Archive

Archive for July, 2011

Indonesia: Bomb Explodes Prematurely and Kills ‘Teacher’ in ‘Bomb-Making Class’ at Islamic School

07/12/2011 Leave a comment

So here we have someone teaching students how to make bombs at an Islamic Madrassa to be used against the police, and the police have to ‘persuade’ the school officials and students to let them investigate?  Who is the real authority in Indonesia?  Police, professors or pupils?

By ALI KOTARUMALOS – “JAKARTA, Indonesia – A man reportedly trying to show students how to make explosives was killed by a homemade bomb inside an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia, police said Tuesday.

School officials and students have prevented police from entering the building since Monday’s explosion, local police spokesman Lt. Col. Sukarman Husen said.

But they discovered the body of the suspected bomb maker, a 30-year-old man identified only as Firdaus, on a bus Tuesday as it tried to leave the school compound, he said.

Eleven people have been taken in for questioning, Husen said, adding that police also confiscated a number of arrows and machetes.

Husen said the bombing victim was a treasurer at the school, but media reports alleged he was a former bomb trainee in the Philippine region of Mindanao. According to TVOne, he was killed in an unintentional explosion while training students about bomb-making.

Police are still persuading the school officials to let them enter the compound, Husen said.

National Police Spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam said the explosion was suspected to be from a homemade bomb being prepared to attack the police.” Read more.

Categories: Radical Islam, Wars and Rumors of War

Experts Keep Cose Watch on Vanuatu’s Increasingly Active Ambae Volcano

07/12/2011 Leave a comment

“Geohazard experts in Vanuatu have set up extra monitoring equipment around the increasingly active Ambae volcano.

A geohazard technical advisor with the Vanuatu government Sylvain Todman says nearby villagers are worried about the volcano’s increasing explosions and ash falls.

He says a team’s been dispatched to keep an eye on the volcano over the next week and seismic sensors have been set up on the east and west of the island.

‘It’s one of the most dangerous volcanoes on Vanuatu and there are many people around this volcano and the activity could increase very fast so we need to be as close as possible to notice any change in the activity.’

Sylvain Todman says the volcano’s level of activity may be upgraded from level one to level two which means people living within a five kilometre radius would have to move.” Source.

Categories: Natural Disasters

UK: Hundreds of Fish Found Dead at Scarborough Lake

07/12/2011 Leave a comment

“AS many as 200 fish have died at a Scarborough lake after being starved of oxygen.

The fish were left desperately gasping for air at Scarborough Mere after the lake’s oxygen levels plummeted following the recent weather.

Firefighters yesterday pumped gallons of water back into the site’s Match Lake to increase the air flow.

Environment Agency bosses confirmed the changeable atmospheric pressure was the cause with tests showing the lake’s air level was just 20 per cent oxygen after the heavy downpours.

In contrast, The Mere’s sister lakes had 132 per cent and 118 per cent oxgyen respectively.

Andy Maccalaugh, junior match secretary for Scarborough Mere Angling Club, said the lake would be closed for three days while water pumps – including one borrowed from Wykeham Lakes – worked to aerate the lake.

He said: ‘The fish were coming to the surface gasping for air.'” Read more.

Kansas – Hundreds of dead fish found at Arma City Pond – “ARMA — Hundreds of fish turned up dead in the Arma City Pond Friday morning. The kill is not unusual in the hot summer months, said District Fisheries Biologist Rob Friggeri, and he and his assistant, Logan Martin, scooped the dead fish out of the water Friday afternoon. What happens, he said, is that oxygen levels go down as the water heats up, which plays havoc with the fish. In the pond are grass carp, channel catfish, bluegill, largemouth bass and red-eared sunfish.” Read more.

Categories: Mass Animal Deaths, Natural Disasters

Update: ‘An International Laughing Stock’: UN Appoints North Korea to Head Conference on Disarmament; Canada Boycotts

07/12/2011 6 comments

Viva la Canada!

Update July 12, 2011: Canada boycotts UN body over North Korea Appointment – “Canada is boycotting a UN body dedicated to disarmament to protest against North Korea being named its chair, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced Monday.

The Conference on Disarmament, where UN members negotiate disarmament and other arms control agreements, is heavily focused on the prevention of a nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament.

‘North Korea is simply not a credible chair at this United Nations body. The regime is a major proliferator of nuclear weapons and its non-compliance with its disarmament obligations goes against the fundamental principle of this committee,’ Baird said during a call with media to make the announcement.

‘North Korea’s chairmanship undermines the integrity of both the disarmament framework and of the United Nations, and Canada simply will not support that.'” Read more.

June 30, 2011: The stupidity and nonsensical appointment by the Useless Nitwits knows no bounds.  Next thing you know they’ll elect let’s-stone-women-to-death Iran to their women’s rights commission.  Oh, they did that already, too?

By ANNE BAYEFSKY – “On Tuesday, the United Nations again made itself an international laughing stock – except perhaps to the American taxpayers who continue to foot 22 percent of the bill – by appointing North Korea chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. That would be the same North Korea that, according to an article this week by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has ‘twice tested nuclear weapons … is developing missiles to carry them … has built facilities capable of producing highly enriched uranium for more nuclear weapons’ and has defied a U.N. arms embargo by exporting weapons and sensitive technologies to rogue regimes…

North Korea assumes the Conference chairmanship by being the next state in the alphabetical rotation of the 65 members, which include five nuclear weapons states and 60 other countries such as Iran and Syria. North Korea will preside over the Conference for a four working-week period.” Read more.

North Korea threatens a ‘sacred war’ on neighbor – “North Korea threatened yesterday to launch ‘a retaliatory sacred war’ against South Korea for alleged slander as the two sides held rare talks on a stalled joint tourism project. A Pyongyang government spokesman accused the South Korean frontline army units of displaying slogans slandering the North’s ‘army, system and dignity’ and said they are ‘little short of a clear declaration of war.'” Read more.

North Korea-Iran Nuclear Cooperation – “The release of U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks and North Korea’s revelations about its uranium enrichment program have raised concerns about North Korea’s proliferation activities, especially to Iran. ‘Most illicit nuclear programs depend very heavily on procurement networks, and North Korea has invested heavily in these supply networks,’ says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.” Read more.

Categories: Anything Else, Wars and Rumors of War

US: Drought Spreads Its Pain Across 14 States

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

By KIM SEVERSON and KIRK JOHNSON – “COLQUITT, Ga. — The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement.

Farmers with the money and equipment to irrigate are running wells dry in the unseasonably early and particularly brutal national drought that some say could rival the Dust Bowl days.

‘It’s horrible so far,’ said Mike Newberry, a Georgia farmer who is trying grow cotton, corn and peanuts on a thousand acres. ‘There is no description for what we’ve been through since we started planting corn in March.’

The pain has spread across 14 states, from Florida, where severe water restrictions are in place, to Arizona, where ranchers could be forced to sell off entire herds of cattle because they simply can’t feed them.

In Texas, where the drought is the worst, virtually no part of the state has been untouched. City dwellers and ranchers have been tormented by excessive heat and high winds. As they have been in the southwest, wildfires are chewing through millions of acres.” Read more.

Categories: Famines and Crop Destruction

The Crescent or the Cross: ‘The Judeo-Christian Origins of Islam’ Part 1 – 6

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

Even Walid Shoebat, himself a former Muslim, has described Islam as a ‘Christian cult’.  The Judeo-Christian origins of Islam are undeniable.  This Beast, which has its roots within the ‘ekklesia’ of God, has subsequently positioned itself not only against the Christ of the Bible, but also in place of Christ and the true ‘ekklesia’ of YHWH.  It effectually stands itself up and positions itself as the true spiritual Temple of God, when in reality it is its antithesis.  And now some ‘churches’ are beginning to take this apostasy to a whole new level …

By Ibn Warraq Part 1 – “As Patricia Crone once put it, ‘new religions do not spring fully fledged from the heads of prophets, old civilizations are not conjured away.’ Islam did not somehow emerge fully developed, as the Islamic traditional accounts would have us believe, but slowly, over a long period of time, as the Arab conquerors came into contact with the far older cultures and civilizations, which pushed the Arabs to question and forge their own religious and cultural identity. Ever since the Nineteenth Century, when Western scholars, especially German, but also Italian, French, Hungarian, and British, began to examine Islam and the Koran in the same manner that they had begun examining the Old and New Testament, the debate has been as to determine whether it was Judaism or Christianity that contributed most to the creation of Islam. As Richard Bell, in his The Origin of Islam in Its Christian Environment [Edinburgh, 1925], expressed it, ‘That both Judaism and Christianity played a part in forming the doctrine of Islam and in preparing the spiritual soil of Arabia for its reception has long been recognised. How much influence is to be attributed to the one, and how much to the other, is difficult to decide. For much is common to both, and we have to remember that there were many forms of Christianity intermediate between the orthodox Church of the seventh century and the Judaism out of which it sprang, and it was in the East, on the confines of Arabia, that we know these Judaistic forms of Christianity to have longest maintained themselves. Some things in the Qur’an and in Islam which appear specially Jewish, may really have come through nominally Christian channels. But even with that allowance there is no doubt about the large influence exercised by Judaism.'” Read more.

Jihad Watch links: Part 1 here; part 2 here; part 3 here; part 4 here; part 5 here; part 6 here; part 7 here; part 8 here; part 9 here; part 10 here.

Categories: Radical Islam, Theology and Eschatology

Magnitude 6.4 Earthquake Shakes the Philippines

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

Richter Magnitude 6.4 – NEGROS, PHILIPPINES
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 04:47:04 AM
9.504°N, 122.211°E
Depth:  20.1 km (12.5 miles)

“The USGS said the quake occurred at 0647 AEST, 125 kilometres west of Negros, at a depth of 19 kilometres, having initially measured the quake at a magnitude of 6.6.

The Philippines sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire — a belt around the Pacific Ocean dotted by active volcanoes and tectonic trenches, where frequent eruptions and earthquakes take place.

Citizens have been nervous about a potential killer quake following the devastating tremors that have hit Japan and New Zealand this year.

One fault line runs directly under Manila, and government seismologists have warned that the city is unprepared for a major quake.” Read more.

Categories: Earthquakes

India: At Lease 50 Cows and Buffaloes Killed by Mysterious Disease in Senapati District, Manipur

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

“Imphal, July 11 (NNN): A mysterious animal disease which broke out less than two weeks ago in Senapati district in Manipur has reportedly claimed more than fifty cows and buffaloes, said a source.

The epidemic continues to claim the lives of about 6-7 animals in and around Makhan village in Tadubi block of Senapati district, a villager informed Newmai News Network today while adding that the symptoms of the mysterious animal disease include excessive urinating and saliva. Animals that show signs of infection and symptom do not live for more than three days, he added.

The villagers are aggrieved that despite complaints being made before Maram and Senapati vet departments no one from the departments has turned up quoting lack of medicine and equipment to handle such eventuality.

The villagers of the areas and its vicinity have appealed to concerned authorities and departments and other concern agencies, societies, companies and individuals who might be able to help in reversing the situation. The villagers also feared that the disease might be transferable onto human if not addressed forthwith.” Source.

Categories: Mass Animal Deaths, Pestilence

Chile’s Puyehue Volcano Grounds More Flights in Uruguay and Argentina as Eruption Continues

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

“Clouds of ash spewing from Chile’s Puyehue volcano have grounded flights at airports in the capitals of Uruguay and Argentina, where a major football tournament is being held.

Scores of local and international flights were delayed or cancelled in and out of Buenos Aires, regional airport authority Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 said on its web page.

The Puyehue has been causing air travel mayhem since it rumbled back to life on June 4 for the first time in five decades, belching into the air a huge volume of dust and ash.

Flights across South America – including hubs in Montevideo, Chile’s capital city Santiago and southern Brazil – have been hard hit as ash clouds swept around the southern hemisphere to linger over Australia and New Zealand.

The flight disruptions on Friday wreaked havoc for football fans arriving in Argentina for the July 1-24 Copa America competition, which has been drawing thousands of supporters. The regional tournament is being played in several Argentine cities.” Read more.

Categories: Natural Disasters

Indonesia’s Mount Lokon Volcano Alert Raised To Highest Level After Weekend Eruptions, Hundreds to be Evacuated

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

“INDONESIA will evacuate hundreds of people living near Mount Lokon on Sulawesi island after raising the volcano’s alert status to the highest level.

‘We raised the volcano’s status to the highest red alert level last night,’ government volcanologist Kristianto told AFP.

‘There was a significant rise in volcanic activity since July 9. The volcano spewed ash 500m into the air over the weekend

Today we will be evacuating people living within a 3.5km radius around the volcano as a precautionary measure, in case of a bigger eruption which may be accompanied by deadly searing gas.’

Around 28,000 people live within the evacuation zone but only ‘hundreds’ will be moved today, those in the path of the ash, as officials continue to monitor volcanic activity, disaster management agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.” Read more.

Categories: Natural Disasters

Scientists Alarmed by Discovery of a Completely New Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea Strain

07/11/2011 Leave a comment

“A team of researchers announced Monday it has discovered a completely new strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to all currently available antibiotics.

The international research team has dubbed the superbug strain of Neisseria gonorrhoeae H041. They say the strain could transform gonorrhea from what was once an easily treatable sexually transmitted infection into a serious public health threat.

‘This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery’ said Swedish researcher Dr. Magnus Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria in a statement.

He and his team announced the discovery Monday, at the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research conference in Quebec City.

The researchers say H041 is highly resistant to cephalosporin antibiotics — the only class of drugs that are still effective in killing off gonorrhea bacteria, analysis shows.

Unemo says the development of a fully resistant strain was predictable because gonorrhea has shown a remarkable ability to adapt.

‘Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it,’ said Unemo.” Read more.

Categories: Pestilence

Canada Rejects Palestinian Statehood Bid at UN

07/11/2011 10 comments

Canada again reiterates its support of Israel.  Viva la Canada!

“Canada is rejecting a Palestinian effort to win recognition at the United Nations as an independent state.

The move is not surprising given that the Harper government has forcefully highlighted its loyalty to Israel and the United States. Both oppose the Palestinian initiative.

The Palestinian Authority, which controls most of the West Bank, launched a campaign last month that will see it pursue a vote on statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September — an effort borne out of its frustration over a peace process that is stalled.

The top Palestinian diplomat in Canada says her official delegation will still push hard for the support of Ottawa.

‘On the conflict, we would like to see the Canadian government taking a neutral stand, supporting the creation of the state of Palestine, supporting the recognition of Palestine as a full member state in the UN in September,’ Linda Sobeh Ali, head of the Palestinian delegation, told The Canadian Press.

Sobeh Ali also said her delegation is pushing Canada to recognize Israel’s pre-1967 borders — something Prime Minister Stephen Harper forcefully opposed, and managed to block from being part of the final communique of G8 leaders at their recent May summit in France.” Read more.

Categories: Anything Else, Good News