More polemics from Tariq Ramadan. You'll be surprised to learn that the murderous killing spree undertaken by Mohamed had nothing to do with his religion, its all the fault of the French.
He only went on a Jihad after being deprived of his true dignity by France.
#2
"...he ends up a Jihadi without real conviction.."
That's why he filmed his 'slay them wherever you find them' moment while shouting Allahu Akbar. Because he didn't really believe. Yeah right.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
03/23/2012 10:09 Comments ||
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#3
But who paid for the terrorists extensive travelling?
I am assessing the French islamic websites. Until one of their own was implicated, they were attacking "nazis" for killing children. Now they are posting pics of babies that are said to be collateral casualties of IAF bombing.
I have counted 5 non-islamic causes for the terror. All blame Western Civilization for not allowing Merah to enforce shariah beheading and limb hacking. Those being the right of the slaves of allah.
We don't infest our homes with termites. Why infest our countries with pests?
#4
It's probably not the religion. It's actually the culture, that's in so many ways the antithesis of Western culture. It was the culture that gave birth to the religion, and the two have been reinforcing each other since 622 A.D.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2012 17:37 Comments ||
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#5
We don't infest our homes with termites. Why infest our countries with pests?
Snark of the day, JD.
Obamacare dominated the 2010 midterms, driving its Democratic authors to a historic electoral shellacking. But since then, the issue has slipped quietly underground.
Now its back, summoned to the national stage by the confluence of three disparate events: the release of new Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, the approach of Supreme Court hearings on the laws constitutionality and the issuance of a compulsory contraception mandate.
Obamacare was carefully constructed to manipulate the standard 10-year cost projections of the CBO. Because benefits would not fully kick in for four years, President Obama could trumpet 10-year gross costs of less than $1 trillion $938 billion to be exact.
But now that the near-costless years 2010 and 2011 have elapsed, the true 10-year price tag comes into focus. From 2013 through 2022, the CBO reports, the costs of Obamacare come to $1.76 trillion almost twice the phony original number.
It gets worse. Annual gross costs after 2021 are more than a quarter of $1 trillion every year until the end of time. That, for a new entitlement in a country already drowning in $16 trillion of debt.
Constitutionality:
Beginning Monday, the Supreme Court will hear challenges to the law. The American people, by an astonishing two-thirds majority, want the law and/or the individual mandate tossed out by the court. In practice, however, questions this momentous are generally decided 5 to 4 i.e., they depend on whatever side of the bed Justice Anthony Kennedy gets out of that morning.
Ultimately, the question will hinge on whether the Commerce Clause has any limits. If the federal government can compel a private citizen, under threat of a federally imposed penalty, to engage in a private contract with a private entity (to buy health insurance), is there anything the federal government cannot compel the citizen to do?
If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.
Figure becomes ground; ground becomes figure. The stakes could not be higher.
Coerciveness.
Serendipitously, the recently issued regulation on contraceptive coverage has allowed us to see exactly how this new power works. All institutions excepting only churches, but not excepting church-run charities, hospitals, etc. will be required to offer health care that must include free contraception, sterilization and drugs that cause abortion.
Consider the cascade of arbitrary bureaucratic decisions that resulted in this edict:
(1) Contraception, sterilization and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention. On whose authority? The secretary of health and human services, invoking the Institute of Medicine. But surely categorizing pregnancy as a disease equivalent is a value decision disguised as science. If contraception is prevention, what are fertility clinics? Disease inducers? And if contraception is prevention because it lessens morbidity and saves money, by that logic, mass sterilization would be the greatest boon to public health since the pasteurization of milk.
(2) This type of prevention is free no co-pay. Why? Is contraception morally superior to or more socially vital than and thus more of a right than penicillin for a child with pneumonia?
(3) Religious exemptions to this edict extend only to churches, places where the faithful worship God, and not to church-run hospitals and charities, places where the faithful do Gods work. Who promulgated this definition, so stunningly ignorant of the very idea of religious vocation? The almighty HHS secretary.
Today, its the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by indeed required by Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.
Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. Hed rather talk about other things.
But theres no escaping it now. Oral arguments begin Monday at 10 a.m.
[Dawn] THE younger brother of one of the late Osama bin Laden's ... who now dances with worms... widows, Amal Abdulfattah, has filed a legal challenge in the Islamabad High Court against criminal cases filed against Ms Abdulfattah and five minor children of the Al Qaeda chief. From what the authorities have disclosed, they entered the country illegally. Perhaps the state believes that because of their proximity to the world's most wanted man the family can provide crucial information. If this is the case, the authorities need to make it clear; otherwise it can be argued that these people are high-profile examples of the manner in which women and kiddies in this shadowy war are written off as negligible collateral damage by faceless myrmidons who head households as well as the security network in pursuit.
In many cases, the faceless myrmidons jeopardise their families' security by keeping them in the area of active operations. It is hard to imagine that the women and kiddies have a choice in the matter. And when the men are targeted, via drones or bombs or raids, those affected include people whose crime was simply to be irrevocably tied to a suspected terrorist. Some argue that the bad boys' intention is to use their families as human shields. Do those planning a strike against faceless myrmidons take such collateral damage into consideration? From the many examples, including that of Baitullah Mehsud's wife who was killed along with her husband in a drone strike, it would appear not. The onus lies primarily on the men who drag their families with them. But military planners are not absolved of the moral responsibility for the death or victimisation of those who have no proven links with terrorism. The fate of Osama bin Laden's family, then, becomes a litmus test. If the only charge against them is of illegal entry, the humanitarian answer lies in deportation.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2012 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] THE Hindu community, particularly in Sindh, has been in the grip of strong feelings of grief, anger and insecurity for several weeks. Unless its grievances are speedily addressed Pakistain stands to suffer incalculable harm in both material and moral terms.
The issue of Hindu girls' conversion to Islam and marriage to Moslem men, both transitions alleged to be forced and often after abduction, is not new. Indeed, it has always been high on the Hindu citizens' list of complaints. What is new is the scale and intensity of their reaction and the large number of their appeals for justice. It seems three recent cases involving Rinkal Kumari, Lata Kumari and Aasha Kumari have unleashed the Hindu community's long-brewing fears of loss of its religious and cultural identities.
The three cases are not identical in detail. Dr Murli Lal Karira, who belonged to Jacobabad and practised medicine at Suhbatpur, in Jafarabad district, was reported to have been kidnapped while travelling homeward. Some days later, his niece, Aasha Kumari Karira, who was taking lessons at a Jacobabad beauty parlour, did not return home after her work hours, and was believed to have been kidnapped. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Dr Lata Kumari, the 29-year old daughter of a medical practitioner from Jacobabad and employed at one of Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... 's premier medical institutions, was reported to have married a young Moslem man after converting to Islam. Her father alleged that her conversion and marriage took place under coercion after abduction and he moved the high court for redress. The lady denies these allegations. She came to the court when her husband applied for bail before arrest.
The brother of Rinkal Kumari (18) says she was kidnapped by unknown persons, allegedly backed by an influential MNA. Her family had difficulty in filing an FIR. The next day she and the young man she was said to have married after conversion to Islam were presented in a court at Mirpur Mathelo, while her family had been told to go to a court in Ghotki. The family was not allowed to see her. It is said that she told the magistrate she wanted to go with her family but the latter reportedly expressed his inability to allow a Moslem girl to go to a non-Moslem house and sent her to a Darul Aman. Subsequently she is said to have modified her statement.
One suspects that these cases have provoked an unusual wave of protest because unlike the poor and voiceless victims in earlier cases of forced conversion-marriage affairs, the women now involved come of socially noteworthy families who have some access to electronic means of communication.
Several non-Moslem citizens have argued that these women have been, or are being, forced to accept conversion and marriage under threats of dire consequences to their families if they refuse to surrender.
The state of the common Hindu citizens' mind is reflected in the e-mail Rinkal Kumari's brother addressed to the chief justice of Pakistain (copied to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistain). He says that Rinkal's abductors have told her that "if she wants to save her parents' life she should choose to convert [change] her religion and marry [an] unknown guy.... And yesterday [the] judge ordered that [the] girl wants to change her religion and want[s] to marry ...Naveed.... [The] judge even didn't allow [the] girl to meet ... her parents or anybody from her family. There were 500-700 people in [the] courtroom all with guns and there was nobody from [the] girl's family.... Now hundred[s] of people will take advantage of [the] 18-year-old girl and after that they will sell her to somebody". Nobody with a reasonably sound heart will fail to be moved by the feelings of anguish and despair oozing from these words.
These cases raise several questions of a fundamental nature.
First of all, change of religion is a fundamental right but Islamic authorities do not accept a Moslem's right to convert to another faith, though the laws of the country are silent on the point. Non-Moslems sometimes demand a bar to any conversion, something no legal authority or human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. activist will agree to.
However, the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything... non-Moslems are on solid ground when they protest against organizations and groups of professional proselytisers who apparently make a living by inducing, if not forcing, non-Moslem Paks to convert and who enjoy support in the majority community, in the police force and even in the judiciary (at least its subordinate part).
The proselytisers and matchmakers are facilitated in their task by a social environment in which a non-Moslem can be persuaded to escape from all-round discrimination and move from the ranks of second-class citizens into a privileged community by changing his religion. To make matters worse, the non-Moslems have to read reports of the exploits of a family that boasts of three or four daughters-in-law who have been converted from Hinduism or the plight of a Hindu family that has lost three girls in a row.
The complaint of foul play acquires additional strength when a non-Moslem woman is kidnapped and the state machinery shows little interest in recovering her until her marriage to a Moslem has been consummated. At that point another factor begins to worry these women. Some of them may be genuinely apprehensive of being killed by their families if restored to them and some others might consider themselves too impure to rejoin their parents. Further, the problems in registration of cross-faith marriages force parties to such unions to prefer secret compacts to open contracts.
This environment prevents most non-Moslem Paks to accept the possibility that one of their girls could voluntarily and of her free will opt for cross-faith matrimony. They do not want to follow the majority community's practice of accepting a Moslem woman's decision to take a non-Moslem as her spouse if he becomes a Moslem in name only.
Thus, the real issues are, firstly, the growth of discrimination against non-Moslem citizens, especially their womenfolk, that makes them vulnerable to force and susceptible to temptation and make-believe about escape from misery and, secondly, the rise of intolerance and hypocrisy in the ranks of the majority community. These matters cannot be resolved so long as the state allows itself to remain hostage to orthodox forces.
Quite obviously, Pakistain's accession to a sane and tolerant society in which all its sons and daughters are equal before the law and by social standards is going to be a long haul. The process may be started with action against organised abduction-conversion marriage rackets, offering guarantees of prompt and effective police action on complaints of abduction, and firm assurances of even-handed treatment by the courts of all parties regardless of belief, gender or social status.
All this is necessary to stop the loss of talent and skills that a spurt in non-Moslem migration to foreign lands is causing and to prevent the majority community from degenerating into a horde of morons capable of neither reason nor compassion. Above all, the distress caused to a minority community must be accepted as a serious national calamity.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2012 00:00 ||
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Iran's leaders believe that with the current global economic climate, specifically in the United States and Europe, and it being an American election year, the talks of a military option to take out the nuclear facilities amount to a bluff. They believe they hold the key to President B.O.'s re-election, as any instability in the region and in the price of energy will send America back into a severe recession.
More dangerous is their belief that even a limited conflict with America will help their status as the leader of a worldwide Islamic movement and trigger the downfall of regimes in the region more friendly to the U.S.; help the Syrian regime out of its current crisis; and push the military junta out of power in Egypt, helping solidify control by the Moslem Brüderbund.
As the Iranian strategist Mehdi Mohammadi recently stated, as Iran progresses on the nuclear front, the West will realize that not only will a military option no longer work, but neither will sanctions. Then the West will have to accept a nuclear Iran.
Iranian leaders also believe that since Israel would now have to act alone, it will not risk thousands of missiles from many fronts raining down on Tel Aviv and ultimately will also accept a nuclear Iran.
Most of all, they believe that once Iran is nuclear-armed, the West will be checkmated, as the cost of any confrontation at that time would be the destruction of the world.
Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award-winning book A Time to Betray. He is a senior fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense's Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).
#2
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't recall a POTUS who suffered a decline in popularity for bombing the sh*t out of somebody perceived as villainous/hostile by USA public.
#5
Why? Gas is approaching $4 per gallon during an election year. And the Prez is a goof who sourced ayatollah suppression of the 2009 riots, in America's 1953 intervention.
BHO has never attacked Ahmadinejad; he only expresses differences with same.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] THE younger brother of one of 
[Dawn] THE Hindu community, particularly in Sindh, has been in the grip of strong feelings of grief, anger and insecurity for several weeks. Unless its grievances are speedily addressed Pakistain stands to suffer incalculable harm in both material and moral terms.
