Hajj Plane From UAE Boarded By Officials in Hazmat Suits At Logan Airport in Boston

BIDMC patient, Logan passengers all Ebola free

A man first suspected of having symptoms consistent with Ebola has now been ruled Ebola-free.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was being held, released the following statement Monday night, "As you are aware, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center accepted in transfer on Sunday evening a patient who had reported traveling from Liberia. Our evaluation is now complete and we have determined with certainty the patient does not have Ebola Virus Disease. The patient remains in good condition."

The Boston Public Health Commission also said in a statement Monday night that the passengers transported from Logan International Airport to various Boston hospitals this afternoon do not have Ebola.

BPHC said, "After discussions with out partner hospitals Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Public Health Commission's Infectious Disease Bureau has determined that the patients who arrived on United Emirates Flight No. 237 at Logan International Airport do not meet the criteria for any infections of public health concern, including Ebola, MERS or meningococcal infection."

AND THEN THERE'S THIS:

HOLY SHIT! As if plane passengers didn't have enough to worry about...

Passenger heard popping noises from outside plane

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A Texas man who was on the American Airlines flight that made an emergency landing after some of the cabin's wall panels cracked loose says passengers knew there was a problem soon after the plane took off from San Francisco.

James Wilson, an amateur race car driver returning from a competition in Northern California, said they felt the fuselage violently shaking and heard popping noises coming from the outside of the Boeing 757 as Flight 2293 made its initial ascent on Monday.

Wilson says people sitting toward the middle of the plane then screamed for the flight attendants to come as they watched the interior panels pull apart on both sides of the plane.

He says the captain decided to keep heading to Dallas for another 45 minutes until he came back and saw the damage for himself.

Hajj 2009 Begins

Check out Brooke's posting on the topic.

Brief excerpt:

Today is the beginning of the Hajj, an annual event in which Muslims must trample each other running figure eights around a big black cube which contains a rock inside a bedpan.

This year's Hajj also brings with it concerns about H1N1 virus, and Brooke cites CNN for some details:

Dr. Asif Saberi gives them a short lecture on how to prepare and encourages everyone to have their shots at least seven days before traveling. He says the Saudi government is doing a lot to protect pilgrims, but "the magnitude of the problem is the magnitude of the numbers of people who attend the Hajj."

When it comes to using hand sanitizer and wearing masks, Saberi says he encounters confusion about religious dictates and flu prevention. According to Muslim beliefs, for example, men in a state of pilgrimage should not wear any stitched items or touch alcohol. So what about wearing face masks or using alcohol-based sanitizers?

Read Brooke's entire posting HERE.

Be sure to read the CNN article, too.

Swine Flu Interferes With The Hajj

Maybe Allah is trying to tell the stone-kissers something?

From CNN:

Two Hajj pilgrims from Iran have contracted the H1N1 virus, according to reports from the country's official news agency.

[...]

The latest cases highlights concerns that the Muslim pilgrimage will hasten the spread of swine flu.

In June, host country Saudi Arabia held a workshop where health officials recommended that pregnant women, children and elderly people with chronic illness should not attend the pilgrimage this November.

In addition, officials are recommending that visitors to the country receive a seasonal flu vaccine at least two weeks before traveling to the holy places.

[...]

Saudi Arabia has already put in place quarantine facilities at major airports in the country so that pilgrims suspected of carrying swine flu can be safely isolated.

Congressman Keith Ellison At The Haj

From the Khaleej Times, on December 10, 2008:

As Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of the US Congress who performed Haj this week, told CNN, you forget who you are –- black or white and American or African — and where you come from when you are before God circling the Kaaba in a two-piece unstitched garment....

Ellison, who serves on the Financial Services and Judiciary Committees, forgot where he came from? He forgot he is supposed to be an American — and, having taken the oath of office, as a public servant in the United States Congress?

Oh, wait.

Ellison took the oath, at least symbolically, on the Koran. Allah and the ummah come first and foremost for him.

And what kind of sermon was preached at the Haj?

Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has used his annual sermon to Muslim pilgrims assembling for hajj to urge Muslim countries to renounce capitalism and form an Islamic economic bloc... [shari'a law]

The United States is already embracing shari'a finance. See this essay by Alyssa A. Lappen.

Shari'a finance is the camel's nose in the tent. Money is power.

Crossposted to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS and Always On Watch]

The Hajj: The Most Shameful Journey in History

Tomorrow in Malaysia is a legal holiday--Hari Raya Korban, also known as Eid al-Adha. This is the holiday that coincides with that annual mass Muslim madness referred to as the 'Hajj', or the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are mandated to make at least once in their lifetimes. And make it they do, by the millions, often using most if not all of their life savings to do so.

Fellow Malaysian blogger Surind posted a video on the Hajj at his blog yesterday, entitled 'The Hajj: The Most Shameful Journey in History.' It caused so much grief and outrage amongst the Muslims that he pulled it from his site today. Well, to show my support for him, to support freedom of speech, and to help spread a point of view that Muslims (and their dhimmi allies) so desperately do not want you to see or hear, I am posting this video here. Transcript of the video is in italics and immediately following the embedded video frame.




The 5th Pillar of Islam wastes more money and effort and time and lives than any other single journey in human history.

Muslims from all around the world - many of them excessively poor - devote a significant proportion of their income to complying with the demand of the Qur'an that they should visit the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia at least once in their miserable lives.

I find this a disgusting and lamentable superstition. Not only this, but some of the poorest families in the some of the poorest Muslim countries in the world save all their lives to send their children to wander around a tomb to a long dead deluded bloke called Mohammad - a self-appointed prophet who raised himself above the status of all other humans and still from the ashes reaches out and financially ruins people's lives to this very day by having insisted that all his deluded followers should pop in to his birth town.

You couldn't write more insane fiction than this if you tried. If you saw this on the pages of George Orwell, you would think it would never happen. But it does. And I am sickened by it.

Allah does not exist. Mohammad was just a normal man - now dead for over 1300 years. There is no spiritual realm. Every single Muslim who makes this journey is diverting money and energy away from making this world a better place - building better nations, developing education, science, technology, politics, medicine and so forth. Each Muslim who makes this lamentable journey is guilty of squandering money in as wasteful a way as those people that they criticise for spending on alcohol that they piss down the drain. In some ways, even worse. At least some boozed-up bloke who struggles off to work the next morning with a hangover knows that he has overdone it. Muslims NEVER think they have overdone it and will simply pass on this world-wide destruction of potential to their poor children.

The greatest aim of all Muslims is to take part in the Hajj? No wonder Islam makes its victims less successful in the real world of the 21st Century: their aspirations are so pathetically low.

Crossposted at Pedestrian Infidel