http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/07/120703-israel-new-natural-gas/ For National Geographic News Israel’s northern port city of Haifa has been a crucial energy center for decades; refineries dating back to the British Mandate in this land have long processed the oil sent by pipeline or shipped here from abroad. Today, rigs are working off Haifa’s coast to tap the first major fossil-fuel […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3176/honor-violence-in-america
Other girls, unable to resolve the conflict between submitting to a marriage, and essentially being raped by a stranger – not to mention the physical torture and possible murder if they resist – prefer to end their lives.
Aiya Altemeemi, aged 19, suffered a punishment last February that none of her schoolmates in Phoenix, Arizona could have imagined: her father cut her throat with a kitchen knife. When she escaped to her bedroom, her mother and sisters followed, tied her to her bed, taped her mouth shut, and beat her. And this was not the first time: previously, when Aiya had expressed reservations about marrying the 38-year-old man her parents had chosen as her husband, her mother had shackled her to the same bed and burned her with a hot spoon.
Despite such treatment, Aiya, who arrived from Iraq with her parents around three years ago, soon after announced to stunned reporters that she understood why her mother had assaulted her: “Because I talked to a boy, and that is not normal with her, that is not my religion. My religion says no talking to boys.”
Alhough Aiya’s was among the few to receive media attention, stories like hers are far more common than most people would imagine. In what is known as “honor violence,” mistreatment includes not just beatings, but acid attacks, setting a woman on fire, severing her nose from her face — particularly in Pakistani and Afghan communities — and other forms of mutilation.
Such incidents, which occur mainly in Muslim and Hindu families, have been the focus of attention in Europe for several years — largely thanks to the efforts of Somali-Dutch activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who first brought the problem to light some ten years ago in the Netherlands. Since then, research has uncovered disturbing statistics: 400 to 600 incidents of honor violence are recorded annually in the Netherlands alone, with around 12 honor killings a year each in Germany and the Netherlands. And in England, where the directors of one center say they receive 500 calls for help from victims of honor violence every month, and where police estimate there are between 3,000 and 17,000 incidents of honor violence each year, a recent report contends that one-fifth of all South Asian immigrants believe that “certain acts thought to shame families were justification for violence.”
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3178/jihadi-tourism-europe
European security officials are especially concerned about reports that al-Qaeda is recruiting and training Western operatives who have “clean” criminal records and have the ability to travel freely and blend in with European and American cultures.
Increasing numbers of Muslims in Europe are travelling to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other conflict zones to obtain training in terrorist methods.Although intelligence agencies have been following the trend since the July 2005 bombings of the London commuter system, which were perpetrated by four home-grown Islamic terrorists, the scale of the problem has come into greater focus in recent weeks.
European security officials are especially concerned about reports that al-Qaeda is recruiting and training Western operatives who have “clean” criminal records and have the ability to travel freely and blend in with European and American cultures.
In Norway, for example, an ethnic Norwegian convert to militant Islam who has received terrorist training from al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen, is awaiting orders to carry out an attack on the West, officials from three European security agencies said on June 25.
European officials have confirmed that the man is “operational,” meaning he has completed his training and is about to receive a target. Although the terrorist-in-waiting is believed to still be in Yemen, even if he is found he cannot be extradited: under Norwegian law it is not a crime to attend a terrorist training camp.
The London-based newspaper Sunday Times, quoting intelligence services, published a story on July 1 that said the Norwegian jihadist had been trained by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP] to evade airport security and is plotting to hijack an American passenger plane and, in a suicide mission, crash it. The newspaper portrayed the plot as an attack on the upcoming London Olympics, to be held from July 27 to August 12, but said the target was specifically supposed to be an American aircraft.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3168/anti-semitism-sweeping-france
“As always, the Jews are like the canary in the coalmine. If Europe fails to protect its Jews, it must be feared that soon Christians, too, will no longer feel safe in Europe. When the Jews are made to flee, it will not be long before others will have to flee as well. Recently, Monsignor Anba Damian, bishop of the Coptic Church in Germany, warned that persecutions of Christians might soon be a reality in Germany. “There is a real danger that an ever more dominant Islam in Germany will seriously threaten Christians,” he said. Many think the Bishop is scaremongering. However, as teacher Iannis Roder said in the Nouvel Observateur, in the late 1990s, he could not have believed that anti-Semitism would again become a common phenomenon in France. “I am from a generation that thought that anti-Semitism had died with the Shoah [Holocaust]. I could never have imagined that it would resurface.”
If Europe fails to protect its Jews, it must be feared that soon Christians, too, will no longer feel safe in Europe. When the Jews are made to flee, it will not be long before others will have to flee as well.
http://times247.com/
Gaza Christians protest forced Islamic conversions
Times of Israel
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
News
Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will. The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz20sVoKFvG
Urban League fears black turnout will drop
Reuters
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
News
High voter turnout among African Americans helped get President Barack Obama elected in 2008 but a black rights group fears even a small drop in turnout in the November election might cause him to lose or struggle in several key states. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz20sVMwKTH
Gergen: Facts don’t back Obama on Bain
CNN
Monday, July 16, 2012
Commentary
Gergen: Facts don’t back Obama on Bain
There may be a number of good reasons to vote against Mitt Romney, but based upon what we know so far, his honesty about his tenure at Bain Capital does not seem to be one of them. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz20sVVPMIc
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Anyone who has watched enough monster movies knows how hard it is to kill the monster. You can set Frankenstein on fire, stab Dracula through the chest with a wooden stake and take the Wolfman to the vet; but sooner or later they come roaring back twice as angry as ever. The Israel Policy […]
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2250 Silman is not Bouazizi; Israel is not Tunisia When 57-year-old Haifa resident Moshe Silman set himself on fire during Saturday night’s demonstration in Tel Aviv to mark the year anniversary of the social protests, he also sparked a media blaze. Before he’d even made it to the hospital, comparisons were being made between his […]
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/16/the-company-they-keep/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
Team Obama has welcomed Islamists in their midst
The truism that you know someone by the company they keep has rarely been more true than in respect to the Obama administration and its burgeoning ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Just last weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became the latest member of Team Obama to consort with sworn enemies of the United States when she sat down with the newly installed president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Despite official, media and academic efforts to portray Mr. Morsi — and, for that matter, the Muslim Brotherhood more generally — as the kind of people with whom the United States can safely deal in the evolving Middle East and here, the determination of these Islamists to impose their supremacist Islamic doctrine of Shariah worldwide could not be more palpable. Their hostility to America, Israel, Western civilization and other infidels goes back to the founding of the organization in 1928 and is rooted in its guiding program — Shariah — and it is absolute and unwavering. Those who say otherwise are deluding themselves or deliberately deceiving others.
Although it cannot be confirmed at this writing, Mrs. Clinton presumably was accompanied on her travels as usual — particularly in the Middle East — by her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. That would be all the more probable given that Ms. Abedin has myriad family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, her mother, Saleha Abedin, is a leader of the organization’s secretive women’s auxiliary, the Muslim Sisterhood, in which she serves along with Mr. Morsi’s wife, Naglaa Ali Mahmoud.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/309606/obama-against-self-made-man-rich-lowry If Bartlett’s ever puts together a collection of insultingly deflating quotations, it should include President Barack Obama’s take on business success before a crowd in Virginia the other day: “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” Obama was explaining — as is his wont — why the rich should pay […]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/16/New-Polls-Show-Why-Obama-Panicked The media narrative and the Obama campaign narrative has been, per the usual, exactly the same. We keep hearing about how Obama’s dishonest attacks against presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney — which have been going on for somewhere around 11,484 unrelenting days now — are taking a real toll on Romney, especially in swing […]
