Turkey’s Elephant in the Room: Religious Freedom

10/02/2011 Leave a comment

“ISTANBUL — With his triumphant tour of the countries of the Arab Spring this month, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to set up Turkey on the international stage as a role model for a secular democracy in a Muslim country — as, in his words, ‘a secular state where all religions are equal.’

The only trouble is that he has yet to make that happen for Turkey.

The relationship between religion and the state, ever the sore spot of Turkish identity, is one of the most explosive issues of the debate on the new constitution that Mr. Erdogan has pledged to give the country in the new legislative term that opens Saturday.

That debate will have to deal with the elephant in the room: the total control that the state exerts over Islam through its Religious Affairs Department, and the lack of a legal status for all other religions in a predominantly Sunni Muslim society.

‘Turkey may look like a secular state on paper, but in terms of international law it is actually a Sunni Islamic state,’ Izzettin Dogan, a leader of the country’s Alevi minority, charged at a joint press conference with leaders of several other minority faiths last week in Istanbul.

Mr. Dogan is honorary president of the Federation of Alevi Foundations, which represents many of what it claims are up to 30 million adherents of the Alevi faith, an Anatolian religion close to Sufi Islam but separate and distinct in its beliefs and practices.

‘The state collects taxes from all of us and spends billions on Sunni Islam alone, while millions of Alevis as well as Christians, Jews and other faiths don’t receive a penny,’ Mr. Dogan said, referring to the $1.5 billion budget of the Religious Affairs Department. ‘What kind of secularism is that?'” Read more.

Egypt: Islamists Boast, ‘We Won’t Leave Any Christians in This Country’

10/02/2011 Leave a comment

An addendum to this story …

By Chana Ya’ar – “Egypt is back to ‘business as usual’ with the Islamic majority harassing and attacking its Christian minority.

A group of Muslims burnt down part of a church Friday – the Islamic Sabbath – in the village of Marinab, according to a report published in the daily Al Masry Al Youm. The village, situated close to the town of Edfu in the Aswan Governorate, is located some 800 kilometers south of Cairo.

Security sources said Muslims rampaged through the village in what appeared to be a pogrom, clashing with the Christian residents and destroying their shops. Central Security Forces cordoned off the village ‘to control the clashes,’ according to the newspaper report.

Christian websites reported in September that a group of Salafi Islamists had threatened the Christians, warning them not to leave their homes in the village unless they first removed the church dome. Saint George’s Church had been restored earlier in the month, according to the report.

A gang of Salafi Muslims boasted to a victim they were torturing in March, ‘We won’t leave any Christians in this country,’ according to a report published several months ago in the Wall Street Journal. The attackers were never arrested…

Since the revolution, there have been numerous murders by Muslims visited upon the Coptic Christian community, which comprises about 10 percent of the 83 million-strong Egyptian population.” Read more.

Report: 100,000 Christians Have Left Egypt Since March Due to Escalating Intimidation and Attacks From Islamists – “The Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organizations (EUHRO) published a report today on emigration of Christians from Egypt, saying that nearly 100,000 Christians have emigrated since March 2011. The report, which was sent to the Egyptian cabinet and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), warned that this emigration has been prompted by the escalating intimidation and attacks on Christians by Islamists. ‘Copts are not emigrating abroad voluntarily,’ said Naguib Gabriell, the director EUHRO, ‘they are coerced into that by threats and intimidation by hard line Salafists, and the lack of protection they are getting from the Egyptian regime.’” Read more.

Iran: Government Now Says Christian Pastor Guilty of Rape, not Apostasy

10/02/2011 1 comment

In an effort to somehow ‘justify’ killing Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, Iran scampers to change the crime punishable by death from ‘apostasy‘ to ‘rape’.  Not only does the suicidal death cult of the Iranian leadership wish to destroy the Western world because we’re all unbelieving ‘infidels’ who reject Islam, they must also want us dead because, apparently, they believe we’re all stupid, too …

By Daniel Tovrov – “Iran said on Saturday that Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for rape, not for the crime of abandoning Islam.

Previous reports indicated that Nadarkhani was found guilty of apostasy because he converted to Christianity as a teenager. Nadarkhani has been sentenced to death by hanging for the crime, which is technically not in Iran’s penal code but is a religious doctrine enforced by an official fatwa.

‘His crime is not, as some claim, converting others to Christianity,’ Gholomali Rezvani, the Gilan province deputy governor, told Farsn news agency. ‘He is guilty of security-related crimes.’

However, a December 2010 court ruling issued and signed by Supreme Court judges Morteza Fazel and Azizoallah Razaghi mentions the religious charges against Nadarkhani and nothing more.

‘Mr. Youcef Nadarkhani, son of Byrom, 32 years old, married, born in Rasht in the state of Gilan, is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion the prophesy of Mohammad at the age of 19,’ the document states.

‘He has often participated in Christian worship and organized home church services, evangelizing and has been baptized and baptized others, converting Muslims to Christianity. He has been accused of breaking Islamic Law that from puberty (15 years according to Islamic law) until the age of 19 the year 1996, he was raised a Muslim in a Muslim home.

‘During court trials, he denied the prophecy of Mohammad and the authority of Islam. He has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim. During many sessions in court with the presence of his attorney and a judge, he has been sentenced to execution by hanging according to article 8 of Tahrir–olvasileh.’

After the subpoena, the Supreme Court eventually ruled that the death penalty, on grounds of encouraging ‘other Muslims to convert to Christianity,’ should be upheld.” Read more.

Where are the protests over Pastor Nadarkhani? – “It is obvious that, faced with mounting outrage around the world – there have been protests from the White House, for example — the Iranian regime has resorted to trumping up spurious accusations against a man they are persecuting on account of his Christian faith. By seeking to deny the verdict of apostasy that was handed down two years ago, they are trying to conceal above all that Pastor Nadarkhani has been imprisoned for two years and is sentenced to hang because of an Islamic religious precept. In other words, this barbarism is yet another religious crime being perpetrated by the regime against an Iranian citizen for no reason other than he has transgressed the laws of Islam enforced by a fanatical regime of religious zealots… It is still possible to save this man’s life if enough protest is made. British political leaders should be making their voices heard very loudly against this barbarity by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Have you been hearing them? No, nor have I.” Read more.

Bloomberg: More Than One in Three International Investors Expect a Global Economic Meltdown Within the Next 12 Months

10/02/2011 1 comment

By Liam Halligan – “More than one in three international investors expect a global economic meltdown within the next 12 months, according to a new Bloomberg poll. Far more – almost 70pc – say the world economy is deteriorating, up from just 18pc four months ago.

At the heart of the gloom, of course, is the eurozone, with 90pc of those surveyed judging that the economy of the single currency area is getting worse. One wonders what planet the other 10pc are on.

The eurozone is clearly sliding. The European Commission’s economic sentiment indicator fell to 95 in September, from 98.4 the month before, plunging at a rate not seen since the Lehman Brothers collapse. German retail sales dropped faster in August than at any time since May 2007.

The eurozone – an economy second in size only to the US – is on the brink of a double-dip recession.

This grim prognosis, though, is set against a more hideous backdrop – the danger of a ‘euro-quake’. Greece will default. The only question is how the default is managed – indeed, if it is managed at all.

A bungled Greek payment failure will spark ‘contagion’, as spooked creditors pull the plug on some big eurozone government, leading to non-payment of wages and benefits, serious social unrest, and a single currency break-up.

We face the very real prospect of a major economic shock, the negative impact of which will be felt around the world.” Read more.

Germany ‘won’t give more to EU bail-out fund‘ – “German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble ruled out Germany contributing any more money to the beefed-up EU bail-out fund than the 211 billion euros approved by parliament, in an interview published Saturday. ‘The European Financial Stability Facility has a ceiling of 440 billion euros ($590 billion), 211 billion of which is down to Germany. And that is it. Finished,’ he told the magazine Super-Illu. He also suggested the European Stability Mechanism, which is due to replace the EFSF by 2013 at the latest, would be smaller.” Read more.

Categories: Man-Made Disasters

Greece: Drastic Steps Taken By Government to Avert Bankruptcy May Not Be Enough

10/02/2011 Leave a comment

By Dina Kyriakidou and Ingrid Melander – “(Reuters) – Greece will miss a deficit target set just months ago in a massive bailout package, according to government draft budget figures released on Sunday, showing that drastic steps taken to avert bankruptcy may not be enough.

The dire forecasts came while inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, EU and European Central Bank, known as the troika, were in Athens scouring the country’s books to decide whether to approve a loan tranche. Without that installment, Greece would run out of cash as soon as this month.

The 2012 draft budget approved by cabinet on Sunday predicts a deficit of 8.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2011, well short of the 7.6 percent target.

The 2012 deficit is set to meet a nominal target of 14.6 billion euros, but at 6.8 percent of GDP it falls short of a target of 6.5 percent, because the economy will shrink further.

“Three critical months remain to finish 2011, and the final estimate of 8.5 percent of GDP deficit can be achieved if the state mechanism and citizens respond accordingly,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

European officials are scrambling to avert an abrupt Greek bankruptcy, which would wreck the balance sheets of European banks, jeopardise the future of the single currency and potentially plunge the world into a new global financial crisis.” Read more.

Greece is slipping into the abyss – “… The Athens I knew 20 years ago has changed radically. I used to tell British friends that despite its chaos, it was a very civilised city. When I moved here, you didn’t have homeless people sleeping on the streets, there was little crime and the sick and needy were looked after. That civility is vanishing fast. With economic doom becoming ever more likely, it sometimes feels as if the fabric of society is being ripped asunder… But we are only at the start of this crisis. What will happen next year when unemployment doubles and people lose their homes? The Communist calls for revolution don’t look nearly as far-fetched as they did six months ago. While civil war doesn’t look likely, a return to the military days must be a possibility. If the Greek people reject their entire political system and the state falls apart, what will be left?” Read more.

Categories: Man-Made Disasters

Tennessee: Ground-Shaking Booms Puzzle Louisville Neighborhood

10/01/2011 Leave a comment

By Jim Matheny – “Louisville residents searching for the source of an unexplained ground-shaking boom can scratch another theory off the list.

A Loudon County resident speculated on Thursday that the noise could have come from maintenance on an underground pipeline (see previous story below). The Plantation Pipe Line Company operates a large liquid refined petroleum pipeline that runs from Knoxville to Macon, Georgia. The pipeline is co-owned and operated by Kinder Morgan.

Emily Mir with Kinder Morgan’s media relations department contacted 10News on Friday morning and indicated there were no recent operations that would have created the noise. Furthermore, the pipeline in question is located around 10 miles from the Lashbrooke subdivision.

The Lashbrooke subdivision in Louisville enjoyed a quiet and sun-bathed afternoon on Thursday. The peaceful surroundings of the affluent neighborhood along the Tennessee River lend no hint that its residents suffer from shell-shock.

‘It’s scary-loud. It’s loud enough that it makes your heart stop for a second,’ said Andy Wombold. ‘It sounds like a shotgun or an explosion of some kind.'” Read more.

Unearthly Sounds of Earth Perplexing Scientists – “Strange unearthly sounds heard around Earth are perplexing scientists, especially when similar sounds are heard at the same time. The sounds are described as ‘running trains,’ while others are described as trumpets or booming sounds. All are unearthly. YouTube.com is full of videos displaying strange sounds from all over the world, with viewers asking for explanations. They vary in countries and states—with many heard at the same time but in different locations of Earth, such as the sounds in southern Sweden.” Read more.

Categories: Anything Else

Egypt: Horde of 3000 Islamists Torch Christian Church, Loot and Burn Christian-Owned Homes and Businesses

10/01/2011 Leave a comment

By Wayne King – “A group of hard-line Muslims attacked a church building in Upper Egypt this afternoon, torching the structure and then looting and burning nearby Christian-owned homes and businesses.

The 3,000-strong mob of hard-line and Salafi Muslims gutted the Mar Gerges Church in the Elmarenab village of Aswan, then demolished much of its remains, multiple witnesses at the scene said. The mob also razed four homes near the church and two businesses, all Christian-owned. Looting was also reported.

Michael Ramzy, a villager in Elmarenab, said the attack started shortly after Muslims held their afternoon prayers.

‘Imams in more than 20 mosques called for crowds to gather and destroy the church and demolish the houses of the Copts and loot their properties,’ Ramzy told local media.

The Mar Gerges burning is the third church in Egypt in seven months to be burned down by a mob. Additionally, numerous other churches have been looted or otherwise attacked this year, including a New Year’s Eve bombing at the Two Saints Church in Alexandria that left 23 dead and scores critically wounded.

No casualties have yet been reported in today’s attack.

The tension in Elmarenab started the last week of August, when Muslim extremists, many of them thought to be members of the Salafi movement, which patterns its belief and practices on the first three generations of Muslims, voiced anger over renovations taking place at the church and anything perceived as a Christian symbol that could be seen from the outside.

To force the Copts to acquiesce to their demands, the Muslim extremists blockaded the entrance to the church and threatened Copts on the streets, in effect making them hostages in their own homes.

On Sept. 2, a meeting was held with military leaders and village elders in which the local leadership of the Coptic church agreed to strike all crosses and bells from the outside of the church. Normalcy returned briefly to the village, but by early the next week, the same people making demands for the removal of the crosses demanded the removal of newly constructed domes.” Read more.

New Hampshire: Dead Harbor Seals Pose Mystery on Beaches

10/01/2011 Leave a comment

By Amanda Cedrone – “Biologists are working to find out why the corpses of young harbor seals have been washing up on New Hampshire beaches this week.

‘We’re now up to a dozen different dead seals from beaches in Seabrook to Rye,’ said Tony LaCasse, spokesperson for the New England Aquarium.

The carcasses range in their level of decomposition from fresh to a few weeks old, LaCasse said.

Staff members at the New England Aquarium are completing necropsies on a few of the seals today to try to determine whether they were killed by disease, LaCasse said. The results will not be available for a few days to a few weeks.

The seals are all the same age, around four months.

‘There is no evidence of any kind of human involvement in these deaths,’ LaCasse said, noting that the situation is different from the gray seals that were found shot to death on Cape Cod beaches earlier this summer.” Read more.

Categories: Mass Animal Deaths

Hamas: ‘Palestinians Must Resort to Resistance No Matter How costly It Is, Until Palestine Is Free and Israel Is Destroyed’

10/01/2011 3 comments

“Hamas leader Khaled Meshal told an international conference in Iran on Saturday that ‘resistance’ was the only option left for the Palestinians.

Meshal was addressing the ‘5th International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada’ in Iran’s capital Tehran.

‘Palestinians must resort to resistance no matter how costly it is, until Palestine is free and Israel is destroyed,’ Meshal said.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who also spoke at the conference on Saturday, assailed a two state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, saying the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations is doomed to fail.

Khamenei told the conference, which was attended by other by senior Palestinian militant leaders as well as Mashaal, that the Palestinians should not limit themselves to seeking a country based on the pre-1967 borders because ‘all land belongs to Palestinians.’

‘Our claim is freedom of Palestine, not part of Palestine. Any plan that partitions Palestine is totally rejected,’ Khamenei told the conference.” Read more.

Florida: Mysterious South Brevard Bee Kill Confounds, Costs Keepers

09/30/2011 Leave a comment

By JIM WAYMER – “Charles Smith last saw his bees alive early last week.

When the Fellsmere beekeeper checked them Monday, his heart dropped as he saw the mounds of dead bees spilling out of all 400 of his hives off Babcock Street, about a half-mile south of Micco Road near the Indian River County line.

Another beekeeper about a mile south found a similar amount of his bees dead, around the same time, Smith said.

‘This is a total wipeout,’ Smith said as he opened the green wooden hives to show the destroyed honey. ‘This is all no good. It’s been sprayed.’

He estimates he lost $150,000 in honey proceeds, the bees and their future generations.

The beekeepers aren’t accusing anyone, and Brevard County officials doubt recent mosquito control spraying in the area killed the bees.

But the die-off left behind the hallmarks of a pesticide kill, experts say, sparking a whodunit beehive mystery in South Brevard.

‘Right now it’s too early to start pointing fingers at anybody,’ said Bill Kern, an entomologist with the University of Florida’s Research and Education Center in Fort Lauderdale, who has been following the case. ‘The fact that it was so widespread and so rapid, I think you can pretty much rule out disease,’ Kern said. ‘It happened essentially almost in one day. Usually diseases affect adults or the brood, you don’t have something that kills them both.’

State agriculture officials gathered dead and dying bees from both hives Thursday to test for pesticides. Results could take several weeks.

‘Right now, we don’t know what pesticide, if any, was involved,’ Kern said. ‘If there’s a real high level, it’s going to be pretty obvious.'” Read more.

Categories: Mass Animal Deaths

Sudan: Christians Being Detained by Sudanese Armed Forces and Executed, ‘This Land is an Islamic Land’

09/30/2011 10 comments

“KHARTOUM, Sudan, September 29 (CDN) — Failure by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied Islamic militia to distinguish between combatants and civilians in territorial battles in South Kordofan state is due in part to a desire to rid the area of Christianity, local Christians say.

A Christian in the Leri East area of Kadugli who escaped SAF Intelligence agents 18 days after his June 20 arrest from his home said he saw six other Christian detainees taken away, one by one, to be executed over the course of two weeks.

‘They were insulting us, saying that this land is an Islamic land and that we were not allowed to be in this land,’ he told Compass. ‘I saw them take my fellow Christians brothers and shoot them in the forest near the place where we were detained.’

While the SAF and its paramilitary allies have targeted members and supporters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement forces, the Christian, who requested anonymity as he is still in hiding, said he was detained simply because he was a Christian. A convert from Islam 10 years ago, he said he was scheduled to be executed the day he escaped.

‘I was already dead, so I did not fear being shot dead – I was not worried about my safety any more; after all, I was under their mercy as they thought, but God was in control,’ he said.

A former aid worker with a Christian humanitarian agency, he said he was praying throughout the ordeal.

‘I was praying despite the fact they were threatening me that I would face the same fate of the six brothers who were shot dead in the forest,’ he said.

After the miracle of being able to escape during a lull in their vigil, God rescued him from other potential dangers in his trek to freedom, he said.

‘I was interrogated three times at three different check-points, but God covered their eyes to keep them from discovering me,’ he said. ‘I think God is teaching me that I still have a mission to accomplish; that was why he rescued me from the hand of Muslims.'” Read more.

A Beast That Keeps On Giving: Hezbollah Terror Cells Active In the United States and Throughout the World, ‘We Must Get Ready for a Global Operation’

09/30/2011 Leave a comment

More and more it is no longer a question of if, but when …

By Reza Kahlili – “The terrorist group Hezb’allah, based in Lebanon, is establishing ‘resistance cells’ worldwide under the direction of Iran, according to Mohammad Hussein Babai, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the province of Golestan.

The cells are already infiltrating the United States with the help of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and drug cartels.

The Iranian Student News Agency, which is close to the Guards, reported last week that Babai, during a press conference, revealed that these jihadist cells began forming after the 2006 Lebanon war between Israel and Hezb’allah, and with the current Islamic Awakening, they have expanded their operations.

Their mission, Babai said, is to help create an Islam-dominated world.

This is the first time that a high-ranking Revolutionary Guard commander in the Islamic regime of Iran has revealed the presence of such jihadist cells in the world.

‘Today we are a witness to our power and authority in the world,’ Babai said, ‘and because of our Islamic Revolution [of 1979], now there is an Islamic Awakening that, with the leadership of the dear supreme leader, Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei, will become stronger and more resilient.’ The West refers to the Islamic Awakening as the Arab Spring.

Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, who is a member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution and an important theorist of the Islamic regime in Iran, said in a televised speech last Friday that ‘today we must get ready for a global operation, and our forces should expand their operation throughout the world.'” Read more.

Flashback: ‘What Are You Waiting For?’ – Al-Qaeda Calls on US Muslims to Buy Guns and Start Killing Americans – “I’ve believed for some time now that when this does come it will, with the right ‘triggering event’, not be isolated. It will be wide-scale. As we all know, there are millions upon millions of Muslims living in Western nations today. If an event were to occur in the world that would be eschatologically pivotal for Muslims this would be sure to awaken any radical elements within the Muslim population, regardless of where they live, and even radicalize some of those who were previously considered ‘moderate’. The arrival of al Mahdi, for example, could become the ‘triggering event’ that has the potential to precipitate a sudden surge in Islamic terrorism all over the globe. If we are complacent into believing that any such scenario could never happen or is highly unlikely, we don’t need to look far before we come face to face with the sobering reality that Islamic terrorist cells are, today, already forming within our own borders.” Read more.