Ummm....Whaaaat?

Things you might not expect to hear on the news...

PERHAPS PREHISTORIC PEOPLE SAVED US ALL FROM THE WALKING DEAD In a 7,000-year-old town in Bulgaria, over 100 graves have been uncovered, revealing skeletons with stakes through their hearts and mutilated bones. Meet the vampires that almost were.

And,

IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT EBOLA, it’s because you’re a racist. “Ebola is now a stand-in for any combination of ‘African-ness’, ‘blackness’, ‘foreign-ness’ and ‘infestation’ – poised to ruin the perceived purity of western borders and bodies.”

So where are the biggest racists? In Africa! Africa stems Ebola via border closings, luck. “South Africa and Zambia slapped travel and entry restrictions on Ebola-stricken countries. Kenya Airways, the country’s main airline, stopped flying to the affected lands. In Zimbabwe, all travelers from West Africa are put under 21-day surveillance. Health officials regularly visit those travelers to check their condition.”

My presumption, now, is that anyone who goes on about racism is either a fool or a tool.
INSTAPUNDIT

AND,

Students: Transgender Woman Can’t Be Diversity Officer Because She’s a White Man Now

AND,

Cornell gives deer tubal ligations, everything goes wrong

AND,

Seattle Socialist Group Pushing $20/hr Min. Wage Offers $13/hr for Web Developer

The Islamic Proxy War in Hamburg

Salafist ISIS supporters attack Kurds

Germany: Holy War Erupts in Hamburg

"The unrest began on the evening of October 7, when around 400 Kurds gathered outside the Al-Nour mosque near the central train station in Hamburg's St. George district to protest against IS attacks on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.

According to police, the initially peaceful protest turned violent when the Kurds were confronted by a rival group of around 400 Salafists armed with baseball bats, brass knuckles, knives, machetes and metal rods used to hold meat in kebab restaurants.

In the melee that followed, more than a dozen people were injured, including one person who nearly had his leg chopped off by someone wielding a machete, and another person who was stabbed in the stomach with a kebab rod.

Some 1,300 police officers, brandishing batons and accompanied by water cannons, were deployed to halt the clashes, which lasted into the early morning hours of October 8. In the final tally, hundreds of weapons were seized and 22 people were arrested."

More Muslims Killing Muslims...

Who Lost Yemen?

"Nobody saw it coming. On Sept. 20, Yemen’s Huthi movement executed a political coup so stealthy that the world hardly noticed, and so momentous that local commentators are dividing modern Yemeni history into before and after the Huthi assent to power. The Huthis, a Shiite-led rebel group with a power base in Yemen’s far north, have been waiting for this moment since the early 2000s, when their civil rights campaign was forced to take up arms in self-defense.

The Huthi coup is not only reshuffling the Yemen political deck, but also regional political calculations, particularly in the Arab Gulf, because the Huthi maintain good ties with Iran. And it poses problems for President Obama’s war against Yemen’s al Qaeda affiliate.

Over the last six months, Huthi militias extended their control over regions adjacent to the Huthi stronghold in Saada, 230 kilometers north of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. They wrested leadership of the powerful Hashid tribal confederation, destroyed military units allied with the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islah Party, and ousted their Salafi opponents from the Dammaj Valley, a few miles southeast of Saada. Finally, the Huthi descended upon Sanaa, destroyed the last remaining military units loyal to Gen. Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, the once-powerful commander of the 1st Armored Division, and his allies in the Islah Party, and took control of the Yemeni government without much resistance – and surprisingly little international coverage."

It's hard to care about this any more, but let's take a quick look: Yemen was Shiite for 1000 years, but then the Sunnis got control, and now the Shiites are back in charge. All accompanied by copious killing of Muslims, by Muslims. Killing each other is just a habit, it appears, possibly it is even mandatory.

Which brings to mind: why should we try to stop it? When we do, they all just blame it on us, and vow to kill us too.

AGW Contradictions

NASA:

NASA: Earth Just Experienced the Warmest Six-Month Stretch Ever Recorded

But:

Water temperature of the Great Lakes is over 6 degrees colder than last year, 3 degrees colder than normal

And:

Lake Superior and Lake Michigan now 6 degrees colder than last year; How will that affect Michigan's winter?

The raw data is here.Since the data claims go back as far as 1880, I call Bullshit. No one was measuring global temperatures in 1880, and not even in 1950. Certainly not NASA. The Geophysical year wasn't until July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. So these aren't really temperatures, they are avatars for temperature, selected who-knows-how... or cares, for that matter.

It's No Wonder Obama Hates Leakers

Headline:

Leaked DHS Document: 167,000 Convicted Criminal Aliens At Large In US

"Deportations from the interior of the United States declined 34 percent this year from last, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, derived largely from an internal Department of Homeland Security document.

The CIS report released Wednesday and authored by the group’s director of policy studies, Jessica Vaughan, details the decline in immigration enforcement and reveals that there remain nearly 167,000 convicted criminal immigrants with final orders of removal still in the United States and “currently at large.”

“Prosecutorial discretion as practiced by the Obama administration has transformed immigration enforcement into a massive catch-and-release program that makes a joke of the law, fails to deter illegal settlement, and allows even illegal aliens who commit crimes to remain here,” Vaughan said Wednesday.

“These policies inflict real harm on Americans and legal immigrants,” she continued, “in the form of lost jobs, depressed wages, additional social services, and even lost lives. In addition, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups around the world, our lax policies represent an unnecessary national security risk.”

Pick a threat, any threat, and Obola wants to import it.

Comment of the Day

From Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds):

"If you say the government is too big, the response is Oh, you want to starve infectious-disease control for funding? but when you give them the money, they spend it on lesbian-obesity studies instead, and are woefully unprepared for the kind of actual crisis the government is supposed to protect against."

That's how a Politically Correct, anti-rational, messiahist, Leftist government rolls; the narrative is more important than reality. The narrative is all that there is. And unpreparedness will be blamed on the Other.

Running Amok In The Cradle Of Civilization

Not only is the Islamic Sunni Caliphate, ISIS, a predator on non-combatants, Iran's shiite militias in Iraq also kill them. For ISIS, one must be Sunni to live; for the Iranian militias, Sunnis must die. Either way, the population reduction in the area is proceeding.

Rights group: Iraq Shiite militias killing Sunnis

"BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's Shiite militias have abducted and killed scores of Sunni civilians with the tacit support of the government in retaliation for Islamic State group attacks, Amnesty International said Tuesday, as a suicide car bombing claimed by the Sunni extremists killed 23 people, including a Shiite lawmaker.

The Shiite militiamen number in the tens of thousands and wear military uniforms but operate outside any legal framework and without any official oversight, the London-based watchdog said, adding that they are not prosecuted for the crimes.

The accusations were based on interviews with relatives of victims and survivors who claimed that members of four prominent Iraqi Shiite militias — Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Brigades, the Mahdi Army, and Ketaeb Hizbollah — were behind many abductions and killings of Sunnis in the country, the rights group said in a 28-page report, entitled "Absolute Impunity: Militia Rule in Iraq.""

Obama is directly responsible for leaving Iraq in a shambles and for not dealing with Iran in a straight forward fashion. Instead, he created a vacuum to be filled with barbarism.

A Reply To Dragon Fang

Dragon Fang (Your assumed name seems to drip with aggression),

You seem to think that attacking what you believe to be my religion is a solution to the issue of Islamic violence, torture, rapes, slavery, etc being done in the name of Allah daily around the planet, as "Allahu Akhbar" rings in our ears. Thus you think that quoting old testament verses is some sort of argument in favor of ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and so forth. You even claim that old testament verses prove that Christianity is bloodier than Islam, despite the current daily news to the contrary, evidence you shrug off.

The claims of the Islamic "leadership", if there is such a thing, do in fact condemn the actions of ISIS (see the other posts here today), although not so much the actions of Boko Haram, Hamas, Al Qaeda etc. And while I am currently agnostic on the character of Islam as a holistic concept, your positioning of yourself as judge and attacker of the Other leads me back toward my previous suspicions of the character of those raised as Muslims. Local imams seem to have as much influence as do world leaders in Islam.

In fact, your claim to have removed any moral base that I might have, based on your assumption of my religious persuasion, is not a rational conclusion since you have no actual concept of what my religious persuasion might be, if any. I have not revealed my religious persuasion, if any, in any manner. I have maintained that Aristotelian, deductive, disciplined logic is the primary thrust of this blog, not religion of any type.

Using such logic is paramount is the determination of valid arguments (all religious positions are arguments susceptible to analysis). Your particular approach is to deviate away from the subject at hand by attacking what you think are the worldview underpinnings of your opposition; this is a logical fallacy, at a minimum it is a Red Herring.

The topic of discussion is Islam, and its use by murderers, rapists, kidnappers, terrorists, even against other Islamic ummah. This can in no manner be justified by quoting old testament verses, especially considering that Muslims consider the OT to be flawed and incorrect.

Considering that Uthman rewrote the sayings of the Prophet and then burned all the sources so that his version was all that was left, the accuracy of the Qur'an itself is considerably questionable. And since the model of Islam is the life of the Prophet, then the Qur'an, which is apparently considered a document of peace (at least when convenient to consider it so), is at odds with the example of the Prophet himself, who led a bloody life, lusting after children and women of other men.

This is the logical conundrum of Islam, and it results in Islamists who seem to feel legitimately engaged in violence similar to that of their prophet. Being congruent with the prophet then gives them the self-assurance of moral authority in their bloody actions. This has nothing to do with old testament verses; it is purely an Islamic issue. In fact, entire Islamic states war on each other, with no thought of the OT.

So the OT is completely without any bearing on the issue at hand.

What is at issue is why Islam generates so much bloody violence, when many claim it to be the religion of peace.

More Islamic Denunciation of ISIS and terrorism

This relates to the prior post, "Re-thinking Islam"

World's top Muslim leaders condemn attacks on Iraqi Christians

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
25/07/2014


"Two of the leading voices in the Muslim world denounced the persecution of Christians in Iraq, at the hands of extremists proclaiming a caliphate under the name Islamic State.

The most explicit condemnation came from Iyad Ameen Madani, the Secretary General for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the group representing 57 countries, and 1.4 billion Muslims.

In a statement, he officially denounced the "forced deportation under the threat of execution” of Christians, calling it a "crime that cannot be tolerated.” The Secretary General also distanced Islam from the actions of the militant group known as ISIS, saying they "have nothing to do with Islam and its principles that call for justice, kindness, fairness, freedom of faith and coexistence.”

Meanwhile, Turkey's top cleric, the spiritual successor to the caliphate under the Ottoman Empire, also touched on the topic during a peace conference of Islamic scholars.

In a not-so-veiled swipe at ISIS, Mehmet Gormez declared that "an entity that lacks legal justification has no authority to declare war against a political gathering, any country or community.” He went on to say that Muslims should not be hostile towards "people with different views, values and beliefs, and regard them as enemies.”

Their remarks come at a time when Christian leaders in Iraq have called on Muslim leaders worldwide to denounce the anti-Christian violence in the country. In the past decade, the majority of Iraqi Christians have either fled the country or taken refuge in the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

The declaration of a "caliphate" by Islamist militants in Iraq lacks legitimacy and their death threats to Christians are a danger to civilization, Turkey's top cleric, the successor to the last caliph's most senior imam, said.

Islamic State, an armed group formerly allied to al Qaeda that has captured swathes of territory across Iraq, last month declared its leader, Ibrahim al-Baghdadi, "caliph" - the historical title last held by the Turkish Ottoman sultan who ruled much of the Muslim world.

"Such declarations have no legitimacy whatsoever," Mehmet Gormez, head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, the highest religious authority in Turkey, which, although a majority Muslim country, has been a secular state since the 1920s.

"Since the caliphate was abolished ... there have been movements that think they can pull together the Muslim world by re-establishing a caliphate, but they have nothing to do with reality, whether from a political or legal perspective."

Gormez said death threats against non-Muslims made by the group, formerly known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), were hugely damaging. "The statement made against Christians is truly awful. Islamic scholars need to focus on this (because) an inability to peacefully sustain other faiths and cultures heralds the collapse of a civilization," he told Reuters in an interview.

(Source: Reuters, Rome reports)"

While this doesn't give any specifics from either the Qur'an or Hadiths, it is a direct condemnation of ISIS and terrorism, by Islamic leadership. Whether this carries any weight amongst the ummah is unknown. It is also unknown whether local Imams agree and/or are influenced by these particular leaders.

Re-Thinking Islam

I have come across a letter from Islamic scholars, professors and leaders to Al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS. This letter explains to Al-Baghdadi that his actions comprise multiple sins under the Qur'an, Hadith, and interpretations of Islam by fourteen hundred years of Islamic scholars and leaders. 126 Islamic scholars and leaders signed the original letter and 35 more have signed after its release.

When reading through the numbered position statements, I was at first skeptical. Early on it is stated that no verse should be taken without considering the context of the entire body of Islamic work, Qur'an, Hadith, etc. Yet the scholars quote verses out of context as part of their argument. That seemed to be contradictory... at first.

Also they state that the context of Islamic work cannot be understood unless it is read in Arabic, yet the letter is in English. That also seemed contradictory... at first.

After reading much (but not all) of this letter, I realized that the scholars do consider the entire context, being immersed in it. And I realized that there is also an Arabic version available on the same site.

Having let go of these non-contradictions, I began to realize that this letter, if it is correct in its statements and context, could form a legitimate Islamic rejection of the killing, terror, slavery, torture, declaration of caliphates without Islamic unity, etc.

Except for the contradictory life of Mohammed himself which puzzles me, I am now agnostic on the subject of the actual dangers of Islam, under correct interpretation.

If one wonders where the Islamic outcry against ISIS is, this might be it, in Islamic context and theological basis.

All thoughts on this are appreciated.

Muslim Apologies

After Obama stepped in it again by insisting in his speech to the UN that Muslims around the world denounce ISIS, many Islamic leaders did, in fact, denounce ISIS and terrorism. One of the funniest is the apologies for all sorts of "Islamic" stuff, along with totally unrelated things. This one cuts two ways:

"Danish:
I'm sorry that a headscarf scares you and a bikini doesn't"
#Muslimapologies

Asserting sexual immorality is actually a valid point. But the whole statement is overcome with the vision of a body bomb on a bikini babe. It really brings back the scarved and hijabbed Muslim women suicide bombers who killed hundreds of Israelis, including the Israeli muslims. Not a bikini bomber in the whole affair.

And even if the entire Islamic population denounced ISIS, would it make Islam and its adherents any less a threat? Would the entire Islamic population need to declare war in order for the world to understand that there is an Islamic war against all Others? When lying is a well-defined part of a culture, then what is there to trust? Especially when it is the documented life of The Prophet, filled with blood and torture, pedophilia and murder in the pursuit of his lusts, which is emulated?

Obama and Strategy

This headline is wrong:

Isis taking control: Obama strategy in tatters as jihadist group marches across the region

Obama never intended to defeat ISIS. If he had, then all possible force would have been asserted against them. But Obama promised "to win" by bombing a little here and a little there. And it is well known that an air war without boots on the ground is ineffective, because the targets need to be identified by laser and ISIS is too dispersed to be bombed out.

Some believe that Obama will pull the same stunt that Nixon did: After the election he will find the right time to declare "WE WIN" and abandon the region as quickly as possible. Obama's strategy is always abandonment, not victory and stability. He still believes that a speech in his dulcet tones will suffice to bring everyone together in a new utopia. And he might believe that utopia to be Islamic.

Or he might just be senile.