20071219

God's basic training!

'God's Basic Training' Coming Under Fire

 

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,158531,00.html

 

The warriors pose for the camera in a group shot - some holding their weapons in one hand and their holy book in another.

Elsewhere, a poster bears a quotation calling for the killing of enemy leaders and forcing the defeated people to convert.

If you think the images come from Islamic fundamentalist training camps in remote regions of the Middle East you'd be wrong.

Poll: What should the relationship be between religion and the military?

The photo depicts Army trainees at Fort Jackson, S.C., where in addition to basic combat training recruits may also attend "God's Basic Training," while the poster -- boasting a quotation from conservative author Ann Coulter -- adorns the door of a Military Police office at Fort Riley, Kansas.

"These are startling and disgusting revelations of further unconstitutional behavior by technologically the most lethal organization ever created by humankind -- the U.S. military," said Mikey Weinstein, whose group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, discovered the evangelical-oriented program at Fort Jackson and the Coulter poster at Fort Riley.

The group also has found at the Fort Riley exchange the Muslim-critical "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam" on display right next to The Holy Bible. And at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., a new "Enabled By Christ" Christian men's store operates at the base exchange, Weinstein said.

Officials with the bases in question and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, however, deny there is any deliberate intent to impose a religious belief on troops, and a Fort Riley spokesman told Military.com command would look into Weinstein's allegations there.

"Command at Fort Riley takes the Army value of respect very seriously," said Maj. Nathan Bond."The things you have mentioned to me, if they are true, do not seem in line with the Army values of respect, and we will look into it."

Maj. Scott Bullock, chaplain for the 2nd Battalion, 39th Basic Combat Training Bn., at Fort Jackson, said in an interview the weekly Bible study program is strictly voluntary. "I make a simple announcement for new soldiers: If you choose to come to this Â… you are welcome to come, especially those from an evangelical protestant background."

Bullock said the recruits posing with their rifles in the photos do so because they've been directed to train as if they were in theater, taking their weapons with them everywhere they go. He said that recruits attending any religious service at the base chapel also would be carrying their weapons.

The "God's Basic Training" program is part of the military ministry backed by Campus Crusade for Christ.

Judd Anstey, a spokesman for AAFES in Dallas, described the "Enabled By Christ" store as a short-term concession, one of about 15 AAFES-wide -- of 50,000 -- that has a religious affiliation. He also said that 75 percent of the vendor's products are for hunting.

"Beyond what is in his stock," Anstey said, "if someone from another religion comes in, let's say, wanting a Torah or a Koran, he would order that special."

Weinstein said the officials can "tell it to the judge," since he plans to include the allegations into a lawsuit he and Army Specialist Jeremy Hall filed in September against the Defense Department over an officer's disrupting a meeting of non-Christian believers and allegedly threatening Hall with punishment for organizing the event, held in August at Camp Speicher, Iraq.

Hall is now stationed at Fort Riley. The case, filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, names as defendants Defense Secretary Robert Gates, representing the DoD, and Maj. Freddy Welborn, the officer who allegedly broke up the meeting and threatened to keep Hall from reenlisting.

Weinstein said they are seeking an injunction to prevent Welborn from conduct "that has the effect of establishing compulsory religious practices," and also asking Gates to ensure Welborn does not interfere with Hall's free speech rights.

Gates is named in the suit, Weinstein said, because he allegedly has let the military engage in a pattern of unconstitutional behavior regarding promotion of religious belief.

Earlier this year Weinstein's organization revealed that senior Pentagon officials participated in a Christian Embassy video, endorsing the work of the group and of Christianity, while in uniform and against the backdrop of the Pentagon.

The DoD Inspector General ultimately determined that seven officers, including four generals, engaged in misconduct by appearing in the videos. Weinstein said the Pentagon has never said what actions were taken against the officers.

 

20071217

3 Iranian among top 100 living geniuses


Top 100 living geniuses

Dr. Ali Javan from MIT is ranked 12.
Dr. Nima Arkani-Hamed (Canadian Iranian) from Harvard University is listed as Canadian and is ranked 32.
Dr. Pardis Saberi from Broad Institute Director Eric Lander's laboratory is ranked 49

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/28/geniustable128.xml


The top 100 living geniuses were compiled by a panel of six experts in creativity and
innovation from Creators Synectics, a global consultants firm.
Each genius was then awarded scores out of ten against criteria which included: paradigm
shifting; popular acclaim; intellectual power; achievement and cultural importance. So:
It is with honor that two Iranians are listed here: they are Professor Ali Javan, currently
the Wight Davis Professor Emeritus of Physics at MIT, founder of first major research
center in the field of lasers? Ranked 12 and Dr. Pardis Sabeti, Biological anthropologist,
Ranked 49.
 
Ali Javan was born in Iran in 1926, is an inventor and physicist at MIT.
He co-invented the gas laser in 1960, with William R. Bennett. He graduated from Alborz
High School, started his university studies at University of Tehran and continued at
Columbia University after coming to the United States in 1948. He received his Ph.D. in
physics in 1954. He joined the research staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in
Murray Hill, New Jersey in September, 1958. In 1961, Professor Javan joined
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an associate professor of physics and has been a
professor since 1964.
 
Pardis Sabeti earned her master's degree in human biology, and her
doctorate in biological anthropology at The University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where
she specialized in genetic diversity and contributed articles to Encarta Africana, Genes and
Immunity and Nature. She will shortly complete her M.D. at Harvard Medical School, and
plans a career in academic medicine and research. Sabeti was born in Iran in 1975. She
arrived in the US at age 2 and now resides in Orlando; Fla. Sabeti plays guitar and bass
and is the lead singer of a rock band.
As a young scientist and medical student, Broad researcher Pardis Sabeti combined her
passions for scientific research and medicine into a singular goal: to gain a deeper
understanding of disease by decoding the evolutionary history that is recorded within DNA.
Now, her pioneering steps toward this goal have earned prominent awards from two
world-class organizations: summa cum laude graduation honors from Harvard Medical
School
and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award.

Sabeti, currently a postdoctoral researcher in Broad Institute Director Eric Lander's
laboratory, conducted portions of her previous doctoral work here at the Broad. While
pursuing her graduate research into the genetic factors that predispose humans to
infectious diseases, she herself was bitten by a "bug" of sorts: Sabeti longed to become an
infectious disease physician. In particular, she sought to address the medical needs of
developing countries, which are often ravaged by communicable diseases, including
malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and others. Thus, she enrolled in medical school.

3rd Iranian among geniuses has been listed as Canadian because presently he is citizen of Canada.

Nima Arkani-Hamed (Iranian-Canadian)
Nima Arkani-Hamed was born in 1972 in the U.S. to Iranian parents (also physicists) and became a Canadian citizen.
Arkani-Hamed graduated from the University of Toronto with a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics, and went to the University of California, Berkeley for his graduate studies, where he worked under the supervision of Lawrence Hall. He completed his Ph.D in 1997 and went to SLAC for post-doctoral studies. During this time he worked with Savas Dimopoulos and this is when the idea of large extra dimensions emerged. In 1999 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley physics department. He took a leave of absence from Berkeley to visit Harvard University in the spring 2001. Shortly after arriving at Harvard he worked with Howard Georgi and Andrew Cohen on idea of emergent extra dimensions, dubbed deconstruction. These ideas eventually led to the development of little Higgs theories.
He officially joined Harvard's faculty in the fall of 2002. Arkani-Hamed has appeared on various television programmes and newspapers talking about space, time and dimensions and the current state of theoretical physics. In the summer of 2005 while at Harvard he won the 'Phi Beta Kappa' award for teaching excellence.
Nima Arkani-Hamed participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.
Currently, he is a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He will join the Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study, effective January 1, 2008.
The son of two Iranian physicists, Arkani-Hamed was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in Boston. After the Iranian revolution of 1979, his family returned to their homeland, but as religious fundamentalists took over the government, his father was forced to go underground and the family eventually had to flee across the border to Turkey. By 1982, Nima was living in Toronto, Canada.
Recalling his early life, Arkani-Hamed says that his time in Iran was largely a positive experience. "The strange thing is that I have mostly wonderful memories," he says. If anything, he adds, it taught him to worry less about what others thought of him. "Given that so many aspects of my life have been unusual, I've never had a problem with feeling different or being different or doing different things."
Best regards
Manouchehr Gojgini


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20071214

IBM Electro-Optic Modulator Could Lead To Supercomputer-On-Chip

That will be a fun day! Can you imagine how difficult it will be for Microsoft to write a new version of Windows to make that one slow as a 386? I know it is a challenge but I am sure they will make it ready by the time the ICs are available!

 

IBM Electro-Optic Modulator Could Lead To Supercomputer-On-Chip

IBM Electro-Optic Modulator Could Lead To Supercomputer-On-Chip

IBM researchers have constructed a way to send pulses of light through silicon, a process that can substitute sending electrical signals over wires and ultimately shrink the size of today's largest supercomputers.

In a paper published in the journal Optics Express, IBM researchers detailed what the industry calls the silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator, which converts electrical signals into pulses of light.

Using light instead of wires to send information between processor cores can be 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires, according to IBM.

Researchers hope the advancement will enable the rapid and compact transfer of information between multiple cores on a chip. Since the modulator is 100 to 1,000 times smaller than other modulators of its kind, it will one day enable optical routing networks to be integrated on a single chip, the company said.

That means that supercomputers — which now consist of thousands of processors connected by miles of copper wire — could one day fit into a laptop PC.

Energy consumption will also be slashed, according to IBM. Supercomputers that presently use enough energy to power hundreds of homes will only expend the energy of a lightbulb.

As the industry continues to pack more computing cores on a chip, current on-chip communications technology would overheat and be too slow to handle a major increase in workload, according to T.C. Chen, vice president of science and technology for IBM Research.

"What we have done is a significant step toward building a vastly smaller and more power-efficient way to connect those cores, in a way that nobody has done before," Chen said in a statement.

Will Green, lead scientist on the project, said the research is a major advancement in the field of on-chip silicon nanophotonics.

"Just like fiber optic networks have enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by enabling users to exchange huge amounts of data from anywhere in the world, IBM's technology is bringing similar capabilities to the computer chip," Green said.

 

 

20071213

Iranians claim to have built Opteron-based supercomputer

They probably used the software from the following project:

 

http://oscar.openclustergroup.org/

 

 

 

Iranians claim to have built Opteron-based supercomputer

Patrick Thibodeau

December 06, 2007 (Computerworld) Despite federal antiterrorism trade sanctions that bar the sale of U.S.-made computer technology to Iran, a computing research center in Tehran claims to have used Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron processor to build the Middle Eastern country’s most powerful supercomputer.

The Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center (IHPCRC), which is located at Tehran’s Amirkabir University of Technology, said in an undated announcement on its Web site that it has assembled a Linux-based system with 216 Opteron processing cores. That’s a relatively small supercomputer, with a claimed peak performance level of 860 billion floating-point operations per second, or gigaflops. But the research center said that the system, which will be used for weather forecasting and meteorological research, is the fastest built in Iran to date.

This isn’t the first time that the Iranians have used U.S.-developed processor technology to build high-performance systems, according to a history posted on the research center’s Web site. For instance, the history says that in 2001, prior to the formation of the IHPCRC, researchers at Amirkabir University built a 32-node PC cluster based on Pentium III processors from Intel Corp. A year later, they used Pentium IV chips in another cluster, this one with eight nodes.

But how did the IHPCRC get Opteron processors for the new supercomputer if U.S. technology can’t be sold in or shipped to Iran? The research center may have provided a clue, though perhaps inadvertently, in a photo gallery that also can be found on its Web site. (Editor’s note: Since this story was posted, the photo gallery appears to have been removed from the IHPCRC’s Web site. As a result, the link in this paragraph and in the photo caption that follows are no longer working. A follow-up story with more details has now been posted on Computerworld.com.)

The gallery includes a series of photos dated this year, showing workers assembling what the research center describes as the “cluster of IRIMO.” That acronym refers to an Iranian meteorological organization, which would be a perfect fit for the planned uses of the Opteron-based supercomputer.

The first picture in that series of photos (see below) shows a staffer using a screwdriver on what appears to be the components of a server. Behind him, on a table, is a stack of similarly sized boxes, all of which appear to have the word “Thacker” and the initials “U.A.E.” written in hand on their sides.

Iranian researcher works on supercomputer cluster
A staffer at the Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center works on the “cluster of IRIMO,” in a photo from the center’s Web site. (Click for larger image.) A sharpened image shows more clearly the word Thacker and initials U.A.E. written on one of the boxes at the IHPCRC.
A sharpened image shows more clearly the word “Thacker” and initials “U.A.E.” written on one of the boxes at the IHPCRC.

Thacker FZE is an authorized distributor of AMD products that is based in the United Arab Emirates, in the state of Dubai. The company is also listed under the name Sky Electronics on AMD’s Web site. Sky Electronics, whose managing director is named Manoj Thacker, says on its Web site that it is a business partner of Intel, Microsoft Corp., Nvidia Corp. and several other technology vendors in addition to AMD.

Although the server components are exposed in the photograph on the IHPCRC’s Web site, no lettering or brand names can be made out on what appear to be two processing units. The faces of the two devices are blank, even after the clarity of the photo was enhanced by Computerworld’s design staff.

After a copy of the photo was e-mailed to Thacker/Sky Electronics, Anil Clifford, a Dubai-based spokesman for the firm, said Thursday that he didn’t understand the image because the company doesn’t have any customers in Iran. “It is an embargo [situation] for us,” he said.

Clifford said that boxes the size of the ones in the photo could include a variety of components, including server casings and power supplies – all of which are made in Taiwan.

Products can be imported into Iran from any number of countries, and by many different means, Clifford added. “There are a lot of Iranians in Dubai,” he said. “They might buy locally from here one or two pieces and take it to Iran.”

In response to questions about the IHPCRC’s claim that it is using Opteron processors in the supercomputer, AMD officials issued the following written statement: “AMD has never authorized any shipments of AMD products to Iran or any other embargoed country, either directly or indirectly. AMD fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products.”

The statement added that any shipments of products to Iran by distributors “would be a breach of the specific provisions of their contracts with AMD.”

The chip maker has increasing ties to the UAE. AMD last month announced that it had received $622 million in funding from a unit of Mubadala Development Co., an investment firm that is based in the UAE’s capital of Abu Dhabi and owned by the Abu Dhabi government. Abu Dhabi is the largest of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, and its ruler – Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan – is also the UAE’s president.

Legal experts said U.S. law requires companies with distributors in other countries to ensure that they also adhere to the trade sanctions against Iran, which is categorized as a terrorist country by the U.S. government. Companies that re-export U.S products are also prohibited from shipping them to Iran.

Nonetheless, Iranian officials have long boasted that the U.S. trade sanctions have had little impact on their nation’s ability to acquire products that it needs from other countries.

Michael Izady, an adjunct professor of Middle Eastern and Western history at Pace University in New York, said via e-mail that “much of what Iran gets in computer parts and advanced devices are brought in – licitly or illicitly – from the UAE.”

Izady said that Iran is producing as many computers as it does automobiles – about 1.6 million per year – and that the computer and Internet industry is “ubiquitous” in that country. “Iran is advancing its computer and Internet knowledge and expertise much faster than its nuclear program,” he wrote.

“The fact there is stuff going into Iran is certainly well known to U.S. regulators,” said Christopher Wall, an international trade attorney in the Washington office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. He added that the UAE has been a country of interest to a U.S. government program designed to stop shipments from foreign countries to Iran.

Although U.S. export law applies to foreign parties that are re-exporting U.S. products, a lot of that occurs without a license, according to Wall. In such cases, many of the foreign entities either don’t follow the law or don’t know its requirements, he said. Moreover, products may change hands many times before they get to their ultimate destinations.

“It’s very difficult to enforce – extremely difficult to enforce,” Wall said. That’s why the sanctions against trade with Iran “are, in some cases, not very effective, because the rules are very easy to get around,” he explained.

David Ivey, an attorney who specializes in international trade at Baker & Hostetler LLP in Houston, said that whatever the product is, exporters have to be sure it can legitimately be sold to other countries. AMD likely will have to do some due diligence to see if it can determine how its processors apparently ended up in Iran, Ivey said, “because the U.S. government may come and ask them that question.”

 

20071207

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Very interesting movie about our life and it’s impact on the world we live in!

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

The Story of Stuff

What is the Story of Stuff?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

 

Husbands for sale!!

A store that sells husbands has just opened in Johannesburg , where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates.

You may visit the store ONLY ONCE!

There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch . . .. you may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building! So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband .

On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 - These men have jobs and love the Lord.

The second floor sign reads:

Floor 2 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, and love kids.

The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, and are extremely good looking.

“Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads:

Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop- dead good looking and help with the housework.

“Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads:

Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop- dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 6 - You are visitor 4,363,012 to this floor. There are no men on this
floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.

Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store. Watch your step as you exit the building, and have a nice day!

Please send this to all men for a good laugh and to all the women who can handle the truth!

 

20071129

Fwd: English Language




HOPE THIS MAKES YOU SMILE

THE MOST FUNCTIONAL ENGLISH WORD

Well, it's shit ... that's right, shit!

Shit may just be the most functional word in the English language.


You can smoke shit, buy shit, sell shit, lose shit, find shit, forget shit,

And
tell others to eat shit.

Some people know their shit, while others can't tell the difference

Between
shit and   clay      .
There are lucky shits, dumb shits, and crazy shits. There is bull shit, horse shit, and chicken shit.

You can throw shit, sling shit, catch shit, shoot the shit, or duck when the shit hits the fan.

You can give a shit or serve shit on a shingle.

You can find yourself in deep shit or be happier than a pig in shit.


Some days are colder than shit, some days are hotter than shit,

And
some days are just plain shitty.
Some music sounds like shit, things can look like shit, and there are times when you feel like shit.


You can have too much shit, not enough shit, the right shit, the wrong shit or a lot of weird shit.


You can carry shit, have a mountain of shit , or find yourself up shit creek without a paddle.

Sometimes everything you touch turns to shit and other times you fall in a bucket of shit and come out smelling like a rose.


When you stop to consider all the facts, it's the basic building block of the English language.

And remember, once you know your shit, you don't need to know anything else!!

You could pass this along, if you give a shit; or not do so if you don't give a shit!

Well, Shit, it's time for me to go. Just wanted you to know that I do give a shit and hope you had a nice day, without a bunch of shit. But, if you happened to catch a load of shit from some shit-head...........
Well, Shit Happens!!!
    HOPE YOUR SHITTY DAYS ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN..


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Farhad Abdolian Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: ny_farhad@yahoo.com
E-bay Account: SeemaResearch
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it" Albert Einstein
-------------------------------------------------------------------


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20071127

Saudis Threaten Rape Victim With Additional Sentence if She Appeals Verdict

The 19-year-old has already been sentenced to 6 months in jail and 200 lashes."The Saudis are continuing to piously justify the recent sentencing of a 19 year old victim of a gang rape to 6 months in jail and 200 lashes for idling in a car with men who were not her relatives"Saudi-Pakistan-UAE the real axis of evil!The 3 countries who supported the Taliban from day 1st.The 3 countries who gave money and material to the Taliban and Osama.The 3 countries who sent money and support to 9/11 hijackers.The 3 countries who benefited tremendously from the War on Terror.The 3 countries with some of the worse human rights records in the region, but never get punished for their wrong doings.The 3 countries who receive unlimited support from the US government!

read more | digg story

Fwd: Support Kucinich: Event, Thu. Eve. Nov. 29 in NYC!-please forward this and the attachments

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

20071121

1M UK Homeowners Face 60% Mortgage Rise

The Council of Mortgage Lenders is so concerned that it has taken the extraordinary step of suggesting that some homeowners should sell their property rather than risk losing it.

read more | digg story

Kyoto targets flouted

GREENHOUSE gas emissions from the world's industrialised countries are again on the rise and closing in on record levels, despite most having signed the Kyoto Protocol.

read more | digg story

When all Fail... Killer Ants Come To Rescue

The Mofu people of northern Cameroon, Africa, have developed a unique process of defending themselves and their crops against termites and other pests: by calling on killer ants they called the jaglavak (Dorylus) for help!

read more | digg story

Bees are the new silkworms

Moths and butterflies, particularly silkworms, are well known producers of silk. And we all know spiders use it for their webs. But they are not the only invertebrates who make use of the strength and versatility of silk.

read more | digg story

20071119

The Creation of a Beehive In A Jar (Photos)

These little guys are pretty cool.

read more | digg story

Church rejects "interfaith" service when it realized Muslims were involved

"Although individuals from all faiths are welcome to worship with us at Hyde Park Baptist Church, the church cannot provide space for the practice of these non-Christian religions on church property"

read more | digg story

20071115

Re-used condoms are used in China as hair-bands

In south China, people are re-using condoms and selling them as hair-bands. They are very popular and cheap and that is why the market is booming :) the items are very cheap, only 25 fen for a 10 pack of used condoms :)The government is trying to stop this because they are afraid it will increase the risk for various disease and virus.

read more | digg story

20071114

Any Software You ever need for everyday use FREE!

100s of Free Software for Windows and Linux, very comprehensive list of applications.

read more | digg story

NORWAY: Murder defendant paid his taxes just before killing spree ?!

Crazy SOB!A 31-year-old man on trial for murdering his three sisters in Oslo last fall paid his taxes just minutes before he allegedly attacked his siblings with an axe.

read more | digg story

20071107

White House Deputy Press Secretary : It’s premature to say that Musharraf i

White House Deputy Press Secretary : It’s premature to say that Musharraf is now a dictator?!by Farhad Abdolian @ 4:25 pm on November 7, 2007. Edit This Filed under Human Rights, US, Media, Pakistan, Freedom - Print This Post, , , ,Home InLooking for Home in? Search over 15,000 sites with one click. Your source f...Your Ad HereThis is priceless! What is the definition of a dictator in Bush’s white house? A person who is anti-American and un-democratic? Not a person who is stopping free-press, putting 100s of innocent people in jail, puts the judicial system out of work and his military and police beat and torture anyone they wish?No, he is not a dictator, he has not said anything against the US, Israel or god knows what, and for that, they can not classify him as a dictator!Welcome to the new world order.

read more | digg story

20071106

Egyptian Al-Ahram : French President Sarkozi was working for Israeli intelligence services?

I am not sure if this is true or not, but Al-Ahram is a reputable paper, they would not write something without checking it for accuracy (I hope). This would explain his strong opposition to Iran’s nuclear program and his aggressive support of US in this conflict.

 

Al-Ahram Weekly | International | Furl the flag

Furl the flag

Gamal Nkrumah reflects on Sarkozy's bad week


Click to view caption

Sarkozy


As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern, "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for -- and perhaps still does, it hinted -- Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).

A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter -- long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret -- revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983. According to the author of the message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. Originally targeted were Patrick Balkany, Patrick Devedjian and Pierre Lellouche. In 1983, they recruited the "young and promising" Sarkozy, the "fourth man".

Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky describes how sayanim function in By Way Of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer. They are usually reached through relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in France, for instance, might be asked to draft a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organisation whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the Diaspora. Could the French relative help in any way? They perform many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental car agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could fund someone in the middle of the night if needs be, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police.

And, a political sayan ? It's rather obvious what this could mean. The sayanim are a pool of people at the ready who will keep quiet about their actions out of loyalty to "the cause", a non-risk recruitment system that draws from the millions of Jewish people outside Israel.

Such talk sends chills down spines, especially Arab and Muslim ones. Indeed, the revelation did not go unnoticed in Arab capitals or come as much of a surprise. Paris can be a sunny place for shady people. When it comes to intelligence gathering on behalf of Israel, a question mark is immediately raised on the moral calibre of the person in question. But, how does this scandal influence France's foreign and domestic politics?

It is of symbolic significance that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on a state visit to France in the immediate aftermath of Le Figaro 's exposé -- ostensibly to discuss Iran's nuclear agenda and the Palestinian question. Proud and prickly France under its supposedly savvy new president hopes to play a more prominent role in the perplexing world of Middle Eastern politics. On Monday, Sarkozy flew to Morocco, the ancestral home of many of France's Jewry, soon after his Mossad connection was made public. There is no clear evidence that the revelation is to make France any more unpopular in the Arab world than it already is, especially not in official circles.

On the domestic front, however, there are many conflicting considerations. The Jews of France now display a touch of the vapours, in sharp contrast to the conceited triumphalism with which they greeted his election: "we are persuaded that the new president will continue eradicating anti-Israeli resistance," Sammy Ghozlan, president of the Jewish Community of Paris pontificated soon after Sarkozy's election. France is home to 500,000 Jews, mostly Sephardic Jews originally from North Africa and Mediterranean countries.

Sarkozy's own maternal grandfather Aron Mallah, hailed from Salonika, Greece, and is said to have exercised considerable influence on his grandson. Even though raised as a Roman Catholic, "Sarkozy played a critical role in moving the French government to do what is necessary to address the ill winds that threaten the largest Jewish community in Western Europe," noted David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. Sarkozy, after all, was a political product of the predominantly Jewish elite neighbourhood of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he long served as mayor.

France's Muslim minority was far from surprised by Le Figaro 's revelations, even though some may have feigned disappointment. Others have been more forthright. "France is not run by Frenchmen, but by lackeys of the Zionist International who control the economy," lamented Radio Islam, of militant Islamist tendencies. When Sarkozy was France's minister of interior and clamped down hard on Muslim immigrants, calling mainly Muslim rioters "scum" in a widely-publicised interview, they retaliated by calling him "Sarkozy, sale juif [dirty Jew]". Obviously there is no love lost between the five million-strong French Muslim community, the largest in Western Europe, and the French president. He has grounds for concern. He assiduously courts the Israelis. That much is known.

In the scientific annals of French politics there is a cautionary tale of pantomime. French presidents are not always what they seem. There are, however, two key observations concerning Sarkozy. One, is Sarkozy's intention of implementing a "new social contract" between employers and employees, capital and labour. This smacks of Thatcherism. His determination to force a "cultural revolution" in the collective national psyche is a trifle farcical. And unprincipled to boot. He recently introduced legislation -- in tandem with his pension cuts, calling for genetic profiling of immigrants to ensure any relatives intending to immigrate are linked genetically. The strategy appears to be to soften the blow of the social security cuts by appealing to xenophobic racism.

The state of race relations in France is an even more muddled picture than the devastating caricatures by French-African comedian Dieudonne suggest. He is notorious for playing the part of a Hassidic Jew who mimics the Nazi salute. Few politicians blame their troubles on cynical comedians, though, and Sarkozy is no exception. His fans point accusing fingers at the "irresponsible press".

The real magic starts when you power Sarkozy with his ex-model wife. She, after all, played a part in the freeing of the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian medical doctor. She, too, is of Spanish-Jewish ancestry. But, that may be nothing but an insignificant aside. France, generally, regarded their bust-up as something of a bad joke. Unlike the Americans, the French do not take the private lives of their presidents terribly seriously. There was the late François Mitterrand, for example. Hardly anyone in all France raised an eyebrow when it transpired that he had an illegitimate daughter. The French are more concerned with the ideological orientation and political affiliation of their president and are not in the least interested in their private affairs -- at least not in any political sense.

The interesting twist, however, is that the contest between Cecilia and Nicolas Sarkozy is a comic cross between a lover's tiff and the battle of the sexes. It appears befuddled French voters are being forced to turn a blind eye to their leaders' antics. Sarkozy's divorce follows hard on the heels of the separation of France's first female presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, the "gazelle" of French politics, from her lifelong lover François Hollande barely a month after she lost the presidential race in May. Moreover, at the tender age of 19, Royal sued her father for his refusal to divorce her mother and pay alimony and child support. That was way back in 1972; barely a decade later she won the case against her father. Ironically, Royal's own mentor the late French socialist president Mitterrand was notorious for his extra-marital affairs, the most conspicuous being his love affair with Anne Pingeot and subsequent disclosure towards the end of his life that he fathered an illegitimate daughter Mazarine with her.

And, what of the voters? The latest hazard facing the French president has been his socio-economic policies. Sarkozy's showdown with the trade unions threatens to turn into a deciding moment for France. Foreign policy, too, has come under much scrutiny. France has become fanatically Atlanticist under the presidency of Sarkozy. Although, unlike US President George W Bush, Sarkozy does not make much noise about his own dubious religious convictions. The commonest criticism of Sarkozy is that he is overly conscious of his religious heritage, a trait that is not appreciated by the fanatically secular French political establishment. France is culturally the most irreligious country in Europe, itself the most secular and anti-religious of the world's continents.

For a politician acclaimed for his acumen, it is startling that Sarkozy has been tripped up by events he should have seen coming. His sagacity obviously failed him this week. Le Figaro let the cat out of the bag. And his wife, too, after shopping with Lyudmila Putin, the Russian first lady, apparently decided that she had had enough of being treated as "part of the furniture" and made their rift very public.

France is now in the awkward position of having no first lady. The 49 year- old former model, lawyer and political advisor is by no means media shy. "I gave Nicolas 20 years of my life," she told the popular French magazine Elle in a special feature which she asked for personally, despite the awkwardness of its timing. She had long complained of being politically peripheralised. Troubling as that interpretation is, it is in a way a consoling one for Sarkozy. He is now free to handle his opponents without his maverick Cecilia breathing down his neck or, on the contrary, disappearing at crucial moments.

Even with his personal life in tatters, Sarkozy is obliged to hoist the French tricoleur high in the international arena. Which flag is it to be?

 

 

20071104

Rendition - A movie every American should watch

100s, if not 1000s of people have been “renditioned” by the CIA, sent to other countries to be tortured or in some cases killed.This movie shows one such character (fiction).The movie is very realistic for the way these prisoners are treated, but unrealistic about the US government and the way this guy could come back home.

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Forgetful Ed :)

Forgetful Ed


Ed was in trouble. He forgot his wedding anniversary. His wife was really angry. She told him 'Tomorrow morning, I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from 0 to 200 in less than 6 seconds, 'AND IT BETTER BE THERE!!'The next morning Ed got up early and left for work.
When his wife woke up she looked out the window and sure enough there was a box gift-wrapped in the middle of the driveway. Confused, the wife put on her robe and ran out to the driveway, and brought the box back in the house. She opened it and found a brand new bathroom scale. Ed has been missing since Friday. Please pray for him.

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20071030

My Identity / Hoviate Man : Iranian rap against the Movie 300

My Identity / Hoviate Manby Yas Featuring Aminهويت منياس با همراهي امينبراي اعتراض به فيلم 300 Listen. I want to tell you my intentThey want to erase my identityThe history of the land of the AryansIs screaming until we come to itSo now is the […]

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France and US tell IAEA to shut up-Let us spread the lies about Iran's WMD!

Here we go again,It is 2002 and 2003 all over again. These bastards want a war, they want Iran’s OIL and no one can stop them.Bush and Bush light are doing it again, discrediting the IAEA just like they did before the war against Iraq. The same liers (now the French Poodle instead of the British one), and the same 'logic'.

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20071029

Olbermann on O'Reilly's Dumbledore, Gay Sex Obsessions:

Olbermann: "A month after his racist remarks about a New York restaurant, O'Reilly now coming out against tolerance a little more than four years after, according to the lawsuit from his former producer Andrea Mackris, BillO tried to talk her and a female friend of hers into performing homosexual acts while he was present.

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20071028

W.M.D. in Iran? Q.E.D.

Asking Cheney some questions? "First you threatened to take action if Iran built a nuclear weapon. Now you’re threatening to take action if Iran knows how to build a nuclear weapon. What’s next? You threaten to take action if Ahmadinejad dresses up as a nuclear weapon for Halloween?"

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