+ För de som liksom jag fascinerades av söndagens Palme-dokumentär, så kan det vara värt att kolla in den här debattartikeln: ”Filmen om mordet på Palme ett moraliskt haveri av SVT.”

+ Ungdomar har en betydligt liberalare syn på narkotika än vuxna. Nästan 15 procent av unga i gruppen 18-25 år tycker att det är okej att röka hasch eller marijuana.

+ Climate scientists issue dire warning. The Earth's temperature could rise under the impact of global warming to levels far higher than previously predicted, according to the United Nations' team of climate experts.

+ Israeli anger at Europe's aid for Palestinians. Sharp differences emerged between Israel and the international community over the acute financial crisis faced by the Palestinian Authority as the EU agreed to an emergency aid package of $143m (about £82m).

+ Hezbollah and Condi’s Double Standard.

+ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, says the US and Israel blew up the Shia shrine in Iraq.

+ Dahr Jamail rapporterar från Irak: Who benefits?

The most important question to ask regarding the bombings of the Golden Mosque in Samarra on the 22nd is: who benefits? Prior to asking this question, let us note the timing of the bombing. The last weeks in Iraq have been a PR disaster for the occupiers. First, the negative publicity of the video of British soldiers beating and abusing young Iraqis has generated a backlash for British occupation forces they’ve yet to face in Iraq.

(...)

As quickly as these horrible events began, they were called to an end and replaced by acts of solidarity between Sunni and Shia across Iraq.

This, however, was not shown by western corporate media.

The Sunnis where the first to go to demonstrations of solidarity with Shia in Samarra, as well as to condemn the mosque bombings. Demonstrations of solidarity between Sunni and Shia went off over all of Iraq: in Basra, Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Kut, and Salah al-Din.

Thousands of Shia marched shouting anti-American slogans through Sadr City, the huge Shia slum area of Baghdad, which is home to nearly half the population of the capital city. Meanwhile, in the primarily Shia city of Kut, south of Baghdad, thousands marched while shouting slogans against America and Israel and burning U.S. and Israeli flags.

Baghdad had huge demonstrations of solidarity, following announcements by several Shia religious leaders not to attack Sunni mosques.

(...)

Shiite religious authority Ayatollah Hussein Ismail al-Sadr warned of the emergence of a sectarian strife “that terrorists want to ignite between the Iraqis” by the bombings and said, “The Iraqi Shiite authority strenuously denied that Sunnis could have done this work.”

He also said, “Of course it is not Sunnis who did this work; it is the terrorists who are the enemies of the Shiites and Sunni, Muslims and non Muslims. They are the enemies of all religions; terrorism does not have a religion.”

+ Al Ahram: After Askariya.

During its 100-year existence, the Askariya Mosque, housing the 1200-year shrine, was never attacked. The Sunni population of Sammara took particular pride in its care, a symbol of Shia-Sunni brotherhood.

(...)

On Friday, as a general curfew managed to secure some parts of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said the attack on the shrine was the work of "specialists".

Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar, who toured Sammara and inspected the damage incurred to the shrine, said the placing of explosives inside the dome was meticulous and must have taken at least 12 hours.

"Holes were dug into the mausoleum's four main pillars and packed with explosives," he told the media, adding that work on each pillar must have taken at least four hours.

This is an astounding statement to make. This means that the perpetrators had free rein for much of the time to carry out their heinous crime.

How did they get access to the shrine in the first place?

Initial reports said that four men, one donning Interior Ministry commando garb, stormed the Shrine after dawn prayers on Wednesday, took the five guards hostage, and fled before detonating their explosive charge.

They released the guards and mingled with worshippers for the Fajr prayers before slipping out.

Reports later said that the attackers were 10 men dressed in commando outfits and that they had been apprehended.

The shrine is meant to be protected by a contingent of 35 Interior Ministry troops because the Mosque is of particular importance to the Shia community.

Questions abound. Why was the security detail reduced from 35 to only five men guarding such an important shrine?

If it took at least 12 hours to plant the explosives, why did no one notice that the five police guards had been taken hostage?

If it took at least 12 hours to plant the explosives, would that not have meant access to the shrine during evening prayers the night before?

+ I det här sammanhanget kan de ju vara värt att komma ihåg vad som hände i Basra för inte alltför länge sedan... Such a dastardly policy.

+ Och Rumsfelds P2OG har säkert inget med saken att göra.. The board recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception. Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces.

+ The Palestinian prime minister-designate says Hamas is ready to recognise Israel if it gives the Palestinian people their full rights and a state in lands occupied since 1967, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

+ Iransk barn-tv. (!!)

+ Låt de sjuka röka hasch. Så sant som det var sagt.

+ The Amadeus code. Dan Brown's breathless quest for the secrets of the Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code cleverly patched together gossip and curiosities from the visual arts. Had the story taken another turn, it could easily have followed a path of mystery and mysticism in classical music.

+ MI6 pays out over secret LSD mind control tests. The Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has paid thousands of pounds in compensation to servicemen who were fed LSD without their consent in clandestine mind-control experiments in the 1950s.

+ Muslim Media Watch. Keeping an eye on how Muslims and Islam is portrayed in the U.S. and International media.

+ Traces from Beyond. Weird shit!

+ R.I. skriver idag om talande fiskar, Messias och den kommande apokalypsen: Signs and wonders.

+ Forensic scientists could use DNA retrieved from a crime scene to predict the surname of the suspect, according to a new British study. (?!?!)

+ Ice worms: They're real, and they're hot. Thriving in conditions that would turn most living things to Popsicles, these inch-long earthworm cousins inhabit glaciers and snowfields in the coastal ranges of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. They move through seemingly solid ice with ease and are at their liveliest near the freezing point of water. Warm them up slightly and they dissolve into goo.

+ Shrine Bombing: A new plot to divide Muslims.

+ Kurt Nimmo har grävt fram en del fler märkliga aspekter av bombningen: According to reports appearing on the humanitarian Iraqi League organization’s Iraqi Rabita website and translated into English by the Iraqi blogger Baghdad Dweller (see original Arabic here and here), at least two witnesses saw “unusual activities by the ING [Iraqi National Guard] in the area around the mosque.” Two mosque guards reported four men in ING uniforms had blindfolded them and planted explosives. A second witness, Muhammad al-Samarrai, the owner of an internet cafe in the area, was told to stay in his store and not leave the area. From 11 pm until 6:30 am, ten minutes before two bombs were detonated, the area surrounding the mosque was patrolled by “joint forces of Iraqi ING and Americans,” according to al-Samarrai.

+ Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America and toward Siberia at such a clip that Alaska might lose its spectacular Northern Lights in the next 50 years, scientists said Thursday.

+ Scientist predicts 'mini Ice Age'. A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity.

+ A fish called Allah.

+ The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God.

+ Dalai Lama: in Palestine. That is what I needed. Dalai Lama taking time from his busy life of meeting with Hollywood celebrities in order to visit Israel. He even made some suggestions on how to best deal with Hamas. Dalai Lama: when did he ever take a courageous stance on anything, outside of hanging out with Richard Gere. Dalai Lama only proves what Robespierre had said about the clergy. And the Dalai Lama seems bothered by Palestinian actions, this from somebody who never uttered a word against Israeli occupation or killing of Palestinians. Dalai Lama: you remind me of Jimmy Carter. You are both boring and insignificant, and yet you both arrogantly think that you are doing something for the word. You are not. If anything, you have done only bad things to the word, your declarations to the contrary notwithstanding. Just go away, Dalai Lama. Go spend time with Jimmy Carter on his farm. Just go and hang out with celebrities and spare us you vapid pontification.

+ Ny trailer för A Scanner Darkly ute nu. Nu börjar det närma sig.

+ Samtidigt som Hamas tar makten strävar USA efter att isolera den terrorstämplade islamiströrelsen. Utrikesminister Condoleezza Rice anlände i dag till Kairo för samtal med president Hosni Mubaraks regim. Senare bär det av till oljevännen Saudiarabien. Budskapet i båda fallen är detsamma: Hjälp inte den snart Hamas-styrda Palestinska myndigheten med pengar för att ersätta bortfallet i västerländska bidrag och skatteöverföringar från Israel. USA:s Mellanösternpolitik står inför ett dilemma. Rice vänder sig till gamla, diktatoriska regimer av den typ Vita huset vill ha bort och ber dem om hjälp med att bekämpa en grupp som nyligen vann regelrätt i ett demokratiskt val.

+ A coalition of American churches sharply denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Saturday, accusing Washington of "raining down terror" and apologizing to other nations for "the violence, degradation and poverty our nation has sown."

+ Pakistani riots about more than cartoons.

+ The Guardian: We are moving ever closer to the era of mind control.

Major companies, ranging from Coca-Cola to BMW, are starting to image the brains of potential customers to study how they respond to new designs or brands. They are beginning to speak of 'neuromarketing' and 'neuroeconomics.'

(...)

One US company claims to have developed a technique called 'brain- fingerprinting', which can 'determine the truth regarding a crime, terrorist activities or terrorist training by detecting information stored in the brain'.

+ Jaha, var är Expressen och de andra förkämparna för de fria ordet nu då? David Irving Sentenced to Three Years in Prison. Det är fullkomligt bisarrt detta.

+ A Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask. 5. Why did the mysterious anthrax attacks come and go like a wraith? Ja, det kan man gott fråga sig.

+ Belgian Reverts Find Comfort in Islam.

+ Kolla kolla, en massa "Al Qaida"-dokument.

+ Xymphora har en lång intressant post där han trasar sönder några aspekter av den officiella 11/9-historien: The Able Danger danger. Vem var egentligen Mohammad Atta?

+ Noor Anayat Khan: The princess who became a spy. She was a Sufi pacifist who fought for Britain and died at the hands of the Gestapo. As a new biography separates truth from myth, Boyd Tonkin celebrates the remarkable Noor Anayat Khan.

+ A sweeping majority of 91 percent of British Muslims are "loyal" to Britain and 80 percent still want to live in and accept Western society, a new poll showed on Sunday, February 19. (...) The survey found that 99 percent of British Muslims believe the July 7 bombers were "wrong" to carry out the atrocity.

+ LSD faces an acid test as a pain killer. PSYCHEDELIA sent a creative tsunami through the rock bands of the 1960s, but government concern over the recreational abuse of drugs such as LSD led to bans that killed off exploration of any legitimate medical uses. But there is something of a resurgence of interest among researchers in the medical uses for LSD, psilocybin and MDMA. Clinical trials have shown promising results for relieving crippling "cluster" and other vascular headaches, as well as pain, suffering and anxiety in terminally-ill cancer patients.

+ A woman has been installed as mayor of the Palestinian Authority’s political capital Ramallah thanks to the support of the Islamist movement Hamas, officials said yesterday. Janette Khuri, a 62-year-old Christian, became the first woman mayor of a major West Bank municipality when she was elected by a majority of her 15 fellow councillors.

+ Women MPs vow to change face of Hamas.

Ask Huda Naeem how she intends to use her influence as a newly elected MP for Hamas and she ticks off a list of wrongs done to women in the name of religion.

Forced marriage, honour killings, low pay and girls being kept out of school are her priorities for change in the Palestinian parliament. That is when she is not preparing her 13-year-old son to die in the fight against Israel.

"A lot of things need to change," she said. "Women in Gaza and the West Bank should be given complete rights. Some women and girls are made to marry someone they don't want to marry. This is not in our religion, it's our tradition. In our religion, a woman has a right to choose.

"As a woman and an MP, there are areas I want to concentrate on but that does not mean we have forgotten our struggle for our homeland, and preparing our children to die when the homeland calls for it."

Mrs Naeem, a 37-year-old social worker at the Islamic University in Gaza City and a mother of four, is one of six women elected to parliament on the Hamas ticket in the Islamist party's landslide victory last month. They will be sworn in when the new parliament opens today.

Women played a crucial role in getting out the vote for Hamas, knocking on doors and often getting a sympathetic hearing. Hamas's strategy to build political support through its social programmes - the provision of health clinics, nurseries and food for the poor - sealed the loyalty of many Palestinian women.

(...)

Shortly before the election, Hamas launched a women's armed wing and pictured its members brandishing guns and rocket-propelled grenades in its campaign posters. But the women MPs say their priority is reform, not armed struggle.

Jamila Shanti, a philosophy professor at the Islamic University who headed the list of Hamas's women candidates, says the female activists agree on the need to tackle discrimination. "Our first job is to correct this because this is not Islam," she said. "We are going to show that women are not secondary, they are equal to men. Discrimination is not from Islam, it is from tradition. It may not be easy. Men may not agree."

+ Poland's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller on Friday ruled out allowing any Iranian researchers to examine the scale of the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis on Polish soil during World War Two.

+ A security expert has described the Iraq war as a gift for al-Qaeda, providing them with the perfect urban terrorist training ground. Professor Paul Rogers told delegates at the Royal United Services Institute that the consequences of creating such a theatre for terrorists to hone their skills would "haunt us over the next 20 to 30 years". (...) "You get young Jihadists from Afghanistan travelling to Iraq, getting combats training against the American troops in urban environments and then taking their skills elsewhere (...) The real gift to al-Qaeda is a long-term urban combat training zone, not a rural one as previously."

+ Cheney’s victim apologizes to Cheney!

+ R. I. i dag: Markovian Parallax Denigrate.

+ The Streets är äntligen på gång att släppa en ny skiva: What The Streets did next.

+ Latest Airline Terror Threat: People Who Read Books. "US rocker and writer Henry Rollins was reported to the National Security hotline during his recent Australian tour because of a book he was reading on flight to Brisbane. (...) A furious Rollins was informed he was 'nominated as a possible threat' for reading Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia."

+ A high court judge yesterday delivered a stinging attack on America, saying its idea of what constituted torture was out of step with that of "most civilised nations".

+ Climate change: On the edge. Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag.

+ Greenhouse gases are being released into the atmosphere 30 times faster than the time when the Earth experienced a previous episode of global warming.

+ Israel and U.S. Jewish groups have lobbied organizers of next month's Academy Awards not to present a nominated film about Palestinian suicide bombers as coming from "Palestine," an Israeli diplomat said on Sunday.

+ Fascinerande artikel om Cargo Cults: South Pacific villagers worship a mysterious American they call John Frum - believing he'll one day shower their remote island with riches.

+ Och via kanske Fantastic Planet (tror jag) kommer en ny blog om "middle eastern culture, art, religion, magic and mysticism": Anulios.

+ Loud music prolongs the effects of taking ecstasy for up to five days. A study published today in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience shows that the reduction in rats' brain activity induced by 3,4 -Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or ecstasy) lasts long after administration of the drug – up to five days – if loud music is played to them simultaneously. The effects wear off within a day when no music is played. (!)

+ A decision is expected soon in the case to extradite Gary Mckinnon to the US to face hacking charges. Here the BBC News website profiles the hacker, his history and his motives. Clean kille, men är han inte kusligt lik seriemördaren Richard Ramirez?


Gary McKinnon


Richard Ramirez
Här skrev jag lite om honom tidigare, och det här citatet ur intervjun med Jon Ronson fascinerar mig fortfarande:

“What was the most exciting thing you saw?” I ask.

“I found a list of officers’ names,” he claims, “under the heading ‘Non-Terrestrial Officers’.”

“Non-Terrestrial Officers?” I say.

“Yeah, I looked it up,” says Gary, “and it’s nowhere. It doesn’t mean little green men. What I think it means is not earth-based. I found a list of ‘fleet-to-fleet transfers’, and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren’t US navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet.”

“The Americans have a secret spaceship?” I ask.

“That’s what this trickle of evidence has led me to believe.”

“Some kind of other Mir that nobody knows about?”

“I guess so,” says Gary.

Om det inte gått in ännu så hackade McKinnon NASA:s, Pentagon, US Army med fleras datorer för att hitta information om UFO:n.

+ Rats Understand Cause and Effect, Experiment Suggests. :)

+ Rigorous Intution är alltid läsvärd, så också idag, med ett inlägg om Cheney, Pentagon och Robert Heinlein: Why They Fight.

+ Pentagon spells out strategy for global military aggression.

That the document uses the term “long war,” a phrase that is increasingly replacing the “global war on terrorism” in Washington official-speak, has ominous implications. The term is aimed at accustoming US military personnel and the American public at large to a state of permanent warfare that will continue regardless of the outcome of the current interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. (...) In another significant terminological shift, the Pentagon document defines the main enemy not as terrorists, but rather as “violent extremists” or merely “extremists.” This choice of words is not accidental. The thrust of the strategic conceptions outlined by the Pentagon review is the organization of the US military to violently quell any and all opposition to US domination. Those who resist Washington’s economic and political hegemony are to be branded “extremists,” no matter what their ideological conceptions, and ruthlessly suppressed. The counterinsurgency methods elaborated in the document are aimed not merely at Islamist terrorist groups, but at any popular movement that emerges against US imperialism and its client regimes.

+ Disabled boy shot dead by Israeli troops. Vapenvila?

+ Norway Criminalizes Blasphemy. WHUT?!

+ 9 11 Revealed - The Daily Mail.

+ Fler observarade frågor om Dick Cheneys människojakt: Cover-up in progress and Shotgun ballistics don’t match-up!

Xymph kommer med lite fler frågor: Cheney's confession.

+ Syria has switched all of the state's foreign currency transactions to euros from dollars amid a political confrontation with the United States, the head of state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria said on Monday.

Och snart följer Iran efter. Får se var det slutar. Saddam bytte från dollar till euro år 2000 (om jag inte missminner mig) och det dröjde inte länge förrän korsfararna knackade på.

+ Only on Fox News: Cable channel aired photos of aliens attacking Library Tower.

+ Inte lite skrämmande rapport i dagens Guardian: America's Long War.

Last week US defence chiefs unveiled their plan for battling global Islamist extremism. They envisage a conflict fought in dozens of countries and for decades to come. (...) The report sets out a plan for prosecuting what the the Pentagon describes in the preface as "The Long War", which replaces the "war on terror". (...) Looking beyond the Iraq and Afghan battlefields, US commanders envisage a war unlimited in time and space against global Islamist extremism. "The struggle ... may well be fought in dozens of other countries simultaneously and for many years to come," the report says.

+ US and Israel 'try to force new elections by starving Hamas. "When we said you could have elections, we meant you should elect leaders WE APPROVE OF, dammit!"

+ Fler bilder från Abu Ghraib har släppts.

+ Och av Bugz fick jag ett tips om denna intressanta artikel om irakisk metal (!): No War for Heavy Metal!

+ A secret Pentagon unit had Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader, in its crosshairs 13 times before the 2001 attacks, a US congressman has claimed citing the unit's records. Oj då.

+ Ja, som ni säkert hört har Dick "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" Cheney skjutit sin jaktkompis. Lite klantigt kan tyckas. Men nu börjar folk ana ugglor i mossen.. Cheney's Chappaquiddick. Mer på Rigorous Intuition (bra diskussion i kommentar-delen också): Accidents will happen. The more than 18-hour delay in news emerging that the Vice President of the United States had shot a man, sending him to an intensive care unit with his wounds, grew even more curious late Sunday. E&P has learned that the official confirmation of the shooting came about only after a local reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, received a tip from the owner of the property where the shooting occured and called Vice President Cheney's office for confirmation.

+ Fissures in Balkan Islam. For Muslims in this small Balkan country, the Ottoman Empire's Islamic legacy still endures. However, some say Arab rivals are seeking to undermine it.

+ Robocop-tider! Shit! Hjälp! FUTURE WARRIOR: New Concepts for Uniform Systems.

+ Into the valley of death: UK troops head into Afghan war zone. With the Army in a new abuse scandal and no exit strategy from Iraq in sight, UK troops head into another war zone.

+ Två nomadkvinnor i Bangidar i västra Pakistan dödades när en robot slog ned i deras tält i lördags. Enligt en anonym pakistansk underrättelsekälla avfyrades projektilen av amerikanska soldater i Afghanistan. Den dödande projektilen var en av minst fyra - granater eller robotar - som avfyrades av amerikanska soldater från Afghanistan in i Pakistan, uppgav underrättelsekällan.

+ Värsta snöstormen i New York sedan 1947.

+ Details emerged last night of a shocking video which appears to show a group of British soldiers brutally beating and kicking defenceless Iraqi teenagers in an army compound.

Se den vidriga filmen här. Bilder och annat finns här: Britain's Breaking Abu Ghraib Scandal.

+ But the mystery over how the issue [Cartoons] inflamed the Muslim world deepened with the revelation that an Egyptian newspaper had published several of the cartoons last October, less than three weeks after they first appeared in Denmark, without provoking a reaction. El Fagr reprinted the drawing considered most offensive on its front page, along with a highly critical commentary. Yet even though it was Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, it took another three months for the cartoons to spread anger across the Middle East and beyond.

+ Turkish rush to embrace anti-US film.

+ Danish paper cancels plans to republish cartoons about Israel. The Danish newspaper that created a storm in the Arab world by publishings cartoons of the prophet Mohammed has canceled plans to reprint several cartoons dealing with Israel, a senior editor told Haaretz yesterday.

+ Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company.

+ Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.

+ Mattias Gardell säger ett sanningens ord igen: Debattörer mörkar det goda islam. När de danska ambassaderna i Beirut och Damaskus stacks i brand reagerade muslimer här med bestörtning. Det får vi inte veta. I stället lyfter svensk press fram tonåringar som säger sig ”vilja dö för islam”. Extremister finns också i islam, men att göra dem till tolk för den muslimska världen är lika missvisande som att göra Sverigedemokraterna till språkrör för alla svenskar. (...) Varför inte lyssna till vad som sägs i den islamistiska huvudfåran? Inflytelserika ledare som Mohamed Rashid Qabani (Libanon), Ahmed Badrreddine Hassun (Syrien) och Yusuf al-Qaradawi (exilegyptier) har fördömt ambassadbränderna. ”Förvisso har islam utsatts för attacker på sistone”, sade Qaradawi (6/2). ”Men muslimer får inte ge igen” utan bör hålla sig till ”bojkott”, ”dialog” och ”upplysning”.

+ Israel fumes over Putin 'knife in back'.

+ Architects threaten to boycott Israel over 'apartheid' barrier.

+ World is at its warmest for a millennium. The entire northern hemisphere is experiencing a sustained period of warming that is unprecedented in the past millennium, a study has found. A review of a range of temperature records, from tree rings and ice cores to historical documents, has found that at no time since the 9th century have temperatures been so consistently high.

+ Astma tipsade om denna text: Muslim Cartoon Controversy: What the Media Isn't Telling You.

While it was a minor side story in the western press, the most important of Muslim religious festivals recently took place in Saudi Arabia - called the Hajj.

(...)

The most recent Hajj occurred during the first half of January 2006, precisely when the "outrage" over the Danish cartoons began in earnest. There were a number of stampedes, called "tragedies" in the press, during the Hajj which killed several hundred pilgrims. I say "tragedies" in quotation marks because there have been similar "tragedies" during the Hajj and each time, the Saudi government promises to improve security and facilitation of movement to avoid these. Over 251 pilgrims were killed during the 2004 Hajj alone in the same area as the one that killed 350 pilgrims in 2006. These were not unavoidable accidents, they were the results of poor planning by the Saudi government.

And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media's radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Most of the pilgrims who were killed came from poorer countries such as Pakistan, where the Hajj is a very big story. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.

Their plan was to go on a major offensive against the Danish cartoons. The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons. The Saudi government asked for a formal apology from Denmark. When that was not forthcoming, they began calling for world-wide protests. After two weeks of this, the Libyans decided to close their embassy in Denmark. Then there was an attack on the Danish embassy in Indonesia. And that was followed by attacks on the embassies in Syria and then Lebanon.

Läs resten också.

+ Det låter som ett skämt, men det är det inte. Israel plans to build 'museum of tolerance' on Muslim graves.

+ Danish paper U-turns on Holocaust cartoons. :D :D :D

+ Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy. Huh? Har jag inte läst ngt om i svensk press?

+ Thousands of Muslims are expected to attend a rally in London at the weekend to protest at both the publication of cartoons defiling the image of the Prophet Mohamed and the response of Islamic extremists. Gott!

+ Israel unveils plan to encircle Palestinian state.

+ Hamas deserves a chance. Former Israeli leader Menachem Begin, who later received the Nobel Peace Prize, was originally the leader of the terrorist group Irgun and planned the bombing of the King David Hotel that resulted in the loss of over 90 lives. Likewise Yitzhak Shamir was a member of the Lohamei Herut Israel terrorist group that participated in the massacre of 260 residents of the Arab village of Deir Yassin.

+ World's first Sept 11 convict released in Germany.

+ Muhammad-bilderna ur ett gnostiskt perspektiv: The Danger of Images: Mohammed Cartoons and the Nature of Representation.

+ Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria. Many Israelis recoil at suggestions that their country, risen from the ashes of genocide and built on Jewish ideals, could be compared to a racist regime. Yet for years the bulk of South Africa's Jews not only failed to challenge the apartheid system but benefited and thrived under its protection, even if some of their number figured prominently in the liberation movements. In time, Israeli governments too set aside objections to a regime whose leaders had once been admirers of Adolf Hitler. Within three decades of its birth, Israel's self-proclaimed "purity of arms" - what it describes as the moral superiority of its soldiers - was secretly sacrificed as the fate of the Jewish state became so intertwined with South Africa that the Israeli security establishment came to believe the relationship saved the Jewish state.

+ Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

+ Iranian paper to run Holocaust cartoons. Jag antar att västs intelligentia applåderar denna modiga yttrandefrihetsaktion. Eller?

+ Samtidigt i Österrike... David Irving hotas av 10 års fängelse för att ha uttryckt tveksamhet om förintelsens omfattning. Varför försvarar ingen Irvings rätt till yttrandefrihet dessa dagar? Eller Ernst Zundel, som sitter fängslad i Kanada för saker han skrivit.

+ Via Angry Arab:

+ Cartoons are a purposeful provocation.

"Agents of certain persuasion" are behind the egregious affront to Islam in order to provoke Muslims, Professor Mikael Rothstein of the University of Copenhagen told the BBC. The key "agent" is Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of JP, who commissioned cartoonists to produce the blasphemous images and then published them in Denmark's leading morning paper last September.

The International Herald Tribune, which reported on the offensive cartoons on January 1, noted that even the liberalism of Rose had its limits when it came to criticism of Zionist leaders and their crimes. Rose also has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons behind the "war on terror."

Rose told the international paper owned by The New York Times that "he would not publish a cartoon of Israel's Ariel Sharon strangling a Palestinian baby, since that could be construed as 'racist.'"

Asked why he was protecting Sharon, a known war criminal, while abusing Muslims and their Prophet in the name of free speech, Rose told American Free Press that he had been "misquoted" in the Times article.

Rose traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares "militant Islam" with fascism and communism.

+ The Daniel Pipes apologetic article from Flemming Rose @ Jyllands Posten.

+ Sen är det ju tyvärr så att Islams värsta fiender finns inom den muslimska fållan. Galningar som står och skriker på Londons gator om att hugga huvudet av dem som förolämpar Islam medan extremistiska imamer breder ut sig i pressen om att det enligt Islam är belagt med dödsstraff att förolämpa Profeten! Det är så osant och sorgligt att jag får ont i hjärtat.

"And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly." [3:78]

"And if your Lord had pleased, surely all those who are in the earth would have believed, all of them; will you then force men till they become believers?" [10:99]

"Lo! ye are those who love them though they love you not, and ye believe in all the Scripture." [3:119]

"Invite (all) to the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious: for thy Lord knoweth best, who have strayed from His Path, and who receive guidance." [16:125]

"And the servants of the Beneficent Allah are they who walk on the earth in humbleness, and when the ignorant address them, they say: Peace." [25:63]

"In their beliefs they must shun submission to conjectures and not be content with mere taqlid of their ancestors, for if man believes in things without proof or reason, makes a practice of following unproven opinions, and is satisfied to imitate and follow his ancestors, his mind inevitably desist from intellectual movement, and little by little stupidity and imbecility overcome him - until his mind becomes completely idle and he becomes unable to perceive his own good and evil, and adversity and misfortune overtake him from all sides." [Jamal al-Din al-Afghani]

+ 2003 tackade Jyllands-Posten tackade nej till flera satiriska teckningar på Jesus. "Det skulle utlösa ett ramaskri", sa tidningens söndagsredaktör enligt Dagbladets nätupplaga. (The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was offered, but did not publish, several satirical images of Jesus in 2003. "I don't believe Jyllands-Posten's readers would find them funny", the editor said.)

+ Folk blir dummare och dummare.

+ Ritual May Play Role In Placebo Relief.

+ Al Muhajabah har en bra post om de senaste kontroverserna rörande nidbilderna av Profeten Muhammad: Freedom and responsibility.

+ Mohammed Image Archive. Depictions of Mohammed Throughout History.

+ Whatreallyhappened:

Now I havent seen the cartoons or pictures or whatever myself but as everyone gets worked up about this I have to wonder what possessed the person to draw them? What benefit did it do other than to give the perfect excuse for a fake terror attack?

So the guy draws the pictures. Moslems get mad and protest and issue what are presumable empty threats. The CIA, Neocons, whoever take the opportunity to stage a terror attack in Europe. Could be the Olympics, could be another underground bombing like in London. The Europeans who havent been for a war with Iran or Syria are just going to automatically assume that the Moslems carried through with the threats. War will be inveitable.

Who paid the guy to do it? I dont think this was just a coincidence. Call me overly paranoid or a conspiracy theorist. It just happened at the right time.

WRH: I agree. The cartoons are an obvious provocation at a time when certain parties clearly want a war between Christians and Muslims.

+ Här finns en tidslinje för utvecklingen: Timeline of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

+ Heja Jan Guillou! Statsministern stryker den rasistiska opinionen medhårs.

+ World Tracker turns anyone into a cellphone spy. A UK service called World Tracker apparently uses cell tower data (or GPS, when available) to track the location of just about any GSM cellphone. Just enter the number you want to track into the service's handy Google Maps-based interface, and you'll be able to zoom in on the device's location, with accuracy somewhere between 50 and 500 meters.

+ Hamas has been known and feared for its men, armed with suicide bombs. But in its parliamentary election triumph here last week, one secret weapon was its women. "Before Hamas, women were not aware of the political situation," she said. "But Hamas showed and clarified what was going on. Women have become much more aware."

+ Maybe that is the way to put an end to all the controversy, protests and boycott: to print, as a special edition, the most insulting and offensive cartoons that they can find of Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. If the intent was merely to make a point about freedom of expression then surely they will have no issue with this and it will only strengthen their claims about commitment to Enlightenment values.

+ Ännu ett tecken på hur George Bush fullkomligt förkastar internationell lag: Bush and Blair discussed using American Spyplane in UN colours to lure Saddam into war. "President Bush said: 'The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.'"

Precis som i Afghanistan med andra ord, där amerikanska trupper kör omkring i vitmålade jeepar, som annars brukar vara reserverade för NGO:s typ Röda Korset och Läkare utan gränser. Detta ledde också till att Läkare utan gränser tvingades lämna Afghanistan, då deras fordon attackerades i tron att deras fordon var amerikanska militärtransporter.