Afternoon Posting.
- Syria Live Blog - May 23. Here .(Al-Jazeera).
- Libya Live Blog - May 23. Here (Al-Jazeera).
- Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan today 5.2 ! More info here.
- Japan - Latest official Situation Update No. 115. Source : Here .
- Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.
- There's a new "Player" in the Air,meet the Grimsvotn Volcano.By John Seach.(VolcanoLive)
64.42 N, 17.33 W - summit elevation 1725 m - caldera
Read the full story here.Live webcam here and here.Google map location here.More info here.
- RSOE Emergency and Disaster Information Service Grimsvotn Volcano Info Situation Update No. 5 - On 23.05.2011 at 03:39 GMT+2.Source :Here .
- O'Bama? Oh puh-lease!(TheTelegraph).Ah Bejaysus and Begorrah! Oi’ll be swearin’ boi the auld shrine to the Vorgin with the shamrocks growin’ round it next to the hill where Cuchullain slew the Great Leprechaun of Kildare on St Patrick’s Day that Barack Seamus O’Toole Flaherty Joyce O’Bama is the most Irish US president that ever set foot on the Emerald Oisle, so he is, so he is.
Except, when he’s in Africa, of course, when he disappears into the dry ice and re-emerges with a grass skirt and a bone through his nose and declares himself to be Mandingo, Prince of the Bloodline of the Bonga People, Drinker of Cattle Urine, Father of A Thousand Warrior Sons, Keeper of King Solomon’s Mines, Barehanded Slayer of Lions, Undaunted Victim of the Evil Colonial British Empire.
And in the Middle East, where he is Al-Barak Hussein Obama, Protector of the Holy Shrine, Smiter of the Kuffar, Lion of the Desert, Tent-Loving-Aficionado-of-the-Oversweetened-Coffee, Chomper of Sheeps’ Eyeballs, Restorer of the Caliphate.Etc.
Tony Blair used to do this trick too, his accent mutating from broad Glaswegian to genteel Edinburgh to Mummerset to Estuary to Richard E Grant to Sarf London Grime – often in the course of one Downing Street reception – the better to persuade his target audience that he was their kind of guy. And it is, of course, the hallmark of an unutterable charlatan.I’ve argued before that Tony Blair and Barack Obama have an awful lot in common. Both are lawyers; both are snake-oil-salesman; both claim to be post-partisan, and Third Way and consensual; both play the acceptable, moderate-seeming public face of a regime chock full of Communists, class warriors, single issue rabble rousers, malcontents, communitarians and eco-loons hell bent on destroying every last vestige of what once made their country great. And both do (or did) the things dodgy political leaders always do when the going gets tough at home and their domestic audience finally wises up to how totally useless they are: they hop on the plane and pose as international statesman instead.Obama can’t stand Britain (his wife likes us even less): he made that clear enough when he sent back Winston Churchill’s bust and dissed our Prime Minister with those dodgy DVDS. He blames us for what happened to his grandfather during Mau Mau. He doesn’t believe in the Special Relationship. Are we honestly supposed to believe in that during the subsequent year in office, Obama has since acquired such wisdom and insight that he suddenly realises how special we are?Of course he hasn’t. Obama is just doing now what all bullies and losers start doing when they realise how unpopular they are and that everyone is abandoning them. They suck up to anybody and everybody. They whore themselves piteously before enemies they once considered beneath their contempt. Fain will they fill their bellies with husks that swine eat – but which no man will give them: and serve them jolly well right, too!By all means let us enjoy watching Obama smarm and grovel and ingratiate himself like some presidential Uriah Heep. But for heaven’s sake let us never give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a cold fish and would certainly never show any mercy towards us were the roles to be reversed.Hmmmm......“Hear, Hear, Hear!”Read the full story here.
- Muslim Cab driver from Irving arrested after bomb squad removes suspicious materials from home.(DallasNews)A cab driver from Irving was arrested Sunday after a bomb squad removed suspicious materials from his apartment.Sharif Ahmed Nour, 41, was initially going to be charged with possessing bomb-making components, but that was amended to possession of prohibited weapons, according to WFAA-TV (Channel 8).Irving firefighters found the unspecified items after extinguishing a small fire at Nour's home in the 3600 block of Brock Drive. The FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force have since joined the investigation."At this point we're taking every precaution necessary," Irving police Officer John Argumaniz told Channel 8. "That's why we've called in the joint task force to assist with the investigation."Nour is originally from Somalia and has been driving cabs at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport for years, a friend told Channel 8.Hmmmm.....Another "Misunderstander of Islam" with a 'chemistry interest?And who scaled down the charges?Read the full story here.
- Barack Obama's trip to Ireland is naked electioneering.(The Telegraph).Barack Obama is no more O’Bama than I am O’Done. And the Irish know it. They’re watching, bemused, as the most powerful man in the world comes to visit their President and Taoiseach, then visit Moneygall, home of his great-great-great grandfather. They know it’s not their smiling eyes he’s visiting for – but for the 35,975,855 Americans who claim Irish roots. That’s a sizeable chunk of the electorate and geographically strategic, too: Irish-Americans are numerous in precisely those states, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, that often prove to be decisive during presidential elections.Obama’s O’Bama act will strike Irish Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic as highly hypocritical not only because, as his autobiography “Dreams from My Father” shows, his Kenyan heritage, not the Irish one, shaped his vision; but also because as President, Obama has pursued an anti-Catholic agenda that has been unapologetically pro-abortion and pro stem cell research. His stand on the death penalty is no different from previous administrations, and his U-turn on Guantanamo Bay betrays a disregard for human life that offends Catholic teaching. For Catholic Ireland, his trip is not so much the return of the Prodigal Son as the photo-op of the wayward cousin. What a contrast Obama’s electioneering provides to the Queen’s heartfelt and dignified state visit to Ireland last week. Hers was a profoundly moving gesture of reconciliation: after so much blood was spilled on both sides – not least that of one of her dearest relatives, Lord Mountbatten – Queen Elizabeth was making an effort to bridge two countries that for generations have been at war. Every ceremony, every state occasion was steeped in genuine emotion.I suspect Obama’s Machiavellian tactic will backfire. The Irish will spin it as a PR triumph capable of regenerating their tourism rather than as a politically momentous occasion; the Irish Americans will quite rightly view the trip as a desperate, last ditch appeal to them.O’Bama, oh why sink so low?Hmmmm.....As the Irish saying go's"May the Lord keep you in His hand and never close His fist too tight."Read the full story here.
- U.S. Objects to New Law on Clinics in Indiana.(NYTimes).WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is raising serious objections to a new Indiana law that cuts off state and federal money for Planned Parenthood clinics providing health care to low-income women on Medicaid.The objections set the stage for a clash between the White House and Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, over an issue that ignites passions in both parties. The changes in Indiana are subject to federal review and approval, and administration officials have made it clear they will not approve the changes in the form adopted by the state. Federal officials have 90 days to act but may feel pressure to act sooner because Indiana is already enforcing its law, which took effect on May 10, and because legislators in other states are working on similar measures. If a state Medicaid program is not in compliance with federal law and regulations, federal officials can take corrective action, including “the total or partial withholding” of federal Medicaid money. The mere threat of such a penalty is often enough to get states to comply. Actually imposing the penalty would, in many cases, hurt the very people whom Medicaid is intended to help. Administration officials said the Indiana law imposed impermissible restrictions on the freedom of Medicaid recipients to choose health care providers. Indiana is one of at least a half-dozen states that have taken aim at Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions, about one-fourth of those performed in the United States. Without waiting for a decision from the federal government, Indiana has moved ahead. “The state law is in effect right now,” said Marcus J. Barlow, a spokesman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. “Medicaid clients who went to Planned Parenthood will have to go to someone else. This is not a change in services. It’s a change in providers.” Most of the money at stake is federal. The federal government pays about 66 percent of the cost of most services covered by Medicaid in Indiana, but for family planning the federal share is 90 percent — an indication of the importance historically attached to such services by Congress. The United States House of Representatives voted 241 to 185 on April 14 to cut off federal money for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates. The Senate killed the proposal, 58 to 42. “It’s morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use them to subsidize the largest abortion provider in America,” said Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana. Other states that have considered legislation to restrict payments to Planned Parenthood, under various programs, include Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin. Both houses of the Kansas Legislature have approved a 2012 budget bill that would redirect about $300,000 in federal family planning money from Planned Parenthood to state and local clinics. Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, is expected to sign it. Hmmmm......A step in the right direction.Read the full story here.
- Christianity: Growing, and Under Siege.(Aina).Around the world, and especially in Africa and Asia, Christian populations are suffering severe discrimination and brutal attacks. Thousands are being killed. Systematic campaigns are being waged against Christians simply because of their faith, and it is not too dramatic to suggest that these are forms of ethnic cleansing and genocide.Yet there is little awareness of these continuing atrocities in the West, and even less response.Christianity is no longer a predominantly Western religion. Since 1900, there has been a startling growth of Christianity in Latin America, Africa and Asia, to the point that now, 65 percent of the world's 2 billion Christians live on one of those three continents. Christians now constitute the largest single religious group in Africa. Close to 350 million Christians live in Asia. But this dramatic growth has also fanned the flames of religious persecution and hatred against them.In northern Nigeria, deadly religious violence occurs with regularity, killing hundreds at a time. Christians in Ethiopia have seen the destruction of 57 churches; thousands of Christians have been displaced, and some have been killed. In Sudan, the government has waged a decades-old war against Christians in southern part of the country. In Egypt, radicals now use the façade of democratic reforms to ramp up their continuing war against Coptic Christians, while the army looks the other way. Christians have lived in Iraq for 1,800 years, but recent violence threatens their very existence as a community. In Pakistan, religious violence and anti-blasphemy laws are used to suppress Christians, while prominent Christian politicians and their defenders are assassinated. In India, religious radicals attack Christian converts, while courts and political assemblies take away their rights. Religious violence against Christians occurs with depressing regularity in Indonesia, while the Chinese government cracks down on Christian churches, especially those that have chosen not to register with the communist government. In many countries around the world, anti-Christian activists have hijacked political processes to codify severe discrimination against Christians, making it illegal to convert to Christianity, while encouraging conversions from Christianity.If you were to read carefully in the media, it would be easy to compile a much longer list of outrages; many other incidents are never covered in the Western press. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that there are organized campaigns of terror and death against Christians in Africa and Asia. Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Al-Qaida in Iraq, the Taliban in Pakistan and Hindu fundamentalists in India (among others) openly admit their actions against Christian populations.Yet the silence from the world community is deafening. Occasionally the U.S. State Department will issue some toothless protest after a particularly egregious event, but nothing ever seems to change. The world community seems to notice little, and to care even less; many "moderates" in Asian and African countries seem cowed by the violence.Western countries seem to have a double standard when it comes to the rights of religious groups around the world, especially religious minorities. Just look at the widespread indignation that occurred when a lunatic pastor and his congregation in Florida threatened to burn a copy of the Qur'an. The media was (rightly) filled with denunciations. But a similar desecration of a Christian work or holy symbol is usually met with little or no response.The world, especially the West, has an exquisite sensibility to the rights of non-Christians around the world. But Christians are suffering daily in Africa and Asia. Where is the outrage?Hmmmmm........No...Why is the Pope not speaking up?Read the full story here.
- Outspoken Pakistani Actress Veena Malik Injured In Attack on Her Car.(Memri).Noted Pakistani actress Veena Malik, who confronted an Islamic cleric in a live debate on Pakistani television early this year, was injured when the car she was riding in was attacked while travelling from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to Lahore on the night of May 16, 2011. Malik is a renowned Pakistani actress, model, social worker, and television anchor. She has played lead roles in a number of box-office hits produced in Urdu and Punjabi languages over the past decade in Lollywood, Pakistan's film industry. In recent years, she has hosted television shows on Pakistani and Indian television channels, becoming a household name across Pakistan and India as well as among the south Asian diaspora community in the United States.While initial Pakistani media reports said that Veena Malik was injured in a car crash, her publicist said that it was a deliberate attack. Her publicist Sohail Rashid said: "A speeding vehicle overtook Veena Malik's car, hit its side door and raced off. The car went off-balance and collided." "It seemed as if they deliberately hit our car. We couldn't see their faces. They hit us, and saw our car colliding. They would have stopped had they hit us by mistake," Rashid said, adding that Malik is now out of danger and her condition is stable.In an interview with The Herald magazine, of Pakistan's Dawn media group, Malik questioned the subjugation of women in Pakistani society, stating: "Why are only women responsible for upholding cultural norms?" The interviewer observed that Malik is now being seen in Pakistan as "a catalyst – of understanding; understanding, recognizing, and describing the demons that lurk among us today…"Amid the controversy surrounding her debate with Mufti Qawi, Malik spoke of how life is not easy for an attractive woman in Pakistani society, stating: "First, if you are an actress, you are a fair game. Everyone feels they have a right to abuse you, call you names. And this is particularly true in Pakistan. Anyone can stand up and judge you, when they do not even know you. But if there are 10 people calling you names, at least one person should stand up and question it. Okay, you abuse me because I am in the public eye, because you think I dress a certain way or talk a certain way. But what about the ordinary woman who wears a burqa? She also gets lashed."Malik has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) for two years and sponsors children at the SOS Children's Village, an NGO in Pakistan. She has appeared on the reality show Big Boss 4 (the Indian version of Big Brother) and hosts television shows in Pakistan and India.Hmmmm......The Religion of Peace.Read the full story here.
- Free speech on Twitter faces test.(NDTV).San Francisco: What began as seamy gossip about an affair between a famous British soccer player and a reality TV star has quickly become another test over how far the rights to privacy and free speech extend online, where social media operate in countries with vastly different laws. The soccer player has been granted a so-called super-injunction, a stringent and controversial British legal measure that prevents media outlets from identifying him, reporting on the story or even from revealing the existence of the court order itself. But tens of thousands of Internet users have flouted the injunction by revealing his name on Twitter, Facebook and online soccer forums, sites that blur the definition of the press and are virtually impossible to police. Last week, amid growing outrage in Britain over the use of super-injunctions, the athlete obtained a court order in British High Court demanding that Twitter reveal the identities of the anonymous users who had posted the messages. A Twitter spokesman, Matt Graves, said the company could not comment on the court order or how it planned to respond. Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, said, "It's really going to the core of Twitter's service and trying to balance the speech of its users and the fact that countries have different laws and norms about speech." And while a debate centering on an athlete's love life might not seem to be the most pressing example of free speech online, there are broader and more urgent implications, analysts said. "If you step back, that same sort of protection is really vital to have in place when you're talking about the individuals involved in a revolution or a social movement like the Arab Spring," said Thomas R. Burke, a chairman of the media law practice at the firm Davis Wright Tremaine. In a company blog post in January, Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, and Alex Macgillivray, its general counsel, wrote, "Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed." Twitter removes spam and illegal posts, they wrote, but tries to limit those exceptions. It releases information when required by law but notifies users before the disclosures unless it is legally prohibited from doing so.Jeremy Hunt, the British culture secretary, said at a forum last week that the Internet was making a mockery of the injunctions. "We have this very unfortunate and unsustainable situation where newspapers can't print things that are freely available on the Internet," he said. But there is support as well for the way British law tries to protect privacy. Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge, Britain's most senior judge, said in a report issued Friday that people who flout injunctions online could be liable. "Are we really going to say," he asked, "that somebody who has a true claim for privacy, perfectly well made, which the newspapers and media can't report, has to be at the mercy of somebody using modern technology?" But Charlotte Harris, a media lawyer who has represented both public figures seeking injunctions and people arguing against injunctions, said that could be extremely difficult. "When you sign up to most sites, you agree to terms and conditions that say you won't use them to break the law," she said. "The problem is that it's all so difficult to enforce. Where would you begin?" Hmmmm......Read the full story here.
- Palestinian Al-Jazeera Producer in Qatari Daily: Time For the End of the 'Great Lie' Israel.(Memri).Palestinian columnist and Al-Jazeera newsroom producer Samir Al-Hijjawi recently wrote an op-ed titled "Israel Is Surely Temporary," which was published in the Qatari daily Al-Sharq, and, in slightly modified form, in the Jordanian government daily Al-Rai. In it, he wrote, "It's time for Israel to go... It's time for the end of the great lie... It's time [for Israel] to go because the regimes protecting [it]... are toppling one by one." He added that the "Nakba Day" protests on Israel's borders were proof that the Palestinians and Arabs would never relinquish Palestine, the beloved waqf (religious endowment) of all Muslims.Following are excerpts from the op-ed:
"The Arab and Palestinian youth who gathered on the borders of Palestine on Nakba Day showed that Palestine resides in the hearts and minds of the Arabs, from the [Atlantic] Ocean to the Gulf, and that the attempts of the Zionist entity and the West, along with the official Arab regimes, to erase Palestine from memory have utterly failed."Israel – along with its allies, the official Arab regimes, including Mahmoud 'Abbas and Salam Fayyad's [Palestinian] Authority – has taken pains to remove Palestine from the school curricula and the mosques. The Zionist entity has attempted to oppose anything that might evoke Palestine – films, [television] shows, articles, poems, books, and lectures. Israel has raised hell following [the publication of] a [certain] article by a Palestinian intellectual, or poems like Mahmoud Darwish's 'Passers between the Passing Words.' [Israel has also] prevented the documentary about the Dir Yassin massacre from being screened at the U.N., and was enraged at the Turkish [television] series 'Valley of Wolves,' responding by brutally [rebuking] the Turkish ambassador [to Israel] to the point of humiliating him."Israel is not acting alone in this arena. It has help from institutions, lobbies, and movements, such as the secret Masonic movement [i.e. the Freemasons], as well as the clubs associated with it, and also from research centers, as they are called, and from associations, clubs, 'peace forums,' and other sham [organizations] whose only concern is to ensure support and protection for Israel. "The Arab and Palestinian youth have refused to be tamed, subjugated, and intimidated, and have proven that under no circumstances will they forget Palestine. The Arabs may be divided over any [other] matter, but not over Palestine. The sensitive Arab forgives whoever harms him, but cannot forgive the Israeli massacres of the Palestinians, nor the detention of 11,000 Palestinians in subhuman conditions, nor the siege on the Gaza Strip."It is no coincidence that the Arab and Palestinian youth in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria are gathering and setting forth for Palestine, standing on the border and throwing stones at the soldiers of the Israeli occupation, facing [their] bullets with bared chests. [It is] out of love for Palestine and its soil; for Jerusalem, for Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; for [the Prophet] Muhammad... and for [Jesus]... [It is] out of love of history, culture, honor, freedom, and nobility, and out of love for the land of the prophets, of [Muhammad's] ascension to heaven, and of the resurrection of the dead. Every Arab and Muslim considers Palestine his own land, and it is indeed the waqf of all the Muslims, even if it is [only] the Palestinians who live there."It's time for Israel to go, along with its tales and legends. It's time for the end of the great lie that has destroyed everything and poisoned relations between the Arabs and the West. It's time [for it] to go because the regimes protecting this entity are going; [indeed,] those that protect the borders of this artificial entity are toppling one by one. It has no choice but to go.Hmmmm......FACT "Palestine doesn't excist in history ,the invading Philistines excist they came into conflict with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael in the land of Israel".Al-Jazeera Obama's favorite channel.Read the full story here.
