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More on the financial issues in the UAE: Questions about the Future of a Desert Village.
I like how they called it an Eco-Development…which seems to mean: we can create an entirely new eco-system from scratch.
But I think the bottom line here is that Thabet is tired of waiting for his villa. 
Blogger and Internet Radio Host Hal Turner encouraged Catholics to make Connecticut legislators “obey the constitution or die”, after two state legislators introduced a bill that would have changed how the Catholic Church had to be governed in the state.
He has been arrested and faces charges for incitement.
Ali Eteraz’s comments on the Obama Speech at True/Slant.
Four more years of Bush it is: Obama to revive military trials
President Barack Obama has announced he is to revive military trials for some detainees at Guantanamo Bay. However, in a statement he said legal rights for those facing the military commissions would be improved.
Between this, the regular invocation of “national security” in court cases and the recent decision to withhold the photos (to avoid backlash against American militarism…by Americans), what more could your average American autocrat ask for?
More Change to Make-Believe In: Obama wants to withhold photos of detainees.
President Obama is seeking to block the release of photographs that depict American military personnel abusing captives in Iraq and Afghanistan, his spokesman said Wednesday, fearing the images could spark a hostile backlash against United States troops.
It appears that Delara Darabi was executed today. Not only was her lawyer was not given the mandatory 48hrs notice required by Iranian law, but a reported 2 month stay of execution, granted on 19 April, would have been violated.
From Allah we come; to Allah we return.
A Canadian court rules that the Canadian government must seek the return of a Canadian citizen. The Canadian government argued that it did not want to have him returned since they were not sure they could convict him of any crime.
In its presentation to the court, the Canadian government said that it would be difficult to convict, or even prosecute, Mr. Khadr in Canada. That argument appeared to have backfired. “To my mind, any concern in this area merely reinforces the case for repatriation,” Judge O’Reilly wrote.
Superior Civilization Watch: Stop those evil Kebabs before they hurt someone!
But what brought dozens of people to a so-called protest lunch outside a doner kebab shop on Thursday was concern that the law was aimed at fast-food restaurants run by immigrants. The measure was approved Tuesday by the center-right majority, but was championed by the conservative Northern League, as a means to preserve the traditional identity of Italian cities. Recently, the party has been lobbying nationally to establish unarmed citizens’ groups that would patrol to prevent violent crimes, which are widely attributed to immigrants.
Turkey and Armenia: Playing Nice
Turkey and Armenia have agreed to a framework for improving their strained relations, the two countries said in a statement this week, apparently in the first breakthrough in diplomacy in more than a decade.
After years of mistreating detaining Yemeni citizens, the US worries that Yemen won’t do an adequate job mistreating rehabilitating its own citizens.
I grew up on the Chris Claremont years of the X-Men. The story of the “mutants” in Marvel’s universe, and in particular the story of the X-Men was a story of civil rights in America. It provided instructions on appropriate ways in which to pursue civil rights if you are a hated minority group. It always appeared to me that there was within its pages a commentary on the civil rights movement of the 60s (at least as perceived by “White America”) with a clear division between good and bad mutants: mutants who wanted acceptance and legal equality of course, but pursued it in a law-abiding (for the most part) and assimilationist manner, and those mutants believed that the injustice of the system demanded revolution and open rebellion: i.e., the X-Men (good mutants) led by Prof. Xavier, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants led by Magneto (for whom the American system was just a, thus far, nicer version of Nazi persecution he and his family had endured during WW2).
But I wonder to what extent this narrative also foreshadowed and now is our narrative concerning Islam, both in America and abroad? Was this not the division between good and bad mutants a repetition of the way in the which the (White) American consciousness had distinguished between between the Christian MLK, who sought peace, and the those within the NoI or, abroad, the Muslim Brotherhood (Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?), who were willing to use violence to fight oppression?
Air I: Letters from Lost Countries shipped today.
“Naïveté can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England towards fascism.”
-Alan Moore, commenting on V for Vendetta, 1990
Didn’t Mush try this already?: Protesters in Pakistan defy the Zadari-government’s ban on public gatherings.
Mar Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic Bishop of Mosul, was killed one year ago today. Raheem Allah ‘aleh.
It is now estimated that more than half of Iraq’s small Chaldean Catholic population has left the country.
I am sure Razib is currently pouring over the ARIS report for 2008 and will have very insightful things to say, which I am eagerly awaiting.
I will just note issues relevant to Catholics. While Catholics have basically held their own, this appears to be based entirely on immigration. Catholic numbers in New England are, for instance, in free-fall, dropping from about 1/2 to 1/3 in just under 20yrs. Meanwhile the new center of Catholic America is going to be in the Southwest.
Morocco severs diplomatic ties with Iran: things haven’t been going well for Iran on the diplomatic front lately.
The Sri Lankan cricket team attacked in Lahore. Six police officers and two bystanders killed.
Two feeds from the Dawn: here and here.
Also an eyewitness account here.
The Sri Lankan team has been flown by helicopter to a military base from which they will be evacuated from the country.
From Allah we come and to Allah we return.
Not surprisingly the Vatican was unimpressed by Richard Williamson’s non-apology for his rampant antisemitism (Holocaust denial is only the beginning).
On a related note, Williamson apparently approached David Irving for advice in how to present his conspiracy theories to the public in a manner that would not cause such an uproar. Irving suggested that he admit the extermination of Jews in three camps (without mentioning any numbers, because those “need to be checked”), but went on to say that Williamson was the target of a Jewish plot designed to distract from the attacks on Gaza:
Israel set off this storm against the church, led by a German pope, to distract the world from the massacre in Gaza.
To round out the insanity, upon his arrival in London, Williamson was met by Michele Renouf. Renouf had previously supported Irving during his trial for Holocaust-denial in Austria. Renouf claimed that Williamson was the victim of an unreasonable persecution by the adherents of a new religion: “Holocaustianity”.
The Catholic Holocaust denying bishop Richard Williamson apologized again for the consequences of his remarks on the Holocaust.
Not surprisingly, there is nothing in the remarks to suggest that Williamson has changed his mind. Nor has the Vatican reacted to any of the other whacko conspiracy theories to which Williamson subscribes, nor have they asked him to apologize for his rather blatant misogyny. But this is not all on Williamson, the failure of the Vatican to pursue these other matters also suggest that they see Williamson primarily as a PR problem in their attempt to reconcile with the fringe SSPX movement and strengthen traditionalists within the Catholic communion at whatever cost.
Btw, The Syrian Catholics recently named a new Patriarch, Mar Ignace Yusef III. Axios!
[I lose track of how many "Patriarchs of Antioch" are running around the Catholic and Orthodox world these days, but I do know that NONE of them reside in Antioch (Antakya, Turkey). The Melkite and Antiochean Patriarchs of Antioch are in Damascus.]
Argentina will expel Richard Williamson, the Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop, on immigration violations. Der Spiegel, covering the same story, also reports that the city of Regensburg is considering whether or not to bring criminal charges against Williamson for Holocaust denial.
Even as the Pakistani government called criticism of its new peace deal in Swat “unhelpful” and “speculative”, there was a march today in Peshawar in which journalists protested and demanded justice following the murder of Musa Khan Khel in Swat yesterday. He had been covering the peace deal.
Dear Pakistan, Here is Your Peace: Pakistani journalist murdered in Swat.
This law just has abuse-of-power written all over it. Does taking a picture of the police, or videoing the police, doing something wrong count as criminal since it will likely make recruiting easier for would-be terrorists? Inquiring minds want to know.
Returning to that poll that Abu Noor posted a wk or so ago…
Why isn’t the conclusion of that poll that, despite the number of adherents that Christianity can very legitimately claim for itself, it is a dying religion (to be as hyperbolic as possible). This seems especially true of Protestant Christianity (whose traditional center has been America and Northern Europe). What that poll tells me is that people in the areas dominated by Christianity do not use Christianity as their primary means of either interpreting or organizing their lives.
That is obviously a broad generalization and the reasons for the erosion of Christian identity in these areas are diverse (Orthodoxy in Russia has obviously faced different pressures than the Christian stew that is found in America). And one would also need to be attentive, in a manner I have not, to the growth of Christianity into Africa and South America
Raise the Green: King Abdullah has dismissed the head of the muttawa as well as another outspoken cleric and placed a woman in charge of the kingdomwide education of girls as he (FINALLY) starts to reorganize. These are certainly overdue and necessary steps in reconfiguring religious authorities and their influence over education in the Kingdom.