Meeting at UC Irvine to Have a Bust of Raoul Wallenberg Placed on Campus

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com

First Gas, Then Fire

Over a week ago President Bashar al-Assad of Syria launched a gas attack on his own people.  Hundreds of civilians are dead and thousands are wounded.  Now to follow up such a hideous act, Assad has launched an incendiary bomb into the city of Aleppo.

Citizens from the area of the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, suffering from burns most likely caused by a incendiary bomb similar to napalm, were shown on Friday on a BBC network broadcast.

According to the report, 10 were killed and many more injured in a bombing on a school.

The broadcast shows a man, identified as a teacher in the bombed school, suffering from burns in most of his body.

The broadcast shows a man, identified as a teacher in the bombed school, suffering from burns in most of his body.

Wounded from the attack:

Click here if the video fails to load.

"The plane bombed a residential area in Orum a-Kubra," he said. "We tried to evacuate quickly, but it appears that fate had the upper hand today."

"The students gathered in one place, and then the plane got us," he added.

In another video, taken after the attack, a doctor who treated the wounded said that 10 students were killed and about 50 injured, most of them suffering from severe burns caused by napalm.

The BBC report described the scene and said the wounded looked like "walking dead."

A BBC reporter at the scene estimated the bomb contained either a napalm type explosive or thermite.

A British medic, Dr Rola, who was in Syria with the charity Hand In Hand, treated the victims at the hospital.

She said: "It is just absolute chaos and carnage here. We have had a massive influx of what looks like serious burns, seems like it must be some sort of, not really sure, maybe napalm, something similar to that.

"But obviously within the chaos of the situation it is very difficult to know exactly what is going on."

She said later: "We feel like some sort of, not even a second class citizen, like we just don't matter. Like all of these children, and all of these people who are being killed and massacred, we don't matter.

"The whole world has failed our nation and it is innocent civilians who are paying the price.".

Meanwhile, the NBC network released a survey which shows 50% of Americans oppose an US strike against Syria. Close to 80% of the surveyed said the President Barack Obama must have the Congress' go-ahead before a military intervention against Assad's regime.

SOURCE

On September 6, 2007 Israel destroyed Syria's nuclear reactor. Could you imagine Assad with a nuke or two?  Would he use it on his own people?  I do believe he would use a nuke on his own people.  He has already used Sarin gas and now an incendiary bomb.  Syria has descended into Hell.  A Hell of their own making.  How this will end is not known to the future, but it will not be a good ending for the Syrian people.

Some Humor To Start Your Day

With all the tension in the world we sometimes forget to stop and laugh at life.

Here is a little ditty to put a smile on your face.

The Pussy Cat Song



Click here if video fails to load.

I hope you enjoyed this.

University of California Whitewash

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Over the years, I have often reported on the on-going investigations by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights as to complaints of anti-Semitism on the University of California campuses. Principal among these was the complaint lodged against UC Irvine in 2007. It may be summed up by stating that the source of the complaints are incidents and speech that have arisen during the periodic anti-Israel events staged by the various chapters of the Muslim Student association and the Students for Justice in Palestine.

Now to the relief of the various campus administrations and Palestinian activists, the DOE has concluded that the complaints are baseless-or to be more exact- are covered under First Amendment protections. Previous findings held that complaints were not filed in a timely manner, or that Jews were not protected as a religion under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, or that there was no finding of discrimination as to nationality-specifically, no Israelis had been victimized. And on it went.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-jewish-20130828,0,6127004.story

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/28/5687439/feds-reject-uc-berkeley-anti-semitism.html

Up until a few years ago, when Ken Marcus was the head of OCR, there was hope that the complaints would bear fruit. Alas, Marcus has long since been replaced by people with a different mindset, so this finding is hardly surprising.

"However, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal, in a statement, said: “This campus values the free and open expression of ideas, and we diligently safeguard our students' civil rights. We are, therefore, pleased that these allegations have been thoroughly investigated and dismissed.”

"UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake said in a statement that “UC Irvine’s Jewish student community is vibrant, growing, and actively engaged in a wide variety of activities on our diverse campus. We are pleased that these allegations have been dismissed and believe very strongly in our carefully and actively nurtured culture of inclusion.”

I find the above comments highly offensive. Here is why:

"You can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew."
-Washington DC-based Mohammed al Asi at UC Irvine in 2001

"You Jews, you'all the new Nazis!"
-Amir Abdel Malik Ali
At UC Irvine 2010

"Rupert Murdoch-straight up Zionist Jew!"
-Amir Abdel Malik Ali
at UC Irvine 2006

This picture appeared on the MSU Apartheid Wall in 2008. I witnessed it and photographed it myself.

All of the above occurred during the Muslim Student Union Union-sponsored week of events at UC Irvine in May of the above years. There are many more which have been documented on this site.

Of course, it is not surprising that the LA Times would give the last word to the crowing of two pro-Palestinian supporters.

"Rebecca Pierce, a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz and member of the Committee for Justice in Palestine, said in a statement that she and others felt “vindicated that the DOE has rejected this attack on our freedom of expression, and we will continue to advocate in accordance with our values regarding human rights and social justice.”

But activists involved in pro-Palestinian causes on campus also questioned why the probes took so long, with the one at Irvine started in April 2008, the Santa Cruz one in March 2011 and Berkeley, September 2012. Berkeley-based attorney Liz Jackson, who works with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the delays have created a chilling effect, making some students afraid to participate in political actions. She said she deplored any anti-Semitic remarks made on campuses but that it is wrong to depict UC as having an anti-Jewish climate."

I wouldn't really call this a disappointment because our side gave up the ghost a few years ago that these complaints were ever going to amount to anything given the current climate. The out-going UC president, Mark Yudof, himself Jewish, never supported the idea that anti-Semitism was a problem on his campuses and showed a cavalier disinterest in the problem passing it off as free speech. His successor, the politically-correct Janet Napolitano will be no improvement. In a nutshell, the administration of the University of California and the various chancellors have been intimidated and cowed into submission by the various MSA chapters. Nobody wants to appear to be Islamophobic. As for anti-Semitism, nobody cares.

Guns Of August 2013

In July 1914 the Great Powers of Europe ((Italy, France, Germany, the British Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire and Russia) failed to come to a diplomatic solution to the growing nationalism, the colonialism that the Great Powers forced upon the Third World, the growing call for war that was filling the continent of Europe.  Then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian national member of the Serbian nationalist organization, the Black Hand, in the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for the Great Powers and the Guns of August fired.

Now in this last week of August we are beginning to hear the Guns of August rolling again.  A different part of the World, (The Middle East not Europe.) and different players (Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Russia, Israel, United States, Great Britain.).  Diplomacy has failed, Assad of Syria will not listen to the world.  And the Assad regime attacked his own civilian population with Sarin gas.  But the outcome of their actions just might ignite the world into a global war.

From Debka:

Ahead of the US strike on Syria, the Israeli security cabinet in special session Wednesday, Aug. 28, ordered the partial mobilization of select, qualitative IDF reserve forces: Rocket, Air Force, missile interception, Home Defense command and intelligence units. Anti-missile Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome systems were spread out more widely than ever before across the country. US and Syria wound up last military preparations for the US strike. Barring last-minute hold-ups, debkafile’s military sources report the American operation is scheduled to start Friday night, early Saturday Aug. 30-31.(Confirmed)

In the past 24 hours, the US Air Force finished a major buildup at the big US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. B-1B bombers and F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets were brought over from other US Mid East air facilities on the Omani island of Masirah and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

These squadrons were not assigned to the US military strike against Syria, say our military sources, but will stand ready to move in should unforeseen complications in the course of the US missile assault on Syria call for the introduction of extra assets from outside.

Israeli officials and spokesmen continued to insist Wednesday on low expectations of a Syrian counter-offensive against their country. Nevertheless, the new US air force reinforcements in Qatar will stand ready to rush to the aid of US allies - Israel, Jordan and Turkey - in the event of their coming under Syrian Scud attack.

On the opposite side, the Syrian army Tuesday started scattering personnel, weapons and air assets to safe places to reduce their exposure to damage and losses from US assaults.

Our military sources report that personnel, tanks and artillery of the Syrian Army’s 4th and Republican Guard Divisions, which are held responsible for the Aug. 21 chemical attack on civilians, were being moved into fortified shelters built last year against potential foreign military intervention.(Confirmed)

Syrian army command centers in Homs, Hama, Latakia and the Aleppo region were also being split up and dispersed, after a tip-off to Syrian and Russian intelligence that they would be targeted by the US strike. Syria has also transferred its Air Force fighter planes, bombers and attack helicopters to fortified shelters which are armored against missile and air attack.

In Israel, the IDF Wednesday installed two Iron Dome missile interceptors in the northern “Valleys” region and Safed in addition to Haifa. Another Iron Dome battery was posted in the heavily populated central district. Arrow, Patriot anti-missile missiles, as well as Iron Domes, have been deployed more widely across Israel than ever before. debkafile’s military sources report that Israel’s Arrow and Patriot interceptors are linked to the US missile shield with which their operation is synchronized.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel was ready for any scenario. Although it takes no part in the Syrian civil war crisis, Israel would not hesitate to fight back for any attempted attacks – and would do so forcefully.

Wednesday morning, the machinery for distributing gas masks to the population broke down under the pressure of demands to distribution centers across the country. The Homeland Ministry’s website crashed. Former Interior Minister Ellie Yishay complained of a shortage of protective masks due to budget cuts. He said there are only enough to supply 40 percent of the population.

Will someone please tell me why are we getting involved in a civil war?  Have we not learned from past experience (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) that we cannot defeat a military using conventional military tactics and Obama's idea of rules of engagement.  Rules written to give the enemy every advantage.

All I can see if we attack Syria is that we support al-Queda and enter into a war we cannot extract ourselves from for years.  A war that will cost the US thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Wednesday's Hero

Staff Sgt. April Welch

    Staff Sgt. April Welch wraps the head of a simulated victim during a Major Accident Response Exercise July 24, 2013, at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. The purpose of the MARE was to test the response of the base’s and the city of Jacksonville’s first responders. Welch is a medical technician assigned to the 19th Aerospace Medicine Squadron.

Photo courtesy U.S. Air Force taken by Airman 1st Class Cliffton Dolezal

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives just so others may get to enjoy freedom. For that I am proud to call them Hero.

Those Who Say That We're In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don't Know Where To Look.

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

What is the Proper Sentence for Nidal Hasan?

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


We will shortly know what the military jury decides should be the fate for Nidal Hasan, death or life imprisonment. Surprisingly, many are guessing that the jury will decide that life imprisonment with no possibility of parole is a harsher sentence than the death that Hasan apparently craves. After all, in his paralyzed condition, life in a cell trapped in a wheelchair and having to wear diapers for another 40 or so years is nothing to look forward to. Hasan thinks that with a death sentence, he will achieve martyrdom and go to Paradise, where he will be entertained by 72 virgins.

There are 13 jurors. If only one of them decides that Hasan would suffer more with a life sentence, that's what it will be. It must be unanimous for death.

Personally, I support the death penalty for premeditated murder and if this case doesn't merit the death penalty, few do. There is no worry that just maybe an innocent man has been convicted. He proudly admits it and was captured in the act anyway.

Were I to believe that Hasan's vision of martyrdom and paradise was true, I would say give him life imprisonment and let him rot to death in ignominy. However, I don't believe that for one moment. On the other hand, we have seen too many cases where life imprisonment turns into eventual freedom. In the case of the Blind Sheikh, we had been worrying about Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi pressuring President Obama to release this evil man who is sentenced to life in a US prison for plotting terror acts against us. (Fortunately, that worry has been removed courtesy of the Egyptian military.) Who is to say that some future president may find it expedient to placate some Middle East dictator-or hostage-taking terrorists- and turn Hasan loose?

In addition, even with a death sentence, appeals will take several years. Since it is only military and federal courts involved here, the process probably won't take as long as state-originated appeals do. Timothy McVeigh may be a closer template. Hasan will still have to spend some years sitting in his wheelchair and soiling his diaper before justice is administered.

Assuming most of his victims and their survivors want to to see the death penalty applied here, I think that is the fitting punishment. He has gotten his trial and the world has seen that we have a justice system that works better than any other-imperfect as it is.  Hasan will eventually learn that his soul is not going where he thinks it is.

US Hits Syria. Syria Hits Israel. Obama Stops Israel From Hitting Back.

The world is watching very carefully what the US response (if any) to the recent Chemical Weapons attack Bashar al-Assad committed upon his people.  Will Obama actually put his money where his mouth is?  Will it be big enough? And what will Assad's reaction be?  We keep hearing the answer to that question from the Syrians.

There is little logic in the Netanyahu government’s public assurances that the Syrian ruler Bashar Assad would not risk a major showdown with Israel for fear of an IDF response powerful enough to overthrow his regime. This argument fails to take into account the calculus in Washington: President Barack Obama would not countenance, at least in the initial stage, an Israeli military strike on a scale greater than the limited operation he is contemplating for his own armed forces in the wake of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack on Damascus last Wednesday, Aug. 21. Israel would therefore not be allowed to endanger Assad’s rule.

Assad’s Russian advisers are no doubt briefing him on this Israel-Syrian equation.

According to debkafile’s military sources, Israeli strategists prefer to believe that Syria will choose Jordan for a conventional missile strike in reprisal for a US attack - rather than go for Israel.

This assumption was refuted by the words of Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem Tuesday, Aug. 27, at a press conference he held in response to US allegations of his government’s responsibility for using chemical weapons in East Damascus.

Accusing the US Secretary of State John Kelly of telling lies and fabricating evidence against his government, Moallem insisted it had not used chemical weapons or delayed permission for the UN team to launch its investigation under guaranteed security in government-controlled sites. That team only arrived Saturday, Aug. 23, and was not ready for its mission before Monday, Moallem insisted.

He went on to question US objectives in seeking to attack Syria, and answered his own question by saying: “Anything that happens in this area is in Israel’s interest. Such aggression will first of all benefit Israel, secondly, the military efforts of Al Nusra, al Qaeda’s armed group in Syria. “So the Americans would be serving Israel first and Al Qaeda second.”

As for Jordan, Moallem stressed Syria’s friendly and neighborly ties with the Hashemite kingdom. “We have no thought of acting against Jordan,” he said, and advised Amman not to let itself be persuaded to give up its friendship with Damascus.

debkafile’s military sources add: Washington may avoid the need to punish Syria for a potential attack on Jordan by harnessing the Saudi Air Force. In response to a joint US-Amman invitation, Saudi warplanes could cross through Hashemite airspace and blast targets in Syria. They would use intelligence input and coordination support from US air commands.

The Saudi air base at Tabuk near the Jordanian border was reported Tuesday to have placed its F-15 squadrons on the ready. A French squadron of Rafale bombers is also based at Tabuk.

The situation could take a different turn if Syria targeted the US forces deployed in Jordan.

For all these reasons, Israel is more likely than Jordan to be first in line for Syrian payback for a US attack. IDF commanders are well aware of this danger and are gearing up for the challenge. Part of their planning may be to stage the first Israel-Syrian military confrontation in Jordan and over its skies and not just in Israel.

That Israel is under explicit threat was made amply clear in statements coming Tuesday from Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and implicitly, Russia. When Moallem said Tuesday that Syria would defend itself in the case of a US strike “using all available means,” he felt safe in including Syrian allies in this category.

Those allies are evidently resolved not to stand by idly if Syria is attacked.

The nature of their promised assistance to Bashar Assad was no doubt conveyed to Barack Obama’s intermediaries, UN Deputy Secretary Jeffrey Feltman and Oman’s Sultan Qaboos, Monday, when they met Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani Monday, to promote the US president’s bid for an understanding on Syria –– as reported exclusively by debkafile.

So the US president must by now know how many players will jump in and where, in consequence of an American attack on Syria. This means that Washington may find it impossible to keep the operation within the predetermined confines desired by the US president. Jerusalem as well as Washington realizes how widely the fallout may spread, but Israeli leaders are keeping this prospect under their hats to avoid public panic.

SOURCE

Normally this would be just hot air coming out of Syria, but the fact that Israeli are stocking up on Gas Masks and protective gear.  They are nervous.  And rightly so.  It is also a fact that President Barack Hussein Obama is NOT a friend of Israel, in fact before he became President he was in favor of the total destruction of Israel.  His actions since he became President have made him the most anti-Israel President since Dhimmi Carter.  I would not put it past him to threaten to attack Israel if they tried to defend themselves.

Obama loves the trappings of the Presidency, but not the work.  I doubt that he will attack Syria with enough force to make it very clear to Assad that he cannot act in such a manner to his own people.  In reality Obama will do a little action and claim victory.  Assad (and Iran) will laugh seeing that if they use such weapons, the world will only slap them on the wrist.  And Israel will be the one who suffers.

Muslim Brotherhood Supporters Using 4-Fingered Salute

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Hat tip Vlad Tepes

                              The new international sign of support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt


A  protest was held in yesterday Ottawa, Canada by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Note the use of the 4-finger salute that was used. The same salute was used the day before by Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Gaza. The Gaza group was parading through town with weapons as well. Vlad Tepes has video of both events.

http://vladtepesblog.com/2013/08/24/muslim-brotherhood-stage-protest-in-ottawa-canada-pretend-to-demand-democracy-and-sharpen-their-taqyyia/

In addition, last night in Santa Monica, California a group of counter-jihad activists had a table (lawfully) set up on the Third Street Promenade during the evening hours. For some strange reason, the Promenade was flooded with Muslims last night, several of whom engaged our friends. Four older men who came up to the table made it a point to show their yellow caps with the 4-finger hand sewn on as a sign of support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here is a website that is promoting the symbol (Pakistaniyan)

http://www.pakistaniyan.com/2013/08/what-is-happening-in-egypt-and-why.html

Here is an explanation which one of my sources obtained from Facebook:

Copied from a Facebook Page:

"Rabaa” meaning four or the fourth in Arabic has become the sign of anti-coup protests in ‪#‎Egypt worldwide. It is the symbol of war against military regime & support for those who were martyred while protesting against military coup. The massacre on August 14 near Masjid ‪#‎Rabia of anti-coup protesters in Egypt tried to voice their demands to the world by raising their four fingers. Rabaa al-Adawiya Square is around 180 feet wide road and almost 6 miles long & it was fully decorated by the gathering of anti-coup protesters, it is as famous as ‪#‎Tahrir Square in Cairo due to resistance of hundreds of thousands of anti-coup protesters going on for more than two months. It has witnessed one of the gravest massacres of recent years. Let’s all change our DP to ‪#‎R4BIA to show solidarity with our ‪#‎Egyptian brethren."

The same Muslim Brotherhood that is burning Christian churches in Egypt and attacking Coptic Christians.

Don't let anyone tell you the Muslim Brotherhood isn't spreading its agenda to North America. It most definitely is and has been for a long time. Here's hoping the current military government crushes them.

Coincidence - Do You Believe In Them?

A big shout out to Poppy for sending this to me.

Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition.

Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle LaVaughan Robinson (later Mrs.Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernardine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.

Bernardine Dohrn just happened to be married to William Ayers, with whom she just happened to have hidden from the FBI at a San Francisco marina, along with Donald Warden, who just happened to change his name to Khalid al-Mansour, and Warden/al-Mansour just happened to be a mentor of BlackPanther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and a close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and al-Mansour just happened to be financial adviser to a Saudi Prince, who just happened to donate cash to Harvard, for which Obama just happened to get a critical letter of recommendation from Percy Sutton, who just happened to have been the attorney for Malcolm X, who just happened to know Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, who just happened to be a close friend of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who just happened to meet Malcolm X when he traveled to Kenya.

Obama, Sr. just happened to have his education at the University of Hawaii paid for by the Laubach Literacy Institute, which just happened to have been supported by Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who just happened to be a friend of Malcolm X, who just happened to have been associated with the Nation of Islam, which was later headed by Louis Farrakhan, who just happens to live very close to Obama’s Chicago mansion, which also just happens to be located very close to the residence of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who just happen to have been occasional baby-sitters for Malia and Natasha Obama, whose parents just happened to have no concern exposing their daughters to bomb-making communists.

After attending Occidental College and Columbia University, where he just happened to have foreign Muslim roommates, Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization that just happened to have been founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul “the Red” Alinsky, author of "Rules for Radicals", who just happened to be the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley College, and Obama’s $25,000 salary at IAF just happened to be funded by a grant from the Woods Fund, which was founded by the Woods family, whose Sahara Coal company just happened to provide coal to Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO just happened to be Thomas Ayers, whose son William Ayers just happenedto serve on the board of the Woods Fund, along with Obama.

Obama also worked on voter registration drives in Chicago in the 1980s and just happened to work with leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI), through which Obama met Carl Davidson, who just happened to travel to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, and who just happened to be a former member of the SDS and a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which just happened to sponsor a 2002 anti-war rally at which Obama spoke, and which just happened to have been organized by Marilyn Katz, a former SDS activist and later public relations consultant who just happened to be a long-time friend of Obama’s political hatchet man, David Axelrod.

Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), whose pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who just happened to preach Marxism and Black Liberation Theology and who delivered anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-American sermons, which Obama just happened never to hear because he just happened to miss church only on the days when Wright was at his “most enthusiastic,” and Obama just happened never to notice that Oprah Winfrey left the church because it was too radical, and just happened never to notice that the church gave the vile anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award.

Although no one had ever heard of him at the time, Obama just happened to receive an impossible-to-believe $125,000 advance to write a book about race relations, which he just happened to fail to write while using the cash to vacation in Bali with his wife Michelle, and despite his record of non-writing he just happened to receive a second advance, for $40,000, from another publisher, and he eventually completed a manuscript called "Dreams From My Father", which just happened to strongly reflect the writing style of William Ayers, who just happened to trample on an American flag for the cover photograph of the popular Chicago magazine, which Obama just happened never to see, even though it appeared on newsstands throughout the city.

Obama was hired by the law firm Miner, Banhill and Galland, which just happened to specialize in negotiating state government contracts to develop low-income housing, and which just happened to deal with now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and his firm Rezar

In 1994 Obama represented ACORN and another plaintiff in a lawsuit against Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks(Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank), and the lawsuit just happened to result in banks being blackmailed into approving subprime loans for poor credit risks, a trend which just happened to spread nationwide, and which just happened to lead to the collapse of the housing bubble, which just happened to help Obama defeat John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In 1996 Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and joined the “New Party,” which just happened to promote Marxism, and Obama was supported by Dr. Quentin Yong, a socialist who just happened to support a government takeover of the health care system.

In late 1999 Obama purportedly engaged in homosexual activities and cocaine-snorting in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair, who claims he was contacted in late 2007 by Donald Young, who just happened to be the gay choir director of Obama’s Chicago church and who shared information with Sinclair about Obama, and Young just happened to be murdered on December 23, 2007, just weeks after Larry Bland, another gay member of the church, just happened to be murdered, and both murders just happened to have never been solved. In 2008 Sinclair held a press conference to discuss his claims, and just happened to be arrested immediately after the event, based on a warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who just happens to be the son of Joe Biden.

In 2003 Obama and his wife attended a dinner in honor of Rashid Khalidi, who just happened to be a former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights, and who Obama claims he does not know, even though the Obamas just happened to have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and just happened to have used them as occasional baby-sitters. Obama reportedly praised Khalidi at the decidedly anti-Semitic event, which William Ayers just happened to also attend, and the event Obama pretends he never attended was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama just happened to have funneled cash while serving on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers, and one speaker at the dinner remarked that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel “will never see a day of peace,” and entertainment at the dinner included a Muslim children’s dance whose performances just happened to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags, and Obama allegedly told the audience that “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” and there has been “genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis,” and the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the event but just happens to refuse to make it public.

In the 2004 Illinois Democrat primary race for the U.S. Senate, front-runner Blair Hull just happened to be forced out of the race after David Axelrod just happened to manage to get Hull’s sealed divorce records unsealed, which just happened to enable Obama to win the primary, so he could face popular Republican Jack Ryan, whose sealed child custody records from his divorce just happened to become unsealed, forcing Ryan to withdraw from the race, which just happened to enable the unqualified Obama to waltz into the U.S. Senate, where, after a mere 143 days of work, he just happened to decide he was qualified to run for President of the United States.

Assad Is Out Of Control

In 48 hours Bashar al-Assad, Iran and Hezbollah launched attacks at the Syrian Rebels (and civilians), Israel, and Lebanon as is being reported by Debka.com.

In the space of 48 hours, the Assad regime, Iran and Hezbollah launched a three-point offensive against foreign intervention, debkafile reports. Here are some facts: The sarin nerve gas atrocity of Wednesday, Aug. 21, alleged to have claimed more than 1,000 lives, was the work of the 155th Brigade of the Syrian army’s 4th Division, headed by President Bashar Assad’s younger brother Gen. Maher Assad.

The poison gas shells were fired from the big Mount Kalmun army base south of Damascus, one of the three repositories of Syria’s chemical weapons. In response to a demand from Moscow last December, Assad collected his chemical assets in three depots. The other two are Dummar, a suburb 5 kilometers outside Damascus, and the Al-Safira air base, west of Aleppo. Not a single shell or gram of poison gas is loaded for use at any of the three sites without an explicit directive from the president or his brother.

Therefore, the clamor raised by the US and French presidents, Western prime ministers and Russian leaders for an independent investigation to turn up evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and identity of its perpetrator – the Assad regime, says the West, and a rebel provocation, according to Moscow – is nothing but playacting. The facts are known and the evidence is present. And the price for refusing to come down to earth and putting an immediate stop to this horrifying precedent may be unimaginably grim – not just for Israel and Jordan – but for the rest of the Middle East and beyond.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented Thursday, Aug. 22 that Iran is using Syria as its testing ground while closely monitoring international responses to its actions.

His remark followed the four Grad rockets fired on northern Israel the day after the chemical attack in East Damascus. His words were scarcely noticed, mainly because Israel’s own spokesmen were busy spreading a blanket of disinformation over the attack, attributing it vaguely to “Global Jihad” (whatever that is).

debkafile’s military sources affirm that, just as the Assad brothers orchestrated the chemical shell attack on Syrian civilians, so too did Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah set in motion the rocket attack on Israel.

By good fortune, the two which exploded in built-up areas caused damage but no casualties and a third was intercepted by Iron Dome.

Nasrallah had his disposal two Palestinian terrorist groups functioning in Lebanon and Syria under direct Iranian command. They are the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian – General Command (PFLP-GC) and Jihad Islami – both of them eager to attack Israel. Then, on Friday night, two car bombs blew up outside Sunni mosques in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli, killing 42 people and injuring 500.

The triple coordinated outrages added up to a dire warning from Tehran and Damascus about what they have in store for the region, and especially Syria’s neighbors, as payback for foreign intervention in the Syrian civil war. On the subject of intervention, the French daily Le Figaro took the liberty last Thursday, Aug. 23, of lifting wholesale and publishing without credit the exclusive report carried Wednesday, Aug. 21, by debkafile. We were the first publication in the world to reveal on Saturday, Aug. 17 the entry from Jordan into southern Syria of a unit of US-trained Syrian rebel commandos, under the caption: Reported Syrian gas attack after first US-trained rebel incursion from Jordan. In that report, debkafile was also the first to expose Assad’s poison gas attack as a warning of the heavy price he would exact for intervention in the Syrian war by foreign forces or by rebels trained by foreign forces – in this case US instructors and officers based in Jordan.

CBS News reported Friday that US and Israel intelligence monitoring known chemical weapons sites detected activity there 20 minutes before the chemical shells were fired Wednesday. Those agencies were therefore on top of valuable advance information, but did nothing to stop - or even warn against – the coming poison gas attack.

Washington and other Western capitals as well as Israel continued to circle around reality Friday and Saturday, when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel let it be known that US warships had been sent to the region for possible cruise missile attacks, in case the president decided on action against Syria.

The Secretary “forgot” to mention that, had the president really wanted to do something, all he had to do was keep the USS Truman aircraft carrier, which was present in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, the day of the chemical attack, from sailing out through the Suez Canal Thursday.

Furthermore, America doesn’t need to send more warships to the region for possible attacks on Syria. It holds plenty of assets at US air and missile bases crisscrossing the Middle East, southern and central Europe and the Persian Gulf. All are fully capable of conducting a variety of operations against Syria without bringing in extra warships.

Except that none of these assets has so far been ordered into action.

What could the Obama administration do if it was so minded?

debkafile’s exclusive military sources described three options available:

One: Striking the Syrian unit which perpetrated the poison gas last Wednesday east of Damascus.

Two: Destroying the Syrian army’s three chemical weapons depots.

Or Three: Coordinated attacks on the first two targets.

For Options Two and Three, the attack would have to destroy all the poison shells at once before they exploded and leaked contamination across wide regions of Syria and neighboring Turkey, Israel and Jordan. The Syrian ruler is capable of having the shells’ contents mixed and armed ready for use ahead of a US attack, thus maximizing the deadly impact of lethal gases across a broad Middle East region.

Notwithstanding the grave risks of action, the consequences of inaction by the US and Israel would be worse: It would give Damascus and Tehran a green light for escalating their viciousness – and not just against the Syrian people. If the barbarity is not stopped, they will get away with making nerve gas and other poison substances acceptable weapons for fighting their foes. Lebanon and Israel are in extreme jeopardy.

SOURCE

President Barack Hussein Obama talks a good talk, but that is all that he does.  A year ago he drew a line in the sand.  Bashar al-Assad has crossed it not once but twice.

Obama's Red Line



Click here if video fails to load.

It is a shame that it was said by a man with a yellow streak a mile wide down his back.

The civilians of Syria are caught in the middle.  On one side is Assad, backed by Hezbollah and Iran.  On the other side is al Qaeda and strict Islamic Law (They are already destroying the churches.)  Either side wins and they will lose.  Yet this is a civil war.  A war no one should get involved with.  This is a problem that the Syrians must solve on their own.

He Is Guilty!

BREAKING NEWS

Nidal Malik Hasan (May He Burn In Hell) has been found guilty on all counts.  The verdict is unanimous thus allowing for the death penalty.  Sentencing will start on Monday.

Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan was found guilty on all counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder Friday, making him eligible for the death penalty.

Sentencing was set for Monday.

A military jury deliberated for roughly one day before announcing the verdict.

Hasan sat emotionless, stroking his beard as the verdict was delivered.

He was charged with 13 counts of pre-meditated murder and 32 counts of attempted pre-meditated murder in the Nov. 2009 shooting attack at the sprawling Texas military base.

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, had acted as his own attorney at the 13-day trial, but questioned only three of nearly 90 witnesses and presented only a single piece of evidence in his defense: an evaluation from his boss that called him a good soldier. He also chose not to make a closing statement.

The American-born Muslim told jurors during a brief opening statement that evidence would "clearly show" he was the shooter, and he described himself as a soldier who had "switched sides."

Military attorneys assigned to Hasan -- who remained on standby throughout the trial as he went it alone -- have suggested he wants to be put to death.

On Thursday, military prosecutors asked jurors for a unanimous conviction on the premeditated murder charges, which would allow them to seek the death penalty -- the government's priority in the case.

In order for Hassan to face the death penalty, the jury's 11 men and two women had to find him unanimously guilty of at least one count of premeditated murder as well as another murder charge. The military court system hasn't executed an active-duty U.S. soldier since 1961.

During closing arguments, prosecutor Col. Steve Henricks described how, when Hasan learned he would be part of a unit deploying to Afghanistan, he visited Guns Galore, a firearms store in Killeen, adjacent to Fort Hood about 70 miles north Austin. Hasan asked for advice and bought the most high tech, highest-capacity pistol available.

Hasan later trained at an off-base gun range and used laser sights. He eventually carefully targeted a medical building he knew would be crammed with soldiers preparing for or returned from overseas military deployments -- mostly in Afghanistan or Iraq -- the same day his unit would be at the building.

Henricks reminded jurors that before Hasan started shooting, Hasan cried "Allahu Akbar!" -- Arabic for "God is great!"

The prosecutor added: "So no one should be confused about his motives that day and no one should be confused today either."

Henricks also replayed an FBI crime scene video that showed victims' bodies strewn on the floor, among overturned desks, scattered office chairs and pools of blood.

SOURCE

May he die swiftly and his name be forgotten.

And We Are Letting Them Have A Nuclear Plant?

In 2011 I wrote That Old Black Magic detailing the prevalent attitude in the Muslim world, especially in Saudi Arabia, of the belief of Witchcraft.  It is hard to believe that in the 21st Century innocent people are being murdered by the state for the crime of Witchcraft.  A crime that has been outlawed in the Western Civilized Nations for over 150 years now.  In the United States the last rash of Witchcraft trials were in the 1690's, with 19 innocent men and women hanged and 1 pressed to death (Giles Corey).

Yet in Saudi Arabia, a nation that wants the world to see it as a civilized place.  A nation that wants to gain nuclear power.  A nation that has built its wealth on oil.  Witchcraft is still not only on the books, but is punished every day.

The sorceress was naked.

The sight of her bare flesh startled the prudish officers of Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV), which had barged into her room in what was supposed to be a routine raid of a magical hideout in the western desert city of Madinah's Al-Seeh neighborhood. They paused in shock, and to let her dress.

The woman -- still unclothed -- managed to slip out of the window of her apartment and flee. According to the 2006 account of the Saudi Okaz newspaper, which has been described as the Arabic equivalent of the New York Post, she "flew like a bird." A frantic pursuit ensued. The unit found their suspect after she had fallen through the unsturdy roof of an adjacent house and onto the ground next to a bed of dozing children.

They covered her body, arrested her, and claimed to uncover key evidence indicating that witchcraft had indeed been practiced, including incense, talismans, and videos about magic. In the Al Arabiya report, a senior Islamic cleric lamented that the incident had occurred in a city of such sacred history. The prophet Muhammad is buried there, and it is considered the second most holy location in Islam, second to Mecca. The cleric didn't doubt the details of the incident. "Some magicians may ride a broom and fly in the air with the help of the jinn [supernatural beings]," he said.

The fate of this sorceress is not readily apparent, but her plight is common. Judging from the punishments of others accused of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia before and since, the consequences were almost certainly severe.

In 2007, Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim was beheaded in Riyadh after his conviction on charges of "practicing magic and sorcery as well as adultery and desecration of the Holy Quran." The charges of "magic and sorcery" are not euphemisms for some other kind of egregious crime he committed; they alone were enough to qualify him for a death sentence. He first came to the attention of the religious authorities when members of a mosque in the northern town of Arar voiced concerns over the placement of the holy book in the restroom. After being accused of disrupting a man's marriage through spellwork, and the discovery of "books on black magic, a candle with an incantation 'to summon devils,' and 'foul-smelling herbs,'" the case -- and eventually his life -- were swallowed by the black hole of the discretionary Saudi court system.

The campaign of persecution has shown no signs of fizzling. In May, two Asian maids were sentenced to 1,000 lashings and 10 years in prison after their bosses claimed that they had suffered from their magic. Just a few weeks ago, Saudi newspapers began running the image of an Indonesian maid being pursued on accusations that she produced a spell that made her male boss's family subject to fainting and epileptic fits. "I swear that we do not want to hurt her but to stop her evil acts against us and others," the man told the news site Emirates 24/7.

According to Adam Coogle, a Jordan-based Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch who monitors Saudi Arabia, the relentless witch hunts reveal the hollowness of the country's long-standing promises about liberalizing its justice system.

In a country where public observance of any religion besides Islam is strictly forbidden, foreign domestic workers who bring unfamiliar traditional religious or folk customs from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Africa, or elsewhere can make especially vulnerable and easy targets. "If they see these [folk practices or items] they immediately assume they're some kind of sorcery or witchcraft," he said.

The Saudi government's obsession with the criminalization of the dark arts reached a new level in 2009, when it created and formalized a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" to educate the public about the evils of sorcery, investigate alleged witches, neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their spells. Saudi citizens are also urged to use a hotline on the CPVPV website to report any magical misdeeds to local officials, according to the Jerusalem Post.

According to a director of the religious police's witchcraft division in Riyadh, the unit provides confidentiality to informants. "We deal with sorcerers in a special way. No one should think that we mention the name of whomever files a report about sorcery," Sheikh Adel Faqih told the Saudi Gazette. In 2009 alone, at least 118 people were charged with "practicing magic" or "using the book of Allah in a derogatory manner" in the province of Makkah, the country's most populous region.

Faqih also claimed that the process of arresting someone for crimes of magic involved more than just receiving a tip from a neighbor or employer. A formal investigation would be pursued, and "information must be collected before an arrest can be made." What sort of information do they need? The answer was unsurprisingly vague and innocuous: if the suspect sought to purchase "an animal with certain features." For example, "he asks for a sheep to be killed without mentioning Allah's name and asks to stain the body with the animal's blood or if he asks for similar unusual things."

By 2011, the unit had created a total of nine witchcraft-fighting bureaus in cities across the country, according to Arab News, and had "achieved remarkable success" in processing 586 cases of magical crime, the majority of which were foreign domestic workers from Africa and Indonesia. Then, last year, the government announced that it was expanding its battle against magic further, scapegoating witches as the source of both religious and social instability in the country. The move would mean new training courses for its agents, a more powerful infrastructural backbone capable of passing intelligence across provinces, and more raids. The force booked 215 sorcerers in 2012.

***

The most aggressive pursuit of witches tends to be in the interior of the Arabian peninsula, a parcel of the country that hosts the capital city Riyadh and many of the most dedicated followers of Salafism, the ultra-conservative school of Sunni Islam that the government enforces throughout the country in its religious courts.

Wresting the country's criminal proceedings from the grip of one of the strictest strains of Islam would involve more than just the development of a more progressive outlook; it would require cosmic revisions in Saudi history and religious identity.

The Saudi government and many of its citizens subscribe to the 18th-century teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a revivalist Islamic scholar who called for a return to literal interpretations of the Quran, and for the abandonment of folk rituals that had developed around the worship of Islamic shrines and grave sites. According to historian Vladmir Borisovich Lutsky:

He sharply criticized such superstitious survivals as fetishism and totemism, which, to him, were indistinguishable from idolatry. Formally all the Arabs were Muslems. But, in reality, there existed many local tribal religions in Arabia. Each Arab tribe, each village had its fetish, its beliefs and rites. The variety of religious forms that stemmed from the primitive level of social development and the lack of cohesion between the countries of Arabia were serious obstacles to political unity. Abd el-Wahhab set up against this religious polymorphism a single doctrine called tauhid (unity)... The Wahhabis fought against the survivals of local tribal cults. They destroyed the tombs of the saints, and forbade magic fortune-telling. But at the same time their teachings were directed against official Islam.

Under Wahhabi doctrine, magic is seen as a serious affront to the pure and exclusive relationship one is supposed to share with Allah.

But belief in the supernatural and magic is actually quite common in Muslim culture. According to the Quran, the jinn are demonic supernatural beings that were created out of fire at the same time as man. Some believe that jinn have the power to cause harm, and it is not uncommon for the possessed to visit faith healers or sorcerers tasked with ridding the evil.

According to the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project

In most of the countries surveyed, roughly half or more Muslims affirm that jinn exist and that the evil eye is real. Belief in sorcery is somewhat less common: half or more Muslims in nine of the countries included in the study say they believe in witchcraft.

Accusations of jinn worship and witchcraft once even touched the administration of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when his advisers and aides were arrested on charges of black magic. Ahmadinejad denied the charges, but a sorcerer well-known among the ruling class claimed that he met with the President at least twice and gathered intelligence for him on "Jinn who work for Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency," according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Pew survey, the majority of Muslims agree that Islam restricts making

contact with jinn or using magic. But Wahhabism is particularly opposed to this notion, according to Muhammad Husayn Ibrahimi's analysis of the sect:

Based on some verses of the Qur'an, Shaykh Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, Ibn Taymiyyah and the contemporary Wahhabis regard seeking help from other than God or asking for their intercession {shafa'ah} as an act of polytheism. Their main proof is the phrase, "other than God" in verse 18 of Surah Yunus. The Wahhabis regard the prophets, saints, idols, the jinn, and the dead as the most vivid manifestations of this verse.

This might explain why Saudis, many of whom are devout Wahhabi practitioners, are so fierce when it comes to the pursuit of witches.

***

The courts are controlled by judges -- commonly religious clerics -- who have unlimited latitude to interpret and define the content of witchcraft crime, the details of which are not articulated in a spare, barely existent penal code. They can also mete out capital punishments as they see fit. Saudi Arabia ranks third behind China and Iran for its number of executions. Evidence in these cases is limited to witness testimony and the presentation of the "magical" items discovered in the possession of the accused.

The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia did not respond to requests for comment on the specifics of its dealings with witchcraft crime.

The ability to defend against the charges seems to depend on the caprice of the particular judge assigned to the case. In the 2006 case of Fawza Falih, who was sentenced to death on charges of "'witchcraft, recourse to jinn, and slaughter' of animals," she was provided no opportunity to question the testimonies of her witnesses, was barred from the room when "evidence" was presented, and her legal representation was not permitted to enter court. After appeals by Human Rights Watch, her execution was delayed, but she died in prison as a result of poor health.

The police can also use questionable tactics. In 2008, a well-known Lebanese television personality, Ali Hussain Sibat, who made a living by telling callers' fortunes and instructing them on other superstitious matters, was lured into an undercover sting operation while making a religious pilgrimage to Mecca. According to the New York Times, he was arrested shortly after the police recorded conversations he held about providing a magical elixir to a woman that would force her husband to separate from his second wife. His death sentence was later stayed after outcry from international human rights organizations.

Belief in magic is so widespread that it is often invoked as a defense in Sharia courts. "If there's an employer dispute -- say the migrant domestic worker claims she wasn't paid her wages or her conditions are unlivable -- a lot of times what happens unfortunately is the defendant makes counterclaims against the domestic worker," Coogle said. "And a lot of times they'll make counterclaims of sorcery, witchcraft, and that sort of thing."

Domestic workers, many of whom who are not fluent in Arabic, face significant challenges in defending themselves against these charges, according to Coogle. Sometimes, he says, "they don't even know what's happening." "I think that there are cases where the authorities will provide translation, but I'm told the translation isn't always available and isn't always reliable." Many don't have the resources to hire a lawyer, so they are often representing themselves, unless a human rights organization takes on their case. Even then, they must face a religious cleric who serves simultaneously as a judge and a prosecutor and can often introduce new charges or modify existing ones during the course of the proceedings. "When you have a situation that's so arbitrary and left to the discretion of a judge, women without the means to defend themselves can sort of be left alone," he said. Though some of the cases receive international attention, Coogle expects that many don't make headlines at all. "Given the isolation of these individuals," he said, "I just expect that a lot happens that we don't know about."

SOURCE

We could joke and laugh about this but the Saudis have already started planning their own nuclear reactor.  A nation that accepts and believes in Witchcraft, Jinns, Sorcerers, Witches, etc... has no right to build a highly technical device.  If there was to be an accident would they blame a Jinn?  Probably.

It is time that the world puts down it foot at this nonsense and  demand that they move into the 21st Century immediate.  Give full rights to women, and end this nonsense about witchcraft.

The Last One

About 2 months ago a call went out saying that Latma TV will cease if they cannot raise funds.  Unlike other so-called satire shows in Israel Latma was not financed by a network.

Sadly the funds did not materialize.  This is the last episode of The Tribal Update.


Best of the Tribal Update, part 2, with closing song 


Click here if video fails to load.

Maybe one day The Tribal Update will return, but not for a while.

Wednesday's Hero

Cpl. Daniel Bedford Moore
86 years old from Mifflin, Wisconsin
June 12, 1838 - July 02, 1914

The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Corporal Daniel Bedford Moore, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 9 April 1865, while serving with Company E, 11th Wisconsin Infantry, in action at Fort Blakely, Alabama. At the risk of his own life Corporal Moore saved the life of an officer who had been shot down and overpowered by superior numbers.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives just so others may get to enjoy freedom. For that I am proud to call them Hero.

Those Who Say That We're In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don't Know Where To Look.

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Why is the Media Burying the Coptic Christian Story?

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


I invite the reader to go to the web pages of all the national news networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox. I have just done so, and it is clear that only Fox News is paying any attention to the attacks against Coptic Christians in Egypt.

This is our news media. If they don't like a story, or it doesn't fit into their world view, they bury it or ignore it altogether. As of today, we have over 60 Christian churches attacked and burned in Egypt, and only Fox news finds that newsworthy? Why is it that even educated readers have to go to Fox or the blogosphere to be kept up-to-date on what is happening to the Copts in Egypt? Ever since the Copts became a minority in Egypt, they have been subject to discrimination and abuse in varying degrees. Under the rule of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, it became open season. Since the military coup, they are being blamed and the attacks have increased by Brotherhood supporters. The Brotherhood is denying responsibility just as they deny responsibility for all the violence, but the Investigative Project on Terrorism has come up with an internal document in which the MB gives its blessing to the attacks.

In Egypt and across the Middle East, a new holocaust is developing, and the world remains silent. Our own administration has nothing to say as they incredibly side with the Brotherhood. The UN is silent. The EU is silent.

And our news media, with the notable exception of the much-maligned Fox News, is silent. This is beyond shameful.

"Five Things I Learned About Mohammad"

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com

Cross-posted from the Orange County Register

Tonight, PBS is broadcasting a 3-hour program entitled, The Life of Mohammad, hosted by Rageh Omar, a Somali-born British journalist. Yesterday, Cathleen Falsani wrote the below article advertising the program. The article is entitled, "Five Things I learned About Mohammad". It appears in the paper's Faith and Values section. The text is below.

Falsani: 5 things I learned about Muhammad

On Tuesday evening, PBS will air “The Life of Muhammad,” an exceptionally fine documentary series about the life and legacy of the founder of Islam.

Hosted by Rageh Omaar, a veteran Somali-born British journalist and war correspondent who is Muslim, the three-hour documentary paints a vivid picture not only of the Prophet Muhammad — who, according to prevailing Islamic custom, cannot be depicted in any fashion — but of the varied understandings of his life, teaching, and legacy.

Journalist and author Rageh Omaar, host and narrator of the three-part PBS series, "The Life of Muhammad," which airs Aug. 20 nation-wide.

Filmed on location in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and elsewhere, the documentary, which was made for the BBC where it aired in 2011, succeeds where predecessors have failed by incorporating sweeping landscapes — physical and spiritual — with a breadth of knowledge from Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars (more than a dozen by my count, including some of the preeminent names in their fields, including Karen Armstrong and Tariq Ramadan) whose own perspectives run the gamut from orthodox and mystic, to skeptic and even detractor.

Divided into three parts — “The Seeker,” “Holy War,” and “Holy Peace” — the film opens inside Omaar’s hotel room where he is preparing for the haj — the pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Omaar tells us he made his first haj as a boy with his family 30 years earlier.

It is this human, personal touch from the host that helps make the documentary all the more compelling.

“Like most Muslims, the first human name I heard was not that of my mother or father,” Omaar says, “but of Muhammad.”

As is the Islamic custom, shortly after he was born in Somalia in 1967, someone whispered the words of the Shahada — the Muslim statement of faith that says, “There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is his messenger” — into Omaar’s ear.

“Fourteen-hundred years ago a man born here, in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, changed the course of world history,” Omaar says, adding that he wants to explore the “many complexities” of Muhammad’s life and times and how they “still affect today’s world. I want to uncover the real Muhammad.”

Robustly researched and beautifully filmed, combined with Omaar’s inviting demeanor and assuring gravitas, “The Life of Muhammad” is well worth watching. It is a vivid corrective to the fear and misinformation that surrounds Islam and its 1.3 billion adherents worldwide.

Muslims are no more a monolith than Christians and Jews, and their understanding of their own doctrines and theology are as dynamic as any held by their Christian and Jewish cousins — all monotheistic “People of the Book,” whose stories overlap throughout history and continue to do so today.

Most viewers will learn a lot about the Prophet and Islam. And even those of us who have studied Islam likely will walk away with at least a few new gems of information and perspective.

Here are a few of mine:

1. Muhammad was an orphan.

His father died before he was born, and his mother (who had placed him with a Bedouin wet nurse as an infant and reunited with him several years later) died when he was about 6. He then went to live with a grandfather, who also died, before he finally came under the protection of his uncle, Abu Talib, who would be among Muhammad’s closest companions until his death.

Interestingly, while he was an ardent supporter of his nephew, according to the film, and despite Muhammad’s best efforts to persuade him, Abu Talib never converted to Islam. “The most direct, the most unequivocal statement in the Qur’an, is that there is no compulsion in religion — no ifs, ands or buts,” scholar Merryl Wyn Davies, director of London’s Muslim Institute, says in the film. “Unless you make a free, willing choice for faith, you cannot be held accountable for your actions thereafter. That is the essence of what Islam is about.”

2. Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah, asked him to marry her.

When Muhammad was about 25, he agreed to work for Khadijah, a widow who was a successful merchant, accompanying some of her wares on a trade caravan. When he returned, she asked him to marry her. Even today it’s unusual for a woman to ask a man to marry her, but in 7th-century Arabia it would have been absolutely unheard of, according to the film.

Muhammad and Khadijah were married for nearly 25 years and together had four daughters. Although polygamy was the custom at the time, Muhammad didn’t take another wife until after Khadijah died. She was the love of his life, according to the film, his first convert and is considered the “mother of Islam.”

3. There are no memorials, statues or even plaques marking Muhammad’s birthplace.

Although historians and scholars believe they know precisely where Muhammad was born, in Mecca on June 6, 632 A.D., there are no markers celebrating the site as a sacred or even special place. According to the film, any signs or markers with Muhammad’s name have been removed over the years in an effort to ensure that Muhammad is not worshiped or venerated in any way. Muhammad was not the son of God or divine — he was just a man, a fact that he insisted be made clear in his lifetime and after.

Worshiping Muhammad or anyone other than Allah — the one true God — is considered the very worst kind of sin.

In accordance with the prevailing tradition in Islam against depicting Muhammad or any of the prophets before him (including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus), the film does not include any dramatic reenactments of Muhammad’s life or any historical artwork that shows the prophet without his face covered by a veil.

4. Muslims haven’t always prayed toward Mecca.

Among the many mosques and houses of worship Omaar visits in the film is the Masjid al-Qiblatain (or “Mosque of Two Qiblas”) in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Qibla is the Arabic term for the direction Muslims face when they pray five times daily (another of the Five Pillars of Islam.) The Mosque of Two Qiblas is so named because it has two arched alcoves indicating the direction of prayer — a large one facing in the direction of Mecca and a second, smaller one facing toward Jerusalem.

It was in this mosque that, while leading prayer, Muhammad is said to have received a revelation from God telling him to change the direction Muslims faced during prayer. According to the film, in the revelation, God told Muhammad to pray toward Mecca and the Kaaba — the large black cube that the Qur’an (the Muslim holy book) says was built as the first building for humans to worship Allah — rather than Jerusalem, as was the custom among Muhammad’s followers, as well as among Jews and Christians. From that day forward, no matter where they are in the world, Muslims face toward Mecca when they pray.

5. An “Islamic state” probably doesn’t mean what you think it means.

One of the most fascinating chapters in the film deals with the so-called “Constitution of Medina,” which is said to have been written by the Prophet Muhammad himself as the basis for the very first Islamic state in Medina. While there are varying historical and religious opinions about who wrote it, when and why — the film does an excellent job presenting various sides of the debate — the document was an agreement between the Muslims in Medina and the pagans, Jews, Christians and others who lived there at the time and made up what Muhammad described as the “ummah” or “community.

While “ummah” is often used today to describe an exclusively Muslim community, the film says that’s not what Muhammad intended. In fact, the constitution of the first “Islamic state” defined the rights given to non-Muslims as explicit members of the community, including a statement that said the “security of God” is equal for all groups, and that non-Muslims were not obligated to take part in “religious wars.”

One of the scholar-commentators in the film, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born Anglican bishop of Rochester, England and author of “Islam: A Christian Perspective,” has one of the best lines in the film. Commenting on the Medina constitution, he says, “When people today say to me, ‘We would like to create an Islamic state here or there,‘ I say to them, ‘Will it be like the first one? And if not, why not?”

Contact the writer: cfalsani@ocregister.com

Comment:

With all the superlative adjectives, looks like this will be one of the greatestcinematographic ventures since Technocolor was invented.

I would not expect the Orange County Register to run an article criticizing Islam or the prophet-even in the editorial section. Yet, at the same time, this article is so hagiographic in nature as to be historically misleading if not downright false. The timing could not have been more ironic with over 60 churches in Egypt having been attacked and burned to the ground-to say nothing of all the other attacks against Christians and on-Muslim minorities across the Islamic world.

"It is a vivid corrective to the fear and misinformation that surrounds Islam and its 1.3 billion adherents worldwide."

Really? Tell that to the Coptic Christians in Egypt who are huddled in fear as we speak. Are they so misinformed?

“The most direct, the most unequivocal statement in the Qur’an, is that there is no compulsion in religion — no ifs, ands or buts,” scholar Merryl Wyn Davies, director of London’s Muslim Institute, says in the film."

True, that statement does appear in the Koran, but so do others written later that call it into question. In many parts of the Islamic world, forced conversions are going on even today.

"Muhammad and Khadijah were married for nearly 25 years and together had four daughters. Although polygamy was the custom at the time, Muhammad didn’t take another wife until after Khadijah died. She was the love of his life, according to the film, his first convert and is considered the “mother of Islam.”

Misleading?

"While “ummah” is often used today to describe an exclusively Muslim community, the film says that’s not what Muhammad intended. In fact, the constitution of the first “Islamic state” defined the rights given to non-Muslims as explicit members of the community, including a statement that said the “security of God” is equal for all groups, and that non-Muslims were not obligated to take part in “religious wars.”

Too bad the writer did not go into detail about what the conditions of dhimmitude were, which includes the part that they must feel subjugated to Islam.

This is quite similar to the current textbook controversy in our schools as to how Islam is presented to our children. Again, in the interests of harmony and the sensitivities of Muslim schoolchildren.

I wouldn't expect schools to attack Islam or any other religion. Yet, if it is necessary to present such a misleading narrative in this area, perhaps, it would be better to leave the subject alone. If we want to be well-informed on this subject, it is certainly possible to read the Islamic texts, study the complete life of Mohammad, and follow world events. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

This will be a series that will gloss over the truth in favor of showing Muhammad (MHBIH) in a good light. They will ignore his murdering ways, his raping of captive women, his hypocrisy, his lies, his pedophilia, his plundering, etc... In fact it is a fairy tale that is being presented to the American people. A fairy tale to lull the American people into a slumber like they did in Europe. A slumber that the American People will awaken to the nightmare that is what the streets of Europe has become.