A Voice of Reason

"I have no doubt that there are many issues which incite people to loath government policies but not to strap explosives to themselves and go out and murder innocent people.

"There is no way of rationalising that.

"I think it is very, very dangerous when people who call themselves community leaders make some assumption that somehow that there's a rational connection between these two things."

--U.K Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells in response to a letter from British Muslim leaders urging changes in government policy to prevent further terrorist activities. Source: BBC News.

Enemies of Islam

Don't go to Afghanistan and share the love and miracles of Christ:

Afghanistan deports Christian Koreans, cancels peace festival

KABUL: Afghanistan has ordered hundreds of South Korean Christians to leave the country yesterday, accusing them of seeking to undermine Islamic culture and trying to spread Christianity.

Members of a South Korean non-governmental organisation, called the Institute of Asian Culture & Development, had prepared for a ’peace festival’ set for this weekend.

A member of the Korean group has said that the festival has been cancelled at the request of the Afghan government, Agence France-Presse reports.

Spokesman for the group Sung Han Kang said that Interior Ministry officials said they were being deported for their own protection, not due to security fears.

Meanwhile, Interior Ministry spokesman Yousef Stanezai said that although the Koreans came with tourist visas, their activities showed they had a different agenda.

"The programme was against the Islamic culture and customs of Afghans," he said, adding they have been told to leave the country as soon as possible.

The South Koreans came to Afghanistan a month ago to provide computer and business training, medical and dental care and arrange sports activities in five cities, he said.

"It was rumoured among the people they have plans to convert the people to Christianity," said Faiaz Mhrain, the governor’s chief of staff.

However, Kang stated that although the Institute of Asian Culture & Development has a Christian background, they have no intentions to win converts.

In western Herat province, provincial authorities put about 200 Koreans on a bus and deported them to Uzbekistan on Wednesday, a top provincial official said.

According to the South Korean-based Institute, some of the visiting Koreans have U.S. or Canadian citizenships, and there were 600 children among the visitors.

Kang confirmed the Koreans were deported but said they were sent to Iran.

Perhaps the South Koreans were lucky. At least the Afghanis did not kill them as enemies of Islam. Does not the Koran say at Surah 9.5:

[S]lay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush...

Peace! Tolerance! What a Religion!

How could Christians ever forget that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Unless, of course a Christian drinks from a Muslims-only water fountain:

Christian Stone Mason Beaten For Drinking Water From Public Facility

By Sheraz Khurram Khan
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service in Pakistan

LAHORE, PAKISTAN (ANS) -- A Christian stone mason received critical injuries, including dislocation of his shoulder after he was seen drinking water from a public facility, by a Muslim man on June 6 (Tuesday) just outside the eastern city of Lahore, the Pakistan Christian Post (PCP) has reported.

Nasir Ashraf, the Christian mason was working at the construction site of a school. The trouble for him began while he was returning to the site. Confronting him with anger the Muslim man asked him as to why he drank water from the public facility by using a glass that was placed at the water tank.

“Why did you drink water from this glass since you are a Christian?” the PCP quoted the Muslim man as asking Nasir.

“The man accused the mason of polluting the glass and proceeded to destroy it. The Muslim man then summoned a crowd by shouting, “This Christian polluted our glass,” and encouraged them to beat him up”, the PCP report said.

“The crowd began beating Nasir, eventually pushing him off a ledge. The fall dislocated his shoulder, broke his collarbone in two places and knocked him unconscious,” it said.

Tell it to Hezbollah!

What do you think of Hezbollah using civilians as shield and faking photographic opportunities?

Tell it directly to Hezbollah! No kidding! Clickable email address here: mediarelations123@yahoo.com

Moonbat Logic Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts on that oxymoron: moonbat logic. Today, we have:

Goldstein v. Frisch (coming to a courthouse near someone)

The tormenter of blogger Jeff Goldstein is a moonbat named Deborah Frisch. After making ugly public comments that any reasonable person would take as threatening Mr. GoldsteinÂ’s children, Ms. Frisch resigned her job as an adjunct professor at University of Arizona and continued her awful blog-baiting with nasty sexual references to Mr. Goldstein, his wife and children. Although even fellow moonbats told her she had gone overboard and was an embarrassment to liberals everywhere, Ms. Frisch refused to cease her nasty attacks on Mr. Goldstein and his family. Mr. Goldstein has now apparently brought legal action.

Of course, Ms. Frisch thinks herself somehow the victim because Mr. Goldstein actually posted, or left posted, her comments on his blog. Ms. Frisch thinks Mr. Goldstein should pay her damages. (At last report, it appears that no lawyer can be found to pursue her weird claim.)

Muslims Acting Like Muslims

There are moderates in Islam, but Islam itself is not moderate as has been so frequently shown by Muslims themselves. This time, credible death threats to a moderate Muslim force him to hide from the public limelight to protect his family. His crime? Insulting Islam by expressing moderate views. Jihad Watch has the story from Canada's Globe and Mail along with commentary.

With the consistently violent history of Islamists, is there any hope in the near future for Muslim tolerance of a multi-cultural society?

Staged Photojournalism

Forbes reports on the controversy surrounding apparently staged photos of dead children after the recent Qana bombing. Comments bolded and in brackets are mine.

The AP said information [What information? Why don't you tell us?] from its photo editors showed the events were not staged, and that the time stamps could be misleading for several reasons, including that web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken. [Which falls short of saying that the time stamps are misleading in this instance.] An AFP executive said he was stunned to be questioned about it. [How dare anyone question the media elete!] Reuters, in a statement, said it categorically rejects any such suggestion. [Because?]

"It's hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy," said Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor.[Yes, it is hard to imagine how Ms. Carroll, sitting in her air-conditioned office can decide the photos were not staged.]

Carroll said in addition to personally speaking with photo editors, "I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described."[So, what kind of photo staging can you get competitive journalists to engage in?]

Photographers are experienced in recognizing when someone is trying to stage something for their benefit, she said. [Yet, they need to picture to make a deadline, so they shoot anyway?]

"Do you really think these people would risk their lives under Israeli shelling to set up a digging ceremony for dead Lebanese kids?" asked Patrick Baz, Mideast photo director for AFP. [Yes.] "I'm totally stunned by first the question, and I can't imagine that somebody would think something like that would have happened." [Another "How dare anyone question...."]

The AP had three different photographers there who weren't always aware of what the others were doing, and filed their images to editors separately, said Santiago Lyon, director of photography. [Increasing the likelihood that they were duped by staged pictures, I guess.]

There are also several reasons not to draw conclusions from time stamps, Lyon said. Following a news event like this, the AP does not distribute pictures sequentially; photos are moved based on news value and how quickly they are available for an editor to transmit. [Someone delayed sending photos of the number one news story of the day? Are we supposed to believe that?]

The AP indicates to its members when they are sent on the wire, and member Web sites sometimes use a different time stamp to show when they are posted.

So, we eagerly await the response of the news media to the outside offer to examine the timestamps. Of course, none of this explains the other anomolies, such as changes of clothes by Mr. Green Helmet between pictures, or the fact that Green Helmet did the same display of bodies to photographers in the 1996 attacks.