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I had to share this.

Yesterday, I started teh crosswords (Nashville CityPaper's Monday edition, dated 8/24/09), looked at the first clue...

ACROSS
1. To whom a Muslim prays

Easy enough, right?

A couple seconds later, the Crossword "Title" halted my crosswording for the day.

If this Crossword author is actually a prisoner, then he should be released early, for this moment of hilarity.

Now, to finish my puzzle... )

An embattled Archbishop of Canterbury will confront anger within the Church of England as, on this most critical day of his five years in office, he tries to justify his remarks about Islamic law.

Dr Rowan Williams will open the General Synod in Central London this afternoon with a presidential address in which he will show that he can weather the storm over his recent remarks. He will attempt to set the record straight, insisting that he never advocated a “parallel jurisdiction” of Sharia.

...in a special room at the Supreme Court. And no, this isn't a Dairy Frieze; it's most likely marble.

From Mental Floss, a history of our Supreme Court and how Mohammed became ensconced there. It's a good read. Did you know the Supreme Court as we know it today wasn't in it's own building until 1935?

From the article...

"One chamber features a frieze decorated with a bas-relief sculpture by Adolph A. Weinman of eighteen influential law-givers. The south wall depicts Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius and Octavian, while the north wall depicts Napoleon Bonaparte, John Marshall, William Blackstone, Hugo Grotius, Louis IX, King John, Charlemagne, Justinian and, you guessed it, Mohammad."

in 1997, the fledgling Council on American-Islamic Relations brought their wrath to the Court, petitioning then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist to remove the sculpture.
...

Rehnquist dismissed CAIR’s objections, saying that the depiction was “intended only to recognize him [Mohammad]…as an important figure in the history of law; it was not intended as a form of idol worship.” He also reminded CAIR that “swords are used throughout the Court’s architecture as a symbol of justice and nearly a dozen swords appear in the courtroom friezes alone.”

"Remember, class: it’s only a tiny minority of Muslims that want to subjugate us all. The vast majority of peaceful moderate Muslims merely wish to scold us for noticing."

TheUberGopher (1 hour ago)
Nice to see the grinning white cow showing how tolerant she is by not condemning any religion that advocates and practices stoning.
Have another latte you brain dead floozy.
Where does she get her 1% statistic? From her big fat ass.

I gets me an email when HDNet runs special programming...including the "Dan Rather Reports", a weekly hour-long exclusive featuring, yes, disgraced CBS newsman Dan Rather. I haven't watched any of them...

But this one might be worth seeing. Because it's featuring Benzair Bhutto, killed yesterday by parties unknown...the email, here...

HDNET TO AIR DAN RATHER REPORTS INTERVIEW WITH BENAZIR BHUTTO Version with updated commentary from Rather to air Friday, December 28

DALLAS - December 27, 2007

WHAT: HDNet will air an interview with Dan Rather and Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The interview was originally broadcast in August of this year, just before Bhutto returned to Pakistan after a period of self-exile.

The updated version will include a new introduction by Rather including commentary about Bhutto's recent assassination.

In the original interview, Bhutto gave Rather rare insights into the political maneuvering that may be shaping Pakistan's future.

The U.S. government had reportedly been working behind the scenes to facilitate a power sharing agreement between Bhutto and Musharraf as a means of legitimizing the regime of America's close ally in the war on terror.

Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim nation.

WHEN: "DAN RATHER REPORTS - A Prime Minister in Exile" airs Friday, December 28 at 6:00 p.m. ET with additional airings scheduled for Saturday, December 29 and Sunday December 30 at 9:00 a.m. ET

"Shame on the killer Musharraf, shame on the killer U.S.," mourners cried.

Well, go figure. This was as predictable as tomorrow's sunrise. Just days ago, a suicide bomber killed 50+ at a mosque in Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto brought death home the day she flew in from Dubai. When she arrived in Pakistan on October 18, from her second exile in London, 140 people died in a suicide blast. That was her second return from exile...firstly, in 1986, she came back to confront Zia-ul-Haq, the military dictator in charge at the time. She fled Pakistan in 1999, to avoid being sentenced to prison on corruption charges, while Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister. Musharraf quashed that sentence with an amnesty bill, October 5, allowing Bhutto to return October 18.

There's a history of violence in Pakistani politics. Benazir lost her father after he was ousted and executed in 1977 by General Zia-ul-Haq, who kept Benazir wrapped up until 1984...when he exiled her to England. Then, when Zia-ul-Haq died in a (mysterious, of course) plane crash in 1988, Benazir came home to Pakistan, was elected PM and served 20 months. Corruption charges forced her out of power, but she was re-elected in 1993.

Then, when her brother Murtaza Bhutto was killed in 1996, she blamed President Farooq Leghari. He dismissed her government, and in 1996 Nawaz Sharif was elected to Prime Minister. Those corruption charges, whether true or not, ran her out of town in 1999.

We see a pattern of instability, here. Democracy, failing. Bush's ally, just another Pahlavi? Is Pakistan the next Islamic Fundamentalist State?

Nuclear weapons? Yes, Pakistan has nukes.

Terrorism is alive and well in Pakistan. Musharraf either backed this deed, or is inherently weak for not being able to control terrorism in 'Junta-tan'. Maybe bin Laden (no friend of Musharraf's) pulled this off to create instability. Can't protect your women, Musharraf? Allow us to keep them under wraps! Yep, if bin Laden is in Pakistan, that's a bit too close to those nukes...

Here's a blast from the past, from a 1993 article by Ann Louise Bardach, "Islamic Fundamentalism's War Against Women"...

"The success of fundamentalism, [according to Pakistan's Prime Minister] Bhutto [interviewed before she was reelected], has two causes. First, it springs from an authentic "search for identity in an increasingly global village where all the messages come from the West... In the absence of the Cold War, when Muslims look out they see the Christian West. It is a reaction to preserve one's-culture when other cultures have dominance."

Second, she says, it is the monster child jointly created and funded by the West and the totalitarian regimes of the region to keep the Communists at bay. "Political parties were largely banned," she says. "To keep the clerics happy, the mosques were well funded. The mosque was allowed to become a place where people could gather. The clerics became very powerful, and they started a new doctrine, where the clerics knew what was best for everybody else. "Virtually every regime in the region which has played the religious card, she says, from Iran to Saudi Arabia, has seen it backfire, leaving the regime hostage to the religious right.

In 1977, when Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, needed to appease the religious right, he outlawed gambling and alcohol. "Some people say that it opened the door at that time," she admits, "because, after that, General Zia came in and started Sharia [in alliance with] the Muslim Brotherhood. "The biggest catastrophe for the region, and perhaps the world, began, she says, when the C.l.A. decided to fund - to the tune of $3 billion - the most extreme right-wing Islamic groups in Afghanistan (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Party of God) to fight the Russians.

"The Muslim Brotherhood ran the training camps," she says, which were headquartered in Peshawar, Pakistan, and which soon became the stomping grounds for the international Fundamentalist set, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Hezbollah, the Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, the outlawed Egyptian party Gamaa al-lslamiyya, and "the usual suspects" from Iran. "A lot of money was funneled through the Brotherhood and they siphoned off a lot of money. Now we have all these revolutionaries - bought and trained - and nowhere to go. Where could they go after Afghanistan?"

Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.

"This nation will not negotiate with anyone over its obvious and legal rights," Ahmadinejad told student members of the Basij religious militia, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"We are not even interested in negotiating with you (the United States) and the Iranian nation does not need America."

That's interesting, Ahmadinejad.  We've advanced to a new level of non-negotiation.  Because lines are being drawn for this conflict...

The United States, Britain and France are preparing to debate a third set of sanctions against the Islamic republic in response to Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment.  Iran has rejected two U.N. Security Council resolutions requiring it to halt its enrichment program.  U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad said the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council along with Germany have begun negotiations in their capitals on a new resolution targeting Iran.  The goal is to get an agreement on suspending enrichment and answers to issues raised by ElBaradei, Khalilzad said.  "We believe that the Iranian nuclear issues is ... a defining issue of our time," he said.  "It cannot be acceptable for it to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons."  Last week, the Bush administration announced a new set of sanctions targeting the Iranian military and state-owned banking systems in hopes of raising pressure on the world financial system to cut ties with Tehran.

VLASIKHA (Moscow Region), October 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Strategic Missile Forces will conduct five launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles by the end of 2007, the SMF commander said Friday. "By the end of this year, we will test launch another five missiles, including a RS-18 (SS-19 Stiletto), a RS-12M (SS-25 Sickle), a missile interceptor and a heavy RS-20 (SS-18 Satan)," Colonel General Nikolai Solovtsov told a news conference. He said that seven ICBM launches had been conducted so far in 2007 to test the performance of a new RS-24 missile with multiple warheads, extend the service life of RS-18 and RS-25 missiles and lift payloads into orbit. He also said five regiments of an SMF division in the Saratov Region have been equipped with silo-based Topol-M (SS-27) systems and put on combat duty. A complete regiment of silo-based Topol-M comprises ten missiles. The advanced Topol-M missile is considered by many experts as the best ICBM in the world at present. "Therefore, Russia already possesses weapons that can penetrate any modern missile defenses," Solovtsov said.

Hmmmph. Give 'em a chance to work out with a market economy, get their house in order, what do they do? Go right back to the 'old' habits of the USSR, building more missiles, getting into an arms race with the U.S. And picking up the slack of the world's enemies. I see definite sides forming, on the same old playing fields. Pushing and shoving again, with missiles and nuclear weapons.

If Russia comes out with a blanket "Order of Protection" treaty with Iran, we have the new Axis.

Is Israel doomed?

Theo Spark

Saber rattling at it's finest...

TEHRAN, October 20 (RIA Novosti) - Iran has the capability to fire 11,000 rockets at enemy bases within one minute if the country is attacked, a top commander in the Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Saturday.

"Within the first minute of any attack by enemies against our country, the missile and artillery unit of the ground force is capable of firing 11,000 missiles and shells at targets that are known to us,"

"A possible war will not last long, because within days we will reduce our enemies to ashes. The enemy must ask himself what losses he is prepared to suffer for his stupidity,"

But we know that the Iranian missiles can't really reach the U.S mainland.  Bases in Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, other Middle East countries, those would be on the list.

But my house payment I'd bet that most of those rockets would target Israel, even if Israel didn't attack Iran. That was Saddam Hussein's strategy when he was losing the first Gulf War. That's one of the reasons we went into Iraq the second time, because Iraq (and now Iran...well, nearly all of the Middle East's Islamic states want Israel out of Israel.)

It's beginning to look more and more like we will have to attack Iran, over the possibility of nuclear missiles. Four days ago, President Bush warned that if Iran's nuclear program isn't stopped, WW III could be the result. "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush said."  Because Ahmadenijad and his masters are crazy Islamic Fascists who think a 12th Imam is buried somewhere in a well, and won't be released until Armageddon is unleashed. Religion of peace, indeed.

Bush's comments at a White House news conference came a day after President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran, where the Russian leader said he saw no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. Putin's trip to Iran for a summit of Caspian littoral states, the first visit by a Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin traveled to Iran in 1943, provoked concerns in the West over increasingly close ties between Moscow and Tehran. The summit resulted in a five-way agreement that no Caspian nations would allow the use of their territories for a military strike against any of them.

"We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,"

"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that "the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time."

Hell, we knew that long ago. I hope our contingency plans are updated daily, we are in close secret contact with Israel, and our forces have the strength to get the job done.

Because we really need to win this one...

Yesterday, we had Dr. James Watson's unfortunate commentary concerning the intelligence factor of Blacks. That will get him shunned and possibly disgraced by the scientific community and, if the Politically Correct Society of Great Britain gets really worked up, some civil action as well (there is no protected free speech over on the Island, or the Continent for that matter.)

Now, we have Martin Amis, British author and son of Sir Kingsley Amis, making comments that may well relieve him of his head...

'I feel morally superior to Islamists, by some distance. I feel an intellectual distance to Islam.

'There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women.

'The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.'

'Some societies are just more evolved than others,' he said. 'I am not saying these people are genetically incapable of not being terrorists.

'These societies are arming themselves with weapons like the AK47 and blowing people up on buses and Tubes.'

When one member of his audience suggested not all Muslims were terrorists he retorted: 'No one else is doing it.

'Here in the West we have the most evolved society in the world and we are not blowing people up.

'I am just saying some societies are more evolved than others. Young men in those kinds of societies are growing up full of loathing and hatred. Something has to be done about it.'

There's a problem with Islam. For some reason, it's simple for a frothing Imam or Ayatollah to attract young jihadists to explode themselves in the name of Allah.

As a religion, Islam was written by a warrior to attract more warriors to his cause. There’s something just not right about how easily some few men can warp even such a broken tool as the Koran to do some of the things that happen in the name of Allah.

But to say that the 1.5 billion Muslims are all terrorists is a bit much.

A nice reform of Islam, removing the elements that attract frothing hate-filled Imams and Ayatollahs and allowing them to attract young men to decidedly unholy causes, is long overdue. Remember, all non-Islamic peoples are written up as infidels. Until that is overwritten (or overlooked), any non-Mohammedan is subject to whatever can be dreamed up in a fascist’s mind, and then programmed into his young army of willing jihadists.

Not all Muslim states and populations are so easily overwhelmed by the attractors to Jihad.

We only have to look to the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, and see a teeming well-to-do Muslim population that's not much interested in virgins in the afterlife. Some nice zip codes, there, it seems...

See what a little capitalism can do for a society? And you wonder why we're still fighting to secure Iraq for their citizen's future?

Here we go again...witnessing Muslim tolerance of other religions. In this case, they tried to blow up a 7th century statue of the Buddha, located in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, a Buddhist region back in the Old Days.

But the bumbling fools couldn't get it done...the Buddha is intact.

ISLAMABAD, September 12 (RIA Novosti) - Pakistani extremists have tried to destroy a seventh century rock carving of Buddha in the Swat valley region, in northwestern Pakistan, a spokesman for the local archaeology department said Wednesday.

Aqleem Khan said that a group of masked men had planted explosives in the rock, where the statue of the sitting Buddha is carved. The explosion damaged the rock, but the monument itself remained untouched.

Local authorities have compared the incident with the destruction by the Taliban of two Buddha statues in the Bamiyan province, in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001.

"It's just like the way the Taliban used to behave," Khan said.

...and six days from the 29th Anniversary...



Cowboy Blob's come up with a...very interesting photo in his latest 'chop/caption' contest. I was somewhat bemused when I first saw it; there's no way to incorporate anything into that!

Well, in the interest of trying, I'm in.

Background: Iran ran a 'blood fountain' to commemorate it's martyred dead (I thought they all got virgins, but that's not...I won't even go there...)

Once the struggle for power was joined, the spilling of blood came to be embraced, not avoided. As Iran's revolution was unfolding during the Moharram ceremony in 1978, demonstrators caught in a battle with the Shah's troops smeared their hands with the blood of the victims and raised their palms toward heaven. In the months before the revolution Khomeini said, "Our movement is but a fragile plant. It needs the blood of martyrs to help it grow into a towering tree." The Black Friday Massacre in Tehran on September 8, 1978, in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed by the Shah's troops, was a key event in precipitating the downfall of the Shah. Khomeini called that day the "victory of blood over the sword."

Hamid showed me the high, wide-tiered fountain built for the martyred war dead. The fountain had once cascaded crimson-colored water dyed to look like blood. As more war dead came home, the cemetery grew bigger, so big that satellite fountains of martyrs' blood had to be built. The martyrs are "irrigating the revolutionary seed," officials liked to say.

After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."

These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan--or "mobilization of the oppressed"--was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction.