 THOUSANDS of wild camels, facing a cull in the outback, have been thrown an unexpected lifeline from distant Saudi Arabia, where the animal is revered rather than viewed as a pest. Saudi camel enthusiasts have mounted a "massive" internet campaign calling on their wealthy countrymen to bring the Australian animals to the desert kingdom, according to a report yesterday. The response followed the Australian Government's decision to kill 6,000 camels in the Northern Territory town of Dockwer River next week using marksmen firing from helicopters. The rescue plan has been greeted enthusiastically in Saudi Arabia, with camel-raisers volunteering to take in the Australian animals. "I own more than 80 camels but I am quite willing to receive as many more from Australia," Salim al-Hajjaji said. He had grown up with camels, he told Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily. "I am now about 50 years old but I am as attached to camels as I was in my boyhood." Saudi Arabia's rapid, oil-fuelled modernisation, which brought an extensive road network and pick-up trucks, has meant that the once-fabled camel caravans are a thing of the past, although the animal still provides transportation for some Bedouin in remote areas. Today camels are valued for their milk and meat while camel races are extremely popular sporting events. Every year across the kingdom there are also "beauty" pageants - similar to cat and dog shows in the West - where winners can pick up huge cash prizes. Australia's relationship with the animal could not be more different. The Government has committed $19 million to camel culling over four years. It is predicted that the million-strong population of wild camels will double in eight years if left unchecked. The feral camels compete with sheep and cattle for food, crush vegetation and invade remote settlements in search of water, sometimes terrifying people by storming into houses and ripping up water pipes in kitchens and bathrooms. They have also been branded big polluters, with a single camel allegedly emitting a tonne of carbon a year. Camels were brought to Australia in the 19th century as pack animals that were well suited to opening up vast unexplored areas. When their work was done, the animals were simply let loose into Australia's deserts. Khalifa al-Bigaili, a Saudi camel owner, urged Gulf businessmen this week to bring in the Australian animals to farm them for their milk. "We can buy them cheap or get them for free since Australians do not want them," he told Arab News. The Australian  ( Save a camel but lash a school girl? )
 By creeping In other words, as Gawker titled their story: Muammar Qaddafi More or Less Owns Your Links. Astute reporting below from a blog entitled Workbench:  Bit.ly Builds Business on Libya Domain
The URL shortening service Bit.ly just secured $2 million in financing from investors including O’Reilly’s AlphaTech Ventures. Though URL shorteners have been around for years, Bit.ly believes there’s money in offering Twitter-friendly short links along with web analytics to track how the links are used. The company reports that its links were clicked 20 million times last month. So far, the news coverage I’ve read about Bit.ly has neglected an unusual aspect of the startup: It’s one of the only prominent online ventures using a domain name in the .LY namespace, which is controlled by Libya. There are two issues that arise from this relationship. First, of course, is the appearance of an American company doing business with Libya, a country that the U.S. considered a state sponsor of terror from 1979 through 2006. On Dec. 21, 1988, Libyan intelligence agents planted a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 that blew up 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people onboard. Bit.ly’s only doing a trivial amount of business with Libya — the domains sell for $75 per year from the registrar Libyan Spider Network — but its use of .LY domain is helping to popularize and legitimize the top-level domain for general use on the Internet. It’s only a matter of time before a reporter decides to ask the families of Lockerbie victims what they think of the arrangement. I can’t imagine that story going well for the company. Even without that PR hit, there’s another potential concern for Bit.ly and any other venture that builds its business on an .LY domain. These domains are governed by Libyan law, as it states on the Libyan Spider Network site: Any .LY domain names may be registered, except domains containing obscene and indecent names/phrases, including words of a sexual nature; furthermore domain names may not contain words/phrases or abbreviations insulting religion or politics, or be related to gambling and lottery industry or be contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality. So the names must conform to Islamic morality, and it’s possible that the use of the domains could fall under the same rules. What are the odds that some of those 20 million clicks on a Bit.ly-shortened URL end up at sites that would be considered blasphemous or otherwise offensive in an Islamic nation? Bit.ly conveniently provides search pages for such topics as Islam, sharia, gambling and sex, any of which contain links that could spark another controversy. Bit.ly’s building a business atop a domain that could be taken away at any time, and the company’s only recourse would be to seek redress in the Libyan court system. Take a look at Section 11 of the regulations for .LY owners: The Arabic language is the language of interpretation, correspondence and the construction of the Regulation or anything related to it. … In case of conflict between the Arabic and the English versions the Arabic version shall prevail. I hope Bit.ly’s attorneys are brushing up on their Arabic. ~end More from Domain Name Wire: Is it wise to run a web service using a questionable country code domain? I’ve warned about the dangers of country code top level domains. Rogers Cadenhead made some interesting observations about Bit.ly, a URL shortening service that just scored $2M in funding. You see, .ly is the country code for Libya, which has a not-so-great history with the United States. He also points out some of the rules attached to country code domains. I’ve written before about .AE for United Arab Emirates that restricts uses within Muslim law. There’s no poker.ae, for example. The same thing goes for .ly. This presents a problem since the Bit.ly service let’s you forward to just about any web site with any topic. Technically the content isn’t hosted on a .ly domain, but the danger is there that Libya would lay the hammer on this. No serious business should use a country code domain name other than a major, unrestricted domain without special content rules. Update: Twitter’s selection of bit.ly is demise of popular URL shortening service tr.im: tr.im is now in the process of discontinuing service, effective immediately. Statistics can no longer be considered reliable, or reliably available going forward. However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009. Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected. We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed. No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount. There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening — users won’t pay for it — and we just can’t justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner. There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep. We apologize for the disruption and inconvenience this may cause you. (there’s money in tr.im somewhere – how about an auction?) Another update: Feedback from tr.im users convinced them to continue the service. With thanks to Creeping Sharia (Note also Tinyurl as another option)
 Google, the Internet’s ubiquitous search engine, is under fire this week for censoring negative search results about Islam. If you type “Christianity is” into the Google search box, there immediately pop up a series of suggested completions to the sentence, most of them derogatory: “Christianity is bulls—t,” “Christianity is not a religion,” “Christianity is a lie,” “Christianity is false,” “Christianity is wrong,” “Christianity is fake.” No positive suggests come up. Likewise with “Buddhism is,” and the sentence is once again completed with numerous negative suggestions: “Buddhism is wrong,” “Buddhism is not what you think,” and so on. But type in “Islam is,” and nothing comes up at all. The negative suggestions inundating the searcher for other religions are nowhere to be seen. Google, however, says it was all a mistake, and denies have done anything to favor Islam. “This is a bug,” insisted a Google spokesman, “and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.” Oddly enough, however, even with all of Google’s technical savvy, this “bug” persisted for days and continues as of this writing, long after Google’s announcement that it would quickly be fixed. Or perhaps it isn’t so odd, in light of Google’s long-established penchant for favoring the hard Left and its allies in the global jihad. Critics have complained for years about Google’s tendency to decorate its logo colorfully for cherished days of the Left such as Earth Day and International Women’s Day, while ignoring Christmas (aside from bland Holiday greetings) and Easter. What’s more, Google-owned YouTube has more than once removed material critical of Islamic jihad supremacism, while allowing blood-curdling pro-jihad and vile anti-Semitic material to remain on the site. Google’s policies on removing videos all too often has appeared to follow a consistent Leftist line: anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-jihad. It is also a remarkable coincidence that Google’s “bug” would appear in Google not about Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, but in connection with the world’s most thin-skinned religion.
The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about “red lines that should not be crossed” regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls “defamation of religions,” but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons. Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn’t need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc’s war against free speech and to oblige the OIC’s totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial. What’s more, what with Google’s influence as by far the premier search engine, the idea that Western non-Muslims must make special allowances for easily-offended Muslims sets a precedent that can only bear bitter fruit in the future.
Ultimately Google, and every individual, group, business, and governing authority in the West, is going to have to decide whether it is going to stand for the hard-won principles of free speech and free inquiry, or kowtow to Islamic supremacism and intimidation. When the censorship is voluntary and self-imposed, as in Google’s case, it is all the more shameful. FPM
 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A church was set on fire in Malaysia early Friday by unidentified attackers amid a growing conflict in the country over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims, officials said. Only the first floor office of the Metro Tabernacle Church was destroyed in the blaze that started a little after midnight Thursday, said church spokesman Kevin Ang.
The worship areas on the upper two floors were undamaged, and there were no injuries. The church is located in a three-story building on a shopping street in Desa Melawati, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, the main city of this Muslim-majority country. The attack on the Protestant church comes days after the Kuala Lumpur High Court struck down a 3-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word "Allah" in their literature. The government has appealed against the court verdict, which allowed a Catholic publication to use the common word for God in the Malay language, and the High Court has suspended its decision from being enforced until the appeal is heard. Muslims argue that "Allah" is exclusive to Islam, and its use by Christians would confuse Muslims and tempt them to convert to Christianity. The court decision has resulted in a rash of angry comments and threats by Muslims on the Internet. Dozens of Muslim groups are planning a protest against the court decision on Friday after weekly prayers. Friday's fire was the first time the controversy turned destructive. District police chief Zakaria Pagan told the AP "we are still investigating" the fire and said he will issue a statement later. Another church official quoted a witness as saying she saw three or four men on a motorcycle breaking the main glass front of the church and throw something inside, possibly a gasoline bomb. The account could not be independently confirmed. About 60 percent of Malaysia's 28 million people are Malay Muslims, while the rest are ethnic Chinese and Indians, who follow Christianity, Hinduism and other religions. The High Court ruling was on a petition by the Herald, the main publication of Malaysia's Roman Catholic Church. It uses the word Allah in its Malay-language edition, which is read by indigenous tribes in the remote states of Sabah and Sarawak. The tribespeople are Malay-speaking, so Catholic officials say "Allah" is the only word they know for God. FoxNews
 By Emily Andrews The disturbed mind of the Christmas Day airline bomber is evident in a series of tormented postings he wrote on the internet.
As a lonely 18-year-old, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab turned to an Islamic web forum as he struggled with his shame over his sexuality and growing alienation from his family.
His innermost thoughts reveal a shy and awkward teenager who loved football – but also contain chilling hints of the terrorist he would become.
They show an increasingly religious and intolerant young man who fantasised about becoming a Muslim holy warrior in the ‘great jihad’ that would take place across the world.
In 310 internet posts written between 2005 and 2007, ‘Farouk1986’ – Abdulmutallab’s middle name and year of birth – desperately searches for guidance and help in hastily written messages filled with spelling and grammatical errors.
While at a prestigious British boarding school in Togo, he wrote: ‘First of all, I have no friends.
‘Not because I do not socialise, etc but because either people do not want to get too close to me as they go partying and stuff while I don’t, or they are bad people who befriend me and influence me to do bad things.
‘Hence I am in a situation where I do not have a friend, I have no one to speak too, no one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do.’
The posts were made on an Islamic bulletin board called Gawaher, which literally translates from Arabic as ‘gems’ or ‘jewels,’ but can also be read as ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’.
They started in 2005 when Abdulmutallab was 18 and preparing to apply to British universities.
He wrote about his privileged upbringing in Nigeria and his family’s wealth.
Abdulmutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a frequent visitor to the U.S., retired this year as chairman of First Bank of Nigeria and still sits on the boards of several prominent Nigerian firms....
 Egypt – Regimes throughout the Arab world are consistently censoring the Internet and arresting and torturing Internet users, a new human rights report has claimed. The 235-page report, “One Social Network With a Rebellious Message”, examines Internet freedom in 20 Arab countries. “In the Arab world, where the most repressive regimes lie, the Internet has been a tool used to bring democracy and free expression to the region,” read the report, issued by the Egypt-based, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). “This new force cannot be stopped by governments’ actions of censorship, blocking the internet and arresting and even torturing internet users.” The report looks at four online platforms – blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – as examples of Internet-based tools which Arab Internet users, especially young people, use to express their opinions, expose corruption and counter repression. “The problem is that there are no laws to regulate Internet usage,” Rawda Ahmed, a lawyer and head of the legal division at ANHRI told The Media Line. “Here in Egypt, there are many internet users, bloggers and Facebook users? Many of them are arrested, tortured or illegally detained, and receive arrest warrants under the Emergency Law.” The report found that Syria also employed its Emergency Law to censor and repress Internet users. In Saudi Arabia, the report said, religious authorities issued fatwas, or religious decrees, to ban certain websites the government was unable to block. According to the report the number of Internet users has reached 58 million in the Arab world, of which only users in Lebanon, Algeria and Somalia have Internet freedom. The report claimed that the relative freedom experienced by Internet users in Lebanon and Somalia is mainly due to the widespread practice of phone tapping in Lebanon and the government’s engagement in a conflict in Somalia. The report found that Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, countries which allowed Internet freedom in the past, have started to show a repressive attitude towards Internet users, while Egypt has become the Arab world’s most repressive country towards Internet users. Egypt stopped the policy of blocking websites five years ago, but has heightened its oppression of bloggers and Internet users. “The number of Internet users and bloggers in the Arab world who actually deal with political issues is only a few thousand,” the report said. “But these activists and bloggers have managed to shed light on corruption and oppression and are getting many forces and opposition blocs on their side.” The two Arab League members not included in the report are Djibouti and the Comoros Islands, for lack of information on Internet usage in these countries. Statistics on communications in the Arab world from the report: – 58 million Internet users – 176 million mobile phones – 34 million land lines – 12 million Facebook users – 600,000 bloggers, a quarter of them active – Algeria has the highest numbers of Internet cafes – around 16,000 – Egypt has the highest number of Internet users – 15 million and also the largest number of YouTube users – Mauritania has the lowest number of Internet users, with 60,000 – Countries with the highest number of Facebook users are Egypt, Algeria and Lebanon – The UAE has the highest number of mobile phone users
 How can young Muslims learn Islam's true message of peace, and not be bamboozled by the myriad Muslim Misunderstanders of Islam who lurk on the Internet? Laurel Bowman of the VOA (an organization that should know better) goes for an answer to Nihad Awad of the Hamas-linked unindicted co-conspirator CAIR. "Muslim Leaders Grapple with How to Protect Their Youth," by Laurel Bowman for the Voice of America, December 18: At one of the largest mosques in the United States, Muslim leaders are trying to create a safe haven for young people to learn Islam's lessons about peace. But can those leaders protect their youth from the doubts that lurk within them? Muslim leaders renewed efforts following the arrest of five American Muslims in Pakistan who allegedly tried to join terrorist groups using the Internet. It's a battle of bodies and for minds on this basketball court just outside Washington. It's Tuesday night at the Adams Center, one of the largest mosques in the U.S. The young people here are hard at play, and the Muslim elders are hard at work trying to keep them engaged in positive activities. [...] "Many of young people are vulnerable to being preyed on," said Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. Awad helped broker talks between the FBI and the families of the young men arrested in Pakistan. He says Muslim leaders had already started looking at dangers on the Internet before the men went missing. "On the Internet, the other side is trying to exploit people's feelings, and they give them instructions on how to do wrong things and we have to give (them) tools and manuals also on how to stay cool and level-headed and stay reasoned and don't get yourself and others in trouble," Awad said. At the Adams Center that discussion has started too. "We are telling parents, 'Hey this is what was available on the Internet, this is what your kids are able to do and some basic tips on if you want to increase security this is how you can do it," Ahmad stated. What's most important, says Ahmad, is keeping young people in the game of peaceful resolution, what he calls a true teaching of Islam. What exactly are they teaching to show these young people that the jihadists are misusing Islamic texts and teachings? Not surprisingly, this article doesn't say. With thanks to JihadWatch
 IRAN'S controversial presidential election was the top Twitter topic in 2009, the popular microblogging service said. "Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly," Twitter said in a blog post yesterday. "Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year." The San Francisco-based service that lets people broadcast news in short text messages using computers or mobile telephones was a primary communications tool by protesters in Iran angered by the results of their presidential election. Dead singer Michael Jackson was the most tweeted about person, while Harry Potter was the film that caused the most Twitter buzz, according to the internet firm. Google Wave - which allows email or instant messages to blossom into shared online arenas where anyone in the exchange can edit documents, add digital content, or comment at any time - was the most tweeted about technology, according to Twitter. The Australian
 by A. Millar “In the last year, two things have happened,” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last Monday. “Iran has advanced its military nuclear program, and Iran has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the international community.” The Iranian regime means business. The Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee was also told it has now enriched 1,800 kg of uranium - enough for one-and-a-half nuclear bombs.
Yet despite serious and widespread concern over its nuclear ambitions, Tehran announced last month that it plans to build ten new sites for further uranium enrichment. It was, of course, the re-election of Ahmadinejad - widely regarded as fraudulent - and the regime’s violent crackdown of pro-democracy demonstrators in June that cost it its remaining semblance of legitimacy, not the nuclear issue.
This, and President Obama’s public and private overtures to Tehran over the last few months, have overshadowed the pro-democracy movement, but they are not separate from one another. More at Hudson New York
 BAGHDAD — Al Qaeda's umbrella group in Iraq claimed responsibility Thursday for coordinated Baghdad bombings this week that killed 127 people and wounded more than 500, warning of more strikes to come against the Iraqi government. The group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, said in a statement posted on the Internet that the attacks in the Iraqi capital targeted the "bastions of evil and dens of apostates." It also warned the group is "determined to uproot the pillars of this government" in Iraq and said "the list of targets has no end." The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified, but it was posted on a Web site commonly used for militant messaging. The blasts Tuesday were the third major strike against government sites in the Iraqi capital since August, raising serious questions about the abilities of Iraqi security forces ahead of next's year national elections and the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. Al Qaeda's claim gave renewed emphasis to U.S. military warnings that insurgents would likely continue high-profile attacks in an attempt to destabilize the Iraqi government in advance of the March 7 parliamentary elections. Anger over Tuesday's security breaches forced Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday to face tough questions from lawmakers in a closed session of parliament, where he deflected blame and accused political discord of jeopardizing Iraq's stability. Lawmakers, who came out of an ongoing special session, told reporters the prime minister cast blame on rival political blocs that he says prevented him from appointing a chief of secret police as well as a lack of cooperation among security forces in Baghdad. They said al-Maliki went so far as to blame a 2003 decision by the United States to disband the Iraqi army. "His defense is not convincing," Sunni lawmaker Adnan al-Jibouri said. Al-Maliki's top security chiefs stayed away from the session, despite calls by lawmakers they appear as well to answer questions. The ministers have previously refused to attend two other sessions called after bombings on Aug. 19 and Oct. 25. More than 250 were killed in those attacks. More at Foxnews
 A new campaign has been launched across the Internet to close the Al Aksa mosque to Muslim worshippers until Hamas terrorists return kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, held in captivity since his abduction near the Kerem Shalom crossing on June 25, 2006. A petition has been making the rounds, calling on the Israeli police to close the Temple Mount to Muslims until Shalit is released without preconditions. The campaign, which is being carried out under the banner, "Without Gilad, There is No Mosque" was initiated by Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, who spoke with Arutz Sheva about the project. "The Temple Mount is our heart of hearts, and an IDF soldier rotting for three years in a hovel without a minimum of basic rights is also in our hearts. The only thing that we can do to hurt the Muslim public is to block their access to the Temple Mount," Glick said, adding that he hopes the pressure from the entire Muslim world will force Hamas to free Shalit in order to reopen the Mount. "We will have to take measures that hurt the Muslim public," he said, adding that he is not concerned about the possibility the idea may cause riots in Jerusalem. "Why aren't they worried over the idea of kidnapping a soldier?" he asked. Glick said he is aware the chances are slim that his proposal will be implemented, or even be heard by government ministers. "I am speaking to the people of Israel and not to the government of Israel. We want to connect the people of Israel with the Temple Mount -- to raise our consciousness." A senior Hamas source told an Italian news agency on Monday that the "ball was in Israel's court" on negotiations over Shalit's freedom. Muhamad al-Katri, the Hamas official in charge of prisoners' affairs, said the terrorist group had even agreed to have Shalit examined by French doctors despite concerns that such a visit would diclose the hiding place where the hostage is being held. German mediator Ernst Uhrlau meanwhile arrived Monday in Tel Aviv with the terrorist group's response to Israel's latest offer on a swap deal for Shalit's release. He is expected to return to Gaza within a few days.
On Sunday, the London-based Arabic-language Al-Hayat newspaper reported that a team of four French doctors indeed accompanied the German mediator to Gaza -- a week ago Sunday -- to examine the Israeli soldier as a confidence-building measure in the negotiations. According to the report, the doctors, all specialists in different fields, arrived with Uhrlau in Cairo and entered Gaza through the Rafiah crossing. They allegedly examined Shalit in the hiding place where he is being held prisoner. INN
 TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian authorities have slowed Internet connections to a crawl or choked them off completely before expected student protests Monday to deny the opposition a vital means of communication. In another familiar tactic before such rallies, authorities have ordered journalists working for foreign media organizations not to leave their offices to cover the demonstrations. Iran's beleaguered opposition has sought to maintain momentum with periodic demonstrations coinciding with state-sanctioned events. Monday's rallies will take place on a day that normally marks a 1953 killing of three students at an anti-U.S. protest. Since the 1990s, the day has served as an occasion for pro-reform protests. Students are at the center of the opposition to Iran's clerical regime and its brutal crackdown on demonstrators protesting what they believed was a fraudulent presidential election in June. The opposition, which relies on the Web and cell phone service to organize rallies and get its message out, has vowed to hold rallies Monday, the first anti-government show of force in a month. It is not clear if the demonstrations will take place on university campuses or in the streets. The call went out on dozens of Web sites run by supporters of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, both of whom ran in the June 12 election. Most of those sites have been repeatedly blocked by the government, forcing activists to set up new ones. Internet connections in the capital, Tehran, have been slow or completely down since Saturday. Blocking Internet access and cell phone service has been one of the routine methods employed by the authorities to undermine the opposition in recent months. The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran's Internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch. A day or two after the demonstrations, cell phone and Internet service is restored. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been a powerful voice of dissent from within the ranks of the Islamic leadership, accused Iran's hard-line rulers in comments reported Sunday of silencing any constructive criticism. More at Foxnews
 TEHRAN, Iran — The showdown between Iran's clerical leaders and a resilient protest movement sharpened Saturday, as opposition leaders accused the government of becoming more brutal than the shah's regime and authorities announced a new Internet crackdown. Two of Iran's top pro-reform figures said in a Web statement that police used excessive force against anti-government protesters who took to the streets last week on the sidelines of state-sanctioned rallies to mark the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, who lead the protest movement rejecting the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's June re-election, said authorities wielding batons even struck women on their heads.
They called such treatment an ugly act that was not even seen during Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's response to the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled him. "I can't understand why they should treat people like this," Karroubi was quoted as saying by several opposition Web sites. "... I struggled against the Pahlavi regime for 15 years ... but there were no such crackdowns." Such Web statements have been the mainstay of an opposition movement struggling to stay alive despite being brutally swept off the streets in the weeks after the June 12 election. Mousavi and his supporters contend that he was the rightful winner of the vote, but that Ahmadinejad was fraudulently declared the winner. In a clear effort to silence the opposition's Internet outlet, Iranian authorities announced they were deploying a special police unit to sweep Web sites for political material and prosecute those deemed to be spreading lies, Iranian media reported Saturday. Many opposition Web sites are already banned, but the opposition has continued to set up new Web sites within days of the old ones being blocked. The new 12-member police unit will report to the prosecutor's office, signaling an intention to bring offenders to trial. "Authorities know that the Internet is one of the few available channels for the opposition to make its voice heard. They want to silence opposition voices," said reform-minded journalist Akbar Montajabi, who described the measure as the latest set of restrictions imposed on media in the country. Iran also pushed ahead Saturday with another key component in its battle with the opposition, sentencing a student activist to eight years in prison, according to the pro-opposition Web site Mowjcamp. More than 100 activists and some senior pro-reform figures have been on trial since August on charges of participating in rallies and plotting to overthrow the country's clerical rulers.
 The Taliban has warned the United States of more attacks like the Fort Hood shooting rampage unless Washington ends its policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the SITE Intelligence Group said on Tuesday. The Afghan militants also described the American army psychiatrist suspected of carrying out the shooting in Texas as a "hero", the monitoring group said, quoting a message posted on the internet. "The recent attack on the military base in Texas warns that if the occupation policy of the American rulers continues in this way, without them folding the carpets of occupation and transgression in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is natural then that incidents and attacks similar to Texas will spread to the Pentagon and other American military centres," the message said. "According to media reports, the hero of the attack is a Muslim psychiatrist and major in the American army, of Palestinian origin," said the message posted on jihadist forums, SITE said. Major Nidal Hasan, a Muslim of Palestinian origin, is suspected of killing 13 people in the shooting spree at a Texas army base last week. Hasan was due to be deployed to Afghanistan later this month and his family has said that he complained of harassment in the military and was deeply concerned about his orders to go to Afghanistan. He has emerged from a coma after being wounded in the Fort Hood shootings. Colleagues of Hasan have told National Public Radio they were troubled by his performance as an army psychiatrist and had discussed removing him. The doctors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Hasan often failed to answer the phone when he was the psychiatrist on duty at the hospital outside Washington, the report said. One hospital official said that Hasan, a devout Muslim with misgivings about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had tried to convert a patient to Islam, telling the patient his religion would save him. Supervisors had warned Hasan that he needed to improve his job performance and the director of psychiatric resident doctors at the hospital discussed kicking Hasan out of the program, NPR said. Psychiatrists said it was difficult to fire a doctor and that an elaborate trail of documents is required showing neglect. Hasan's supervisors had not sufficiently documented his alleged shortcomings, it said. Source: Military News
 Michael Ledeen, the expert who sparked the rumors about Khamenei being in a coma (which then turned into rumors about him being dead due to follow-up reports from AntiMullah.com), now says that Khamenei is out of his coma. Some will laugh at Ledeen for sticking to the story he was given, but I’d caution against such mockery. As I wrote myself, I supported Ledeen in concluding that something bad had happened to Khamenei’s already poor health.
Nothing else can explain his absense from sight, particularly after the massive Jundullah bombing that killed senior Revolutionary Guards officials. Ledeen confirmed that Khamenei met with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan “at the very last minute” at his home (where the doctors remain), on October 28.
That is an absence of 22 days, and if Ledeen’s timeline is correct, a state of comatose for about 16 days. It should also be mentioned how odd it is that the Erdogan-Khamenei meeting happened so late. Ledeen writes: “This suggests to me that the doctors worked very hard to prepare Khamenei for his appearance, which would otherwise have taken place much earlier.” One more important note: I’ve been receiving reports from Iranians about big plans for November 4, as reported on WorldThreats.com, which is the anniversery of the taking of American hostages at the embassy in 1979.
Ledeen says he’s also receiving the reports, but adds that Russian experts have been hired by the Iranians to jam the Internet and other transmissions. Source: World Threats
 A Saudi court on Saturday convicted a female journalist for her involvement in a TV show, in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex, and sentenced her to 60 lashes. Rozanna al-Yami is believed to be the first Saudi woman journalist to be given such a punishment.
The charges against her included involvement in the preparation of the program and advertising the segment on the Internet. Abdul-Rahman al-Hazza, the spokesman of the Ministry of Culture and Information, told The Associated Press he had no details of the sentencing and could not comment on it. In the program, which aired in July on the Lebanese LBC satellite channel, Mazen Abdul-Jawad appears to describe an active sex life and shows sex toys that were blurred by the station. The same court sentenced Abdul-Jawad earlier this month to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes. The man's lawyer, Sulaiman al-Jumeii, maintains his client was duped by the TV station and was unaware in many cases he was being recorded. On Saturday, he told the AP that not trying his client or al-Yami before a court specialized in media matters at the Ministry of Culture and Information was a violation of Saudi law. "It is a precedent to try a journalist before a summary court for an issue that concerns the nature of his job," he said. The case has scandalized this ultraconservative country where such public talk about sex is taboo and the sexes are strictly segregated. The government moved swiftly in the wake of the case, shutting down LBC's two offices in the kingdom and arresting Abdul-Jawad, who works for the national airline. Three other men who appeared on the show, "Bold Red Line," were also convicted of discussing sex publicly and sentenced to two years imprisonment and 300 lashes each. Source: YNet
 By Bill Warner The fruit never falls far from the tree. What are the practical results of Islam’s political and cultural ideology?
What is the fruit on the tree? Islam is a complete civilization that rejects every aspect of kafir civilization as being inferior. Islam’s Golden Age claim is an assertion that Islam is the superior civilization. The Koran says that Muslims are the best of nations. [1] How does the best of nations compare at the level of politics, economics, and culture? Islam claims that the Koran is the perfect book with the perfect political and social doctrine that will make Muslims intellectually superior to kafirs. Remember that the Koran is the perfect recording of the mind of infinitely intelligent god, Allah, so Muslims should be the absolute leader in knowledge and ideas. Islam is the finest, most perfect idea that can exist. Knowledge First, a personal question: what Muslim author have you read lately? That is a personal approach and since this book is about objective reasoning, we need objective data.
The United Nations has put together a series of four books that measure Arab society. Now Arabs are a minority of Muslims, but there is little data about Islam as an entire civilization and so the Arabs have to represent all of Islam.
The Arabs are the oldest Muslims and Saudi Arabia can make a claim to being the most perfect Islamic nation. Mohammed was from there, and the Koran makes special claims about the Quraysh tribe and Arabs in general. So the Arabs are not a perfect measure but they are the best measure. The most popular way to move information today is the Internet. England has about 48% of its population connected to the Internet; while Saudi Arabia has 2% of its population connected to the Internet [2] . High-income nations have 380 computers per thousand people. Arab nations have 20 computers per thousand people. The world as a whole has 80 per thousand. But there is not as much need for a Muslim to explore the information on the Internet. “Starting in early childhood, the [Arab] child becomes accustomed to suppressing her or his inquisitive and exploratory tendencies.” [3] The education curricula “seem to encourage submission, obedience, subordination and compliance, rather than free critical thinking.” [4] This lack of critical thinking can be seen in patents. Over a 20-year period, Saudi Arabia got 171 patents, while South Korea to 16,328 patents. [5] This is a natural result from the research and development funding.
Sweden spends 3.1% of its GNP on research, while the Arab states spend 0.2%. [6] Switzerland has 79.9 frequently cited scientific papers per million of citizens. Saudi Arabia has 0.07 frequently cited papers per million of citizens. [7] What that means is that Saudi Arabia published 1 paper that was frequently cited by others. The thirst for knowledge can be seen in that in the five-year period from 1970-75 only 330 books were translated per year.
There have been only 1000 books translated into Arabic in the last 1200 years. [8] That is less than one book per year over the centuries.
As a comparison, Spain translates 10,000 books per year into Spanish. In scientific publications the industrialized nations generate about 6 publications per ten million citizens, while the Arab countries create about 0.1 per ten million citizens. [9] Read more here,,,, Source: Western Front America
By Dr. Tal Pavel Prior to the presidential election in Iran, the Internet and social networking Web sites were used by the different candidates and their online supporters as a means of competing with each other. In hindsight, it is clear that the Internet - and Twitter, specifically - was painted green. Only now does the general public know the power of the Internet in Iran. At about 35 percent, Iran has one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in the Middle East. This figure reflects an increase of about 9,100% in Internet users between 2000-2008. In the run-up to the June 12 presidential election, candidates's campaigns made extensive use of the Web, using various social networking sites such as Flickr, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Google Calendar and others. Prior to the presidential election in Iran, the Internet and social networking Web sites were used by the different candidates and their online supporters as a means of competing with each other. In hindsight, it is clear that the Internet - and Twitter, specifically - was painted green. Only now does the general public know the power of the Internet in Iran. At about 35 percent, Iran has one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in the Middle East. This figure reflects an increase of about 9,100% in Internet users between 2000-2008. In the run-up to the June 12 presidential election, candidates's campaigns made extensive use of the Web, using various social networking sites such as Flickr, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Google Calendar and others. Read more ...Source: JPost
 Hamas mass wedding (Screengrab from Youtube.com)August 04 | By Aaron Klein Hamas has strongly denied Internet rumors and blog reports claiming the Palestinian Islamic group last week held a mass ceremony at which little girls were married off.A video circulating on the Internet, titled "Hamas shocking mass wedding for 450 little girls," purports to show children who appear to be about 8 to 10 years old being married off in a mass Hamas ceremony last week. Little girls in what appear to be wedding dresses are filmed arriving in cars and then walking down an aisle with the grooms. The video and related pictures generated scores of blog postings making similar claims that Hamas was marrying off hundreds of little girls. WND received a large volume of e-mail asking the news organization to investigate. Hamas indeed held a mass ceremony last Thursday in which nearly a thousand Palestinians celebrated marriage. Many of the families involved said they could not afford their own wedding party. Each groom received a present of about $500 from Hamas, which said its workers had also contributed 5 percent of their monthly salaries to add to the wedding gift. Ahmed Jarbour, the Hamas official in Gaza responsible for social activity, told WND the youngest girl to marry at the ceremony was 16 years old. He said most brides were above the age of 18. Jarbour, like two other top officials contacted by WND, was offended by the suggestion Hamas would marry off little girls. He explained the minors seen in the video were family of the bride or groom. He said it was tradition for little girls to dress in gowns similar to the bride. He said the little girls walking down the aisle with the grooms are family members of either the bride or groom. A WND review of the video found some of the little girls, speaking in Arabic, state they are at the wedding of a family member. The girls interviewed do not say anything about themselves getting married. Multiple calls to Palestinians who participated in the wedding affirmed the little girls are not themselves the brides. Hamas, meanwhile, hailed the wedding ceremony as a victory. "We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness," Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas' chief in Gaza, told the grooms at the event. Source: WND
Court wades into brewing battle over rights of Internet journalists July 04 | By Drew Zahn When Internet journalist Joe Kaufman wrote an article exposing terrorist connections in two American Muslim groups, he was sued by a swarm of Islamic organizations, none of which he had mentioned in his online article. The technique is called by some "legal jihad" or "Islamist lawfare," and the Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Kaufman in the lawsuit, claims Muslim advocates are using the strategy to bully online journalists into silence. "The lawsuit against Kaufman was funded by the Muslim Legal Fund for America. The head of that organization, Khalil Meek, admitted on a Muslim radio show that lawsuits were being filed against Kaufman and others to set an example," claims a Thomas More statement on the case. "Indeed, for the last several years, Muslim groups in the U.S. have engaged in the tactic of filing meritless lawsuits to silence any public discussion of Islamic terrorist threats." The organizations suing Kaufman also sought to legally deny him certain legal protections granted to traditional journalists, claiming that as an Internet writer, his right to seek a quick and inexpensive dismissal of the case didn't apply. The case set up a battle, not only between Islamic advocates and those that would question their political connections, but also between organizations that fly low under the mass media's radar, enjoying little public scrutiny, and the burgeoning field of Internet journalism that often investigates places the mainstream media ignores. In an unanimous decision from a three-judge panel of the Texas Second Court of Appeals, however, not only did the court rule that the Muslim organizations had no basis for claiming defamation – since Kaufman didn't name or point to them in his article – but the judges also declared that online journalists do merit the same status and legal protections that their more traditional media peers enjoy. Though the case against Kaufman is therefore dismissed for now, the Law Center reports the seven Muslim organizations have filed an appeal, continuing their quest for, according to court documents, "injunctive relief related to Kaufman's existing and future Internet publications." As WND reported, Kaufman's troubles began when he wrote an article for the online FrontPage Magazine in 2007, criticizing two Islamic groups for hosting a "Muslim Family Day" at Six Flags over Texas, a Dallas-area amusement park. The Islamic Circle of North America and the Islamic Association of North Texas, Kaufman revealed, had funneled money to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and al-Qaida. "While using images of cartoon characters and sponsoring events at amusement parks may seem innocuous, the danger that the Islamic Circle of North America poses to the United States, Canada and others is clear," Kaufman wrote. "As a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization looks to impose Islam on Western society, and as a donor to a terrorist organization, the group is a willing participant in the act of violence." And while neither the ICNA nor the IANT claimed libel, seven other Muslim organizations – the Islamic Society of Arlington, Texas, Islamic Center of Irving, DFW Islamic Educational Center, Inc., Dar Elsalam Islamic Center, Al Hedayah Islamic Center, Islamic Association of Tarrant County and Muslim American Society of Dallas – cried foul, bringing the defamation suit against Kaufman. Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, "This frivolous lawsuit is an example of the legal jihad being waged by radical Islamic organizations throughout our nation. These lawsuits are aimed at stifling the free speech rights of Americans who dare to expose their agenda. They intentionally file lawsuits to intimidate reporters who seek to expose their agenda. By making it costly to defend against their lawsuits, they hope journalists will refrain from writing about the threat to our nation." The opinion of the court, written by Justice Terrie Livingston, overturned a lower court's denial of Kaufmann's motion to dismiss the libel claim before a time-consuming and expensive trial. Listing seven different reasons for the court's decision, Justice Livingston wrote, "We conclude that an Internet author's status as a member of the electronic media should be adjudged by the same principles that courts should use to determine the author's status under more traditional media." The court did not, however, uphold that all Internet writers – such as bloggers – should be afforded the protections traditional journalists enjoy. Kaufman, the court noted, has written for a variety of national publications since 1995, has appeared on several television news networks and in writing for FrontPage Magazine, was writing for a separate online news source with the freedom to accept or reject his article. The court concluded, "We believe that these facts and circumstances, establishing Kaufman's journalistic background and his notoriety outside of the parameters of the article and graphic at issue and FrontPage Magazine's broad readership and its existence as a news/commentary medium that is independent from Kaufman's articles, are sufficient to qualify Kaufman as a member of the electronic or print media and to qualify FrontPage Magazine as an electronic or print medium." Furthermore, the court ruled, that the Muslim organizations' contention that an Internet author could "never" qualify as a member of the media "would make as little sense as an inverse rule that a print author (such as someone distributing their own photocopied musings) would always qualify as such." Source: WorldNetDaily
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THOUSANDS of wild camels, facing a cull in the outback, have been thrown an unexpected lifeline from distant Saudi Arabia, where the animal is revered rather than viewed as a pest. 
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