DEDICATED TO EXPOSING DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA AND TO PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS - WITH SHARP ANALYSIS AND BLUNT COMMENTARY. NO ADS. NO TIP-JAR. JUST THE TRUTH.
NYTIMES FRONT PAGE: Democrats Seek to Rally Blacks in Bid to Retain Senate Control
Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress.
O.J. Simpson wants to convert to Islam — if he can get through the holy month of Ramadan.And upon his release, Tyson made the situation even worse by biting off the ear of Evander Holyfield. One can only wonder what Simpson, if he's ever released from prison, will do after converting. This was a man who murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend in 1994, and never paid properly for it. And who effectively embarrassed his screen performances. Now he's made things worse by converting, in his words, to find redemption for his deeds, but in reality, as a justification for them. A pure disgrace.
Ramadan is the fourth of the five pillars of Islam, and requires Muslims to fast during the hours of daylight. And as any recent photo will attest, food is a big, big part of Simpson’s daily life.
According to the National Enquirer, a source said Simpson sometimes wears the traditional Kufi prayer cap and studies the Koran, but failed to fast during Ramadan.
[...] The Enquirer reported that Simpson became interested in Islam through former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, who converted to Islam while serving time in prison for rape.
"It is very exciting," Jorgen Ouren of Statistics Norway tells The Local news website. A recent count of the city's population showed more than 4,800 men and boys in the city are called Mohammed, beating out other popular names like Jan and Per. Although Mohammed - with various spellings - has been the favourite name for baby boys in Oslo for the past four years, this is the first time it has also topped the men's list.
And it's not only in Norway that the name is gaining ground. The UK's Office for National Statistics says Mohammed was the most common name parents gave to baby boys in England and Wales in 2013.Unless Europeans start having more kids and start expelling non-citizen muslims who want sharia, or who have fought for islamists or donated money to islamists or who attend mosques which support islamists, then Norway and Europe are finished and 1000 years of islamist tyranny and utter darkness will reign.
A group of 230 Jews, reportedly from the cult group Lev Tahor, have started leaving the Guatemalan Indian village where at least some of them have lived for six years amid claims that they were threatened.Yep, the cult sure was being pretty clever there. Besides, how can anyone sympathise with a group who dress in layers of black clothes in the sweltering heat much like Saudi Arabia, shun general knowledge, make their female members wear burka-shaped outfits and even refuse to recognize women outside their cult as human? That's not doing much to prove respect for other communities based on personal character. It's only exploiting hosts and milking them for all they're worth, much as they tried doing in Canada.
Reports about the expulsion of Jews from San Juan La Laguna, located on the banks of Lake Atitlan 125 miles from the capital Guatemala City, first surfaced in May.
However, George Tannenbaum, President of the Guatemala Jewish Community, claimed in early June that the group under discussion and particularly its leader Misael Santos were members of the Lev Tahor cult, which has reportedly engaged in shocking physical and sexual abuse. Members of the group have tried fleeing Canada to Guatemala over legal proceedings.
Since October, the local indigenous population has accused the Jewish group of violating Mayan customs.In this case, they're justified to think Lev Tahor could be imposing, since they took such a degrading stand on women's dignity, to name one example. A group that corrupts Judaism with mixtures of Islam does no favors for Judaism, and that's why they don't belong there. The question remaining now is where Lev Tahor will go next? Earlier signs suggest they might be breaking up, but still a lot needs to be done to put a stop to this revolting cult and their physical/mental abuse of the children in their clutches.
The Council of Indigenous Elders said the Jewish group "wanted to impose their religion," and was undermining the Catholic faith that is predominant in the village.
"We act in self-defense and to respect our rights as indigenous people. The (Guatemalan) constitution protects us because we need to conserve and preserve our culture," council spokesman Miguel Vasquez told AFP.
The town's Elders Council voted last week to force the group to leave because they say some members of the sect have mistreated indigenous residents and tourists in the area.They tried to cheat the local businesses and picked fights with tourists over peanuts. I must fully agree that's not acceptable behavior, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did it on purpose to embarrass Judaism's image in a foreign country. One more reason why they should be ashamed of themselves and deserve to be exiled from a sane society.
Antonio Ixtamer, who lives in the community, said that several members of the group had upset residents because of their arrogant attitude.
He said several times members of the Lev Tahor community would go into stores and pay whatever they wanted for the products rather than the marked price. He said they also bothered tourists.
"On one occasion there was a tourist taking pictures of a hill and the Jews thought he was taking photos of them and they clashed," Ixtamer said.
"This is not normal behaviour in a community that lives off of tourism," he added.
A sister of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was arrested in New York Wednesday after allegedly threatening a woman in a domestic harassment case, saying, “I have people that can go over there and put a bomb on you.”It sounds like a case of jealousy here. In any case, she did a grave wrong and should face serious penalties for it.
Ailana Tsarnaev, of North Berger, New Jersey, was arrested at a police station in New York City Wednesday afternoon, charged with one count of aggravated harassment. She was released with a summons to return to a criminal court in Manhattan on Sept. 3, according to police Lt. John Grimpel.
Grimpel said the victim of Ailana Tsarnaev’s alleged threat has a child with the father of one of Tsarnaev’s children. Grimpel did not elaborate on the nature of the dispute.
Israeli authorities have stressed that at present they have no firm evidence of a terrorist abduction, but confirmed that the circumstances surrounding Sofer’s disappearance are pointing in that direction.This is just why it's becoming dangerous to hike in some parts of the country.
Israeli police said on Thursday they had found the body of a 23-year-old American student who went missing last week near a forest in Jerusalem and that they did not suspect a criminal motive.Even so, it's still terrible that an innocent person had to suffer a terrible fate.
Aaron Sofer, a Jewish seminary student from New Jersey, vanished last Friday while walking in woods not far from the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. His body was found earlier on Thursday.
"Following a forensic examination, the body ... was identified as that of missing person Aaron Sofer. Tests showed that no criminal act was committed and the body will be transferred to the family in the coming hours," a police spokeswoman said.
Another enjoyable element is that Kamala's Muslim faith and upbringing plays a big role in the story. So often in comic books a new character will be introduced with a certain religion or characteristic that is just there so that they can bring it up every now and then so the writer can call it a characteristic. But in Ms. Marvel, Kamala's faith is a huge part of who she is – who she and her family are. They go to mosques, they wear headscarves, and she has to seek advice from her Sheika. Her religion is actually an integral element of the story and the character and is woven well throughout the first seven issues.Obviously again, this rendition does not admit there's an iota wrong with the Religion of Peace, but what this op-ed also confirms is that, despite any claims to the contrary, Islam does play a significant role in this propaganda, proving Marvel doesn't have the courage to admit they're fine with promoting a particular agenda, and the use of taqqiya (deception).
Though the religious aspect of the story is important, the strongest element in this series is its characters. Rarely has a comic book had this strong a set of characters. Whether it be Zoe, the ditzy blonde girl in school who thinks that she is really reaching out as a friend to Kamala when she really isn't or it be Bruno, Kamala's second-best friend, who only tries to look out for her -- even if that means getting her in trouble with her parents. And there's a plethora of other great supporting characters in this book, such as Sheika Abdula, who initially comes off as a grouchy old man who has disdain for Kamala but is actually very kind and understanding to her plight.Curious how the writer says the characters don't feel like stereotypes when, as noted before, the non-Muslim whites (and probably Blacks and Latinos too) come across terribly, and the blonde student is apparently just one of those examples of poor focus on "kuffars" (infidels), if she's portrayed negatively. He fails to consider how the surreal depiction of the family is all done at the expense of some of the guest characters. Yet the mother's rendition is eyebrow raising. Why must the father be portrayed as "caring", yet the mother characterized more as a hothead? And how interesting that this, of all books Marvel could be publishing, is the one allegedly featuring the "brightest" viewpoint, scuttled by how it only serves to mask an ideology thriving on darkness. I've often had the feeling a lot of so-called reviewers do these positive takes deliberately, and wouldn't be surprised if the same applies here. At the end, it says:
The best set of characters in this book, though, are Kamala and her family. G. Willow Wilson does a fantastic job injecting her family with humanity and believability. They don't feel like cartoonish over-the-top stereotypes they feel like real people. Kamala's brother Jamir is very religious but you understand that he has a deep interest in the teachings and ideals of his faith, Kamala's mother Disha is very shrill and hysterical but it's because she doesn't really understand what the American teenager is like, compared to her upbringing. And Kamala's father Abu-Jann is very stern but clearly cares about Kamala and understands her better than the rest of her family. None of them come off as completely annoying and you really care about Kamala's relationship to all of them and how much they all care for each other.
Ms. Marvel is a great read for kids, adults teens, women, Muslims, everyone!It's very dishonest to say it's great for women and children if it's not transparent about the religion's content, yet, as earlier research shows, not every Muslim is enthused either, the propaganda angles notwithstanding. The idea of a girl with powers is not something hardcore Muslims appreciate. And I just remembered: G. Willow Wilson claimed earlier that polymorphs are portrayed negatively, yet Big Bertha is one heroine in the MCU whose power of inflating her structure to huge proportions is very much like polymorphism, which makes Ashley Crawford another character of that kind who's been depicted positively, and Wilson failed to take note of.
Six years ago, Yaser Abdel Said, now 57, made headlines after he killed his two teenage daughters. Investigators concluded the murders were honor killings that Said doled out because his daughters were dating non-Muslim boys.That's because there's ways to get around the system, enabling them to work illegally. If that monster's there, anyone who identifies him should contact the authorities immediately.
Said was never arrested – or even found – after the murders, and the FBI believes he may have fled to Egypt. The case hasn’t received much public attention in recent years until now, as a documentary on the killings is set to be released. The film, "The Price of Honor," intends to educate the public on both Said’s murders and honor killings in general.
[...] The FBI believes Said may be in New York or Egypt. Private investigator Bill Warner, who was hired by the girls’ family after the murders, thinks he could be in New York City working as a taxi driver.
“It’s all he knows and I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if he’s there working as a taxi driver,” investigator Bill Warner told Fox News in May. “He could blend in at a metropolis like New York.”
Israeli police said Tuesday they are searching for a young New Jersey religious student who disappeared during a hike in a forest outside Jerusalem last week.The fears of kidnapping are very legitimate in these tense times, so they better continue to act serious about this. It's bad enough the reaction to the kidnapping of the 3 yeshiva students 2 months ago was awful. They should not make the same mistake here.
Aaron Sofer, 23, of Lakewood, N.J., has been missing since Friday, when he went on a hike with a friend in the Jerusalem Forest, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Rosenfeld said police have launched an extensive search for Sofer, an ultra-Orthodox student at a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. Sofer's parents have flown to Israel.
Shlomo Sofer, Aaron's cousin, criticized the search response and called on the Israeli military to get involved. He told FoxNews.com roughly 500 people took part in searches of the Beit Zayit area of the woods on Tuesday. [...]
"This is a young, American student who came to Israel to spend a year or two here," he said. "And there's no reason to assume he has committed suicide or has done anything silly or immature. We feel they should be taking further measures in terms of investigating a possible abduction."
"On the erotic side, on the other hand, I found the thing a little surprising," he continued. "Apart from the fact that there is a compulsory prerequisite to do: it seems to me that both in the United States and in the rest of the world there are things much more important and serious you have to deal with. The facts of Ferguson, or the drama of Ebola. That there are people that if the take for things like… unless there is, in these times, a hypersensitivity to images more or less erotic, due to this continuous comparison that we are called to do with Islam. We know that the censure of the woman's body should not be a characteristic our, western. It is also this that I am surprised enough."It's difficult to understand, but I think he's suggesting the dissenters are taking a risk of calling for censorship like Muslims do of lovely female imagery. And as much as Slott and Brevoort, Marvel's most vehement apologists for Islam, must want to defend the cover art, knowing their politics, I wouldn't be surprised if they're now red in the face with embarrassment after what Manara told the Italian site. Just 4 days ago, Slott said:
If someone can find me the post where I defended the choice to use the variant cover, I'd love to see it. I've been defending the artist.
— Dan Slott (@DanSlott) August 20, 2014
The EIA estimates that the U.S. has 223 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil. Pioneer Natural Resources estimates that 75 billion barrels are located in the Permian Basin alone, in the Spraberry/Wolfcamp shale formations.
That estimate is up 50% in the last year. … estimates of technically recoverable oil are likely to increase dramatically in the years to come.
For example, in the EIA’s 2011 world shale and tight oil report, the organization estimated that the world had 32 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale/tight oil reserves.
By 2013, those estimates had increased nearly 11-fold to 345 billion barrels. Given the fact that the EIA estimates 3.357 trillion barrels of shale oil resources exist in the world, even today’s lofty estimates are likely only scratching the surface of what future technology can accomplish.The rest of the world might have a lot of oil too.
The technology of oil discovery and oil production is moving forward at remarkable rates, bringing more and more oil formations into reach.
At the same time, the cost of discovery and production are being brought down by new approaches, and depletion rates are being brought under better control.
The drilling techniques were developed by companies that began drilling multiple wells offshore from one location. The technique is called horizontal drilling, where companies could drill thousands of feet vertically and then drill hundreds of feet horizontally from the same well bore.
Multiple wells could be drilled from the same platform, which saved time and money.
Horizontal drilling moved onshore and became a key component in the production of natural gas, and later crude oil, from shale formations originally in the Barnett Shale of North Texas… …
Companies have been fracturing wells since 1947 in an effort to force open intervals in the rock. Shale, however, created additional problems because of the tightness of the formation. A technique called slick water injections using hydraulic fracturing was developed and the success started a flurry of activity.
Today, companies are experimenting with new technologies that are even more successful.
One such company is BHP Billiton, an Australian based company that plans to spend $4 billion drilling 400 wells in Texas’s Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale this year… … poorly propped fracs were the primary cause of rapid decline in production, which caused BHP to turn from the slick water techniques to the BroadBand Sequence technique developed by Schlumberger that creates chemical diversions to improve stimulated rock volume and create a more uniform distribution across clusters.
Skaufels said BHP, which holds about 300,000 net acres in the Eagle Ford play, is the second largest producer in the Eagle Ford, but it has its sights on becoming the largest and most cost efficient producer.
“Our costs have come way down over the last year, and it’s because now we’ve got time to actually be able to look at what we’re doing, analyze our data, and improve,” he said. “We have seen a 25 percent improvement in both time and cost,” Skaufels said …
The news of national shooter Tara Sahdev’s husband unleashing dogs on her has sent shock chills across the nation. The reason behind this heinous act has been her decision of not agreeing for the religion conversion as demanded by her husband. Jharkhand born Tara Sahdev has alleged that her husband Ranjit Kumar Kohli had been pressurizing to convert her religion to Islam and when she denied doing anything of that sort, she was subjected to physical assaults on various occasions – including dogs being unleashed on her and also keeping her without food for days.Here's more on India TV:
In her claims, Tara Sahdev accused Ranjit Kumar Kohli of marrying her under pretext of wrong identity and that he was a Muslim man named Rakibul Hasan. The national shooter said that she was wooed by Ranjit who used to come and watch her practice on the shooting grounds. The two came close and got married on July 7 in a grand affair that was attended by several big names, including politicians. But the nightmare began from the first night itself when Ranjit Kumar Kohli alias Rakibul Hasan called 20-25 Hajis and forced Tara to convert to Islam. And when she refused, she was brutally assaulted and left to be bitten by dogs. Rakibul also tried to physical force himself upon her.
Tara Sahdev had registered the complaint and gave her statement against her husband in front of DSP Deepak Kumar. She had also decided to report her turmoil to State National Commission for Women’s chief, Mahua Manjhi and BJP leader Ajay Nath Shahdev.
According to Tara, Rakibul kept her under confinement for one month and forced her to convert into Islam.It may or may not be surprising a Muslim would keep dogs around, no matter how much Islam regards canines as filthy. As this horror story hints, a Muslim might keep dogs around just for using to target innocent people. The savage who commited this spousal abuse while concealing his true background should be locked in a dungeon for eternity.
Tara alleged that Rakibul made her starve and even changed her name to Sara, to which she protested strongly.
“He did not let me meet anybody. He threatened to beat me and even said that he will shoot me if I refuse to convert into Islam… he assaulted me very badly. I was forced to speak ‘qubool hai’ three times and also to say I am not a Hindu as I have changed my religion. I was even bitten by dogs,” she said.
Tara said that Rakibul also forced her to get physical with him.
“He tortured me mentally and had sex with me on a gunpoint,” she said.
[...] She further said that Ranjit did not disclose that he was a Muslim and instead faked his identity.
You once said to Will Eisner that "In the world of comics, 'troublemaker' means someone with some sense of dignity." Do you know many contemporary comics creators that are galvanizing enough to be dignified?An interesting observation. If anything, we could say that so-called auteurs like Dan Slott, Ron Marz, Gail Simone, Mark Waid, Scott Lobdell, Tom Brevoort, Grant Morrison, Erik Larsen and Mark Millar, among others of their ilk, are not people with dignity, given how some of them are prone to making statements and/or writing stories with a lot of leftism stuffed in. Adams, by contrast, may be a liberal, but isn't the kind who forces his politics so cynically upon others and doesn't spite the audience like some of the aforementioned do.
I'm not going to take anyone down in public, but there are still creators like Neal Adams out there setting a good example.
After 9/11, you said that your political stance was most like a "liberal hawk." That perspective comes up in your Holy Terror graphic novel, which serves as a good companion to your sequel to The Dark Knight Rises in some ways. Complacence seems to be the real enemy in both of those stories. Is that why you've been outspokenly critical of Occupy Wall Street? Do you feel it's a kind of slacktivist movement?And with all the horror stories coming out of the Occupy movement's encampments in the past 3 years before they collapsed, that just makes it all the more apparent they didn't know what they were looking for, other than the opportunity to aggravate innocent people. So again, I congratulate Miller for handing them the condemnation they deserved. His description as a "liberal hawk" sounds interesting, and could be another way of saying he's a liberal who's being a realist.
I've mainly objected to the Occupy protests because I don't see them as having clear-cut goals. I don't see its purpose, or who they're rebelling against, or what they want. As for my hawkish-ness, I wrote Holy Terror as a New Yorker that lost a couple thousand neighbors in a day. We were attacked, and a response needed to be made. I don't agree with the direction or the motives of the ensuing political indecision that followed. So I made a story about heroes that were ready to respond. I don't want to comment on it further than that.
Let me interject that I hold no brief for the police in America, at least in the cities. They inspire me with a frisson of fear every time I see one, though I break no law. Their manner is more that of masters of the public than of servants of the same; many of them seem to be the kind of people who wanted to be soldiers but couldn’t make the grade because they were not fit enough. They look menacing and seem to shoot to kill on relatively slight pretexts (or perhaps they are just bad shots).According to the FBI's figures, however, American policemen are physically assaulted more than 50,000 times a year. Fewer than 500 people are shot and killed by the police in a typical year.
British society, its political class and community leaders must share the blame for the "jihad generation" of young men and women joining the Islamic State terrorist organisation, a former senior Muslim Army officer says today.Seriously? If they were really disappointed, they wouldn't have listened to them in the first place.
Afzal Amin, who was chairman of the Armed Forces Muslim Association, a conflict strategist and a military adviser on winning "hearts and minds" in Afghanistan, says young Muslims in inner-city Britain have been left disenfranchised by politics and let down by imams and other community leaders.
Establishing the counter-narrative should not be left to "self-appointed Muslim community leaders" who have "failed and are failing in every aspect of the evolution of the British Muslim communities from foreign-born and raised immigrants to becoming native Brits". The former army captain added: "Almost all the mosques I know and know of have foreign imams who cannot even communicate with young people, let alone convince them of anything. Mosques almost everywhere are seen as out of touch and failing in their duty to guide young people.Hasn't it dawned upon him? They don't rehabilitate, they indoctrinate, all in synch with the Koran's beliefs. What we have here is either a taqqiya master, or just somebody throughly naive about the belief system he sticks with. People like him will not get the Muslim community to turn around, not in the UK, not anywhere.
"We must not be afraid to ask the difficult questions and to thoroughly cleanse our ghettoised communities from feeling so distant from the ideals of what it means to live in a free society where you can choose to practise faith or not to, where you can live alongside every faith and none, where your rights are protected under law and you are an equal citizen. These are noble values, yet in Muslim communities I have almost never heard these being discussed with young people in inner-city areas."
Mr Amin questioned why, despite being the single largest employer of imams in the UK, the prison system does not rehabilitate extremists sufficiently.