by Nadeem F. Paracha on 06 17th, 2010 Last Monday (June 12) in the National Assembly of Pakistan, a member of a breakaway Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), Maulvi Asmatullah, suddenly rose from his seat and started to recite the azaan (Muslim call for prayer). It didn’t matter to him that the muezzin of the assembly mosque had already sounded the call, and the fact that Asmatullah was not facing the qibla (Kabah) while reciting the azaan. I am sure I would have burst out laughing had I been there, enough to burst the stitches I just got while playing football. … Continue reading Goodbye seventh sky

Turkey’s Erdogan emerging as leader in Muslim world, hosting Arab League on home soil Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas shake hands as they pose for cameras before a meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, June 7, 2010. Abbas is in Turkey to attend a security meeting and an Arab forum. Turkey’s foreign minister on Monday called on Israel to accept an international probe into the raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.(AP Photo/Murad Sezer, Pool) (Murad Sezer, AP / June 7, 2010) ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey’s prime minister on Thursday … Continue reading Erdogan emerging as leader in Muslim world

“Ground Zero Mosque” protest ends up, predictably, with racially-motivated hatred By Alex Pareene http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/06/07/ground_zero_mosque_hate AP/Swoan Parker People in New York protest the proposed construction of a mosque near the World Trade Center site on Sunday, June 6. There was a protest yesterday, attended by various wingnuts, racists, riled-up nativists, and terrified fools, of the supposed “Ground Zero mosque.” (It will not be at Ground Zero, and it will actually be a community center that will include a mosque. But still.) While national conservatives have picked up the ball, what local opposition there is to the proposed community center has been … Continue reading Why ‘THEY’ hate American and Americans!

Muslim Assaulted in Third Hate Crime of the Year Against Muslims in Santa Clara County, California Posted on 16 June 2010 by Danios – loonwatch.com Zahra Billoo, program director for the Santa Clara chapter of CAIR. To think that this happened not in hickville USA but in one of the most liberal and tolerant areas of the country… Notice also the link between Antisemitism and Islamophobia: Sunnyvale: Man attacked for being Muslim, public safety officers say By Lisa Fernandez 6/14/2010 // // 0){ document.getElementById(‘articleViewerGroup’).style.width = requestedWidth + “px”; document.getElementById(‘articleViewerGroup’).style.margin = “0px 0px 10px 10px”; } // ]]> // ]]>Sunnyvale public … Continue reading Jews Assaulted in California

David Yeagley: Bad Eagle or Plain Loon? Posted on 15 June 2010 by Garibaldi at Loonwatch.com “Bad Eagle” or just “Plain Loon”? What happens when you cross a white supremacist with someone who claims to be half-white and half-Native American? Answer: David Yeagley (hat tip: Mallorcaman). Yeagley is a rare and strange specimen, self-described as the “lone Conservative Indian voice,” he rails against Native Americans and anyone who he considers to be liberals. He is known amongst Native Americans, for reasons we will come to shortly as the Indian apple, apple n. An Indian who is red on the outside, … Continue reading David Yeagley – ”Hitler was right?’

By Mahir Ali dawn.com “The last person the Taliban would want to see is Asif Zardari,” wrote Ahmed Rashid. –File Photo The vehement denials that have lately been pouring out of Islamabad with reference to Matt Waldman’s controversial discussion paper on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate’s embroilment with the Afghan Taliban offer little cause for surprise. Even a relatively milder indictment of the ISI’s role in Afghanistan would have been greeted with a dismissive counter-offensive. At the same time, however, even a cursory perusal of the report demonstrates that what’s disconcerting about it goes well beyond the striking allegation that … Continue reading What’s wrong with this picture?

WikiLeak Case Echoes Pentagon Papers Coleen Rowley Former FBI Special Agent Co-authored by Robert Parry Almost four decades after Defense Department insider Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers — thus exposing the lies that led the United States into the Vietnam War — another courageous “national security leaker” has stepped forward and now is facing retaliation similar to what the U.S. government tried to inflict on Ellsberg. Army Intelligence Specialist Bradley Manning is alleged to have turned over a large volume of classified material about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to Wikileaks.org, including the recently posted U.S. military video showing … Continue reading WikiLeaks founder under threat?

(The dynamics of …) Sergey Gavrilets*,†,‡ and Aaron Vose§ + Author Affiliations Departments of *Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, †Mathematics, and §Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 Edited by Tomoko Ohta, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan, and approved September 21, 2006 (received for review February 20, 2006)   Next Section Abstract The “Machiavellian intelligence” hypothesis (or the “social brain” hypothesis) posits that large brains and distinctive cognitive abilities of humans have evolved via intense social competition in which social competitors developed increasingly sophisticated “Machiavellian” strategies as a means to achieve higher social and reproductive success. Here we build … Continue reading Machiavellian intelligence

MPs’ expenses: MPs complain of being ‘thrown to the dogs’ MPs have complained that they are being ‘thrown to the dogs’ after being forced to abide by a strict new expenses regime. telegraph.co.uk MPs are unhappy about changes to the expenses system Photo: PA One veteran Labour backbencher, Ann Clwyd, said she would not have sought re-election to Parliament had she known the “hassle” she would be forced to undergo to claim allowances under the system introduced last month. Other MPs branded the regime a “nightmare” and “indefensible,” and some demanded that they be given a credit card rather than … Continue reading MPs’ Expenses – Time to stop the lynching of MPs’?

By Syed Saleem Shahzad ISLAMABAD – After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States , Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and its industrial and financial backbone, became a main transit route for al-Qaeda – illustrated in gruesome fashion by the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in May 2002; he was on al-Qaeda’s trail. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, in collaboration with United States intelligence, tackled the problem head-on and by 2007 dozens of al-Qaeda cells had been broken up, all but cleaning the southern port city of al-Qaeda’s influence. The Taliban’s resurgence in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan in … Continue reading Bloody fight over Taliban lifelines