Australia Considering Allowing Female Genital Mutilation…Yes, Allowing

From Weasel Zippers:

AUSTRALIAN doctors are considering a controversial form of genital mutilation on baby girls.
The practice involving cutting a girl’s genitals, sometimes with razors or pieces of glass, could be allowed in a clinical setting to stem illegal backyard procedures which are leaving young girls scarred for life.

The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians will next month discuss backing “ritual nicks”, a modified form of genital mutilation.

But experts are divided on whether to allow the practice, given that in some cultures it is used to remove the sexual feelings of women.

Female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Australia since the 1990s but is common among African, Asian and Middle Eastern communities.

With the rise in Somali and Sudanese living in Australia, doctors are seeing more cases of young girls, and women, needing surgery after illegal operations. Backers of “ritual nick” said it was a superficial procedure leaving no long-term damage.

INSANE: BRENNAN SAYS THAT JIHADO-TERRORISTS ARE VICTIMS WHO ARE NOT MOTIVATED BY RELIGION

From the Astute Bloggers:

This is absolutely outrageous, the fact that someone this deranged, who defends jihadis as “victims,” is defending us from al-Qaeda sends shivers up my spine… The president’s top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used to describe America’s enemies.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in “religious terms."

THIS MAN BRENNAN SHOULD BE FIRED; HE IS A MENACE TO THE USA AND THE ENTIRE WEST.

How To Really Deal With Somali Pirates: ‘Release’ Them To Their Own Boat, Then Blow up Boat And Celebrate (Russian Special Forces)

From Weasel Zippers:

Most of this video isn’t in English but the Russians ‘free’ the pirates into their own boat and then blow their boat a few minutes later (4:30 mark).

About the WTC Mosque Imam

From the Weekly Blitz:

Back in 2004, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was invited to speak in Sydney, Australia, by Premier Bob Carr. According to an article that was published at the time in the Sydney Morning Herald, Imam Rauf stated, "The U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end." Published on March 21, 2004, the article quoted the Imam from New York. "Speaking from his New York mosque, Imam Feisal said the West had to understand the terrorists' point of view." Rauf further stated, "The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets."
"The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians…" Really? Wow, glad that was cleared up. So where did that stack of dead bodies (from the 15,297 terrorist attacks perpetrated in the name of Jihad and Islam since 9/11) come from?
"The West had to understand the terrorists' point of view." Actually, I do understand their point of view. I have read the Koran, the Hadith and the Sira. This so-called "religion of peace" is nothing of the sort. I think the founder of CAIR (the Council of American-Islamic Relations), Omar Ahmad, summed it up best when he said, "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." This statement has been widely reported over the years, but it appears Mr. Rauf is counting on the ignorance of many people to win this argument. Ahmad's statement reflects nothing more than a fervent wish for domination, pure and simple.
So who is this man, Imam Rauf, who now wants to dominate Ground Zero in the shadow of a $100 million, 13-story mosque?
Imam Rauf was born in Kuwait in 1948 after his parents fled (or were thrown out, depending on which report you read) from Egypt. His father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf, was a known member of the Muslim Brotherhood which is why some say he was thrown out of Egypt in 1948. The Muslim Brotherhood, for those of you who don't know, was founded in 1928, only four years after the Ottoman Empire ended. It is the oldest terrorist organization in the world and has over 70 different offshoots which include al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, just to name a few. Interestingly, the Muslim Brotherhood is not only banned here in the U.S., but it was banned in Egypt as well.
People need to know history in order to understand Islam and what they are really out to achieve. At its height, the Islamic Empire covered more of the earth than the Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire ended in 1924 and the Muslim Brotherhood came about only four years later. This is no coincidence; it was established to bring back the world domination that Islam once had. Aside from Islam conquering a huge part of the world, Islam also conquered most of Spain in the year 711 from Tariq ibn Zayid's invasion and held it through 1248; it controlled parts of Spain until its full liberation in 1492. Spain was renamed Andalusia. So why is this of importance?
The name of the organization planning the mosque is the "Cordoba Initiative," and this name itself is a full affront to Americans. Cordoba was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate that ruled Spain and the name is often used today by Islamic militants when recalling the glory of the Islamic Empire from the years when they occupied Spain.

Each dot in this image is a galaxy containing billions of stars

From the Astute Bloggers:

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand in New Herschel Image

Image of the distant Universe as seen by Herschel’s SPIRE instrument Credit: ESA / SPIRE and HerMES consortia

Wow. Just wow. Each of the colored dots in this new image from the Herschel telescope is a galaxy containing billions of stars. These are distant luminous infrared galaxies, and appear as they did 10–12 billion years ago, packed together like grains of sand on a beach, forming large clusters of galaxies by the force of their mutual gravity.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Europe 2010: The Beginning of History?

From Victor Davis Hanson:

A German remarked today to some of us that he found it odd that, given all the graffiti one sees, there is never any defacement on the great stone stage at Nuremberg (patterned by Albert Speer after the Pergamon altar) that is immortalized in so many film clips of Hitler screaming to the masses in the 1930s.

The German government has done a wonderful job in creating a museum inside the uncompleted Speer-design coliseum not far away from the parade ground. One leaves Nuremberg with the reminder that the fantastic and impossible are just a blink away when the planets line up.

Had I suggested a year ago that the euro would be in freefall and the entire union on the verge of implosion, one would have suggested I was unhinged. Today such an assessment is mainstream to conservative. I think the European debt crisis is far worse than let on, Iran far more likely to get the bomb than we think, and a North Korea far closer to trying something stupid.

If we are not careful, there is going to be a Mideast nuclear arms race that will spill into Europe itself. (I take nothing back from the last posting on a seething Germany, and still insist that should an Iran go nuclear, and after it, an Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and should there be real doubt about the reliability of the United States [and I think there is already], then a great nation like Germany amid a financial meltdown in southern Europe would quite quickly dispense with its utopian UN rhetoric and take measures to defend itself from third-rate thugs with missiles that could hit Berlin.)

...

As much as we suspect the pretensions of the European Union, Americans must appreciate its achievement in lessening European tensions after the fall of the Cold War, the end of a common enemy in the Soviet Union, and the gradual diminution of a U.S. presence. If this implosion begins to unravel the EU, I think we will be once again right in the middle, rather than at the end, of history.

Fox:

ICE Busts California Flight School in Massive Visa Fraud Scheme
Published May 25, 2010

The former owners of a California flight school have pleaded guilty in a massive visa fraud scheme in which they hired illegal immigrants as flight instructors — a scam that immigration officials say posed a "significant" threat to national security.

Andrew Burr and Christopher Watson, the former president and vice president of Anglo-American Aviation, pleaded guilty Thursday to misdemeanor counts of hiring unauthorized workers, part of a larger felony case against their company that was the culmination of a two-year investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE officials found that from 2001-2008, the company hired 11 illegal immigrants as flight instructors.

"The actions by the defendants in this case not only undermined the integrity of our nation's legal immigration system, they also posed a significant national security risk," said Joe Garcia, acting special agent in charge for the ICE Office of Investigations in San Diego.

ICE investigators focused on a four-month period in the summer of 2007, when the school issued visa documents to more than 100 foreign students, even though the Federal Aviation Administration had revoked their certification to train commercial pilots.

The company was abusing an online database developed in the wake of 9/11 to track foreign students, according to ICE officials. Without that FAA certification, the company was forbidden to issue I-20 immigration documents to its students, who used the forms to get visas from the State Department.

ICE investigators successfully tracked down 53 of the students — more than half of those trained in the summer of 2007, according to ICE statements — and said none were found to pose a security risk. They provided no information on those they failed to locate.

At the hearing Thursday, Burr and Watson were sentenced to five years' probation, and along with the flight school must forfeit $250,000 in illegal profits.

Anglo-American Aviation Inc. also pleaded guilty to felony charges for making false statements and creating false visa documents, and will be sentenced on June 21.

The company now operates under a different name — American Aviation Academy — but uses the same mailing address and phone number in San Diego, where two of the 9/11 hijackers received flight training

Ground Zero Imam: ‘I Don’t Believe in Religious Dialogue’

Pajamas Media:

Exclusive new translations from Arabic websites reveal Imam Faisel Abdul Rauf seriously misleads New Yorkers about his intention to infiltrate Shariah law through his Ground Zero mosque.

May 27, 2010- by Walid Shoebat

Is Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf — founder of the hugely controversial Ground Zero mosque — lying to the American public and his fellow New Yorkers?

We have uncovered extraordinary contradictions between what he says in English and what he says in Arabic that raise serious questions about his true intentions in the construction of the mosque.

On May 25, 2010, Abdul Rauf wrote an article for the New York Daily News insisting:

My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists. We are the people who want to
embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the
radical rhetoric. Our purpose is to interweave America’s Muslim population into the mainstream society. [emphasis added]

Oh, really?

Only two months before, on March 24, 2010, Abdul Rauf is quoted in an article in Arabic for the website Rights4All entitled “The Most Prominent Imam in New York: ‘I Do Not Believe in Religious Dialogue.’”

Yes, you read that correctly and, yes, that is an accurate translation of Abdul Rauf. And Right4All is not an obscure blog, but the website of the media department of Cairo University, the leading educational institution of the Arabic-speaking world.

In the article, the imam said the following of the “religious dialogue” and “interweaving into the mainstream society” that he so solemnly seems to advocate in the Daily News and elsewhere:

This phrase is inaccurate. Religious dialogue as customarily understood is a set
of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing. Religions do
not dialogue and dialogue is not present in the attitudes of the followers,
regardless of being Muslim or Christian. The image of Muslims in the West is
complex which needs to be remedied.

But that was two months ago. More recently — in fact on May 26, one day after his Daily News column – Abdul Rauf appeared on the popular Islamic website Hadiyul-Islam with even more disturbing opinions. That’s the same website where, ironically enough, a fatwa was simultaneously being issued forbidding a Muslim to sell land to a Christian, because the Christian wanted to build a church on it.

In his interview on Hadiyul-Islam by Sa’da Abdul Maksoud, Abdul Rauf was asked his views on Shariah (Islamic religious law) and the Islamic state. He responded:

Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an
Islamic state can be established in more then just a single form or mold. It can
be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to
establish the general fundamentals of Shariah that are required to govern. It is known that there are sets of standards that are accepted by [Muslim] scholars to organize the relationships between government and the governed. [emphasis added]

When questioned about this, Abdul Rauf continued: “Current governments are unjust and do not follow Islamic laws.” He added:

New laws were permitted after the death of Muhammad, so long of course that
these laws do not contradict the Quran or the Deeds of Muhammad … so they create institutions that assure no conflicts with Shariah. [emphasis in translation]

In yet plainer English, forget the separation of church and state. Abdul Rauf’s goal is the imposition of Shariah law — in every country, even democratic ones like the U.S.

But these attitudes are nothing new for the (alas, few) people who have been paying attention. Way back on September 30, 2001, Faisal Abdul Rauf was interviewed on 60 Minutes by host Ed Bradley. Their verbatim dialogue from this CBS News transcript concluded:

BRADLEY: Are- – are — are you in any way suggesting that we in the United States deserved what happened?

Imam ABDUL RAUF: I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

BRADLEY: OK. You say that we’re an accessory?

Imam ABDUL RAUF: Yes.

BRADLEY: How?

Imam ABDUL RAUF: Because we have been an accessory to a lot of — of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, it — in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is
made in the USA.

This is the “anti-terrorist” of the Daily News article?

The Faisal Abdul Rauf who spoke to 60 Minutes in 2001 is the same Abdul Rauf who, in the last couple of months, espoused the spread of Shariah law on Arabic websites and said the opposite in the pages of the Daily News. He is the man New York City authorities are about to allow to build a mosque on Ground Zero.

Caveat emptor. Meanwhile, perhaps some enterprising reporter should ask Abdul Rauf his opinion of that fatwa forbidding Muslims from selling land to Christians who intend to build a church on it.

This Week on The Gathering Storm

(This post is a weekly announcement. Please scroll down for other postings)

Listen to The Gathering Storm Radio Show, hosted by WC and Always On Watch. The show broadcasts live every Friday beginning at noon, Pacific Time.

The call-in number is (646) 915-9870.

Callers welcome!

Our scheduled guest is IQ al Rassooli.

Listen to the May 28, 2010 edition of The Gathering Storm Radio Show, live or later, by CLICKING HERE.

UPCOMING SHOWS
June 4: Alec Rawls
June 11: IQ al Rassooli
June 18: Midnight Rider

The Year of Making Lunches

I spent 20 years at the same company doing a job I liked very much. I didn't always like who I did it for, but I liked the work I did.

My dad worked at the same company all his life. Cradle to quite literally grave.

I had planned to retire from there some day. I did excellent work. There were no complaints.

About a half dozen years ago, I queered a dirty little kickback deal before it could take off. Well, probably did, anyway. It never took off so nothing could be proven. Suffice to say there were a number of people who were unhappy but in no position to do anything about it. And senior management was not among them. But a very ambitious and ruthless husband and wife team were.

It took some time but the wife managed to make it to Vice President, and my department reported to her. Within two weeks of her taking over I was transferred out to another department where my duties were never made clear other than to have my brain picked best they could about my job and how I did it.

Then, early September 2009, my position was eliminated. No place to move me. No black marks against me. Just eliminated.

Which, for a guy who had worked steady for 20 years, less than a dozen sick days in that time, was a bit of a culture shock.

I had been nominally an 8-5 employee but the truth was much longer and stranger hours than that. I was on call 24/7/365. If they couldn't get me at home or on my cell they knew my favorite pubs and had no problem calling them to find me if there was trouble.

So, in addition to trying to find work and trying to stay financially afloat (bailing water on The Titanic with a Dixie cup) while doing so, I took over chores my wife usually handled.

Like grocery shopping regularly. Understand, my wife used to have nightmares when I'd go to the grocery store alone. Especially if I went hungry.

Like mowing the lawn. She actually likes to do it (something to do with growing up on a farm) but I'm getting bored sitting around here.

Shoveling snow. My job usually required me to spend significant storms at the office. 72 hour shifts. Great fun. So for the big ones I was usually at work. Until those few monsters we had this winter I hadn't seriously lifted a shovel in many years.

Making suppers regularly. This is one I'm very good at. I learned to cook as a kid from my mom and grandmom and how to run a good grill in the summer from my dad. You don't get dry burned pork chops when I'm cooking.

Making the lunches for my wife and daughter. I was let go the day after my daughter (daughter #3) started 6th grade. She will be done in 3 weeks. So at 180 school days times 2 that's 360 lunches I've made in a years time. It is the one absolute constant through this whole damned mess. Kid's getting ready for bed? Got to make the lunches for tomorrow.

That may not seem like alot to you who have been doing the same for years but to a guy who is used to listening to phone calls, designing recording and editing auto-attendants (yep, I'm one of those guys who makes you press one for English) and making decisions on the best software to get for call center applications and keeping the damn thing up and running so that emergency calls can get through I assure you the excitement of it is underwhelming.

But this is not complaining here (not that I don't from time to time). It is what it is. I didn't do anything to bring this on and I'm still able to sit here writing this and, although things are getting damned tight after a year of making sandwiches, at the moment, I'm okay. Tomorrow that may change but I'll deal with tomorrow when it gets here.

And I'm happy to report my wife and daughter # 2 state I am far more domesticated than I was in September. If somewhat more curmudgeonly.

The point is this. And this is going to sound like I'm patting myself on the back but here goes.

I have an impressive work record. And very good repertoire of specialized telecomm skills. I come highly recommended. And I can not find work right now.

And I am not alone. I was at a job fair several weeks ago and the line was out the door and down the block for a 3 hour fair. And they weren't just new kids, graduates, looking to hook up their first "real" position. These were mid management suits trying to find work.

When nearly a half million people lost their jobs in one week alone, how can anyone believe there's been an economic turn around? How can anyone say they're being stimulated?

I don't need to ask 25 questions to find out it's all bullshit. I only need to make 360 lunches to know that.

By the way, that husband and wife team? The husband was fired a couple months ago. No severance. I know the reason why and it's not the bullshit story they're allowing as gossip to spread to the employees. What goes around comes around.

And not that I find any glee in this but the day after I left their entire call center network came crashing down. And is still not completely correct. When I met with a friend a little while back he said he saw an email he wasn't supposed to, left lying about, between vendor techs.

"They got rid of the only guy who knew what the fuck he was doing with this system."

:)

someday I'll write a book about that joint. . .

Business Insider:

25 Questions To Ask Anyone Who Is Delusional Enough To Believe This Economic Recovery Is Real

If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case?

Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that.

Click here to see the questions you should ask yourself >

What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.

And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiraled out of control.

Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn't mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.

Any "recovery" that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.

But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.

Never Let a Good Crisis. . .

I'm not so cynical as to believe that Obama would allow the oil spill to deepen just to use it to push for climate change legislation. I'm not that cynical.

The hell I ain't.

Politico:

Obama cites spill in climate pitch

FREMONT, Calif. – President Obama called the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico “heartbreaking” and said it makes the passage of climate change legislation all the more urgent this year.

“The spill in the Gulf, which is just heartbreaking, only underscores the necessity of seeking alternative fuel sources,” Obama said after declaring climate change a “threat to our way of life” and calling on Congress to pass climate change bill “this year.”

Obama expressed tempered hope that the attempt to plug the oil leak, an effort known as top kill, will work. The Coast Guard gave BP approval to go ahead with the operation as early as Wednesday.

“If it’s successful, and there are no guarantees, it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil now streaming into the Gulf from the sea floor,” he said. “If it’s not there are other approaches that may be viable.”

Increasingly under fire for his response to the oil spill, Obama said his administration is “intensively engaged.” “We’re going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop to this,” he said, adding that he looks forward to visiting the Gulf Coast Friday to “lend my support to the region.”

But even as he expressed concern about the oil spill, Obama pivoted off the current crisis to make a pitch for refocusing America’s energy use away from fossil fuels like oil and toward a cleaner-energy economy.

Obama pivoted off the current crisis to reinforce how dangerous the United States’ dependence on oil is and to press for energy and climate change legislation.

“We all know the price we pay as a country,” Obama said. “With the increased risks and increased costs, it gives you a sense of where we’re going. We’re not going got be able to sustain this kind of fossil fuel use. This planet can’t sustain it.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) have proposed a climate-change bill, though Democrats are skeptical that it can get traction in a year that has already seen major fights over health care and Wall Street reform, especially with the midterms looming.

But even as Obama vowed to set the country on a clean energy path and promised his administration “will not rest” until the leak is plugged, Obama acknowledged that an immeasurable amount of damage has already been done – to the ecosystem in the Gulf Coast and beyond, to the economies of the communities that rely on it.

“We’re going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop to this thing but a lot of damage has been done already,” Obama said.

America’s oil addiction is not only a national security and economic threat, he said, but also sets the nation at a global competitive disadvantage.

The nation that leads the clean energy economy is the one that will lead the global economy, he said.

Before addressing workers, Obama toured the manufacturing plant and adjacent construction site of a company called Solyndra. The construction is funded through a grant in the stimulus bill and is expected to expand Solyndra’s business and create several thousand jobs.

Obama then promised the couple hundred workers seated in the new manufacturing building that the economy will get better.

“As difficult as it may be,” he said, “we will recover. ... We will rebuild.”

"MOHAMMED GAVE HIM A FAG AT 18 MONTHS"

From The Sun:

THESE are the first shocking pictures of smoking toddler Ardi Rizal - who throws tantrums if he can't puff 40 cigs a day.

The Sun told on Saturday how the two-year-old got hooked after dad Mohammed gave him a fag at 18 months.

Now he weighs 4st and trundles round on a toy truck blowing smoke rings - too unfit to run with other kids.

Mum Diana, 26, wept: "He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick." (Maybe he's being visited by Allah).

No kidding ... 4st toddler Ardi Rizal
is too unfit to run round with pals

Ardi will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents £3.78 a day in Musi Banyuasin, Indonesia.

Officials have offered to buy the family a car if he quits. 

But fishmonger Mohammed, 30, said: "He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem."

Clannad
I Will Find You



Robin The Hooded Man

The Hypocrisy of the Politically-Correct Attitude Towards Muslims

From Bernie at Planck's Constant:

I have never understood people who can hold those two concepts in their head simultaneously:

1. Muslims are like dangerous, wild, violent, murderous psychopaths - say nothing to antagonize them.
2. There is nothing wrong with allowing Muslims to come to America, they pose no danger to our way of life.

Humpday Blues

Sonny Boy Williamson

Keep It To Yourself