"Anti-riot police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse protesters camped out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as Western governments voiced growing concern over Islamist President Mohamed Morsi’s assumption of sweeping powers. The president already held both and executive and legislative powers and Thursday’s decree puts him beyond judicial oversight until a new constitution has been ratified in a referendum." Continue reading →
"Four months since Egypt elected veteran Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed Mursi as president, human rights activists say hardliners are trying to impose Islamist ways on society. Such actions have grabbed local headlines and fuelled the worst-case-scenario fears of moderates worried by the rise of Islamists who were tightly reined in by Hosni Mubarak but have emerged as a major force since he was swept from power. Christians say overall the atmosphere has become increasingly menacing as the presence of hostile Salafi Muslim hardliners in public life has grown more pronounced." Continue reading →
"United Nations report calls for Internet surveillance, saying lack of 'internationally agreed framework for retention of data' is a problem, as are open Wi-Fi networks in airports, cafes, and libraries. The United Nations is calling for more surveillance of Internet users, saying it would help to investigate and prosecute terrorists. What are the organizations behind the suggestion of a 'global surveillance state?' The article writes that the UN report was 'produced in collaboration with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force, which counts the World Bank, Interpol, the World Health Organization, and the International Monetary Fund as members.'" Continue reading →
"Muslim attacks worldwide and against all targets, failed and successful, add up to 18,000 since 2001. This number is bound to be controversial and subject to error. If this involved 18,000 Muslims, that's a little over one-thousandth of one percent of Muslims who engaged in a terrorist or violent attempted attack or attack anywhere in the world. How many Muslims have American forces killed since 2001? I've found a low-end estimate for 1990 to 2009, and it's 288,000. How many of these were Muslim terrorists? I can't find a tally so far. The number is very, very small relative to 288,000. The tally for drone strikes is 2-3,000 with a high proportion being innocent people." Continue reading →
"The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that gives regional leaders 45 days to provide specific plans for an international military intervention to oust rebels in northern Mali. The unanimous resolution marks a key step and speeds up preparations for a possible intervention to retake the region from al Qaeda-linked rebels. Mali plunged into chaos in March after a military ruler overthrew the president, shaking one of West Africa's most stable democracies." Continue reading →
"When you clear your way through all the spurious hot air about 'American exceptionalism' and 'a world eager for U.S. leadership,' you will hear the ardent desire of two men, two parties, and almost all of the media to maintain and even increase the cultural and military interventionism in the Muslim world that has killed so many Americans at home and abroad in the past sixteen years; which has brought the United States numerous, shameful military defeats; and which has created nothing but the prospect of an ever larger and more costly war with much of Islam in the years ahead." Continue reading →
"After the US invasion of Iraq, some 300,000 Christians fled that 'liberated' country for Syria — one of the few places in the Middle East where Christians could feel safe and go about their lives unmolested. US/Saudi/Qatari/Israeli-supported 'freedom fighters' — who as German intelligence finds are as much as 95 percent non-Syrian — are putting an end to that, threatening to completely eradicate a Christian population that goes back to the time of Christ. What do American Christians do? Cheer on the rebels as they kill Christians left and right in Syria because their government tells them they are 'freedom fighters.'" Continue reading →