Obama Releases Statement Following Deadly 1-1-11 Terror Attacks: Won’t Blame Islamic Radicals & Says Muslims Were Victims

HT:GatewayPundit.Obama Releases Statement Following Deadly 1-1-11 Terror Attacks: Won’t Blame Islamic Radicals & Says Muslims Were Victims.A blood-spattered poster of Jesus Christ is seen inside the the Coptic Christian Saints Church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, Egypt Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011. A car exploded in front of the church early Saturday as worshippers emerged from a New Year’s Mass, killing at least 21 people according to officials, and sparking clashes between Christians and Muslims — a sign of the sectarian anger that has been arising with greater frequency in Egypt.Barack Obama today released a statement following the Islamic terrorist attacks targeting Christians in Egypt and innocents in Nigeria.The President would not blame “Islamic” radicals in his statement and said Muslims were also victims.Hmmmm....Makes me wonder who writes these statements his "Islamic"envoy Hussein?Or Hussein Obama himself"?Read the full statement & story here.

2011 looks grim for progress on women's rights in Iraq

HT:McClatchydc.2011 looks grim for progress on women's rights in Iraq.The tension between the two sides bubbled over last month in Kadhmiyah, a section of northern Baghdad, where local Islamist leaders erected a provocative display outside a major Shiite shrine. It shows four mannequins wearing the hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering for women, while behind four mannequins with uncovered heads are laced with burns, shackled in chains and have red strands lapping at their feet to simulate a fiery afterlife.The message to women is clear: Dress modestly, or burn in hell.When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki introduced what he called a national partnership government two weeks ago, he included allies and adversaries, Arabs and Kurds, Shiite Muslims and Sunnis. One group, however, was woefully underrepresented. Only one woman was named to Maliki's 42-member cabinet, sparking an outcry in a country that once was a beacon for women's rights in the Arab world and adding to an ongoing struggle over the identity of the new Iraq.Whether this fledgling nation becomes a liberal democracy or an Islamist-led patriarchy might well be judged by the place it affords its women.Hmmmmm......Islam and womenrights?Read the full story here.

Violence as Pakistan strikes over blasphemy law

Violence as Pakistan strikes over blasphemy law.Violence flared Friday as police and protesters clashed during a mass protest strike that closed businesses across Pakistan over a bid to end the death penalty for blasphemy.Police said protesters near the home of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari in the financial hub of Karachi pelted stones as they shouted slogans including "We'll sacrifice our lives -- we'll save the sanctity of the Prophet".Teargas shells were fired to disperse them, while normally busy town centres turned quiet across the Muslim country, AFP reporters said, following a move to amend a law which permits death sentences for those found to have blasphemed.Conservative religious groups called for a national strike after thousands of Islamists rallied in major cities last week against any change to the law, which rights campaigners say encourages Islamist extremism.The strike went ahead despite a categorical announcement by deputy information minister Samsam Bokhari on Thursday that the government had no intention of amending the controversial law.Police official Naseer Tanoli told AFP the protesters were going to join the main rally in the town but had tried to pass the President's home en route."We asked them to use a different route we had assigned for it. But they refused and pelted stones on the police, which forced us to use teargas," Tanoli said, adding that the demonstrators had dispersed.Around 5,000 people rallied in the city, carrying placards and banners inscribed with anti-government and anti-US slogans with some chanting "Death to America".Hmmmm.....Perhaps the Obama administration should give a couple of Billion Dollars more to them?Read the full story here.

Home Internet with Anonymity Built In

HT:.TechnologyReview.Home Internet with Anonymity Built In.A router that runs the Tor software prevents Web tracking.Many political activists, nonprofits, and businesses use an anonymity system called Tor to encrypt and obscure what they do on the Internet. Now the U.S.-based nonprofit that distributes Tor is developing a low-cost home router with the same privacy protection built in. The Tor software masks Web traffic by encrypting network messages and passing them through a series of relays (each Tor client can also become a relay for other users' messages). But using Tor has typically meant installing the software on a computer and then tweaking its operating system to ensure that all traffic is routed correctly through the program."We want to make anonymity something that can happen everywhere, all the time," says Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor project developer. "When you are connected to a router with Tor inside, all your traffic goes through Tor without you changing your system at all. It makes it simple to use."Hmmmm.....The protection against Big Brother FCC?Read the full story here.

US gold closes up 30 pct, silver adds 84 pct in '10.

HT:ScotiaBank.US gold closes up 30 pct, silver adds 84 pct in '10. U.S. gold futures finished 2010 strong, with gains of more than 1.0 percent on Friday, that contributed to its 30 percent advance this year, its biggest increase since 2007, driven higher by economic uncertainty and accommodative monetary policies. For the year, gold advanced 29.7 percent, its biggest annual gain in three years, marking a record of 10 straight yearly increases.Spot silver swept higher for an 83 percent gain on the year. It was the second-best performer among precious metals, and reached a 30-year peak of $30.92.Read the full story here.

New Year slaughter of Christians in Egypt shows we’re all in it together against Islamism.

HT:RobertShepherd.New Year slaughter of Christians in Egypt shows we’re all in it together against Islamism.It will be interesting to observe the international response following last night’s slaughter of at least 21 Christians by Islamists outside a Church in Alexandria, Egypt. If it had been the other way around (heaven forfend that it had been carried out by Jews) there would have been mass protests around the world, condemnations from leading politicians and, given that this comes on the heels of other such massacres, could well have ended up with a resolution at the United Nations.But don’t hold your breath. The politically correct multi-culturalism that holds sway across Europe and increasing sections of the United States (I hardly need mention the UN) dictates that we must always beware of enflaming Muslim sensitivities. The great diversionary spectre of “Islamophobia” silences all that go before it.Hmmmm......“I was for the possibility of bridging the gap between the east and the west but recently I have changed my mind on this issue, especially since the west wants to impose its values and traditions on us,”Sheikh Qaradawi.To me it reads like a declaration of war and since then Christians have been much more under attack!.Read the full story here.

EPA Rules Will Trump Your Rights

HT:Investors.EPA Rules Will Trump Your Rights.Environment: Ignoring both Congress and the voters, the Environmental Protection Agency starts the new year governing by decree with job-killing regulations. Take a deep breath, but if you exhale you're a polluter.Cap-and-trade is dead, long live cap-and-trade in the form of regulations promulgated in the coming year by what George Orwell might call the Ministry of Environment. It claims that the Clean Air Act and a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 let the EPA regulate carbon dioxide as a planet-warming pollutant.Oh, and remember those high-speed electric trains in China that have people like the New York Times' Tom Friedman cooing over how green China is? James Fallows, writing in the Atlantic, quotes a Chinese official as saying they are being built to move passenger trains out of the way of coal trains.As it turns out, much of China's domestic coal is far inland away from urban centers. High-speed trains, as such, have nothing to do with being "green." Far from it. They enable China to use more coal — not less.As Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, related on a YouTube video: "Lisa Jackson, Obama's EPA administrator, admitted to me publicly that EPA based its action today (issuing its finding) in good measure on the findings of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious, independent analysis to see whether they were true."We hope the incoming Republican House will deal rapidly with what is bad regulation based on junk science.Hmmmm.....Look at Europe what the "Green" parties made of it, so many regulations that businesses can't even implement them!Read the full disaster story here.

2010: The Year They Came for the Constitution

HT:PajamasMedia.2010: The Year They Came for the Constitution.Recall 2010 as the year progressives went after the Constitution, and the year that same Constitution gave us the chance to vote out the would-be tyrants.I nearly spit out my coffee while reading a New York Times post-election day column titled “Tea Party Rooted in Religious Fervor for Constitution.” One nearly had to pity the Gray Lady’s desperation in running the column.Oh, my! These rough-around-the-edges provincials have gone and pulled off the biggest electoral tsunami since 1938 by running around touting the wonders of the U.S. Constitution and flagellating Democrats for running afoul of it. Oh, what to do? Why, frame these ignorant upstarts with the tar brush of religious fundamentalism, of course. That always works.What a load of pitiful poppycock.Every American who has the educational attainment of fourth grade civics understands that the U.S. Constitution is the very document to which every single elected federal official must swear a fealty oath. Every American past the fourth grade also knows that the entire armed forces of the United States serves to protect and defend that very document: not a president, not even the people, but the U.S. Constitution. We don’t call it the “supreme law of the land” for nothing, folks.What the New York Times and everyone else associated with the know-nothing media of the left fails to see is that 2010 is already widely known as the year the proverbial “they” came for the Constitution. It was the ninnies of the 111th Congress, led by Pelosi and Reid, that openly trashed our Constitution. It was the 111th Congress, whose flagrant disregard for the limits on their power lit the fires of Tea Parties all across the land.And sentient Americans who follow politics with even a modicum of scrutiny would think that Democrat pols, who’ve been around a long, long, long time, would at least know enough not to mock the U.S. Constitution in the glare of a rolling video camera or in front of meat-hungry press mongrels.
Hmmmmm.....Only the fight for the "Land of the Free" aint over yet,far from it.Read the full story here.

Clashes follow Egypt church bombing

Clashes follow Egypt church bombing.Clashes have flared in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria, following a car bombing blamed outside a Coptic Christian church that killed at least 21 people.Police and Christian men faced off late on Saturday afternoon, with reports of rubber-coated bullets and tear gas being fired at crowds of young men.Enraged Christians emerging from the Qiddissine church fought with police and stormed a nearby mosque, prompting fights and volleys of stone throwing with Muslims.Authorities blamed the incident on a suicide bomber but provided no evidence to back up their claim.Reporting for Al Jazeera, Nadia Abou El-Meg, a journalist in Alexandria, said: "This scene [of clashes] has been [witnessed] several times today. The protesters started gathering and throwing stones ... the police responded with tear gas."Tension is running very high and people are very angry ... We saw a lot of people weeping and screaming and asking why are they being attacked."The church has issued a statement which was also very angry, demanding justice, and criticising the performance of the government."More and more people are gathering as the night is falling. Many people are not buying this idea of the suicide bomber."The Copts are the biggest Christian community in the Middle East and account for up to 10 per cent of Egypt's 80m population.Hmmmm...Mr President?..What killing Christians in Egypt?...Got to finish my vacations first, then ask the Saudi King what to say.Read the full story here.

Now coastal Queensland braces for 30-foot flood waters

Now coastal Queensland braces for 30-foot flood waters.Floods that have inundated 22 Australian towns and forced more than 200,000 from their homes headed toward the northeast coast on New Year's Day, forcing further evacuations and warnings of 30-ft flood waters.Australia has endured its wettest spring on record, causing six river systems in tropical Queensland to flood, as soaring temperatures in the states of Victoria and South Australia sparked warnings of devastating bushfires.The rain has flooded coal mines and hit farming hard, with many roads still impassable, and prompted warnings of the dangers of crocodiles and snakes in flooded homes.The inland sea that stretches across Queensland is dotted with the roofs of flooded homes, islands of dry ground crowded with stranded livestock and small boats ferrying people and emergency supplies.On Saturday, coastal areas were preparing for the worst. Evacuations were under way in the town of Rockhampton where the Fitzroy River, one of Australia's largest river systems, was expected to flood.The town's airport was closed to commercial flights, while relief officials warned the floods would likely reach more than nine meters (30 ft) in height.Read the full story here.

2010 Was By Far the Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan—One American Killed Every 18 Hours.

2010 Was By Far the Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan—One American Killed Every 18 Hours.With 496 casualties, 2010 was by far the deadliest year for U.S. troops fighting a war in Afghanistan that has now entered its tenth year, according to casualty reports issued by the Department of Defense and tracked in a comprehensive database of war casualties maintained by CNSNews.com.There were 303 U.S. casualties in the Afghanistan war in 2009, making 2009 the second deadliest year of the war.Almost 17 times as many U.S. troops were killed in the Afghanistan war in 2010 as were killed in 2002, the first full calendar year of the war. In the past year, U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan were killed at a rate of about one every 18 hours.Thus far, 1,357 U.S. armed services personnel have lost their lives in the war in Afghanistan. The year-by-year casualty count is as follows.Hmmmmm.....Don't tell me the "Courageous restraint" has nothing to do with the increase of causalities?Read and see the full story here.

UAE: Court Rules Male Worth More Than Female, Even In Womb

HT:WomenAgainstSharia.UAE: Court Rules Male Worth More Than Female, Even In Womb.The UAE Supreme Court has ruled that the blood money to compensate the death of a foetus in a road accident be calculated as if the newborn would have been a girl baby.While the blood money compensation for a man is Dh200,000, the amount is Dh100,000 for a woman.The landmark ruling made on Wednesday was in response to an appeal in a case where a Fujairah woman was hit by a lorry in 2007, reports The National.While she suffered serious injuries, the baby she was carrying in her womb died.While upholding the lower court’s verdict that asked the insurance company to pay Dh1.2 million in damages, the apex court however ruled that the compensation must include Dh100,000 as blood money. The blood money for a foetus dead in a road accident is calculated at 10 per cent of that of an adult woman – which would be Dh10,000.Some eight months ago, the President of the Federal Supreme Court Dr Abdul Wahab Abdul had called for reforms in the blood money laws to make it same for males and females.Several experts had argued for parity on the grounds that the traditional justification for lesser compensation for women does not apply in the modern world where members of both sexes are equal.Hmmmm.....Imam Rauf "Sharia Law is the same as the Constitution"Source.

Is Turkey a ‘pariah’ in NATO-EU club?

Is Turkey a ‘pariah’ in NATO-EU club?Did US President Barrack Obama intervene at NATO to give Turkey one of the empty chairs for an assistant secretary-general position?Turkey was at the frontline of defense against the Russian-led Soviet threat for the transatlantic alliance throughout the Cold War, making its military and human assets readily available for deployment by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). With the second largest army in this military alliance, Ankara was what our Western friends often referred to as the “staunch ally” in the most troubled and volatile region of the world.But the picture has changed dramatically in recent years. Turkey no longer considers itself a frontline for anybody and Russia is a newfound friend who is ready and willing to boost trade and political ties with its historic foe, Turkey.We had a similar problem with new NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in terms of an unfulfilled pledge, but that was recently settled. As part of a last-minute deal with Turkish President Abdullah Gül, brokered by US President Barrack Obama, to overcome Ankara’s objections to appointing Rasmussen, Turkey was promised a seat in one of the empty chairs for an assistant secretary-general position. At the first opportunity, Rasmussen bypassed Turkey and appointed a German national to one of the vacant positions, naturally infuriating Ankara. Turkey was calmed several months later with the announcement of Ambassador Hüseyin Diriöz’s selection as an assistant secretary-general for another chair. Undoubtedly the US intervention made a difference.The EU should do its own bidding as well and stop playing the blame game. It is time to pay heed to the concerns raised by Turkey if the EU really wants to boost the security aspect of the organization. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu made a cynical point to his colleagues during the ministerial meeting on the sidelines of NATO’s Lisbon summit, Ankara does not want to be part of what he called a “pariah category,” for which it enjoys neither full rights attributed to countries who are both EU and NATO members nor special privileges given non-EU and NATO countries, like Norway. After all, the petty interests of a tiny island cannot and should not be allowed to jeopardize the overwhelming interests of both organizations to cooperate. The responsibility is on the EU’s side.Hmmmm....."Spoken like a true defender of Democratic principles"?Read the full Ottoman dictatorial story here.

Bomb hits Egypt church at New Year's Mass, killing 21.

Bomb hits Egypt church at New Year's Mass, killing 21.A powerful bomb, possibly from a suicide attacker, exploded in front of a Coptic Christian church as a crowd of worshippers emerged from a New Years Mass early Saturday, killing at least 21 people and wounding nearly 80 in an attack that raised suspicions of an al-Qaeda role.The bombing enraged Christians, who often complain of discrimination at the hands of Egypt's Muslim majority and accuse the government of covering up attacks on their community. In heavy clashes Saturday afternoon, crowds of Christian youths in the streets outside the Saints Church and a neighboring hospital hurled stones at riot police, who opened fire with rubber bullets and tear gas."The last thing I heard was a powerful explosion and then my ears went deaf," Marco Boutros, a 17-year-old survivor, said from his hospital bed. "All I could see were body parts scattered all over - legs and bits of flesh."Blood splattered the facade of the church, as well as a mosque directly across the street. Bodies of many of the dead were collected from the street and kept inside the church overnight before they were taken away Saturday by ambulances for burial.Some Christians carried white sheets with the sign of the cross emblazoned on them with what appeared to be the blood of the victims.But the Interior Ministry said later in a statement that there was no sign that the epicenter was a car. That "makes it likely that the explosives ... were carried on the person of a suicide attacker who died with the others," it said.Around six severely damaged vehicles remained outside the church, but there was little sign of a crater that major car bombs usually cause. Bits of flesh were stuck to nearby walls.Hours after the blast, President Mubarak went on state TV and vowed to track down those behind the attack, saying "we will cut off the hands of terrorists and those plotting against Egypt's security.""Now it's between Christians and the government, not between Muslims and Christians," shouted one Christian woman at the hospital.In a reflection of the deepening mistrust between Egypt's communities, many in the crowd believed police would not fully investigate the bombing, reflecting Christians' suspicions that authorities often overlook attacks on their community.Archbishop Arweis, the top Coptic cleric in Alexandria, said police want to blame a suicide bomber instead of a car bomb so they can write it off as a lone attacker. He denounced what he called a lack of protection."There were only three soldiers and an officer in front of the church. Why did they have so little security at such a sensitive time when there's so many threats coming from al-Qaeda?" he said, speaking to the AP.Hmmmmm....As usual no word from the US President Barrack HUSSEIN Obama when it comes to bombing Christians.Read the full story here.Video here.