Lingua Islamica

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney Should Resign

2007-07-04T02:16:00.001-07:00

Riveting commentary. It is approximately 10 minutes long, and it is essential to watch.

Google Health Advertising Blog Makes Me “Sicko”

2007-07-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

First and formest, everyone needs to watch “Sicko”, Michael Moore’s moving documentary about the health care crisis in the United States. The documentary makes a compelling arguments about the need to revolutionize the dysfunctional health care system.

Last Friday, on the opening night of the movie, Lauren Turner, a health account planner at Google wrote a disgusting post, criticizing “Sicko”, and worse, calling on health care companies to offset the negative press generated from the movie by advertising with Google.

The post caused uproar among bloggers, and Turner was forced to backtrack with another post on Sunday, by distinguishing between her personal opinion and that of Google’s. By then, however, the damage had been done to Google’s self-proclaimed “do no evil” image, forcing Google to post on their primary official blog apologizing for Turner’s post.

If Google was sincere in vehemently disagreeing with Turner’s ultra-insensitive post, the correct course of action should have included deleting the original post and terminating her position at Google.

For more:

Buy tickets to see “Sicko”

Only 41% of Muslim Americans Pray 5 Times a Day

2007-07-02T09:51:00.001-07:00

The Pew Research Center recently published a comprehensive 102-page study on Muslims in the United States entitled Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream. The study covered various aspects of the community, among them the population of Muslims in the United States, demographics, religious belief and practice, identity and assimilation, challenges and problems, political and social values, and finally foreign policy, terrorism and extremism.

The study was based on a survey conducted of 1,050 American Muslims from January 24 to April 30, 2007.

I will be the first to admit that the findings of this study should not be granted carte blanche trust. That being said, however, there are some striking, and in some cases even shocking, results in the study.

Perhaps the most shocking of the results was the response to a question about daily prayer. Only 41% of the people surveyed responded that they pray five times a day. If this is even somewhat representative of the community at large, that means that not even half of the community performs its most basic requirement to Allāh.

The Messenger of Allāh (may Allāh bless him and grant him peace) said:

“The first thing people will be accountable for on the Day of Judgment is prayer. Allāh will say to His angels, “Look at my servants’ prayers. Were they complete or not?” If they were complete It will be written as complete. If they were not fully complete Allāh will say. “See if my servant has voluntary prayers.” If he has them Allāh will say, “Complete his obligatory prayers shortage with his voluntary prayers.” Then the rest of his deeds will be dealt with in the same manner.”

(Reported by Imāms Ahmad, Abū Dāwūd, an-Nisā'i, and al-Hakim)

For our own personal salvation, we must solidify our five daily prayers. It will be the primary determinant of our final eternal destination. Furthermore, for the sake of our condition in the dunya (this world), we must realize that Allāh will not grant us success until we fulfill this most basic obligation. As Allāh tells us clearly in the Qur’ān:

إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ

Inna Allāha lā yughayyiru mā biqawmin hattā yughayyirū mā bi'anfusihim.

Allāh will never change the condition of a people until they change that which is within themselves.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat ar-Ra‘d, Āyah 11)

The Pew Research Center Report: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream

FBI Whistleblower Describes Government Muscle Tactics

2007-06-28T14:34:00.001-07:00

Frome Wired Blogs:

A whistleblower who lost her job and was gagged by the Bush administration after revealing careerism, corruption and widespread incompetence at the FBI detailed her difficult search for justice to an audience on Monday at the American Library Association’s annual conference. Sibel Edmonds, hired by the FBI as a translator shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 after reporting a range of problems at the bureau, including:
slothful, unqualified employees
family members of diplomats suspected of spying who translated the wiretaps of their relatives
ignored or overlooked intelligence warning of Al-Qaeda’s plans to hijack planes and attack major cities
evidence of a Turkish bribery ring that, according to some accounts, was connected to then-Speaker of the House Denny Hastert (R-Illinois)

Wired Blogs: FBI Whistleblower Describes Government Muscle Tactics

Israeli President Katsav to Resign to Avoid Rape Charges

2007-06-28T14:15:00.001-07:00

From Al Jazeera English:

Moshe Katsav, Israel’s president, has signed a plea bargain that will force him to resign but includes no rape charges and entails no jail time, Meni Mazuz, Israel’s attorney-general, said.

In the space of a year, Katsav has sunk from being “Israel’s number one citizen to a convicted sex offender,” Mazuz said on Thursday at a news conference.

Kinneret Barashi, a lawyer for one of the victims, expressed outrage at the plea bargain and a women’s rights’ advocate said it would discourage other women from complaining about sexual crimes.

Barashi said her client “feels she is a victim for the second time”.

Zahava Gal-On, a politician and women’s rights campaigner, accused Mazuz of moral cowardice.

Gal-On said: “Victims of sex crimes will believe they do not have any shield.”

Abrupt end

Israel’s high-level officials, including the prime minister, have been increasingly implicated in scandals.

Al Jazeera English: Israeli president Katsav to resign

Alleged Egyptian ‘Mossad Spy’ Found Dead in London

2007-06-28T13:06:00.001-07:00

From Al Jazeera English:

An Egyptian billionaire who allegedly spied for Israel in the 1970s has been found dead outside his home in London.

Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of Gamal Abdel Nasser, a former Egyptian president, “lost his balance” while standing on his balcony on Wednesday and fell to his death, Egyptian state media said.

British police said only that they were looking into the death of an Egyptian man in central London, and it was being treated as “unexplained” but not suspicious...

Yom Kippur ‘tip-off’

Gad Shimron, a former Mossad officer turned historian, said Marwan had warned Israel hours before the Egyptian attack in 1973.

“We know now, from testimony given by Israeli spymasters and made public years after the Yom Kippur War, that Marwan was the man who tipped off the Mossad,” he said.

According to The Times, a UK newspaper, Marwan offered his services to Israel in 1969, going on to provide information on Egypt and the Arab world.

He worked as a senior information official for both Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Abdel Nasser’s successor as president.

Al Jazeera English: Egyptian ‘Mossad Spy’ dies in UK

Egypt Outlaws All Female Circumcision

2007-06-28T09:55:00.001-07:00

From AFP:

Egypt on Thursday finally banned all female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a 12-year-old girl.

Officially the practice, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the pharoahs, was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases".

AFP: Egypt Outlaws All Female Circumcision

Israeli Air Strikes Kill 12

2007-06-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

May Allāh grant victory to our Palestinian brothers and sisters.

From Al Jazeera English:

At least 12 people have been killed by Israeli air strikes and artillery fire in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials have said.

Palestinian medics said the Israeli army’s incursion on Wednesday into Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Younis, the biggest raid on the territory since the Hamas takeover two weeks ago, is ongoing.

Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into both areas in overnight incursions - sparking clashes with Palestinian fighters.

Al Jazeera English: Israel launches deadly Gaza raids

Hot Rocks Keep us Alive

2007-06-27T14:02:00.001-07:00

From the Discovery Channel News:

If it weren’t for the hot rocks down below Earth’s crust, most of North America would be below sea level, report researchers who say the significance of Earth’s internal heat has been overlooked.

Without it, mile-high Denver would be 727 feet below sea level, the scientists calculate, and New York City, more than a quarter-mile below. Los Angeles would be almost three-quarters of a mile beneath the Pacific.

In fact most of the United States would disappear, except for some major Western mountain ranges, according to research at the University of Utah.

Earth’s Inner Heat Keeps Cities Afloat

New York Times Op-Ed: What Hamas Wants

2007-06-26T14:52:00.002-07:00

Ahmed Yousef is the political adviser to Ismail Haniya, who became the Palestinian prime minister last year.

The New York Times ran this editorial on June 20, 2007.

Gaza City

THE events in Gaza over the last few days have been described in the West as a coup. In essence, they have been the opposite. Eighteen months ago, our Hamas Party won the Palestinian parliamentary elections and entered office under Prime Minister Ismail Haniya but never received the handover of real power from Fatah, the losing party. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has now tried to replace the winning Hamas government with one of his own, returning Fatah to power while many of our elected members of Parliament languish in Israeli jails. That is the real coup.

From the day Hamas won the general elections in 2006 it offered Fatah the chance of joining forces and forming a unity government. It tried to engage the international community to explain its platform for peace. It has consistently offered a 10-year cease-fire with the Israelis to try to create an atmosphere of calm in which we resolve our differences. Hamas even adhered to a unilateral cease-fire for 18 months in an effort to normalize the situation on the ground. None of these points appear to have been recognized in the press coverage of the last few days.

Nor has it been evident to many people in the West that the civil unrest in Gaza and the West Bank has been precipitated by the American and Israeli policy of arming elements of the Fatah opposition who want to attack Hamas and force us from office. For 18 months we have tried to find ways to coexist with Fatah, entering into a unity government, even conceding key positions in the cabinet to their and international demands, negotiating up until the last moment to try to provide security for all of our people on the streets of Gaza.

Sadly, it became apparent that not all officials from Fatah were negotiating in good faith. There were attempts on Mr. Haniya’s life last week, and eventually we were forced into trying to take control of a very dangerous situation in order to provide political stability and establish law and order.

The streets of Gaza are now calm for the first time in a very long time. We have begun disarming some of the drug dealers and the armed gangs and we hope to restore a sense of security and safety to the citizens of Gaza. We want to get children back to school, get basic services functioning again, and provide long-term economic gains for our people.

Our stated aim when we won the election was to effect reform, end corruption and bring economic prosperity to our people. Our sole focus is Palestinian rights and good governance. We now hope to create a climate of peace and tranquillity within our community that will pave the way for an end to internal strife and bring about the release of the British journalist Alan Johnston, whose kidnapping in March by non-Hamas members is a stain on the reputation of the Palestinian people.

We reject attempts to divide Palestine into two parts and to pass Hamas off as an extreme and dangerous force. We continue to believe that there is still a chance to establish a long-term truce. But this will not happen unless the international community fully engages with Hamas.

Any further attempts to marginalize us, starve our people into submission or attack us militarily will prove that the United States and Israeli governments are not genuinely interested in seeing an end to the violence. Dispassionate observers over the next few weeks will be able to make up their own minds as to each side’s true intentions.

Ahmed Yousef is the political adviser to Ismail Haniya, who became the Palestinian prime minister last year.

New York Times Op-Ed: What Hamas Wants

Washington Post Op-Ed: Engage With Hamas, We Earned Our Support

2007-06-26T14:52:00.001-07:00

Ahmed Yousef is the political adviser to Ismail Haniya, who became the Palestinian prime minister last year.

The Washington Post ran this op-ed on June 20, 2007.

GAZA CITY, Palestine -- The Palestinian National Authority apparently joins the list of elected governments targeted or toppled over the past century by interventionism: nations that had the courage to take American rhetoric at face value and elect whomever they would. No doubt some in Washington persist in the fiction that the United States is following a "road map" to democracy for Palestinians, just as others believe the Iraq war has been a sincere exercise in nation-building. Neoconservative strategists have miscalculated, however, and Hamas is stronger than ever.

For the first time in months, Gaza is secure. This may be a momentary peace as Israel prepares an attempt to retake parts of Gaza. Yet neither blunt force nor U.S. subterfuge will extinguish Palestinian aspirations for self-governance, free from outside interference.

Hamas's actions to secure Gaza from the horrific recent violence of the Palestinian contras have been out of self-defense. The assassinations of Hamas officials and supporters, attempts on the life of the elected prime minister, and kidnappings and bombings by some in President Mahmoud Abbas's paramilitary groups had to stop. The PA has a clear legal right, indeed an obligation, to prevent this violence, by force if necessary, and to protect the Palestinian people.

It is not Hamas that has "outlawed" the government. (When has an elected party with a voting majority ever resorted to banning the government to get its way?) The success of the Reform and Change Party is neither a chimera nor a momentary lapse in reason on the part of the electorate. Rather, it is the result of four decades of hard work in Palestinian society. It reflects the trust of the people. Those who collaborate with the occupiers to void the electoral process will not succeed. Abbas's "state of emergency" and his U.S. and Israeli arms will not prevail in Gaza or quench the thirst for political freedom in the West Bank.

Some critics raise the red flag of "al-Qaeda" and say that Hamas and parliament are a stalking horse for Salafi jihadists. I defy them to demonstrate one instance in which Hamas's military structure has struck against any force outside the theater of the occupation. The struggle has always been against the Israeli agenda of ethnic cleansing and conquest. Hamas is a movement of Palestinian liberation and nationalism -- Islamist, yes, but in the sea of contending faiths that is the homeland, where is the sin in loving one's creed?

Likewise, those who demean resistance to the occupation as little more than a proxy for Iran, Syria or Hezbollah are ignorant of history. The long-suffering Palestinians have gratefully accepted assistance from neighbors both near and far, Arab and Western, Muslim or otherwise. Slighting the generosity of those who sympathize with the Palestinians is hypocritical given America's billions of annual aid dollars for Israel, money that has only purchased tragedy.

Palestinians want, on their terms, the same thing Western societies want: self-determination, modernity, access to markets and their own economic power, and freedom for civil society to evolve. Those who warn of "failed states" and "Hamastan" as a breeding ground for terrorism forget where blame for failure belongs -- at the feet of the American administration, which has chosen to isolate, rather than deal with, the elected government.

The Bush administration never intended to honor the outcome of fair and transparent elections in the occupied territories. The embargo, designed to punish the electorate for its choice, was the first step toward crushing new democratic institutions. The second has been to find collaborators for the American agenda and to supply them with advisers, funds and weapons for their campaign of destabilization. The final step will be to truncate Gaza from any proposed Palestinian state and make it a de facto prison for all "undesirable" aspects of Palestinian nationalism. This will culminate in provocations designed to trigger a military response from Israel, which will "justify" a war on Gazans. This would be tragic for all concerned, and the international community, especially the Arab League, must not allow such an outcome.

What can be salvaged from the wreckage of the multiparty system? Those who have dissolved the government and joined with the occupiers are embraced by the Bush and Olmert administrations, which have released Palestinian tax revenue and taken other steps to shore up the Abbas government's legitimacy and proclaim it the future of a Palestine shorn of troublesome Gaza.

Yet it remains that Hamas has a world in common with Fatah and other parties, and they all share the same goals -- the end of occupation; the release of political prisoners; the right of return for all Palestinians; and freedom to be a nation equal among nations, secure in its own borders and at peace. For more than 60 years, Palestinians have resisted walls and checkpoints intended to divide them. Now they must resist the poisonous inducements to fight one another and resume a unified front against the occupation.

We urge the Bush administration not to repeat the mistakes that have become hallmarks of its actions in the Middle East. Allow the Palestinian people to chart their own course, free from the influence of those who seek little more than to perpetuate the status quo. The alternative is unacceptable.

Ahmed Yousef is a senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, who is contesting his dismissal as prime minister by Mahmoud Abbas.

Washington Post Op-Ed: Engage With Hamas, We Earned Our Support

U.S. Diplomat: Iran Sending Weapons to Taliban... Yeah, and Saddam Funded Osama

2007-06-26T14:36:00.001-07:00

This is yet another claim by the Bush Administration that is so completely outrageous, that anyone with basic knowledge of the Muslim world would be able to refute it. Just as it was basic knowledge prior to the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were bitter enemies, it is basic knowledge today that Iran and the Taliban are enemies as well. This claim by the Bush Administration attempts to capitalize on general ignorance of subtle differences between Muslims in order to build a stronger case to attack them.

From the International Herald Tribune:

A senior U.S. diplomat, lobbying world powers for tougher sanctions against Iran, accused Tehran on Wednesday of violating international law by arming its once-bitter foe — Afghanistan’s Taliban — and of trying to destabilize the Middle East.

If true, the claim by Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns that Iran is supplying weapons to the Taliban could mark a disturbing escalation in Iran’s efforts to resist U.S. policy on multiple fronts, from Iraq to Afghanistan. Tehran is violating a recent Security Council resolution barring it from weapons exports, Burns said.

U.S. official says Iran violating U.N. rules by sending weapons to Afghanistan's Taliban

Leading Human Rights Groups Name 39 CIA “Disappeared” Detainees

2007-06-26T14:24:00.001-07:00

From Amnesty International:

In the most comprehensive accounting to date, six leading human rights organizations today published the names and details of 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The briefing paper also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

In a related action, three of the groups filed a lawsuit in US federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking the disclosure of information concerning “disappeared” detainees.

The 21-page briefing paper, Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the “War on Terror”, includes detailed information about four people named as “disappeared” prisoners for the first time. The full list of people includes nationals from countries including Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan and Spain. They are believed to have been arrested in countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan, and transferred to secret US detention centres.

The list—drafted by Amnesty International (AI), Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law (CHRGJ), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Reprieve — draws together information from government and media sources, as well as from interviews with former prisoners and other witnesses.

Amnesty International: Leading Human Rights Groups Name 39 CIA “Disappeared” Detainees

Al Jazeera English: Yahoo ‘sued’ by China reporter

2007-06-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

From Al Jazeera English:

Internet giant Yahoo has defended itself against criticism that is has supported China’s censorship laws, saying Chinese authorities should not punish people for expressing political views online.

The comments come a day after the mother of a jailed Chinese reporter announced she was suing the US company for helping officials imprison her son.

Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005 after sending an e-mail about Chinese media restrictions on coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Al Jazeera English: Yahoo ‘sued’ by China reporter

World Renowned Economist Jeffrey Sachs: Sanctions Won’t Help Darfur

2007-06-26T14:07:00.001-07:00

From BBC:

World renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs has condemned the US decision to impose fresh sanctions on Sudan over Darfur.

Mr Sachs said this would do little to address the underlying causes of the four-year conflict, which he said was a squeeze on natural resources.

The ban on companies trading or banking with the US would do little to achieve peace in “one of the most desperate places in the world”, he said.

BBC: US sanctions ‘won’t help Darfur’

CNN: Yahoo Blasts China on Free Speech

2007-06-26T13:54:00.001-07:00

From CNN:

China should not punish people for expressing their political views on the Internet, Yahoo Inc. said Monday, a day after the mother of a Chinese reporter announced she was suing the U.S. company for helping officials imprison her son.

Yahoo criticized China in a brief statement that didn’t specifically mention the case of jailed journalist Shi Tao, whose mother visited Hong Kong on Sunday. Shi was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after sending an e-mail about Chinese media restrictions.

The company has acknowledged sharing information about Shi with Chinese authorities.

“Yahoo is dismayed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political views on the Internet,” the company said in the statement faxed to The Associated Press, which asked Yahoo to comment on Shi’s lawsuit.

The Internet company, based in Sunnyvale, California, also said it has told China that it condemns “punishment of any activity internationally recognized as free expression.”

However, Yahoo added that companies operating in China must comply with Chinese law or risk having their employees face civil or criminal penalties.

CNN: Yahoo Blasts China on Free Speech

The Petaflop Frontier: 3 Quadrillion Operations Per Second!

2007-06-26T13:46:00.001-07:00

From CNET News:

IBM has devised a new Blue Gene supercomputer--the Blue Gene/P--that will be capable of processing more than 3 quadrillion operations a second, or 3 petaflops, a possible record. Blue Gene/P is designed to continuously operate at more than 1 petaflop in real-world situations.

New IBM supercomputer achieves petaflop

Rebel Serb Leader Milan Martic Sentenced to 35 years for the Murder, Persecution, Torture and Deportation

2007-06-26T13:41:00.001-07:00

From Reuters:

The U.N. war crimes tribunal sentenced the former leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, Milan Martic, to 35 years in jail for his role in atrocities committed while rebel Serbs set up a breakaway state in Croatia.

Martic, 52, was found guilty of criminal responsibility for the murder, persecution, torture and deportation of Croats, Muslims and other non Serb civilians, but cleared of extermination. He was also convicted for ordering the unlawful shelling of the Croatian capital Zagreb in May 1995.

Original Article:

Reuters: Rebel Serb leader Martic sentenced to 35 years

CNN: Google Privacy ‘Worst on the Web’

2007-06-26T13:36:00.001-07:00

From CNN:

Google Inc.’s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet’s top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.

In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with “comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy.”

None of the 22 other surveyed companies -- a group that included Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL -- sunk to that level, according to Privacy International.

While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to “achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,” Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings.

CNN: Google Privacy ‘Worst on the Web’

Los Angeles Times Feature: Jerusalem: Struggle for the Heart of a Holy City

2007-06-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

Original Link:

Los Angeles Times: Jerusalem: Struggle for the Heart of a Holy City

New York Times Editorial: It’s Time to Close Gitmo

2007-06-26T13:24:00.001-07:00

Here is a powerful editorial from The New York Times arguing for the need to close the gulag at Guantánamo Bay:

Ever since President Bush rammed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 through Congress to lend a pretense of legality to his detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, we have urged Congress to amend the law to restore basic human rights and judicial process. Rulings by military judges this week suggest that the special detention system is so fundamentally corrupt that the only solution is to tear it down and start again.

The target of the judges’ rulings were Combatant Status Review Tribunals, panels that determine whether a prisoner is an “unlawful enemy combatant” who can be tried by one of the commissions created by the 2006 law. The tribunals are, in fact, kangaroo courts that give the inmates no chance to defend themselves, allow evidence that was obtained through torture and can be repeated until one produces the answer the Pentagon wants.

On Monday, two military judges dismissed separate war crimes charges against two Guantánamo inmates because of the status review system. They said the Pentagon managed to get them declared “enemy combatants,” but not “unlawful enemy combatants,” and moved to try them anyway under the 2006 law. That law says only unlawful combatants may be tried by military commissions. Lawful combatants (those who wear uniforms and carry weapons openly) fall under the Geneva Conventions.

If the administration loses an appeal, which it certainly should, it will no doubt try to tinker with the review tribunals so they produce the desired verdict. Congress cannot allow that. When you can’t win a bet with loaded dice, something is wrong with the game.

There is only one path likely to lead to a result that would allow Americans to once again hold their heads high when it comes to justice and human rights. First, Congress needs to restore the right of the inmates of Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions. By the administration’s own count, only a small minority of the inmates actually deserve a trial. The rest should be sent home or set free.

Second, Congress should repeal the Military Commissions Act and start anew on a just system for determining whether prisoners are unlawful combatants. Among other things, evidence obtained through coercion and torture should be banned.

And Congress should shut down Guantánamo Bay, as called for in bills sponsored by two California Democrats, Representative Jane Harman in the House and Senator Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. Both lawmakers are intimately familiar with the camp and have concluded it is beyond salvaging.

Their bill would close Gitmo in a year and the detainees would be screened by real courts. Those who are truly illegal combatants would be sent to military or civilian jails in the United States, to be tried under time-tested American rules of justice, or sent to an international tribunal. Some would be returned to their native lands for trial, if warranted. The rest would be set free, as they should have been long ago.

The Guantánamo camp was created on a myth — that the American judicial system could not handle prisoners of “the war against terror.” It was built on a lie — that the hundreds of detainees at Gitmo are all dangerous terrorists. And it was organized around a fiction — that Mr. Bush had the power to create this rogue system in the first place.

It is time to get rid of it.

Here is a link to the editorial:

Gitmo: A National Disgrace

Homeland Security Using Muslims to Help Prevent Radicalism

2007-06-26T13:09:00.001-07:00

It is very unfortunate that some Muslims allow the Department of Homeland Security to help dictate what is defined as radicalism and how to prevent it. Islam already a very rich history of advancing a moderate society and rejecting extremism. Working with agencies that have proven to be unjust and outright anti-Muslim is not an effective method for Muslims to combat extremism in our communities. Rather, it helps an anti-Muslim agenda more effectively.

As the Qur'an says:

وَكَذَلِكَ جَعَلْنَاكُمْ أُمَّةً وَسَطًا لِّتَكُونُواْ شُهَدَاءَ عَلَى النَّاسِ وَيَكُونَ الرَّسُولُ عَلَيْكُمْ شَهِيدًا

Wa kadhālika ja‘alnākum ummatan wasatan litakūnū shuhadā'a ‘alā n-nāsi wa yakūnu r-Rasūlu ‘alaykum shahīda.

We have made you a justly-balanced Ummah (worldwide nation), so that you may be witnesses over the nations, and the Messenger may be a witness over you.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Baqarah, Āyah 143)

An excerpt from a San Francisco Chronicle article:

After nearly six years of intense law enforcement scrutiny of Muslims in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is reshaping his agency’s approach to Muslims and invited four prominent Muslims to help the agency prevent homegrown radicalism.

The four leaders Chertoff called on -- a former ambassador from Pakistan, a Santa Monica author who grew up in San Jose, a Houston city councilman and an Austin, Texas, blogger -- suggest increasing youth services, working with bloggers to fight extremist ideology on the Web and even changing the terminology the government uses to describe terrorists.

The May 8 meeting -- the first of its kind the Homeland Security secretary has called with Muslims -- was part of a series of gatherings that Chertoff told Congress in March would be “an unprecedented level of cooperation” with various ethnic and religious communities to “prevent radicalization.”

San Francisco Chronicle: Security agency enlisting Muslims to rebut radicals

New York Times: Google and Utility to Test Hybrids That Sell Back Power

2007-06-25T19:36:00.001-07:00

Kimberly White/Reuters
Google’s founders, Sergey Brin, left, and Larry Page, plugging in
a hybrid car Monday at the company’s California headquarters.

An excerpt from The New York Times:

Google and Pacific Gas & Electric have unveiled their vision of a future in which cars and trucks are partly powered by the country’s electric grids, and vice versa.

The companies displayed on Monday six Toyota Prius and Ford Escape hybrid vehicles modified to run partly on electricity from the power grid, allowing the vehicles to go up to 75 miles on a gallon of gas, nearly double the number of miles of a regular hybrid. They also modified one vehicle to give electricity back to the power company.

The New York Times: Google and Utility to Test Hybrids That Sell Back Power

13-Year-Old Girl Refuses to Remove Hijab Despite Public Ridicule by School Supervisor

2007-06-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

This 13-year-old girl's bravery is a shining example for us all. From the Monterey County Herald:

A confrontation over a head scarf in the lunchroom of Seaside High School between a school supervisor and a 13-year-old student has led for a call for a public apology from the official by a major Islamic organization.

The San Francisco/Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, said the girl, an incoming freshman, was told by the supervisor Tuesday to remove her hajib, an Islamic head scarf.

After explaining that she wore it for religious reasons, the supervisor, according to the CAIR statement, then demanded in front of more than 100 other students, “You have to take it off now.”

The girl, who was taking a summer algebra class, then broke down in tears, said CAIR, but did not remove her scarf.

Monterey County Herald: Muslim girl told to remove scarf

Carter: Bush Administration’s Refusal to Accept Hamas’ Election is “Criminal”, Hamas Far More Organized than Fatah

2007-06-25T17:29:00.001-07:00

From the Associated Press:

Former President Jimmy Carter accused the U.S., Israel and the European Union on Tuesday of seeking to divide the Palestinian people by reopening aid to President Mahmoud Abbas’ new government in the West Bank while denying the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”

Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas’ moderate Fatah movement...

Carter said the U.S. and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would “conquer Hamas in Gaza” — but Hamas routed Fatah in the fighting last week because of its “superior skills and discipline.”

Associated Press: Carter blasts US policy on Palestinians

Minneapolis Muslim Attacked in Hate-Crime while Leaving Masjid

2007-06-25T17:19:00.001-07:00

From the Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune:

A man leaving a mosque in St. Cloud was assaulted in what police described Sunday as a crime motivated by bias.

The victim, a 26-year-old man, was approached about 2:15 p.m. outside the mosque, in the 600 block of 7th Avenue S., by a white man, later identified as a 33-year-old Isanti, Minn., resident. The suspect has been arrested and was awaiting charges.

The suspect, police said, accused the victim of being a Muslim terrorist. The suspect then shoved the victim and elbowed him in the head, sending his glasses flying.

Star Tribune: Police: Bias is behind attack on man leaving St. Cloud mosque

Aid Agencies to U.S. Advocacy Groups: You’re Hurting Darfur, Not Helping

2007-06-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

Women displaced from their homes lined up one morning in February to getwater from a pump in the Hamadiya camp at Zalingei in West Darfur.

While the atrocities occuring in the Darfur region of Sudan require attention from the world community, advocacy groups in the United States that are often run by Zionists with hidden anti-Sudan agendas are actually harming humanitarian relief efforts on the ground in Darfur. Agencies such as InterAction and Action Against Hunger are actually making public statements about the harm that these U.S.-based advocacy groups are causing in Darfur.

While reading the article below, please take a moment to make du‘ā’ (pray) for the suffering people of Darfur, and to donate to one of the aid agencies listed below.

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times article:

...Save Darfur has gotten into hot water with aid groups helping the refugees of the conflict.

In February it began a high-profile advertising campaign that included full-page newspaper ads, television spots and billboards calling for more aggressive action in Darfur, including the imposition of a no-flight zone over the region.

Aid groups and even some activists say banning flights could do more harm than good, because it could stop aid flights. Many aid groups fly white airplanes and helicopters that may look similar to those used by the Sudanese government, putting their workers at risk in a no-flight zone.

Sam Worthington, the president and chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of aid groups, complained to Mr. Rubenstein by e-mail that Save Darfur’s advertising was confusing the public and damaging the relief effort.

“I am deeply concerned by the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and to understand the consequences of your proposed actions,” Mr. Worthington wrote.

He noted that contrary to assertions in its initial ads, Save Darfur did not represent any of the organizations working in Darfur, and he accused it of “misstating facts.” He said its endorsement of plans that included a no-flight zone and the use of multilateral forces “could easily result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Another aid group, Action Against Hunger, said in a statement last week that a forced intervention by United Nations troops without the approval of the Sudanese government “could have disastrous consequences that risk triggering a further escalation of violence while jeopardizing the provision of vital humanitarian assistance to millions of people.”

Aid groups also complain that Save Darfur, whose budget last year was $15 million, does not spend that money on aid for the long-suffering citizens of the region.

Eagle or Ostrich Trailer

2007-05-31T22:27:00.000-07:00

Monem Salam — fellow Muslim blogger and the public face of Amana Mutual Funds Trust — is putting together a documentary called Eagle or Ostrich about his experiences while learning how to fly a plane.

Read more:

Police Arrest 13-Year-Old for a Yearbook Joke

2007-05-31T21:57:00.001-07:00

Perhaps the police will start raiding Islamic pre-schools next.

From the East Valley Tribune:

Ban Abdulghafoor did not expect to hear the voice of a Gilbert police officer on the line when she answered the phone last Thursday.

It was the final day of school at Mesquite Junior High School, and her 13-year-old son, Mustafa Abdul Razzaq, decided to stay home because it was a halfday. The call woke him from his late-morning slumber.

While Mustafa was asleep, Gilbert police were looking for him at school. This was going on as his fellow students were being evacuated at the school after a parent reported what appeared to be two bomb threats written in her son’s yearbook.

A boy named David signed one of the threats, implying that he might try to bomb the courtyard. The other threat was signed with Mustafa’s name.

East Valley Tribune: Police find Gilbert teen innocent in bomb scare

Where Are They Now? Ex-Sonic Zaid Abdul-Aziz

2007-05-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

People have encountered the tall, cerebral man on the street, accepting his outstretched hand to pull them out of the gutter.

They’ve chatted easily with him on the bus, riding the No. 41 downtown or the 16 to Green Lake.

They’ve spotted him at Northgate Mall, lost in his thoughts and writing furiously.

Across Seattle, Zaid Abdul-Aziz has been a drug and alcohol counselor, Metro transit fixture and all-around inquisitive sort.

Oh, yeah. He played in the NBA for a decade.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Where Are They Now? Ex-Sonic Zaid Abdul-Aziz

The Side of Compassion Loses a Spokeswoman

2007-05-31T21:51:00.001-07:00

It is incredibly sad that getting people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz or Gonzales to resign for their crimes is like pulling teeth, but a voice of compassion like Cindy Sheehan is forced to find some normalcy in her life because Bush won’t give her the time of day.

It is also interesting to note that Sheehan blames Democrats equally, because she is “disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end”.

From CNN:

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became an anti-war leader after her son was killed in Iraq, declared Monday she was walking away from the peace movement.

She said her son died “for nothing.”

Sheehan achieved national attention when she camped outside President Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas, throughout August 2005 to demand a meeting with the president over her son’s death.

While Bush ignored her, the vigil made her one of the most prominent figures among opponents of the war.

But in a Web diary posted to the liberal online community Daily Kos on Monday, Sheehan said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll of the past two years.

She wrote that she is disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to bring the unpopular war to an end and tired of a peace movement she said “often puts personal egos above peace and human life.”

CNN: Anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan gives up her protest

If You Can’t Beat Them, YouTube Them

2007-05-31T21:26:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from CNN:

Radio Caracas Television, the station silenced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has found a way to continue its daily broadcasts -- on YouTube, the popular video Web site.

Although the station is officially off the air, CNN’s Harris Whitbeck said its news department continues to operate on reduced staffing, and the three daily hour-long installments of the newscast “El Observador” are uploaded onto YouTube by RCTV’s Web department.

CNN: Silenced Venezuelan TV station moves to YouTube

New Paradigm Shift in the Way Software Must Be Written

2007-05-31T20:40:00.000-07:00

Now that processor speeds have been pushed to their physical limits, a new paradigm shift is taking place in computing, where processors will be built with multiple cores to allow parallel computations to take place. The problem is that most software today doesn’t take advantage of parallelism. A new radical paradigm shift is about to start in the way software is written.

An excerpt from a CNET News article:

After years of delivering faster and faster chips that can easily boost the performance of most desktop software, Intel says the free ride is over.

Already, chipmakers like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are delivering processors that have multiple brains, or cores, rather than single brains that run ever faster. The challenge is that most of today’s software isn’t built to handle that kind of advance.

“The software has to also start following Moore’s law,” Intel fellow Shekhar Borkar said, referring to the notion that chips offer roughly double the performance every 18 months to two years. “Software has to double the amount of parallelism that it can support every two years.”

But it’s a big challenge for the industry. Things are better on the server side, where machines are handling multiple simultaneous workloads. Desktop applications can learn some from the way supercomputers and servers have handled things, but another principle, Amdahl’s Law, holds that there is only so much parallelism that programs can incorporate before they hit some inherently serial task.

CNET News: Intel: Software needs to heed Moore’s Law

Bravo to the 2.38%

2007-05-29T23:06:00.001-07:00

These “elections” are an utter joke. Can’t they at least choreograph it a little better to make it seem less obvious that it’s staged? You know, throw in a couple of extra “candidates” from other “parties” with other “platforms”. That way the Syrian information minister will seem a little more credible when he says hails “the political maturity of Syria and the brilliance of our democracy and multi-party system”.

And who are these 2.38% that didn’t vote for Al-Assad? They have to be some of the bravest people on the planet.

An excerpt from an Al-Jazeera article:

The Syrian president has won 97.62 per cent of the vote in a referendum that handed him a second term in office, officials say.

But the US denounced the poll, in which Bashar al-Assad was the only candidate, for offering no real choice to the electorate.

Al-Assad, 41, was the only person allowed to put his name forward in the run-up to Sunday’s plebiscite, which was boycotted by the opposition and widely regarded as a formality.

Bassam Abdel Majeed, the information minister, declared the results at a news conference.

‘This great consensus shows the political maturity of Syria and the brilliance of our democracy and multi-party system,’ he said.

US criticises al-Assad election win

Moroccan Government Afraid of Criticism

2007-05-29T19:39:00.001-07:00

The Moroccan government has long treated the people of its Western Sahara territory as second-class citizens. Now that criticisms of the government have appeared on YouTube, the site was mysteriously blocked.

Here are two excerpts from a BBC article:

Internet users in Morocco who have been unable to access YouTube have voiced concern that it is being deliberately blocked by the authorities.

Many Moroccans have been unable to see the video-sharing site since 25 May.

Some people have linked the problem to videos critical of Morocco’s actions in Western Sahara, a disputed territory which Morocco took control of in 1975.

Bloggers and some internet users agreed. “They’ve clearly blocked YouTube,” university student Abdelhakim Albarkani told AP.

“I’m worried, because YouTube allowed us to see things the state newspapers and television won’t show,” he said.

Reporters Without Borders linked the apparent blocking to videos showing pro-independence demonstrations in Western Sahara.

One such, posted in December 2006, says it shows police beating female protesters in the Western Saharan city of Laayoune.

BBC: YouTube site ‘blocked’ in Morocco

Tracking Transience: Telling Big Brother Where You Are 24/7

2007-05-28T23:33:00.000-07:00

Although this probably isn’t advisable for most American Muslims simply because of the sheer volume of civil liberty abuses by the U.S. government, it’s an interesting experiment. Check out his Web site in the links at the end of the post.

An excerpt from a Wired Magazine article:

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he’s keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we’re drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone’s touchscreen. “OK! It’s uploading now,” says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. “It’ll go public in a few seconds.” Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you’ll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.

Elahi’s site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you’re on, it’s hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he’s doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.

The globe-hopping prof says his overexposed life began in 2002, when he stepped off a flight from the Netherlands and was detained at the Detroit airport. He says FBI agents later told him they’d been tipped off that he was hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit; subsequent lie detector tests convinced them he wasn’t their man. But with his frequent travel — Elahi logs more than 70,000 air miles a year exhibiting his art work and attending conferences — he figured it was only a matter of time before he got hauled in again. He might even be shipped off to Gitmo before anyone realized their mistake. The FBI agents had given him their phone number, so he decided to call before each trip; that way, they could alert the field offices. He hasn’t been detained since.

The European Union Does Things a Little Differently than the United States

2007-05-28T23:21:00.001-07:00

While the U.S. government salivates over the the data that major tech companies store on Web users -- issuing subpoenas on a frequent basis to get a hold of whatever it can -- the European Union advocates on behalf of its users by warning companies not to store search data for too long.

An excerpt from a New York Times article:

Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years, the latest example of a United States technology giant whose practices face a collision with European standards.

An advisory panel of data-protection chiefs from the 27 countries in the European Union sent a letter last week to Google asking it to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits, Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the European Union’s justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said on Friday.

Privacy experts said the letter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in Europe, where the 400 million consumers outnumber those in the United States.

Any effort to impose limits on Google, which operates under United States law, would be the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European policy makers to rein in global technology companies.

The New York Times: E.U. Probes Google Over Data Retention Policy

Salon.com: Wolfowitz’s Tomb

2007-05-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

وَمَكَرُواْ وَمَكَرَ اللّهُ وَاللّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ

Wa makarū wa makara Allāh. Wa Allāhu khayru l-makirīn.

They plotted and planned. And God plotted and planned.
And God is the Best of Planners.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat Āli ‘Imrān, Āyah 54)

Here is an except from an excellent Salon.com article about Paul Wolfowitz’s decline from the architect of “shock and awe” to the his recent forced resignation from the World Bank.

A lead architect of the Iraq war, he believed shock and awe would transform the Middle East. But his policies failed -- along with his tenure at the World Bank.

Paul Wolfowitz’s doctrines are a summa of numerous failed political dogmas of the 20th century. His notion of politics was essentially Bolshevik, but less democratic in practice than Lenin’s. Wolfowitz had no concept of mass politics. Nor did he have an idea of democratic centralism, the core of Leninism, by which the vanguard led the cells of the party. Wolfowitz believed only in the vanguard...

The squalid ending of Wolfowitz’s glittering career, bickering over lies about payments to his girlfriend, submerged his grandiosity. Wheedling with the World Bank board, he appeared as a shadow of his former self, the intellectual field marshal pulverizing the opposition with the artillery of his arguments, reduced to using a Washington lawyer to make fine points.

Salon.com: Wolfowitz’s tomb

The Independent: Exclusive: Secret U.S. Plot to Kill Al-Sadr

2007-05-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

British newspaper The Independent reports how the U.S. army attempted to assassinate Muqtadā al-Sadr in an act of desperate deceit.

The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying.

The Independent: Exclusive: Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr

Time Features Muslim Teacher: How to Fix No Child Left Behind

2007-05-25T04:01:00.001-07:00

In an article on how to fix No Child Left Behind -- Bush’s failed attempt to fix education -- Time prominently featured a Muslim high-school teacher Rasheed Abdullah in Philadelphia.

At 2:45 in the afternoon, Rasheed Abdullah, the kinetic lead math teacher, stages what could be called a prep rally with 11 third-graders. The kids, who are at neither the top nor the bottom of their class, have been selected for intensive review--as has a contingent from other grades--because their test scores hold the key to putting the school over the top on the pivotal Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSAS). Last year, after a history of failure, the school, under new leadership, managed to meet the federal goal for adequate yearly progress (AYP) on the state tests for the first time. If it does so again, Blaine moves off the dreaded list of failing schools, no longer a target for intensive oversight and sanctions that could include replacing the staff.

Abdullah, who has an easy rapport with students, issues a quick reminder to sign up for “Super Saturday” review classes and then begins his math-athon with a rousing recitation of the school’s declaration of education. “We believe that we can learn at high levels,” the children chant. “We believe we can reach our learning potential ... We believe that Blaine will become a high-performing institution.”

Quite a mouthful for an 8-year-old. And there’s more. Abdullah starts pumping his fists as the kids finish with passionate vows.

“I’ll never give up!” he shouts.

“I’ll never give up!” they echo.

“Even on the PSSA test!”

“Even on the PSSA test!”

“‘Cause winners never lose, and I am the best!”

For the next 15 minutes, the kids, divided into teams, compete to win points by solving math problems, with Abdullah acting as a combination game-show host and math coach. There are giggles and cheers and plenty of correct answers, but everyone in the room knows the fate of the school is at stake.

Time: How to Fix No Child Left Behind

Tongue-Tied: When Bilinguals Switch Languages Involuntarily

2007-05-25T03:11:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating post from the British Psychological Society Research Digest Blog

People who can communicate in more than one language – bilinguals - are intriguing to psychologists. A new study focuses on how bilinguals switch between tongues – how come they don't mix up words from different languages? A prevailing view is that bilinguals have a kind of switch at the front of their brain that inhibits the language(s) not currently in use. Now Kuan Kho and colleagues report the case of two bilingual patients who, during the course of brain surgery for epilepsy, appear to have had their 'switches' involuntarily flipped.

Prior to surgery, patient A – a Dutch-English bilingual - underwent a Wada test that involves anaesthetising one half of the brain at a time. When his left-hemisphere was anaesthetised he first went mute for a few minutes, then he fully recovered English (his second language), but struggled with Dutch. Asked to recall a story told to him earlier, he was only able to do so in English. Any Dutch he did come up with, he spoke in an English accent!

Patient B, a French-Chinese bilingual, was having his brain prodded with an electrode to identify which neural tissue was involved in language before the surgeons got to work. The patient was asked to count. He began in French, then when he reached seven (...quatre, cinq, six, sept), the stimulation was applied to his left inferior frontal gyrus, at which point he involuntarily switched to Chinese (...ba, jiu, shi). When the stimulation ended, he reverted to French.

These case studies support the notion that, in bilinguals, specific regions at the front of the left hemisphere act as a language switch. The observations are also consistent with another recent study, which documented involuntary language switching in two bilingual patients who received transcranial magnetic stimulation to their left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as a treatment for depression.

British Psychological Society Research Digest: Tongue-tied: When bilinguals switch languages involuntarily

The Beauty of the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him peace)

2007-05-24T15:22:00.001-07:00

According to Imam al-Bajūrī (Allāh have mercy on him) our scholars have explicitly stated that it is from the perfection of faith to believe that no human’s body had the combination of beautiful features that were combined in the body of the Prophet Muhammad (Allāh bless him and grant him peace). He proceeded to say, “Even with this, his complete beauty did not manifest, otherwise eyes would not have been able bear the sight of him.” Allāh’s blessings and peace be upon him...

Al-Tirmidhī related from the tradition of Anas, “Allāh did not send a Prophet except with a beautiful face and a beautiful voice, and your Prophet is the most beautiful of them in face and voice.”

SunniPath: Is Prophet Muhammad more beautiful than Prophet Yusuf?

Universities Prepare for Data Deluge from CERN Collider

2007-05-24T15:11:00.001-07:00

The world’s largest science experiment at CERN will produce 15 petabytes of data!

The world’s largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists...

At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever...

The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.

By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.

Universities Prepare for Data Deluge from CERN Collider

Google Offers Translated Search

2007-05-24T14:36:00.001-07:00

As featured on the Official Google Blog, Google now offers translated search. For example, you can search with an English phrase, have it translated automatically into Arabic, and receive search results in both English and translated into Arabic. You can also do it the other way around.

One example that they provided in their blog post is an Arabic speaker could look for restaurants in New York, by searching for “مطعم نيويورك”.

Another example that they provided on the Google Translate page is that you can search for “Dubai Tours” from English to Arabic.

The search results are clean with both languages side by side and they get the job done.

Try your own Google Translated search at
http://translate.google.com/translate_s?hl=en

Read more:

Official Google Blog: Search without boundaries

Keith Olbermann: Democrats Betray the Voters’ Mandate

2007-05-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Olbermann hits hard again, this time about the weak leadership that Democrats displayed by agreeing to Bush’s demands for an Iraq war budget without a timetable for withdrawal.

This is the best quote from his Special Comment:

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

Al Jazeera: Israel bombs Hamas leader’s house

2007-05-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

From an excerpt from an Al Jazeera article:

An Israeli air raid on the house of Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas politician, in the Gaza Strip has killed at least eight people, according to a Hamas source and hospital officials.

The attack on Sunday came hours after Israel said it would intensify its military assault on the Gaza Strip in response to homemade rockets fired into Israeli towns.

Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting for Al Jazeera from Gaza, said: “We know that Khalil al-Hayya was not in at the time of the attack.”

Several members of al-Hayya’s family were killed and 13 people were injured. Al-Hayya is a prominent member of the Palestinian parliament.

At the al-Shifa hospital, where the wounded were taken, al-Hayya said: “We will go ahead despite the challenges, despite the martyrs, despite the pain that I am suffering and my people are suffering.”

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesperson, said the attack was a sign that Israel is targeting “everyone - civilians and leaders”.

Six Palestinians were later wounded by Israeli tank fire on a home in Bait Lahiya in northern Gaza. Three children were among the injured, medical sources said.

Al Jazeera: Israel bombs Hamas leader’s house

The Guardian: Bono warns G8 backsliders

2007-05-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from an article in The Guardian:

Only Britain and Japan are living up to the promises of the Gleneagles agreement

Bono last night called for an emergency session on Africa at next month's G8 summit in Germany as it emerged that rich countries are using the sympathy felt in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London to justify their foot-dragging on meeting aid pledges made at Gleneagles two years ago.

Amid signs that Russia and Italy are using delaying tactics to downplay the commitment by the G8 to raise an extra $50bn (£25bn) in development assistance by 2010, the rock star warned there was a risk of a return to the violent street protests of Genoa and Seattle at the turn of the millennium unless the G8 acted next month.

The Guardian: Bono warns G8 backsliders

Sacramento Bee: Uproar over UCD speech

2007-05-20T19:59:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from a Sacramento Bee article:

The intellectual wrestling match over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages on at UC Davis as the Muslim Student Association brings to campus Wednesday a son of Nazi concentration camp survivors who accuses Israel of exploiting the Holocaust.

Norman Finkelstein, a DePaul University professor who got his doctorate from Princeton, will speak at 8 p.m. on "Israel and Palestine -- Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace."

Finkelstein, author of "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections On The Exploitation of Jewish Suffering," has been called a self-hating Jew and a Holocaust denier by his critics.

The Sacramento Bee: Uproar over UCD speech

Time: Was Gonzales’ Emergency Visit Illegal?

2007-05-20T19:52:00.001-07:00

It appears that Alberto Gonzales may have committed a serious federal crime when he was the White House counsel. Here is an excerpt from a Time article:

When then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales went to John Ashcroft’s hospital room on the evening of March 10, 2004 to ask the ailing Attorney General to override Justice Department officials and reauthorize a secret domestic wiretapping program, he was acting inappropriately, Ashcroft’s deputy at the time, James Comey, testified before Congress earlier this week. But the question some lawyers, national security experts and Congressional investigators are now asking is: Was Gonzales in fact acting illegally?

In dramatic testimony Tuesday, Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he raced to the intensive care unit of George Washington University Hospital that evening to intercept Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card and prevent them from convincing Ashcroft to reauthorize the program after Justice Department lawyers had concluded that it was illegal. Comey, who during Ashcroft’s stay in the hospital was acting Attorney General, has told Congressional investigators that when he arrived at the room and began explaining to Ashcroft why he was there, he was intentionally “very circumspect” so as not to disclose classified information in an unsecure setting and in front of Ashcroft’s wife, Janet, who was at his bedside and was apparently not authorized to know about the program.

Comey described what happened next: “The door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the Attorney General very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was — which I will not do.” Ashcroft bluntly rebuffed Gonzales, but Comey’s unwillingness publicly to say what Gonzales said in the hospital room has raised questions about whether Gonzales may have violated executive branch rules regarding the handling of highly classified information, and possibly the law preventing intentional disclosure of national secrets.

“Executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace,” says Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, who was National Security Advisor to the Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton. “The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power,” Katyal says. This particular information could have been highly sensitive. Says one government official familiar with the Terrorist Surveillance Program: “Since it’s that program, it may involve cryptographic information,” some of the most highly protected information in the intelligence community.

Time: Was Gonzales’ Emergency Visit Illegal?

Minneapolis Muslim Chases Down Robber, Returns Stolen Money to Owner

2007-05-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from an article in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul:

A man comes running out of the chow mein restaurant, run by a Chinese woman who is afraid to tell me her name. Her restaurant is two doors from Bosaad’s store.

The man is carrying the drawer from the restaurant’s cash register and is running westerly, past Maxwell’s Corner Deli, which is located between the chow mein restaurant and the corner grocery. The deli is run by an Egyptian immigrant, Adel Hamid.

The robber runs past several young men from the neighborhood, who do nothing to stop his flight.

“But now look at this,” says Bosaad, pointing to the recorded images. “Watch this man.”

It is the Egyptian, Hamid. He steps out of his business and starts chasing the robber, who, obviously frightened, drops the cash drawer at the Emerson-Lowry intersection and runs across Emerson.

Hamid stays in pursuit, finally catching the punk out of camera range.

Why would Hamid chase after a man who could have been armed?

“I am a Muslim,” said Hamid. “That is what I should do. You help your neighbor.”

When he caught the robber, Hamid turned and looked back.

There were more than a dozen young men and maybe a couple of young women picking up bills that were in and around the cash drawer.

Watching this on the digital images, it as if people had slimed out from under rocks. At the beginning, there are only a few. But they are joined by more and more.

“At first I thought they were there to help the Chinese woman get her money back,” said Hamid. “But then I saw they were taking the money.”

Hamid released the robber and raced back to the intersection. He grabbed the cash drawer and took as much money as he could from the hands of the pathetic young people.

He returned what he could recover to the Chinese woman.

Star Tribune: A lonely battle against crime on one corner

Carter: Bush is “Worst President Ever”, Blair is “Abominable, Loyal, Blind, Apparently Subservient”

2007-05-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from New York Times article:

Former President Jimmy Carter criticized George W. Bush’s presidency in interviews released Saturday as “the worst in history” in international relations and faulted Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain for his loyal relationship with Mr. Bush.

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Mr. Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said in a telephone interview with The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from the Carter Center in Atlanta.

“The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me,” Mr. Carter told the newspaper.

In an interview on BBC radio, he criticized Mr. Blair for his close relations with the president, particularly concerning the Iraq war.

“Abominable,” he said when asked how he would characterize Mr. Blair’s relationship with Mr. Bush. “Loyal, blind, apparently subservient.”

Mr. Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his charitable work, was an outspoken opponent of the invasion of Iraq before it was begun in 2003.

“I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world,” he said.

In the newspaper interview, Mr. Carter said Mr. Bush has taken a “radical departure from all previous administration policies” with the Iraq war.

“We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered,” he said.

Northern Colorado Masjid Attacked by Gunfire

2007-05-20T19:30:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from an article from The Tribune of northern Colorado:

Abu Faraj of Greeley was concerned Thursday when he discovered that the mosque he oversees had been shot at three times sometime during the day.

Faraj, who said he is the head of the community at the Islamic Center of Greeley Mosque, 1600 8th Ave., said this is not the first time something like this has happened there.

A mosque is a place of worship for people of the Islamic faith.

Faraj said it appears as though the shots came from a BB gun or a .22-caliber automatic weapon that had been fired from a distance. Three holes impacted the window, which cracked in several places but did not shatter.

The Tribune: Greeley mosque damaged by apparent gunfire

Thoughts on the FBI Assault Incident at UC Irvine

2007-05-20T13:56:00.001-07:00

In today’s climate, it’s usually the FBI who is running after Muslims, whether to instill fear, step on basic civil liberties, follow a weak or fabricated lead, or – on a very rare occasion – investigate an actual crime.

But think about the irony of what took place at UC Irvine last week (for reference, read the previous blog post on this issue). Muslims were running after the FBI. And they weren’t doing it to instill fear, step on civil liberties, or follow a weak or fabricated lead. They witnessed an FBI agent commit a crime, and chased him down, while he fled.

And what were the Muslim students at UC Irvine doing in the first place to warrant being under the watchful eye of the FBI? They were merely holding an anti-Zionism week to showcase the racism, apartheid and crimes that are inherent with Zionism. No crimes were committed.

And this was after they held a Holocaust Memorial Week, when they held programs highlighting the genocides committed in Nazi Germany, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the slaughter of Native American during Manifest Destiny.

The Muslim students at UC Irvine should be applauded for their ability to hold programs covering pertinent and controversial issues, as well as their ability to turn the tables on an ever-abusive FBI.

Los Angeles Times: Tensions rise again at UC Irvine

2007-05-20T13:05:00.001-07:00

Here is an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article about the incident at UC Irvine last week where an unidentified FBI agent assaulted a Muslim student by pushing him with his car.

Senior Yasser Ahmed said a silver Ford Taurus followed him as he drove a 24-foot moving van from a nearby parking lot to UC Irvine’s Free Speech Zone to pick up an exhibit sponsored by the Muslim Student Union. The group had sponsored a weeklong presentation, “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected,” to protest that country’s policies against the Palestinians.

Ahmed, 21, said he got out of the truck, walked to the car and asked the driver why he was following him. The driver did not respond, Ahmed said, and he tried to snap a photo of the license plate with his cellphone camera. At that point, Ahmed said, the car nudged him with its front bumper and he got out of the way. He was not injured.

The man behind the wheel drove off but was stopped almost immediately by a campus police officer, who had responded to cries for help from Ahmed and other students. The driver identified himself as an FBI agent “who was doing surveillance,” Henisey said.

On Friday, Ahmed, an economics major and lifelong Orange County resident, said he was still reeling.

“He didn’t open his window and didn’t let me know who he was. He never said anything,” Ahmed said. “All he had to say was that he was FBI or law enforcement and this wouldn’t have happened. I was frightened. He pushed me with the car, which had tinted windows and then tried to drive away. What’s one supposed to think?”

Henisey said campus officers were interviewing witnesses.

“There are potential criminal allegations, and we’re still not certain what happened,” he said. “We’re trying to determine if there was an assault and if the vehicle was used.”

Los Angeles Times: Tensions rise again at UC Irvine

FBI Agent Assaults UCI Student by Pushing Him with His Car

2007-05-19T14:58:00.001-07:00

The FBI is using unnecessarily hostile tactics to thwart freedom of speech at UC Irvine. An excerpt from an Orange County Register article:

UCI economics student Yasser Ahmed said he was driving a borrowed truck up onto the Ring Road near the library loading dock Monday night, on intending to haul away the wall, when he noticed a silver Ford Taurus with blackened windows following him.

Ahmed said he stopped the truck in view of other campus observers and stood in front of the Taurus, trying to look through the blackened windshield and asking the driver to identify himself. When he would not speak, Ahmed said he tried to take a photo of the car’s license plate with his camera phone.

“He could have just rolled down his window and said, ‘I’m an FBI agent,’ and that would have been the end of it,” Ahmed said. “There was nothing improper going on.”

Instead, according to Ahmed, the driver revved his engine threateningly and began pushing him backward with the car’s front bumper. Ahmed said he then began calling for help, and dozens of other students ran over to assist.

“I was frightened,” Ahmed said. “I felt I could have been killed or seriously injured if I hadn’t jumped out of the way.”

Sociology student Marya Bangee, a member of the Muslim Student Union, said the incident was frightening.

“The car was revving its engine to look as intimidating as possible,” Bangee said. “I thought it was going to come and hit the (mock Palestine) wall.”

Eventually, the car roared off, according to witnesses, chased by students on bicycles and a campus police car. Later, Ahmed said a police officer told him that the car had “cold” license plates, meaning they could not be checked through normal computers.

The next morning, Ahmed said, he went to the campus police station and was told by the police chief that the man in the car was an FBI agent.

The Orange County Register: FBI actions at UCI questioned

Michael Moore: “Sicko” is Completed and We’re Off to Cannes!

2007-05-17T22:12:00.001-07:00

An open letter from Michael Moore about his new movie “Sicko” about the abuses of the health-care industry:

“Sicko” is Completed and We’re Off to Cannes!

Friends,

It’s a wrap! My new film, “Sicko,” is all done and will have its world premiere this Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival. As with “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” we are honored to have been chosen by this prestigious festival to screen our work there.

My intention was to keep “Sicko” under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes. That is what I have done and, as you may have noticed if you are a recipient of my infrequent Internet letters, I have been very silent about what I’ve been up to. In part, that’s because I was working very hard to complete the film. But my silence was also because I knew that the health care industry -- an industry which makes up more than 15 percent of our GDP -- was not going to like much of what they were going to see in this movie and I thought it best not to upset them any sooner than need be.

Well, going quietly to Cannes, I guess, was not to be. For some strange reason, on May 2nd the Bush administration initiated an action against me over how I obtained some of the content they believe is in my film. As none of them have actually seen the film (or so I hope!), they decided, unlike with “Fahrenheit 9/11,” not to wait until the film was out of the gate and too far down the road to begin their attack.

Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, launched an investigation of a trip I took to Cuba to film scenes for the movie. These scenes involve a group of 9/11 rescue workers who are suffering from illnesses obtained from working down at Ground Zero. They have received little or no help with their health care from the government. I do not want to give away what actually happens in the movie because I don’t want to spoil it for you (although I’m sure you’ll hear much about it after it unspools Saturday). Plus, our lawyers have advised me to say little at this point, as the film goes somewhere far scarier than “Cuba.” Rest assured of one thing: no laws were broken. All I’ve done is violate the modern-day rule of journalism that says, “ask no questions of those in power or your luncheon privileges will be revoked.”

This preemptive action taken by the Bush administration on the eve of the “Sicko” premiere in Cannes led our attorneys to fear for the safety of our film, noting that Secretary Paulson may try to claim that the content of the movie was obtained through a violation of the trade embargo that our country has against Cuba and the travel laws that prohibit average citizens of our free country from traveling to Cuba. (The law does not prohibit anyone from exercising their first amendment right of a free press and documentaries are protected works of journalism.)

I was floored when our lawyers told me this. “Are you saying they might actually confiscate our movie?” “Yes,” was the answer. “These days, anything is possible. Even if there is just a 20 percent chance the government would seize our movie before Cannes, does anyone want to take that risk?”

Certainly not. So there we were last week, spiriting a duplicate master negative out of the country just so no one from the government would take it from us. (Seriously, I can’t believe I just typed those words! Did I mention that I’m an American, and this is America and NO ONE should ever have to say they had to do such a thing?)

I mean, folks, I have just about had it. Investigating ME because I’m trying to help some 9/11 rescue workers our government has abandoned? Once again, up is down and black is white. There are only two people in need of an investigation and a trial, and the desire for this across America is so widespread you don’t even need to see the one’s smirk or hear the other’s sneer to know who I am talking about.

But no, I’m the one who now has to hire lawyers and sneak my documentary out of the country just so people can see a friggin’ movie. I mean, it’s just a movie! What on earth could I have placed on celluloid that would require such a nonsensical action against me?

Ok. Scratch that.

Well, I’m on my way to Cannes right now, a copy of the movie in my bag. Don’t feel too bad for me, I’ll be in the south of France for a week! But then it’s back to the U.S. for a number of premieres and benefits and then, finally, a chance for all of you to see this film that I have made. Circle June 29th on your calendar because that’s when it opens in theaters everywhere across the country and Canada (for the rest of the world, it opens in the fall).

I can’t wait for you to see it.

Yours,

Michael Moore

P.S. I will write more about what happens from Cannes. Stay tuned on my website, MichaelMoore.com.

Mitt Romney Tries to Prove Just How Delusional He Is

2007-05-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

In a sickening scene that resembled a game to prove who was the most delusional, Republican candidates for president at their second presidential debate took turns trying to prove who would be the toughest candidate.

Perhaps the most obscene comment of the night came from Mitt Romney:

“Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo.”

As the Washington Post writes:

He added that terrorism suspects should be kept in the military prison camp to keep them without access to legal counsel.

“I want them in Guantanamo where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons. I want them there,” said Romney.

As impossible as it may seem, Romney has less of an appreciation for basic civil liberties and less of an understanding of “innocent until proven guilty” than even the Bush Administration does.

Read more:

Occupation 101 DVD Released in North America

2007-05-16T02:24:00.000-07:00

Occupation 101 is a documentary film on the root-causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A message from the producers of Occupation 101:

Dear Friends and Supporters

It is with great pleasure that we announce the Official DVD release of Occupation 101 for sales in the United States and Canada! That is right… Our Canadian brothers and sisters will also be able to purchase our film (we worked hard to make it happen…other markets/regions will soon be announced, please be patient with us :).

To purchase the DVD please visit www.occupation101.com

We chose to release our film on this day the 15th of May – to remember and honor the struggle of the many innocent victims of displacement, oppression, and unfortunate circumstances since before 1948. We have devoted many years of our lives to make sure that we present to you our best work in a most sincere and honest way – and with the best in artistic creativity.

Our goal is to raise awareness on the tragedy of Israel and Palestine through the medium of film so that we can re-educate millions of people in North America and across the world about a conflict that is most widely misunderstood. Give us 90 minutes of your time, and your reality will never be the same again – you will not only be informed, but inspired to take action!

Thank you so much for your continued support and may God Bless you all.

Peace,
Occupation 101

Please support these brothers’ noble efforts and purchase a DVD today:

Occupation 101 Web Site

BBC: Red Cross Condemns Israeli Occupation of East Jerusalem

2007-05-15T11:12:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from a BBC article about a confidential Red Cross report that was leaked to the press:

The international Red Cross has privately accused Israel of reshaping Jerusalem to further its own interests, in violation of international law.

A leaked ICRC report says Israeli policy has far-reaching humanitarian consequences for Palestinians living under occupation in East Jerusalem.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, and the territory is regarded as occupied land under international law.

BBC: Israel Jerusalem policy condemned

Associated Press: Jail hiring Muslim chaplain after uproar

2007-05-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

The county jail where a Christian minister handed out anti-Islamic cartoons announced it will hire an imam for its Muslim inmates.

The Rockland County Jail also said it will provide religiously appropriate food.

Rockland Undersheriff Thomas Guthrie said Tuesday that the imam will work one day a week, joining the jail’s priest and rabbi.

The Christian chaplain, the Rev. Teresa Darden Clapp, was suspended with pay last month after inmates complained she was passing out anti-Islam booklets.

In the cartoon panel stories, a tract titled “Men of Peace?” said Islamic fundamentalists who commit terrorist acts are not “bad Muslims” but “very good Muslims” who act in accordance with their religion. Another tract, titled “Allah Has No Son,” said Allah is not God, Muhammad was no prophet, and the Quran is not the word of God. Both stories end with people being convinced Islam is false. In one, a Muslim converts to Christianity.

Local Muslims have called for Clapp’s dismissal, and the county requested an independent investigation.

Clapp has not commented public about the controversy and has not responded to messages seeking comment.

Source:

Associated Press: Jail hiring Muslim chaplain after uproar

Washington Post: IMF, World Bank Face Irrelevance

2007-05-15T02:52:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from a Washington Post article about Latin American countries shying away from relying on the IMF and the World Bank:

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank aren't very popular these days in Latin America. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants to sever all ties with the top two international financial institutions based in Washington, claiming they are "tools of U.S. imperialism." Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has evicted the World Bank representative from his country and declared him persona non grata, saying the bank's loans are tantamount to blackmail.

Given Chavez's and Correa's reputations for antagonism, their actions might seem expected. But other governments throughout the region, conservative and liberal alike, are also distancing themselves from the institutions for a variety of reasons.

Washington Post: IMF, World Bank Face Irrelevance

New York Times: Israeli Riddle: Love Jerusalem, Hate Living There

2007-05-14T22:00:00.001-07:00

An except from a New York Times article:

ISRAEL is facing a challenge it never expected when it captured East Jerusalem and reunited the city in the 1967 war: each year, Jerusalem’s population is becoming more Arab and less Jewish.

For four decades, Israel has pushed to build and expand Jewish neighborhoods, while trying to restrict the growth in Arab parts of the city. Yet two trends are unchanged: Jews moving out of Jerusalem have outnumbered those moving in for 27 of the last 29 years. And the Palestinian growth rate has been high.

Read the rest of the article:

Israeli Riddle: Love Jerusalem, Hate Living There

Wired News: Scientists Work on Encyclopedia of Life

2007-05-14T20:53:00.001-07:00

Wired News on a new ambitious project called the Encyclopedia of Life:

In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.

The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading scientific institutions and universities. The project will take about 10 years to complete.

Saudi Aramco World: Healing South Central

2007-05-14T15:09:00.001-07:00

Here is an excerpt from an excellent Saudi Aramco World article about the UMMA Community Clinic in South-Central Los Angeles:

“You’re only students.”

That was the reaction from community leaders in 1992 when Rushdi Abdul Cader and six med-school friends proposed offering free medical services in South Central Los Angeles, then recently ravaged by riots.

What made the proposal even less plausible was that the seven, all members of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), had no money—and it would be years before they received their degrees.

Nonetheless, four years later, with the encouragement of their professors and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Rita Walters, the indefatigable idealists opened the first charity health clinic in the United States founded by Muslims. They named it UMMA, an acronym for “University Muslim Medical Association” and the Arabic word for “community.”

Read the rest of the article:

Saudi Aramco World: Healing South Central

altmuslim: The New Halal (And the Non-Muslims Who Love It)

2007-05-14T14:55:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from an altmuslim article:

And since nothing attracts the corporate world like the smell of unharvested profits, businesses from Citibank to IKEA are wondering just how much Muslim marketing they can produce without alienating their other customers, and initial forays are meeting with some success.

For example, when two McDonald’s restaurants in Melbourne, Australia switched to halal sources for their meat, sales doubled despite some protests by non-Muslims (select McDonald’s restaurants in the UK followed suit this week). The Nando’s restaurant chain has profited immensely by offering halal offerings of its Portuguese chicken in 25% of its stores in the UK. One entrepreneur is even seeking to export prepackaged organic halal pizzas from Canada to Muslim populations throughout North America and Europe. "There are a lot of Muslims who would eat this up," says Angelo Alof , founder of Organic Halal International Foods (and master of puns, evidently).

As for mainstream foods, another businessman has helped introduce and distribute in the UK halal sweets (including Gummi Bears) by Haribos, one of Europe’s biggest sweet manufacturers. Nestle has become the biggest multi-national food manufacturer for Muslims, producing halal food in 75 of its 481 factories and earning over $3 billion in annual sales. And for those Muslim entrepreneurs, such as restaurant owners, who are looking for Islamically-compatible business-to-business services, Lloyd’s TSB Bank has begun offering Islamic business accounts in Britain.

Read the rest of the article:

altmuslim: altmuslim: The New Halal (And The Non-Muslims Who Love It)

New York Times: Afghans Say U.S. Airstrikes Killed 21 Civilians

2007-05-10T18:25:00.001-07:00

Afghan officials said Wednesday that airstrikes called in by American Special Forces against Taliban fighters in Helmand Province had killed 21 civilians, the latest in a series of claims of noncombatant casualties that have strained relations with the Afghan government.

Read more:

New York Times: Afghans Say U.S. Airstrikes Killed 21 Civilians

Palestinian Christian: Why Israel is after me

2007-05-04T15:40:00.001-07:00

Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian Christian who was a member of the Knesset until last month wrote this op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

A few excerpts from the op-ed:

More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel’s “Bill of Rights” — defines the state as “Jewish” rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.

Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions.
...

I have certainly ruffled feathers in Israel. In addition to speaking out on the subjects above, I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel’s illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.
...

Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?

Read the full op-ed piece:

Los Angeles Times Why Israel is after me

Resign! It’s not that you killed civilians... you just didn’t kill them effectively

2007-05-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to feel content with mainstream society’s criticisms of the mishandling of the occupation of Iraq. It’s like the in thing now. All the cool politicians, journalists, bloggers and commentators like to throw in the ever-increasing anti-Bush jab here and there. You won’t get ostracized for doing it anymore.

The same thing is happening now with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Occupied Palestine. He really messed up the war against Lebanon last summer. He went in to get a couple of his soldiers back, destroyed an entire country, sustained incredible losses to his army, and was sent home packing by Hizbullah – all in a matter of weeks. He couldn’t even manage to get his soldiers back!

Olmert’s campaign was a complete and utter failure by any measure.

So now, because of a damaging report of how badly he messed up, Israelis all over Occupied Palestine are demanding his resignation. It’s the in thing now. Even his own deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, is joining in on the fun!

But we have to ask ourselves, where were these popular anti-Bush and anti-Olmert stances early on in their respective occupation faux-pas? It wasn’t popular to criticize Bush at the beginning of the war on Iraq. The main-stream media didn’t do it. Television commentators didn’t do it. Not even most high-ranking Democrats did it. (Hillary, Kerry, Edwards even supported it!)

Likewise, where was the Israeli public outrage when the war against Lebanon started? It was practically non-existent!

It leads to the clear conclusion that a lot of the recent Bush/Olmert criticisms are political opportunism at best.

So the moral of the story? We don’t care that you killed thousands of Iraqis or Lebanese. You just didn’t do it right. Now get out of office, and let someone else do a better job than you.

Read more:

Israeli Foreign Minister Calls on Olmert to Resign

Tell Us the Mission

2007-04-30T04:56:00.000-07:00

A strong spoken word critique of Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” blunder from tellusthemission.org:

Visit:

Tell Us the Mission

Student Protesters Upset Attorney General’s Harvard Reunion

2007-04-29T17:40:00.001-07:00

Student protesters wearing hoods and Guantanamo Bay garb found their way into the US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ 25th Harvard Law School reunion Saturday.

A release sent by the group to RAW STORY claims Gonzales was “forced to leave through a back door.”

Gonzales apparently arrived unannounced. Students met him and his fellow classmates outside the law library where the class of 1982 had posed for a photo.

As the photographer said cheese, the group said students yelled that “torture,” “resign” or “I don’t recall” might be more appropriate.

The Justice Department could not immediately be reached for comment.

“When I heard he was on campus, I was stuffing envelopes with letters to Congress in an office two floors above,” said Deborah Popowski, a second-year law student, according to the release. “I dropped everything. Gonzales needs to know that after approving poorly-reasoned memos that distort the rule of law and justify torture, he is simply not welcome here.”

According to the group, Popowski slipped though the law library’s front doors and approached Gonzales from behind as the Attorney General’s security detail kept protesters at bay.

“On behalf of many other Harvard Law students,” she said, “I’d like to tell you that we are ashamed to have you as an alumnus of this school. And we’re glad you’re here to be able to tell you that.”

Gonzales thanked the student and offered to shake her hand, but was refused.

Following the photo, Gonzales was said to have entered the library, traveled to the reading room, then ducked out through a basement emergency exit and into a waiting SUV.

Photos by Nate Ela, one of the protest organizers.

Source:

The Raw Story: Student Protesters Upset Attorney General’s Harvard Reunion

New York Times: Bosnians in America: A Two-Sided Saga

2007-04-29T14:20:00.001-07:00

The New York Times published this story about a Bosnian community in Chicago.

An excerpt:

A new Muslim cultural center is being built on the north side of Chicago to draw Bosnians who do not attend the suburban mosque. But Imam Senad Agic is not sure it will reach those most in need. “I think we have not done enough to reach out to people,” he said. “I will certainly go there. But I just do not know. Our way is to appeal to the souls of the people who come to us.”

Within the more secular group, too, there are conflicts. When Mr. Mahic suggested at the library meeting that their group also welcome Bosnian Serbs and Croats, the mood quickly shifted.

“Maybe you didn’t see people in your family die in the war,” responded one woman, nearly in tears. “I am sorry, but many Bosnian Muslims will not come if that is the way it is going to be.”

Amela Guso, 21, a college student born in Srebrenica, site of a 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims, sat silent but tense during the exchange. “My father’s brothers, cousins, so many family members were killed in the genocide,” she said later. “How can you expect people to just say, ‘O.K., let’s have dinner and hang out with these people?’ ”

Read the rest of the article:

The New York Times: Bosnians in America: A Two-Sided Saga

Washington Post: 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

2007-04-29T03:51:00.000-07:00

Even though 82 inmates have been cleared by military review panels to leave Guanatanmo Bay, U.S. officials could take months or even years to free them from captivity.

An excerpt from a Washington Post article:

More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

The Washington Post: 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

Gravel Rocks the Boat at Democratic Debate

2007-04-29T03:32:00.001-07:00

Former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska rocked the boat at the Democratic presidential debate, even attacking other candidates for their stances on Iraq, Iran, the use of nuclear weapons, pre-emptive strikes, and hostile foreign policy.

Entertaining and definitely worth the watch:

This clip is 6:43 long.

New York Times: The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest Wars

2007-04-29T02:02:00.001-07:00

The New York Times published this article about child soldiers being used very effectively in wars in Africa.

An excerpt from the article:

IN the early 1980s, in the lowlands of Mozambique, a new technology of warfare emerged that would sweep across Africa and soon the rest of the world: the child soldier.

Rebel commanders had constructed a four-foot tall killing machine that cut its way through village after village and nearly overran the government. Its trail was smoking huts and sawed off ears.

The Mozambicans learned that children were the perfect weapon: easily manipulated, intensely loyal, fearless and, most important, in endless supply.

Today, human rights groups say, there are 300,000 child soldiers worldwide. And experts say the problem is deepening as the nature of conflict itself changes — especially in Africa.

The New York Times: The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest Wars

Washington Post: Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed

2007-04-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post reported today how the U.S. government failed to collect most of the $854 million in aid offered in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. This only further underlines the clear double-standard in how the government responded to the victims of the 9/11 attacks versus those of Katrina.

An excerpt from the article:

...the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

In addition, valuable supplies and services -- such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships -- were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted.

Read the rest of the article:

Washington Post: Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed

A Meeting with Allāh

2007-04-28T17:47:00.001-07:00

An amazing description of a meeting between Allāh and the people of Paradise.

The clip is 9:02 long, but it is definitely worth watching.

Laila Al-Arian: My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat

2007-04-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

Laila Al-Arian wrote this heart-wrenching post on The Huffington Post on Monday about civil rights abuses suffered by her father Sami Al-Arian at the hands of prison guards. While the length of the post may be formidable, it is a very important read.

My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat
by Laila Al-Arian

“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. I am not going to put off Dr. Al- Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”

-- federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg

“The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive.”

-- Amnesty International

My father, a Palestinian professor named Sami Al-Arian, was arrested over four years ago on trumped up terrorism charges and submitted to a prosecution over the course of six months that bordered on the farcical. Though he was ultimately acquitted by a jury of the most serious charges against him, the Bush administration has prolonged his imprisonment indefinitely. My father now languishes in a Virginia jail, another victim of the demagogic politics of the so-called war on terror.

Many have wondered why my father would be targeted so vigorously, especially after the government lost a case that cost $50 million. But as with its firing of the eight federal prosecutors who “chafed” against its radical agenda, the administration of President George W. Bush has injected its politics into the system, prolonging my father’s imprisonment to punish him for the humiliation his acquittal caused them.

Last month, my father completed a 60-day hunger strike to protest his continued imprisonment that left him in such a weakened state he was confined to a wheelchair. Soon after receiving medical treatment, he was transferred to a Federal Correctional Institute in Petersburg, Virginia. Upon my father’s arrival, a prison guard remarked while strip-searching him: “Where are you from? Afghanistan?” Though my father refused to answer the demeaning question, the guard repeated it several times. He went on:

“It doesn’t matter where you’re from. If I had my way, you wouldn’t be in prison. I’d put a bullet in your head and get it done with. You’re nothing but a piece of s***.”

This is not the first time this guard harassed my father. In January, he told him: “You’re a terrorist. I can tell by your name.”

This time there was a witness to the abuse, though he wasn’t exactly a friendly one. Upon hearing his underling’s outburst, the lieutenant in charge took my father aside and shackled his arms and legs. The shackles were so tight my father lost sensation in his extremities for the duration of the four-hour trip to his final destination, a detention center in Alexandria. On the way, the lieutenant joined in the abuse, unleashing a stream of obscenities at my father and repeatedly telling him to “Shut the f*** up.” When they arrived, the lieutenant violently shoved my father against a wall.

The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the government’s treatment of my father. “The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing,” Amnesty wrote in a February letter to the Attorney General, “appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive.”

My father immigrated to the United States in 1975 and eventually earned tenure as a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida. As the son of Palestinians forcibly removed from their land after the creation of Israel in 1948, he considered it his obligation to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people from his position of influence in the United States. He held conferences and published literature to tell the story of Palestinians living under occupation.

His activism earned the ire of some of the most reactionary figures of the right, from self-declared “terror experts” like Steven Emerson to Bill O’Reilly, whose expertise on Middle Eastern affairs apparently does not extend to the falafel.

(See here, here and here to learn about Emerson’s long history of hysterical, discredited claims.)

As the shrill cries for my father’s prosecution intensified after 9/11, the Bush administration arrested him. According to an anonymous FBI source, Attorney General John Ashcroft personally ordered the indictment against my father, a mandate that puzzled the many career professionals assigned to the case. The political nature of the charges was apparent from the beginning. A jury empaneled by the federal government would reach the same conclusion three years later, concluding that the Bush administration’s case was not much of a case at all.

But first my father would suffer under extremely restrictive, inhumane conditions clearly meant to psychologically break him before trial, including being placed in solitary confinement for 27 months. At one point, he was denied phone calls for six months, and while convicted felons were allowed to hug their families, my father, a pre-trial detainee, had to visit us behind glass. Even then, he was strip-searched before and after our visits. The cards were stacked against us.

When my father’s trial finally began in June 2005, the government presented 71 witnesses, including nearly two dozen from Israel, paraded before the jury for sheer emotional effect. Four hundred phone calls out of half a million the government recorded during a decade of relentless, indiscriminate surveillance of my family were also presented. The prosecutors acted out the phone calls on the 13th floor of a courtroom in downtown Tampa, giving new meaning to the phrase political theater.

The government’s evidence against my father largely consisted of speeches he gave, magazines he edited, lectures he presented, articles he wrote, books he owned (4 out of 5,000), conferences he organized, rallies he attended, and news he heard. In one particularly bizarre instance, the prosecutors presented as evidence a conversation a co-defendant had with my father in a dream.

Some of my father’s detractors say that his criticism of Israel was overly strident. Often they deliberately de-contextualize his remarks, made nearly two decades ago, to undermine the credibility of the Palestinian narrative they have long sought to suppress. But whatever you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you hopefully agree that the criminalization of political speech is un-American and violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

Because the government based its case on my father’s expressed political views, our lawyers rested without presenting a single witness. Our defense was the First Amendment.

On Dec. 6, 2005, my father was acquitted of 8 of the 17 charges against him, though the jury voted 10 to 2 for full acquittal. Those holding out for conviction were the only two who listed themselves as readers of the Tampa Tribune, a paper which had slandered him for over a decade. Two of my father’s three co-defendants were fully acquitted; the jury did not return a single guilty verdict in over 100 charges. The verdict was a testament to the hollow nature of government’s case--an especially strong statement in the midst of post 9/11 hysteria.

Following the trial, the government had the option of dropping the charges against my father, but chose not to, once again revealing the political nature of his case. At the same time, they decided to casually drop tax-evasion charges against the founder of Hooters whose jury split evenly on his conviction.

Facing the prospect of a new trial that would drain my family emotionally and financially, my father decided to plead guilty to one charge of nonviolently supporting a designated terrorist group. In return, the government signed a plea agreement promising to drop the remaining charges, recommend the minimum sentence (which would have basically amounted to time-served) and allow my father to walk free on the condition that he leave the country. Disregarding the prosecutors’ recommendation and dismissing the jury’s verdict, the judge in the case gave my father the maximum sentence, which pushed his release date to this month.

Sadly, our story does not end there. An overzealous federal prosecutor with a documented record of bigoted remarks against Muslims, Gordon Kromberg, is trying to force my father to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in direct violation of his plea agreement. This is a ploy to bring further charges against my father and prolong his imprisonment -and our suffering--as much as possible. Kromberg himself bitterly referred to the plea agreement as a “bonanza” for my father.

Shortly before the Muslim observance of Ramadan began last October, Kromberg revealed an ulterior political motive behind his prosecution. When my father’s attorney requested to delay a prison transfer during the holy month, a time he would have liked to spend with visits from his family, Kromberg responded:

“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”

Kromberg’s racist outburst clearly calls his objectivity into question. Another reason my father has been reluctant to testify before a grand jury is because we fear Kromberg is setting up a perjury trap. The prosecutor did just that with another Muslim defendant in Virginia, who was acquitted by a federal judge. Following his acquittal, Kromberg summoned him to testify before a grand jury and charged him with making false statements when he didn’t like his answers. The man, Sabri Benkhala, is now facing 25 years in prison.

My father has endured a decade of surveillance and government harassment, a draining six month trial, and the demonization of his entire family by self-serving right-wing demagogues, all the while hoping his nightmare would end. It should have when he was acquitted by a jury and the government promised his freedom. Surely, the fulfillment of that promise is not too much to ask.

(To learn more about Sami Al-Arian or to join the campaign for his freedom, visit freesamialarian.com)

The Butcher of Chechnya Is Dead

2007-04-23T23:29:00.001-07:00

Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin died today from heart failure at the age of 76. He will certainly not be missed by the people of Chechnya. In 1994, he launched a brutal invasion of Chechnya. Two years later, when the dust had settled, 80,000 to 100,000 Chechen civilians were killed, and 500,000 more were forced to become refugees.

No matter how much power, resources and wealth a ruler may have, as Allāh says in three places in the Qur’ān:

كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَائِقَةُ الْمَوْتِ

Kullu nafsin dhā’iqatu l-mawt.
Every soul shall taste death.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat Āli ‘Imrān, Āyah 185,
Sūrat al-Anbiyā’, Āyah 35,
and Sūrat al-‘Ankabūt, Āyah 57)

Wikipedia: First Chechen War

Last Act of Muslim Victim of Virginia Tech Massacre: Saving a Fellow Student’s Life

2007-04-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Waleed Shaalan, a 32-year-old member of the Blacksburg Muslim community, was among the 33 victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. He left behind Amira, his wife of 3 years, and Khaled, his one-year old son.

A fellow student who was in the room when Shaalan was killed credits him with saving his life.

An excerpt from an Associated Press article:

Randy Dymond, a civil engineering professor, said Shaalan was credited with distracting gunman Cho Seung-Hui to save the life of a fellow student.

Dymond, who attended a service for Shaalan Thursday, said the Egyptian was in the first classroom Cho attacked and was badly wounded. Cho returned to the room twice to search for signs of life.

During one of those incidents, a second student who was uninjured, was playing dead. When Shaalan noticed Cho making a move to shoot the student, the Egyptian made a “protective movement to basically decoy the killer into thinking it was him making any kind of sound instead of the survivor,” Dymond said.

Dymond declined to give the name of the student who survived, but said the student wanted him to tell the story “so that the family of Waleed understands the sacrifice.”

Shaalan’s mother broke down when she heard Dymond’s account.

“He was trying to save someone else?” she said repeatedly.

Dymond said Shaalan’s body was taken to a Blacksburg mosque Thursday afternoon so classmates, teachers and friends could say goodbye before it was sent to Egypt for burial.

Please click here to donate to the fund for Waleed’s family.

Read more:

Associated Press: Egyptian student killed at Virginia Tech leaves behind wife and 1-year-old son

Waleed Shaalan Among Those Killed at Virginia Tech, Leaves Behind a Wife and One-Year-Old Son

2007-04-18T18:43:00.001-07:00

Waleed Shaalan, an essential member of the Blacksburg Muslim community, was among the 33 people killed in the brutal Virginia Tech massacre on Monday morning. He left behind Amira, his wife of 3 years, and Khaled, his one-year old son.

MSA National set up a memorial fund for Waleed’s family with the goal of raising $25,000 over the next four weeks.

Please click here to donate to the fund for Waleed’s family.

May Allah grant Waleed martyrdom and entry into Jannat al-Firdaws (the Highest Level of Paradise). May Allah grant his family patience during this difficult time, as well as all of the families who lost loved ones in the massacre.

Read more:

Fatimah the Resplendent

2007-04-18T18:02:00.001-07:00

Witness-Pioneer has a moving biography about Fātimah az-Zahrā’ (may Allāh be pleased with her), the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (may Allāh bless him and grant him peace). It is rare to read personal accounts of her life story, which is ironic considering her exalted status among all women.

As the Messenger of Allāh (may Allāh bless him and grant him peace) said, “The best women in all the world are four: Maryam (Mary) daughter of ‘Imrān, Āsiyā the wife of Fir‘awn (Pharoah), Khadījah daughter of Khuwaylid, and Fātimah daughter of Muhammad.”

Here are three excerpts from the biography:

‘Ali ibn Abī Tālib (may Allāh ennoble his countenance and be pleased with him) Asks for Her Hand in Marriage

Ali, the son of Abu Talib, plucked up courage and went to the Prophet to ask for her hand in marriage. In the presence of the Prophet, however, Ali became over-awed and tongue-tied. He stared at the ground and could not say anything. The Prophet then asked: “Why have you come? Do you need something?” Ali still could not speak and then the Prophet suggested: “Perhaps you have come to propose marriage to Fatimah.”

“Yes,” replied Ali. At this, according to one report, the Prophet said simply: “Marhaban wa ahlan - Welcome into the family.”

Her Contributions to Her Society

Before her marriage, she acted as a sort of hostess to the poor and destitute Ahl as-Suffah. As soon as the Battle of Uhud was over, she went with other women to the battlefield and wept over the dead martyrs and took time to dress her father’s wounds. At the Battle of the Ditch, she played a major supportive role together with other women in preparing food during the long and difficult siege. In her camp, she led the Muslim women in prayer and on that place there stands a mosque named Masjid Fatimah, one of seven mosques where the Muslims stood guard and performed their devotions.

Fatimah also accompanied the Prophet when he made ‘Umrah [the lesser pilgrimage to Makkah] in the sixth year after the Hijrah after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. In the following year, she and her sister Umm Kulthum, were among the mighty throng of Muslims who took part with the Prophet in the liberation of Makkah. It is said that on this occasion, both Fatimah and Umm Kulthum visited the home of their mother Khadijah and recalled memories of their childhood and memories of jihad, of long struggles in the early years of the Prophet's mission.

Her Passing

One morning, early in the month of Ramadan, just less than five months after her noble father had passed away, Fatimah woke up looking unusually happy and full of mirth. In the afternoon of that day, it is said that she called Salma bint Umays who was looking after her. She asked for some water and had a bath. She then put on new clothes and perfumed herself. She then asked Salma to put her bed in the courtyard of the house. With her face looking to the heavens above, she asked for her husband Ali.

He was taken aback when he saw her lying in the middle of the courtyard and asked her what was wrong. She smiled and said: “I have an appointment today with the Messenger of God.”

Ali cried and she tried to console him. She told him to look after their sons al-Hasan and al-Husayn and advised that she should be buried without ceremony. She gazed upwards again, then closed her eyes and surrendered her soul to the Mighty Creator.

Witness-Pioneer: Fatimah bint Muhammad (may Allāh bless him and grant him peace)

New York Times: Egyptian Nuclear Engineer Is Charged With Spying for Israel

2007-04-17T22:23:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from a New York Times article:

An Egyptian nuclear engineer who worked for the country’s Atomic Energy Agency has been arrested and charged with spying for Israel, the government authorities said Tuesday.

A government statement said the engineer, Muhammad Sayyid Saber Ali, had delivered “important and secret information” about the agency and about one of two nuclear reactors in Egypt to “Israeli intelligence elements” in exchange for about $20,000 transferred to a bank account.

New York Times: Egyptian Nuclear Engineer Is Charged With Spying for Israel

The World's Most Northerly Masjid: Norilsk, Russia

2007-04-17T21:02:00.001-07:00

An excerpt from a Reuters article:

Mukum Sidikov’s grandfather left Norilsk after surviving the labor camps of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Sidikov, caretaker of the world’s most northerly mosque, retraced his grandfather’s footsteps in search of well-paid work in the Russian Arctic.

Now he estimates the city is home to about 50,000 Muslims -- just under one-quarter of the region’s population of about 210,000. Most are from Azerbaijan and the Russian republic of Dagestan and work as traders or construction workers.

Reuters: Arctic mosque stays open but Muslim numbers shrink

BBC: Advanced geometry of Islamic art

2007-04-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from a BBC article:

A study of medieval Islamic art has shown some of its geometric patterns use principles established centuries later by modern mathematicians.

Researchers in the US have found 15th Century examples that use the concept of quasicrystalline geometry.

This indicates intuitive understanding of complex mathematical formulae, even if the artisans had not worked out the underlying theory, the study says.

The discovery is published in the journal Science.

The research shows an important breakthrough had occurred in Islamic mathematics and design by 1200.

“It’s absolutely stunning,” Harvard’s Peter Lu said in an interview.

“They made tilings that reflect mathematics that were so sophisticated that we didn’t figure it out until the last 20 or 30 years.”

The Islamic designs echo quasicrystalline geometry in that both use symmetrical polygonal shapes to create patterns that can be extended indefinitely without repetition.

Wired News: ‘Yahoo Betrayed My Husband’

2007-03-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a Wired News article about how, at the request of the Chinese government, Yahoo provided evidence leading to the arrest of previously-anonymous government critic Wang Xiaoning:

Early one Sunday morning in 2002, a phone rings in Yu Ling’s Beijing duplex. She’s cleaning upstairs; her son is asleep, while downstairs, her husband, Wang Xiaoning, is on the computer. Wang writes about politics, anonymously e-mailing his online e-journals to a group of Yahoo users. He’s been having problems with his Yahoo service recently. He thinks it’s a technical issue. This is the day he learns he’s wrong.

Wang picks up the phone: “Yes?”

“Are you home?” asks the unfamiliar voice on the other end.

“Yes.”

The line goes dead.

Moments later, government agents swarm through the front door -- 10 of them, some in uniform, some not. They take Wang away. They take his computers and disks. They shove an official notice into Yu’s hands, tell her to keep quiet, and leave. This is how it’s done in China. This is how the internet police grab you.

Five years later, Yu, 55, sits in the dining room of a small house in Fairfax and weeps softly. She is a slight woman -- 100 pounds and barely 5 feet tall in slippers. Her eyes betray her exhaustion; but she is determined, too. She carries a thick stack of notes with her, and she has scrawled more on her left hand.

“Yahoo betrayed my husband and deprived him of freedom,” Yu says through a translator, her voice trembling. “Yahoo must learn its lesson.”

Yu’s husband is now in Beijing Prison No. 2, serving a 10-year sentence for inciting subversion with his pro-democracy internet writings. According to the written court verdict, the Chinese government convicted Wang, in part, on evidence provided by Yahoo.

Wired News: ‘Yahoo Betrayed My Husband’

8 Muslim Children, 1 Mother Perish in New York City Fire; 17 Injured

2007-03-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

A funeral was held on Thursday for victims of a fire that claimed the lives of nine immigrants from Mali -- eight of whom were children. The fire also injured 19 others, including a 7-year-old girl in critical condition.

Hundreds of Muslims prayed the janazah (funeral) prayer over the bodies, and many others joined the services, including the mayor of New York City.

Here are pictures from the funeral.

Nicholas Kristof: Talking About Israel

2007-03-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece surprisingly critical of the Zionist state and the approach that American politicians take with regard to it.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Democrats are railing at just about everything President Bush does, with one prominent exception: Mr. Bush’s crushing embrace of Israel.

There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself.

Read more (unfortunately, you will need a subscription to TimesSelect to access the article):

New York Times: Talking About Israel by Nicholas D. Kristof

We Are So Insignificant

2007-03-10T14:18:00.001-08:00

Google Video: Some Stars and Planets in Scale

Olmert Planned for Invasion of Lebanon Four Months in Advance

2007-03-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

From British newspaper The Guardian:

Preparations for Israel’s war in Lebanon last summer were drawn up at least four months before two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hizbullah in July, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has admitted.

His submission to a commission of inquiry, leaked yesterday, contradicted the impression at the time that Israel was provoked into a battle for which it was ill-prepared. Mr Olmert told the Winograd commission, a panel of judges charged with investigating Israel’s perceived defeat in the 34-day war, that he first discussed the possibility of war in January and asked to see military plans in March.

The Guardian: Israel planned for Lebanon war months in advance, PM says

What Manhattan Might Look Like If Sea Levels Continue to Rise

2007-01-30T13:21:00.000-08:00

Original photograph by Cameron Davidson; photo illustration by John Blackford.

While Washington Slept by Mark Hertsgaard

The Shameless Audacity of Egyptian Police

2007-01-10T12:06:00.001-08:00

This story is utterly shocking.

An Egyptian man named Imad Kabir tried to intervene in a dispute between Egyptian police and his cousin in January, 2006. The police detained Kabir and tortured him by sodomizing him with a stick. One of the abusers filmed the incident, the video became public on the Internet in November, and Egyptian bloggers circulated the video. Two of the officers accused of torturing Kabir were detained and will go on trial in March.

The most ironic twist in this incident, however, is that now the Egyptian government has detained Kabir again for “resisting authority”, and Human Rights Watch said that Kabir has “received several phone calls threatening him and his family unless he dropped his case against the police.”

Sadistic torture is a integral part of the culture in Egyptian prisons. In addition to Kabir’s video, a handful of other videos of Egyptian prisoners being tortured – including female detainees – have begun to surface on the Internet.

One would hope that this publicity, as embarrassing as it is to the torture victims, will apply enough pressure on the Egyptian government to eliminate these disgusting practices.

Read more:

BBC: ‘Torture’ victim jailed in Egypt

Definition of Manhood by Hasan al-Bannā

2007-01-09T03:09:00.001-08:00

The man who dreams is different from the man who talks, the man who talks is different from the man who works, the man who works is different from the man who strives, and the man who strives is different from the man who strives hard with wisdom and productivity.

Manhood can only be tested by patience, endurance, constant work and seriousness.

Imām Hasan al-Bannā, shahīd
founder of al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn

Stephen Colbert and FUSSDIRAGs

2007-01-09T01:19:00.001-08:00

Referring to the recent deaths of former Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein:

And Nation, we are running out of FUSSDIRAGs. “FUSSDIRAGs” of course is my acronym for “Former United States-Supported Dictators Internationally Reviled for Acts of Genocide.”

Stephen Colbert
The Colbert Report
January 8, 2007

Reuters: Israel has plans for nuclear strike on Iran

2007-01-07T21:45:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from a Reuters article:

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper said

Citing what it said were several Israeli military sources, the paper said two Israeli air force squadrons had been training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz using low-yield nuclear “bunker busters.”

Two other sites, a heavy water plant at Arak and a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan, would be targeted with conventional bombs, the Sunday Times said.

Reuters: Israel has plans for nuclear strike on Iran

Reuters: Report says U.N. troops in Sudan raping children

2007-01-04T11:29:00.001-08:00

Reuters ran an article about The Daily Telegraph reporting that U.N. troops in Sudan raping children. Here is an excerpt:

The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday that U.N. peacekeepers and civilian staff were raping and abusing children as young as 12 in southern Sudan.

The newspaper, in a story posted on its Web site, said it had gathered accounts from more than 20 young victims in the town of Juba of U.N. civilian and peacekeeping staff forcing them to have sex.

Reuters: Report says U.N. troops in Sudan raping children

Maps of War: History of Religion and Imperial History of the Middle East

2007-01-02T16:01:00.001-08:00

Maps of War features a handful of Flash presentations, two of which are featured below.

The History of Religion
Click here to view the full-size presentation.

Imperial History of the Middle East
Click here to view the full-size presentation.

Slate: The 10 Most Outrageous Civil Liberties Violations of 2006

2006-12-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

From Slate:

10. Attempt to Get Death Penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui
Long after it was clear the hapless Frenchman was neither the “20^th hijacker” nor a key plotter in the attacks of 9/11, the government pressed to execute him as a “conspirator” in those attacks. Moussaoui’s alleged participation? By failing to confess to what he may have known about the plot, which may have led the government to disrupt it, Moussaoui directly caused the deaths of thousands of people. This massive overreading of the federal conspiracy laws would be laughable were the stakes not so high. Thankfully, a jury rejected the notion that Moussaoui could be executed for the crime of merely wishing there had been a real connection between himself and 9/11.

The other nine are:

9. Guantanamo Bay
8. Slagging the Media
7. Slagging the Courts
6. The State-Secrets Doctrine
5. Government Snooping
4. Extraordinary Rendition
3. Abuse of Jose Padilla
2. The Military Commissions Act of 2006
1. Hubris

Read them all at:

Slate: The 10 Most Outrageous Civil Liberties Violations of 2006

Good Riddance, Saddam

2006-12-30T03:13:00.001-08:00

Very few people will miss Saddam Hussein’s presence in this world.

His reign of terror included, among many other things:

An unprovoked invasion of neighboring Iran that led to a brutal war from 1980 to 1988, in which nearly 1 million people were killed.
Attacks on the Kurdish population in northern Iraq in 1988 in which 50,000 to 100,000 civilians were killed.
An unprovoked invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1991.
A brutal suppression of Kurdish and Shi‘ah uprisings in 1991 in which 20,000 to 100,000 Kurds were killed, and 60,000 to 130,000 Shi‘ah were killed.
Multiple uses of chemical weapons in the war with Iran and in suppressing uprisings.
Systematic torture of opponents, including amputation, branding and rape, among other brutal methods.
Frequent murder of political opponents, including members of his own family.
And the list goes on and on...

So good riddance to Saddam.

One now wonders whether or not trials will be ever be conducted to examine the crimes committed against the Iraqi people by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (as former National Security Adviser), Paul Wolfowitz, and other members of the Bush Administration.

It is estimated that over 100,000 civilians have been killed in a war predicated on a lie. That same lie sent more American soldiers to their graves than the total number of people killed on 9/11.

Where are the plans to try members of the Bush Administration for their crimes against humanity? Where is the public outcry and disgust for their actions, which are no different than those of Saddam?

There are three fundamental types of people in this world: those who actively seek to implement justice, those who actively impose injustice upon others, and those who will follow whichever trend is prevalent in their society.

Among those who impose injustice upon others, there is often in-fighting. This has been exhibited clearly in the war between the U.S. regime led by Bush and the former Iraqi regime led by Saddam.

Their fate, however, will be one. They will all stand before their Creator one Day. Powerless. Humbled. Unable to enlist the help of others.

And they will all have to answer for their actions that have led to the deaths of millions of people.

May Allāh protect us from a similar fate.

‘Īd Mubārak!

2006-12-30T02:50:00.001-08:00

!عيد مبارك

May Allāh accept the Hajj of all those who performed it this year, and may Allāh instill in us the lesson of sacrifice, as taught to us through the story of the Prophet Ibrāhīm (Abraham) and his son the Prophet Ismā‘īl (Ishmael), peace be upon them both.

May Allāh accept the fasting of those who fasted the first few days of Dhū ’l-Hijjah, and may Allāh forgive us all of our sins, and grant us all entry into Jannat al-Firdaws (the highest level of Paradise)! May Allāh alleviate the suffering of the needy around the world! May Allāh grant victory to His dīn (religion, complete way of life) and those to seek to adhere by it and elevate its status in every aspect of life! Āmīn!

_____
‘Īd al-Adhā (commonly spelled Eid al-Adhā) is an Islāmic religious holiday commemorating the end of the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Makkah that is required at least once for every able-bodied Muslim if he/she is capable of performing it. ‘Īd al-Adhā falls on the 10th day of Dhū ’l-Hijjah, the 12th month of the Islāmic calendar.

‘Īd Mubārak (commonly spelled Eid Mubārak) - literally translated means "Blessed Feast" - is the traditional Muslim greeting on the occassion of ‘Īd al-Adhā.

NPR Audio: Latinas Choosing Islam over Catholicism

2006-12-23T11:32:00.000-08:00

Here is a blurb describing NPR audio about Latinas accepting Islam:

“The Catholic Church has been grappling with an exodus of Latin Americans over the past few decades. A small yet growing segment of the Hispanic population is leaving Christianity altogether and converting to Islam -- and most of them are women.”

Listen:

NPR: Latinas Choosing Islam over Catholicism