

In a nutshell, the problem is that both the cultural traditions in Islamic lands, and Islam itself, encourage inbreeding.

Suffice it to say that there are excellent reasons why the descendents of the royal families of Europe no longer intermarry as they once did, and why some States in the USA ban first-cousin marriage. The Orthodox Christian Church takes it further, prohibiting marriage between first or second cousins. Yet cousin marriage remains customary, not only within Muslim countries, but also among expatriate Muslim populations elsewhere.

Charles II of Spain, mentioned in the article below, suffered throughout his short life from severe mental and physical disabilities.

Discover: The individual & social risks of cousin marriage

…What’s the negative? Pedigree collapse. I’ve been talking about marriages between first cousins throughout this post, but that’s really a small issue next to this. Even first cousin marriages produce individuals with a fair amount of inbreeding. I ran a test for runs of homozygosity in my 23andMe genetic profile and I got 3 hits, while a friend whose parents are first cousins got ~70 (the parameters for the test aren’t important, just giving a relative sense). For inbred clans it gets much worse because people are related in many different ways, and genetically are far closer than first cousins. That is what happened to the Spanish Hapsburgs. As you can see from the pedigree of Charles II his parents were closer than typical first cousins. The Samaritans of Israel are a religious sect which seems to be going through pedigree collapse. Some of them are proactively marrying outsiders to prevent their extinction through high infant mortality rates. Others, “traditionalists,” oppose exogamy because intermarriage within the group is the custom, and diseases are God’s will.

The Samaritans are an extreme case. But we may be seeing a thousand Samaritan flowers blooming across the Middle East. From what I know cousin marriage in the Middle East is not limited to Muslims, Christians and Jews practice it as well. But among many Muslims it has some cachet because of particular hadiths which point to this practice as preferred. Setting religion aside, there are also social reasons why this practice is common. As I noted above sex segregation means that you may not know women outside of your family well, and in some societies where veiling is practiced it may be that you do not see many women you are not related to (even if veiling occurs at puberty, you may have seen your cousin at a younger age). Marriages are bonds which may tie a family into one operational social unit, and so produce a powerful inbred clan. This illustrates the cross-purposes of a cultural unit of selection vs. the individual unit of selection. In a society where clan vs. clan competitions are critical sorting mechanisms consanguineous marriages may serve as beneficial cross-linkages. Balanced against this of course are marriages across clans. On an individual level a first cousin marriage reduces the reproductive fitness, but higher potential reproductive fitness of two individuals who have no social support because of ostracism may be a moot point.

Read the rest.

A scandalous documentary

The greatest taboo: One woman lifts the lid on the tragic genetic consequences of when first cousins marry

By Tazeen Ahmad
Last updated at 11:11 AM on 23rd August 2010

Sitting in the family living room, I watched tensely as my mother and her older brother signed furiously at each other. Although almost completely without sound, their row was high-octane, even vicious.

Three of my uncles were born deaf but they knew how to make themselves heard. Eventually, my uncle caved in and fondly put his arm around his sister.

My mum has always had a special place in her family because she was the first girl to live beyond childhood. Five of her sisters died as babies or toddlers. It was not until many years later that anyone worked out why so many children died and three boys were born deaf.

Today there is no doubt among us that this tragedy occurred because my grandparents were first cousins.

My grandmother’s heart was broken from losing so many daughters at such a young age. As a parent, I can’t imagine what she went through.

My family is not unique. In the UK more than 50 per cent of British Pakistanis marry their cousins – in Bradford that figure is 75 per cent – and across the country the practice is on the rise and also common among East African, Middle-Eastern and Bangladeshi communities.

Back when my grandparents were having children, the med­ical facts were not established. But today in Britain alone there are more than 70 scientific studies on the subject.

We know the children of first cousins are ten times more likely to be born with recessive genetic disorders which can include infant mortality, deafness and blindness.

We know British Pakistanis constitute 1.5 per cent of the population, yet a third of all children born in this country with rare recessive genetic diseases come from this community.

Despite overwhelming evidence, in the time I spent filming Dispatches: When Cousins Marry, I felt as if I was breaking a taboo rather than addressing a reality. Pakistanis have been marrying cousins for generations.

Read the rest.

Here is the documentary; it runs for approximately one hour:

Click this link if the embedded video does not work in your browser.

h/t: Vlad Tepes and Gates of Vienna

Widespread effects of inbreeding

The effects of inbreeding are not limited to the incidence of obvious birth defects. Even those offspring who do not have overt congenital defects will, on the average, have lower intelligence and less ability to deal with life in the modern world.

Muslim Inbreeding: Impacts on intelligence, sanity, health and society

EuropeNews 9 August 2010
By Nicolai Sennels

Massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1.400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool. The consequences of intermarriage between first cousins often have serious impact on the offspring’s intelligence, sanity, health and on their surroundings

The most famous example of inbreeding is in ancient Egypt, where several Pharaonic dynasties collapsed after a couple of hundred years. In order to keep wealth and power within the family, the Pharaohs often married their own sister or half-sister and after a handful of generations the offspring were mentally and physically unfit to rule. Another historical example is the royal houses of Europe where royal families often married among each other because tradition did not allow them to marry people of non-royal class.

The high amount of mentally retarded and handicapped royalties throughout European history shows the unhealthy consequences of this practice. Luckily, the royal families have now allowed themselves to marry for love and not just for status.

The Muslim culture still practices inbreeding and has been doing so for longer than any Egyptian dynasty. This practice also predates the world’s oldest monarchy (the Danish) by 300 years.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called “consanguinity”) and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants”

Statistical research on Arabic countries shows that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algiers are consanguine (blood related), 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (southern area in Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen (Reproductive Health Journal, 2009 Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs.).

A large part of inbred Muslims are born from parents who are themselves inbred – which increase the risks of negative mental and physical consequenses greatly.
…
Low intelligence

Several studies show that children of consanguineous marriages have lower intelligence than children of non-related parents. Research shows that the IQ is 10-16 points lower in children born from related parents and that abilities related to social behavior develops slower in inbred babies:

“Effects of parental consanguinity on the cognitive and social behavior of children have been studied among the Ansari Muslims of Bhalgapur, Bihar.

IQ in inbred children (8-12 years old) is found to be lower (69 in rural and 79 in suburban populations) than that of the outbred ones (79 and 95 respectively). The onset of various social profiles like visual fixation, social smile, sound seizures, oral expression and hand-grasping are significantly delayed among the new-born inbred babies.” (Indian National Science Academy, 1983 Consanguinity Effects on Intelligence Quotient and Neonatal Behaviours of nsari Muslim Children“).

The article “Effects of inbreeding on Raven Matrices” concludes that “Indian Muslim school boys, ages 13 to 15 years, whose parents are first cousins, were compared with classmates whose parents are genetically unrelated on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices, a nonverbal test of intelligence. The inbred group scored significantly lower and had significantly greater variance than the non-inbred group, both on raw scores and on scores statistically adjusted to control for age and socioeconomic status.” (Behaviour Genetics, 1984).

Another study shows that the risk of having an IQ lower than 70 goes up 400 percent from 1.2 percent in children from normal parents to 6.2 percent in inbred children: “The data indicate that the risk for mental retardation in matings of normal parents increases from 0.012 with random matings to 0.062 for first-cousin parentage.” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 1978 Effect of inbreeding on IQ and mental retardation“). The study A study of possible deleterious effects of consanguinity concludes, that “The occurrence of malignancies, congenital abnormalities, mental retardation and physical handicap was significantly higher in offspring of consanguineous than non-consanguineous marriages.”

Read it all.

Also see:

The Mountain of Names (Geneology)

By 1389

As I have pointed out earlier, the damage that has been done by outsourcing our technical know-how to India and China, ever since Reagan left office, is irreparable.

• Starting with the Clinton Administration, we GAVE a wealth of technological access to the Chinese, allowing their military-industrial complex to progress much faster than would otherwise have been the case.
• Through the H-1b program and the tax and regulatory advantages of offshoring, the federal government has made it more and more difficult, verging on impossible, for Americans to make a decent living in high-tech careers. Young people aren’t going into those fields, and older folks are finding low-paying jobs outside their fields, or are retiring on inadequate incomes because they can’t find work any more.

This gives the high-tech companies (run by tranzi progressives, and sometimes by immigrants from Muslim countries, who contribute heavily to the Dems) an excuse to claim that we need to outsource and offshore even more, because of the a shortage of home-grown high-tech help. Of course, it is a lie, but in the future, this shortage will indeed exist, simply because nobody born here can hope to make a living in high-tech fields.

Creating TWO underclasses of indentured servants

1. Managers and CEOs at high-tech firms aren’t offshoring and outsourcing in order to enhance America’s competitiveness by recruiting “the best and the brightest.” It’s all about short-term self-interest. What they really want are poorly-paid, compliant, and easily intimidated foreign workers who will make no demands and who will do exactly as they are told, with no thought given to pesky matters of conscience such as loyalty to the US or to Judaeo-Christian standards of ethics in the workplace.
2. Adding insult to injury are all of those efforts to get American youngsters interested in studying for high-tech careers. That includes one of the three things that Obama tasked former NASA director Charles Bolden to do: to inspire children to learn math and science. Even the most talented children will seldom put the effort into studying math and science unless they think there’s something worthwhile that they will be able to do with that knowledge.
   
   By the time they reach college age, those youngsters are being induced take out student loans that they will never be able to pay back, because there will be no jobs in those fields for Americans. The sneaky thing here is that student loan debts cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, so the federal government gets a permanent class of people in peonage and debt-slavery. The federal government can then promise to forgive some part of the student loans if the victim agrees to spend a certain number of years doing menial tasks promoting the interests of those currently in power.

Raising vipers in our bosom

On the other hand, the offspring of our jihadi enemies have enough petrodollars that they need not trouble themselves about unpaid student loans. Instead, they come to the US on student visas, accumulate the technical knowledge that their own benighted societies cannot produce, and take it back to their compatriots at home and abroad to use against us. It never occurs to the members of the leftist-jihadist convergence who run our universities that it is a bad idea to provide technical training to our avowed enemies.

Here’s my advice:

If you want a high-tech career, don’t borrow money to learn it and don’t plan on living in the US.

What a tragic irony!

In case you haven’t heard, Satyam was the fourth-largest IT outsourcing company in India, with 55,000 employees (or so they claimed). The CEO, Ramalinga Raju, recently resigned after admitting massive financial fraud. As of this writing, the company is almost out of cash.

Here we go again…

Satyam has done business with companies and governments in over 60 countries, including the U.S. This scandal appears to be even larger in scope than the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal of late 2001. Price Waterhouse, the Indian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is facing close scrutiny over having signed off on Satyam’s audits.

Obviously, the much-touted Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after the Enron/Arthur Andersen debacle did nothing to prevent the recent collapse of the U.S. real estate, stock market, and financial sector. The take-home lesson is that once any corporation becomes multinational in scope, and politically well-connected, no laws, no regulations, no bureaucratic restructuring can possibly keep it honest if its management chooses to do otherwise.

Another reason why outsourcing is wrong

Outsourcing and offshoring are always and everywhere the enemies of accountability. The further away one’s trading partners are located, the harder it is to comprehend what they are up to, and that will never change.

Why corporate cheating is contagious

Whenever one major company in an industry has been “cooking the books” to promote or exaggerate its own success, what effect do you suppose that has? Think about it! Every other executive, every other company in that industry will be pressured to match or exceed the cheater’s inflated results, by fair means or foul, or face the wrath of board members and stockholders.

Some news links and other sources:

• Business Standard: Regulators, government tighten noose around Satyam
• Business Standard: Government supersedes Satyam board
• Wikipedia: Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
• NYT: Satyam Chief Admits Huge Fraud
• IHT: India hears calls for Satyam bailout
• IHT: Auditor in cross hairs over fraud at Satyam
• The Australian: Police arrest Satyam founder, Government sacks board
• Information Week Blog: Satyam And Its 8-Year Ban from World Bank
• Bloomberg.com: Satyam U.S. Investors File Actions Alleging Fraud (Update2)
• TheDeal.com: Enron went bankrupt, but what of Satyam’s future?

Perhaps some of this would be funny if it were not so sad.

Note: The screen capture was taken by 1389AD from www.satyam.com, shortly after the announcement. The pixelated area was blurred in the original.

Update 3/30/08:

• Geert Wilders Floods 1389 Blog – Fitna Movie HERE
• Fitna, The Movie Is Here – Where to See It?

From Klein Verzet:
This Week: Fitna, The Movie

Dutch parliamentary member Geert Wilders has announced that his Islam critical film named “Fitna” will be ready at the end of this week. The film, he announced, will soon have its own website:

www.fitnathemovie.com

Revealing fact is that the Dutch parliamentary member choose to host the website not from a server in The Netherlands, but from a server located in North America. Presumably to hold it out of reach of the Dutch government.

Next week, says Wilders, he will start negotiating with Dutch broadcasters to get his 15 minute film broadcasted in The Netherlands. A process that, according to him, can take up to several weeks. This could be sign that the movie will not be released the end of this week. But it could also be a way to put pressure on the Dutch broadcasters who don’t want to broadcast the whole movie, because they all politically oppose Wilders, but who at the same time would even sell their own mother for a scoop.

We keep you posted about the developments around the film Fitna. In the meantime, if people like to provide some free PR to the movie, they should create as many back links as possible to the website “fitna the movie”. This can be done by simply placing links to www.fitnathemovie.com. This can be done on you’re personal blog, other people’s blog comments, discussion forums, websites, etc.

Remember that massive YouTube outage last Sunday?

From The Times of India:
Pakistan lifts curbs on YouTube

26 Feb 2008, 2206 hrs IST, PTI

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities on Tuesday lifted a ban on popular video-sharing website YouTube after it removed “objectionable content” insulting Islam.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had ordered about 70 internet service providers last week to block the website because it had hosted a trailer for a “blasphemous film” by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that portrays Islam in a negative light.

The move by Pakistani authorities to block access to the website caused an accidental near global blackout of YouTube on Sunday.

YouTube , which is owned by Google, said on Monday that an ISP complying with Pakistan’s ban had caused a blackout of the website on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Senate or upper house of Parliament strongly condemned the republication in Denmark of the blasphemous cartoons caricaturing Prophet Mohammed that were also posted on YouTube.

A resolution passed unanimously by the Senate said “serious tensions” are also brewing because of a “sacrilegious film against Islam” made by Wilders.

(Emphasis is ours.)

That’s right… the controversy even brought down YouTube!

These crude and heavy-handed efforts to stop people from watching Fitna will eventually backfire. The harder our foes work to censor vital political speech, the more attention it will get, and the more curiosity will be aroused. That’s just human nature; after all, if the movie warrants that much consternation, then what it contains must be very important indeed.

But even though totalitarian censorship fails in the long run, before that happens it always does enormous damage to human societies and to the human spirit. Geert Wilders’ movie is going to be huge – and it deserves every opportunity to reach its eagerly-awaiting audience.

Here’s where YOU come in:

• Cross-post the Fitna movie announcement on your own blog.
• Email the link to http://www.fitnathemovie.com to your friends.
• Add the link to your bookmarks, favorites, or blogroll.
• Publicize it on social news sites, forums, and relevant comments on blog posts.
• Explain why this movie, and the freedom to distribute it and view it, is so important!

Links:

• Category Link: Articles about Geert Wilders on 1389 Blog
  (Note: To page back through the archive of older articles in a category link, please scroll down and click
  the ← Previous Entries link at the bottom of the page.)
• Klein Verzet: And on dhimmis being proud of it

Commentary on Balkans For Dummies, Part I

By SerbianFighter

All of this is backed up with facts…

A lot of people think that Albanian Muslims have a less religious character than the rest of the Islamic world. Which is, of course, not true. The real question is why the Islamic character of Albanian terrorism is concealed. (And I will call it terrorism, because actions where one group of people are trying to seclude a part of tne country in a illegal way is terrorism.) Maybe the answer is that there is a fear that the public will recognize that, in the heart of Europe, a new Islamic state has been formed by taxpaying citizens of the “West”.

Nothing new about the push to Islamize the Balkans

However, the Islamization of the territory around Albania – especially the effort to force Islamization upon Kosovo and Metohia – isn’t a recent process. It has been active for centuries and has gone through a number of phases. In certain phases, Islamization was interlaced with solving a national territorial question; that is, joining all territories with Islamic populations in one state.

At this point, I would like to point out that Kosovo and Metohia (the full name of the region) was Serbian before the first Albanian tribe came down from the mountains and set up there. In 1389 there was a famous Battle of Kosovo, of Serbs and their allies against the Ottoman Turkish empire. The Turks conquered Serbia and stayed there for 500 years before they were forced out, and Serbia was declared an independent state once more. When Turks came and brought Islam on Balkan soil, the Serbs and other people had a choice to join Islam or to become a form of slave to the newly-established and mighty Ottoman Empire.

Icon of Nemanjic Dynasty, medieval rulers of Serbia

An unthinkable surrender for the Serbs

Now we are talking about proud people who had a holy lineage of rulers during the previous couple of centuries, and such thing was unthinkable. When I say holy, I mean holy like saints – they were acknowledged to be saints and they are celebrated even today. It is even said that one of the descendants could perform miracles… so I hope this will shed a little light on what was going through people’s minds.

Oh, and I said a form of slaves – well, the main difference is that Ottomans took the Serbs’ firstborn male children 7-14 years old, and trained them to be an elite army for the empire, never to return home.

Well, unlike Serbs, Albanians were a group of mountain tribes without a significant heritage, so they didn’t have any problem with accepting Islam. Under the Ottoman Empire, this gave them an advantage over other people in this region. They also participated in violence against the Christian people. In spite of this, a great number of Serbs survived to see the fall of Ottoman Empire in this region, and, after the Balkan Wars, the rejoining of Kosovo and Metohia to Serbia. Albanians, of course, were not satisfied with such a solution. They also participated in the liberation from the Turks, but with different ambitions. They wanted to create a “Greater Albania” that would include all territories where Albanians lived, either as a majority or a minority, it didn’t matter.

WWI poster – “Kossovo Day” June 28, 1916
Solidarity with our Serb allies

That was a great source of frustration for a great number of Albanians and their ideology. In the newly created state of Serbia, they were a considerable minority, even in Kosovo (according to the records, in the late 19th century, there were 415.000 residents of Serbia who were Christians, 236.420 who were Muslim, and only 106.270 Albanians). By the end of WWI they became an even smaller minority, but that didn’t stop them from harassing the Serbs of Kosovo, who were beaten up, humiliated and forced out from their homes. Many foreign authorities wrote about it, so that you can be pretty sure that Serbs didn’t imagine it.

Nazi Albania

The most important phase in Islamization of Kosovo and Metohia occurred during WWII. Because of specific relations between Albania and their own interests, Italian occupiers allowed mass persecution of Serbs from these parts, and at the same time allowed a large number of Albanians from Albania to move there. In this way, a significant artificial demographic upheaval was made, which went unpunished and uncorrected. This also was to have a deciding role in the growth of terrorism and separatist ambitions in the region.

In this period around 10.000 Serbs were killed, 70.000 were banished, and 30.000 houses and other structures were demolished and destroyed. At the same time, 300.000 Albanians came from Albania to the territories of Kosovo and western Macedonia.

In battle against Christian Serbs (and later I will return to this, because there are other Christians in these parts beside Serbs), the Albanian leaders mobilized all Albanians – Muslim and Christian. To Christian Albanians, the struggle against Serbs was portrayed as a fight against Serbian oppression, and for the creation of “Great Albania.” But within the inner circles, among the Muslims themselves, they spoke freely of their real goal of creating an Islamic country – a goal that is entirely consistent with Islam as a religion. As an expression of their ambition for creating such a country, along with other things, a Skenderbeg Division was created.

Skenderbeg Albanian Muslim Waffen SS Division

The Skenderbeg Division had in its assembly military imams who worked to promote ideology among the fighters. Of course, the pan-Islamic and jihadist basis for doing battle against unbelievers was constantly highlighted. Among the unbelievers were Partizans, a Slavic (Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bosnian and Slovenian) guerrilla anti-German military in Balkan parts. [In other articles on this blog, we have discussed the Chetniks, led by Draza Mihailovic, a Serbian Orthodox anti-German force loyal to the Kingdom. - 1389] The first action of the Skenderbeg Division, which confirmed their Nazi orientation, was the arrest and execution of 281 of Pristina’s Jews in May of 1944. Pristina is a city in Kosovo.

The pan-Islamic character of the Skenderbeg division was revealed in the fact that it consisted of, among others, almost 150 Tajiks and Turkmen. Probably under their influence, the division was remembered for countless crimes against the Serbian population, even against women and children.

Communist Yugoslavia ratifies Nazi-era theft of Serbs’ property

After WWII, in spite of expectations, life for Serbs of Kosovo and Metohia in the newly-formed, atheist country of Yugoslavia for began as hard and difficult a period as before. After the war came a law that prohibited Serbs who had been exiled from Kosovo and Metohia from returning there. The direct consequence of this law was that a large number of Albanians who had entered Kosovo and Metohia during the war were given legal status. This made it possible for them to stay on property that they had taken from the Serbs. Albanian terrorists got a clear hint that they could run amok. Instead of being punished for their actions and receiving the same status as all other defeated nations, the Albanians got a total legalization of the demographic imbalance that they had created, and the Serbs got the short end of the stick.

“Godless Communists” favored Muslims over Christians

Confirming that Albanians as Muslims were privileged, unlike the Christians, is the fact that polygamy was tolerated because it was in the Islamic tradition. While in other parts of the country, marriages between nationalities were promoted, in Kosovo and Metohia it was possible only in one direction – an Albanian male could take a Serbian female, but not the other way around, because of reasons given in the Kuran.

There are other examples of Islamization of Albanians and Kosovo and Metohia, and of their preparations for the terrorism that never completely stopped, but more or less escalated over the years. From Enver Hodza’s Albania (that also declared itself as atheist) came a number of sheik dervish privates, that were convicted in Prizren in 1956 for aiding a terrorist gang. President of Central Comity of Communist Alliance Muhmut Bakali, as a communist (and communists were officially declared to be atheists) had a mosque built in Pec and further led to breaking Serbs in those parts. Several of his anti-Serb slip-ups were recorded, where he showed his sympathy for Muslims and Albanians, as a supposed communist and atheist.

The West works hand in glove with al Qaeda

Now we come to the year 1999, a year that NATO dumped its surplus of bombs on Serbia, even cluster or “cassette” bombs that are outlawed by international war rules. At various round tables that were organized to resolve the Kosovo and Metohia problem, various pronouncements often denied or negated the Islamization of this region. Those conclusions often came from abroad, from circles that stood to gain political benefit from denying these facts. Only one counter-argument is needed to prove that this Islamization is real: What about the Catholic Albanians, the famous jewelers from Janjevo? Although they were Albanians, they would have had to be Muslims to live a safe and carefree life in Kosovo. As Catholics, they had to seek refuge in Croatia.

At various times, Al Qaeda has announced terrorist acts and declared fatwas against “infidels”: USA, UK, France, Israel, India, Russia and Serbia. Osama bin Laden himself, during 1995, spent some time in Albania where he met with Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj.

Osama bin Laden with Ayman al-Zawahiri

The unconcealed connection between Kosovo Albanian separatists and the Islamist factor was confirmed in 1996 in Skopje (capital of Macedonia), at the 118th annual celebration of the Prizren League. It was attended by representatives of Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia, where they again sworn to fight for the league’s expansionist ideals. This is significant, because in the documents of the league, they appear as Muslims and not as Albanians, clearly showing the desire to create an Islamic country.

In 1998, the American administration even found it necessary to put its ally, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army, consisted of Muslim Albanians who fought against Serbs for, well you guessed, liberation of Kosovo) on a list of terrorist organizations, for the stated reason that they had found records of funds from Islamic countries that were involved in drug trafficking. At that time, they said that one of the financiers was Osama bin Laden. According to Interpol data, one of the elite KLA units was led by Muhammad al Zawahiri, the brother of al Qaeda ideologist Ayman al Zawahiri, who is considered second in command after Osama bin Laden.

Islamic organizations fund Kosovo terrorism

During 1998. the existence of the “Abu Bekir Sidik” unit was confirmed. This unit operated in the Drenica area, and was financed with funds from the “Balkan Islamic Center” and “Active Islamic Youth”. The unit consisted of around 40 foreign citizens, and its commander was Ekrem Avdia. When the unit was disbanded, almost all of its members were arrested, along with its leader Ekrem. But they all were released because of pressure from the “international community” during 2001. Soon after he was released, Ekrem was put in charge of the organization “Kosovo’s Islamic Biro,” which had a great number of outposts across Kosovo and Metohia. After that, Ekrem reactivated his old unit. They operate and contribute to the instability of this region to this day.

A great number of Islamic organizations even now operate on the territory of Kosovo and Metohia. Believe it or not, even under the cover of humanitarian organizations they smuggle weapons, they do other illegal trading, and they finance extremist and terrorist activities.

The bottom line is that there is nothing more frustrating when a small child is beating you up, and when you try to defend yourself, a bigger child slaps you down. Meanwhile, the other children just silently watch the whole thing and shout but won’t help you. It’s a messed-up world we live in.

More:

• The “Balkans For Dummies” Article Series
• Articles by CzechRebel
• Articles about the Balkans
• Articles about Kosovo
• Articles about Orthodox Christianity
• Articles about Serbia

Put your email and your blog to work for freedom!

From a Letter from Esra’a Al Shafei:

…Also, I wish to let you know that I’m the Director of the Free Kareem Coalition. Kareem Amer is an Egyptian blogger who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for writing posts critical of Islam and the Egyptian government. This coming Feb 22nd, it will be a full first year since he was officially sentenced, even though he was in prison for a year and 3 months now (3 of these months, he was imprisoned with no official charge or trial.)

On this date, we are organizing a worldwide op-ed day. Basically, this means that many people around the globe will be writing about Kareem’s case in order to increase awareness on it and making the Egyptian government realize that we have not forgotten this brave, young, innocent man whose only crime is free speech.

Also on this date, 2 rallies will be taking place: One in France and the other in Washington DC. Last year, we organized 3 worldwide rallies which took place everywhere from Brazil to India to Romania. Over 20 cities were involved and thousands wrote about it on their blogs.

This year however, since our last rally just took place in November, we are trying to take another approach and directly target the media to help keep Kareem in people’s minds and prayers.

I hope you can get involved in any way, at least by posting something about it on your blog. We could really use the help in spreading the word.

Thanks a lot,
Esra’a

Visit Free Kareem! to learn what else you can do.

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Nasser Rabbat, a Syrian professor of Islamic architecture at MIT, told the Park Service not to worry about the giant Mecca oriented crescent at the center of the Flight 93 Memorial. He said that since it does not point quite exactly to Mecca (it is off by 1.8°) it can’t be considered a proper mihrab (the central feature around which every mosque is built).

Liar. Many of the most famous mihrabs face as much as 20 or 30 degrees off of Mecca.

Here is another Rabbat deception:

Mosques are never in the shape of a crescent or a circle. This defeats the purpose of lining up the worshipers parallel to the Qibla wall (Mecca orientation), which usually translates into a rectangular shape, or sometimes a square. [From the White Paper released by the Memorial Project in August 2007.]

It is true that most mosques are rectangular, the more clearly to mark the direction to Mecca, but this is certainly not a requirement, given that the two most religiously significant sites in Islam are round mosques. Significant site #1 is the Sacred Mosque in Mecca:

Second most significant is the Mosque of Omar, also called the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, from which point Muhammad supposedly ascended into heaven:

Perhaps because of the prominence of these precedents, a small but significant number of mosques around the world follow the round model.

There is the Tun Abdul Aziz mosque built in Malaysia in 1975, referred to colloquially as the “Masjid Bulat,” or “round mosque.”

There is the new 5,000 person Arafat Mosque in Nigeria, which the architect claims is “the only round mosque in Africa,” but he is wrong. Another round mosque, Al Nileen, sits at the confluence of Blue and White Nile rivers in Khartoum:

[From Google Earth. Look up "alnileen mosque".]

Africa is also home to some older round mosques. Here is a round mosque from the Ivory coast. Similar mosques have also been found in Sierra Leone.

Here is a modern Russian mosque, laid out in shape of an eight point star.

There is even a famous round mosque right in the heart of the EU, at the northwest corner of the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels.

There is a round mosque in Kuwait, a round mosque in Kadavu India, and probably many more.

At the Islamic architecture website Archnet, a Muslim architect (not a native English writer) explains the problem with round mosques:

… a circular mosque can not function well because a mousqe should have an oriantation to kibla and as we all know that a circle does not have an orientation, How can we know the kibla wall if it is a circle ?

This problem does not afflict Paul Murdoch’s mosque design for the Flight 93 memorial because Murdoch’s giant crescent does create an orientation. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just as with a smaller size mihrab.

Geometrically, Murdoch’s Crescent of Embrace is just a gigantic Islamic prayer rug:

A Muslim prayer rug is a two dimensional mihrab, laid out to face Mecca, just as the Crescent of Embrace is.

Notice that to a person looking into the Flight 93 crescent, the irregularity of the outer arc of the crescent is not visible. The radial arbors are all behind the double row of red maples that line the walkway. The ends of the crescent are also well defined by the end of the walkway of red maples at the bottom and the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall Entry Portal Wall on top. This is a perfectly comprehensible and recognizable Mecca direction indicator.

Rabbat’s comments to the Park Service do not even pretend to be objective. He lists “talking points” in defense of the crescent design without ever even pretending to weigh the merits of the case against the design.

Most obviously, Rabbat never considers the almost exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a grounds for concern, but limits his remarks to possible excuses for not worrying about this obviously worrisome fact. The same for all of his other talking points. He only even considers ways to absolve the crescent design.

In short, Rabbat is as overtly biased as he could possibly be, yet the Park Service has no qualms about this overt bias. Rabbat gives them the excuses for unconcern that they want and they eagerly embrace him. The Park Service investigation into warnings of an enemy plot was a total fraud.

(Originally posted at Error Theory)

To join our blogbursts:

Email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.

The National Geographic is reporting:

The heaviest snowfall in [Iran] in more than a decade has killed at least 21 people…Some died of the severe cold, some were buried under avalanches, and others died after their cars overturned on snow-covered roads…Heavy snow and cold weather has also affected Afghanistan, India, and several Central Asian countries.

Winter-related tragedies reported by the BBC hereand here by the Gulf Daily News (Bahrain) here and by Reuters here include:

• Iran: eight people frozen to death after being trapped in their cars…snowfalls for the first time in living memory [in desert areas]
• Kyrgyzstan: 50 homeless people froze[n] to death
• Tajikistan: daytime temperatures as low as -10C and nighttime temps as low as -25C with power rationing
• Afghanistan: 50 deaths caused by heavy snow, and food shortages due to closed roads
• Ghor: Five people killed in an avalanche
• Herat: eight members of the same family died after their roof collapsed under heavy snow
• Pakistan: seven soldiers killed in avalanche
• Mazandaran: unprecedented cold weather and gas shortages
• Baghdad: first snowfall in “living memory”
• Uzbekistan: coldest temperatures for almost four decades
• India: more than 20 people killed by cold weather
• Tehran: airports and schools closed

Die-hard members of the religion of Global Warming, however, are keeping the faith:

OSLO: Climate change is still nudging up temperatures in the long term even though the warmest year was back in 1998 and 2008 has begun with unusual weather such as a cool Pacific and Baghdad’s first snow in memory, experts said. “Global warming has not stopped,” said senior scientific co-ordinator of the World Meteorological Organisat-ion’s climate programme Amir Delju.

(hat-tip, 1389, also on FHK)