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Locked on 06/01/2006 7:13:39 PM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason:
New thread here. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642083/posts |
Posted on 04/18/2006 11:09:45 PM PDT by nwctwx
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618142/posts
"Jail loos turned from East (UK moves prison toilets so they dont face mecca)"
The Sun ^ | ? | By JAMIE PYATT
Posted on 04/20/2006 2:55:33 AM PDT by KneelBeforeZod
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "JAIL bosses are rebuilding toilets so Muslim inmates don’t have to use them while facing Mecca.
Thousands of pounds of taxpayers money are being spent to ensure lags are not offended.
The Islamic religion prohibits Muslims from facing or turning their backs on the Kiblah — the direction of prayer — when they visit the lav.
Muslim lags claimed they have had to sit sideways on prison WCs.
But after pressure from faith leaders the Home Office has agreed to turn the existing toilets 90 degrees at HMP Brixton in London.
The Home Office refused to reveal the cost of the new facilities — part of an “on-going refurbishment”.
One Muslim former inmate said: “The least the Prison Service can do is make sure people can practise their religion correctly in prison.”
But a Brixton jail officer said: “If they didn’t get locked up for committing crime they would not have this problem. Yet we have to sort out their loos. If we weren’t paying for it as taxpayers I’d laugh my socks off.”
Around a quarter of prisoners at the Category B jail are Muslims."
UPDATE...
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=104&sid=761593
"AP: 6 Branch Davidians to Leave Custody"
Apr 19th - 9:11pm
By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press Writer
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "WACO, Texas (AP) - Thirteen years after the Branch Davidians' armed standoff with federal agents ended in an inferno that killed nearly 80 people, six sect members who were sent to prison are about to be released from custody."
ARTICLE SNIPPET #2: "Koresh and nearly 80 followers, including two dozen children, died in a blaze that survivors say was ignited by tear gas sprayed into the compound buildings from military tanks. Authorities claim the Davidians committed suicide by setting the fire and shooting themselves."
PERSECUTION.ORG
http://www.persecution.org
===
Note: The following text is a quote:
---
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s06040071.htm
ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
MASSIVE ARREST OF CHURCH LEADERS INCLUDING AMERICANS IN YUNNAN PROVINCE
President Bush is urged to bring up China’s human rights record with Chinese President Hu Jintao during their meeting at the White House
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
MIDLAND, TX (ANS) -- On the eve of the visit to the White House on April 20 of Chinese President Hu Jintao, China Aid Association has issued a news release saying that according to CAA’s field investigators in China, seven foreign evangelical church leaders including five Americans and two Taiwanese were interrogated for five hours on March 23, 2006.
“At 9:30am, March 23, 2006, over 120 security officers from five different government agencies raided a conference building in the suburb of Kunming City, the capital of Yunnan Province. The government officers and military police came in two buses and 10 police cars,” said the release from the Midland, Texas, organization.
“Eighty Chinese house church leaders from 20 provinces were attending a fellowship meeting with Christian leaders from America. These 80 leaders represent 25 Chinese minority groups. The five Americans are from churches in Greensboro North Carolina. Among them two are white Americans and three are Chinese Americans. Since the two white American pastors are still inside China and some of the released Chinese pastors are still monitored by the Chinese security agents, their names are not available to the public according to one of the arrested pastors who came back to his home in the US.”
The release continues: “CAA learned this raid was directly orchestrated by the director of the Public Security Bureau of Yunnan Province and carried out jointly by the officers from the provincial public security, national security, foreign affairs office, religious affairs bureau and military police officers. At 2 pm (Beijing Time), following a 5 hour marathon interrogation, all of those arrested were released and some are being followed back to their home provinces.
“According to an eyewitness, the Chinese officers’ attitudes were very rude and they refused to show their IDs and even ate all of the food prepared for the pastors’ lunch. The foreign religious leaders were accused of being foreign religious infiltrators by their interrogators.
Pastor Cai Zhuohua
CAA says that it has also learned that jailed Beijing Pastor Cai Zhuohua has been forced to work more than 10 hours a day making commercial handbags since his transfer to Tianhe Prison on January 11, 2006. Since January 23, 2006, Despite repeated attempts by Cai’s mother, none of Cai’s relatives have been allowed to visit him in prison.(Prison Address: No.9 Qingfeng Road, Tiantang He, Daxing District, Beijing City Tel: +86-10-60278855, director: Mr. Yang Hua; website: www.qsc.gov.cn)
Meanwhile, CAA has issued heartbreaking true stories regarding religious persecution inside China in which it says that the persecution against Protestant House Churches in China has intensified.
“According to reliable reports by China Aid Association, from February to December 2005, at least 1317 confirmed arrests of house church pastors, leaders, and believers have occurred in over twenty provinces in China. Seventeen foreign missionaries including eleven Americans in ten different provinces were arrested during this time. Most of the arrested were released after they were interrogated anywhere from 24 hours to several months.”
CAA says that it has confirmed reports through victims own testimonies showing inhumane torture against the arrested believers including coercion of evidence through drugging and other extremely abusive methods by the interrogators from both Chinese Public Security officers and State Security agents.
Chinese house church pastor, Cai Zhuohua (centre), baptizing a new convert.
“Religious groups which already had limited fundamental rights have been deemed a ‘cult’ at any time and have lost what legitimacy they previous held. Foreigners were ordered to leave the country after hours of interrogation,” said the news release. “On August 2, 2005, the two American theological students from Westminster Theological Seminary were treated brutally and handcuff after they were arrested at a bible study site in Zaoyang City, Hubei Province. Both were denied their right to contact the US Embassy as part of the international consulate protection procedure guaranteed by US-China bilateral treaties.
“We urge President Bush to discuss these specific cases with Chinese President Hu tomorrow,” said Rev. Bob Fu, “the First Freedom – Freedom of Religion - should not be expended freely with free trade.”
Meanwhile, members of Congress want President Bush to again push China to do more to respect the human rights of its people.
According to a story from AP, “The White House says Bush will bring up the issue when he meets with the Chinese president tomorrow. But, lawmakers are skeptical much will be accomplished.
“Republican and Democratic senators have written the president saying there has been an unfortunate backsliding in China's human rights record in recent years. They cite a State Department report that in 2005 there was a trend toward increased harassment and detention of people the Chinese government considered threatening.
“The watchdog group Human Rights Watch is also urging Bush to raise a half-dozen issues with the Chinese leader, including China's increased restrictions on free expression and torture of detainees.”
The website for China Aid Association can be found at: www.ChinaAid.org
Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com. danjuma1@aol.com. (Photo of Dan Wooding: Raul Gonzalez)
** You may republish this story with proper attribution.
The new link is active.
Site looks nice.
Easy on the eyes.
http://counterterrorismblog.org/
2 lives looted by an alleged identity thief
Prosecutor: He moved into their empty home, tapped $1.4M in equity
When a Grant City couple went overseas for the winter a year and a half ago, a Queens man allegedly stepped into their home and lives -- without their knowledge.
Using their personal information, and the deed to their Lincoln Avenue house as collateral, Ahmed Fayyaz illegally obtained home-equity loans and lines of credit from five different banks and financial lenders totaling about $1.4 million, prosecutors allege. (snip)
http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1145539942200950.xml&coll=1
Foreign militant with suspected al-Qaida links killed in gunfight in Pakistan
A suspected foreign Islamic militant and a security official were killed in a gunfight at a roadblock in a remote northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border on Thursday, Pakistan's army spokesman said.
Two local intelligence agents said the slain militant was an Arab and had links with al-Qaida. One of the agents said authorities found a video camera, a laptop computer, hand grenades and some documents in the man's vehicle.
(snip)
One of the agents said the man's body had been transported to a hospital in the northwestern city of Peshawar for a DNA test.
He did not identify the slain man, but claimed he was a Saudi national and had links with top al-Qaida leaders.
(snip)
http://www.tkb.org/NewsStory.jsp?storyID=116270
(Was the guy REALLY tall???)
Paul Craig Roberts
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Is your job safe? Not if it can be done abroad. The only safe jobs are in domestic services that require a "hands-on" presence, such as barbers, hospital orderlies and waitresses.
For a number of years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly payroll jobs reports have been sending U.S. policymakers dire warnings, only to be ignored. The March report repeats the message. Ninety-five percent of the new jobs created are in domestic services. The U.S. economy no longer creates jobs in export or export-competitive sectors.
Wholesale and retail trade, waitresses and bartenders account for 46 percent of the new jobs. Education and health services, administrative and waste services, and financial activities account for another 46 percent.
This has been the profile of U.S. employment growth for a number of years, along with some construction jobs filled by legal and illegal immigrants. It is the job profile of a Third World economy.
From January 2001 to January 2006, the U.S. economy lost 2.9 million manufacturing jobs. The promised replacement jobs - "new economy" high-tech knowledge jobs - have failed to materialize.
High-tech knowledge jobs are also being outsourced abroad. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. employment of engineers and architects declined by 189,940 between November 2000 and November 2004 (latest data available). Economist Alan Blinder estimates that as many as 56 million American jobs are susceptible to offshore outsourcing. That would be about half of the U.S. workforce.
Offshoring has contributed to the explosion of the U.S. trade/current account deficit over the past decade to $800 billion annually and rising. The United States has a trade deficit in manufactured products, including advanced technology products, of more than a half trillion dollars annually, a sum far larger than the oil import bill.
To cover the trade deficit, the United States has to turn over to foreigners ownership of its accumulated wealth. This worsens the current account deficit, as the income streams on the U.S.-based assets now accrue to foreigners.
Many economists pretend that the whopping U.S. trade/current account deficit is evidence that the rest of the world has great confidence in America. They pretend that it is foreign investment in the United States that causes the trade deficit, whereas the simple fact is that it is the U.S. trade deficit that gives foreigners the dollars with which to purchase our existing assets.
Traditionally, a trade deficit might indicate that a country's industries were not competitive against imports from abroad, resulting in a decline in the exchange value of the country's currency. This would make foreign goods more expensive for that country and its goods cheaper for foreigners, thus restoring a balance.
This does not work for the United States for three reasons:
How can the United States reduce its trade deficit when it deprives itself of exports and fills itself with imports by offshoring its production of goods and services, and when the devaluation of the dollar is limited by the dollar's reserve role and by other countries pegging their currency to the dollar or by intervening to support the dollar? Obviously, when balance returns to U.S. trade, it will not come through traditional means.
One way balance can return is by the United States oversupplying the world with dollars to the point at which the dollar is abandoned as the reserve currency.
Another way is through the limit placed on Americans' ability to consume that results from replacing manufacturing and engineering jobs with waitress, bartender and hospital orderly jobs. A country that loses high value-added jobs and gains low value-added jobs is in danger of losing its prosperity. Offshoring raises corporate profits in the short-run at the expense of destroying the domestic consumer market in the long-run.
Most economists are confused about offshoring. They mistakenly think offshoring is an example of free trade bringing mutual benefit through the principle of comparative advantage. It is not. Offshoring is an example of companies obtaining absolute advantage by combining high-tech capital with low-cost labor. The gains from absolute advantage are asymmetrical or one-sided. The cheap-labor country gains, and the expensive-labor country loses.
As Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach pointed out on April 7, "average hourly compensation of Chinese manufacturing workers is only 3-4 percent of levels in the United States, 10 percent of the pay rate of Asia's newly industrialized economies, and 25 percent of levels in Mexico and Brazil." Roach also notes that with a rural population of 745 million (about two-and-a-half times the total U.S. population) and headcount reductions of more than 60 million workers from state-owned enterprises, China will not experience a labor shortage anytime soon.
This means that it will be a long time before Chinese wages rise enough to offset the benefits of offshoring. The same can be said about India. Consequently, a large percentage of U.S. jobs is vulnerable to being moved abroad.
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Editor's note:
Real inflation is 3 to 4 times more than we`re told -- Read More Here Discover the Next Big Biotech Winners! Go Here Now Top 5 Locked-in Profit Trends of 2006! See Them Here
102-102
Thank you, Velveeta.
Well now, that is interesting.
Updates always appreciated.
OFF TOPIC...
The cartoon toilet jihad...I can see it now.
Oh wait, memory jogger...
===
stepping back in time...
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/005445.html
02 February 2006
"Coming soon: Toilet bowl jihad!
This poor benighted soul doesn't seem to realize that the story is a joke:"
http://www.internet-haganah.com/harchives/005452.html
05 February 2006
"Toilet bowl jihad: they still don't get it"
Yep, I was there in the wee hours this morning.
No log in.
Thanks.
Note: The following text is a quote:
---
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_940.html
Travel Warning
United States Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Washington, DC 20520
This information is current as of today, Thu Apr 20 2006 12:28:39 GMT-0700.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
April 20, 2006
This Travel Warning is being re-issued to provide U.S. citizens with updated security information on the Central African Republic (CAR). It supersedes the Travel Warning for the CAR issued April 19, 2005.
The Department of State warns Americans to use extreme caution when traveling in the CAR, and to avoid travel outside the capital unless absolutely necessary. U.S. citizens who remain in the CAR despite this Travel Warning are urged to exercise caution at all times, particularly at public gatherings.
In Bangui, tensions are high due to unpaid civil servant salaries and skirmishes between government forces and opposition groups. There are approximately 300 peacekeeping troops from neighboring member countries of the Economic and Monetary Union of Central Africa (CEMAC) that move in and out of the capital. CAR security forces, sometimes with French military assistance, staff checkpoints throughout the city. Some crimes are perpetrated by uniformed CAR security and military personnel. Two World Health Organization physicians were murdered by unidentified assailants on the outskirts of Bangui in April 2006.
Outside the capital many areas are lawless and rebel groups are active in the western, northern, northeastern, and southeastern provinces. The U.S. Embassy advises its personnel to take a CAR military escort when traveling outside the capital, particularly near the borders with Chad and Cameroon. The country held peaceful elections in March 2005, but the country’s economic and security situations have not improved markedly. The rebels wish to overthrow the constitutionally elected president and seek new elections.
The U.S. Embassy in Bangui has a single American officer and can provide only limited emergency services to U.S. citizens.
U.S. citizens in the CAR are strongly urged to register on the State Department’s web site at https://travelregistration.state.gov. Americans without Internet access may register directly with the U.S. Embassy in Bangui. By registering, American citizens make it easier for the Embassy to contact them in case of emergency.
The U.S. Embassy in the CAR is located at Avenue David Dacko, B.P. 924, Bangui; tel. (236) 61-02-00; fax (236) 61-44-94. For additional information on safety and security in the CAR, contact the Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon, at telephone (237) 223-4014, (237) 223-0512, or 223-0581; fax (237) 223-0753; web site http://yaounde.usembassy.gov/. Americans may also obtain updated information from the American Embassy in N'djamena, Chad, at telephone (235) 51-70-09, 51-92-33 or 51-90-52; fax (235) 51-56-54; web site http://ndjamena.usembassy.gov/.
U.S. citizens should also consult the Department of State's most recent Consular Information Sheet for Central African Republic and the Worldwide Caution Public Announcement, which are located on the Department's web site at http://travel.state.gov. Up-to-date information on safety and security is also available at 1-888-407-4747 toll free in the U.S. and Canada, or for callers from other countries, on a regular toll-line at 1-202-501-4444. These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618464/posts
"Hoover Alabama police arrest one of Texas’ 10 most wanted!"
Birmingham News/AL.COM ^ | 2/20/06 | Jon Anderson
Posted on 04/20/2006 12:19:42 PM PDT by Full Court
Hoover police arrest one of Texas’ 10 most wanted
To all lurkers:
This ARTISTIC RENDITION of a toilet is NOT a toilet in Gitmo.
Now, this is NOT nice...
Note: The following text (including the poor spelling) is a quote:
---
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2006/04/011105print.html
April 20, 2006
A love note from a defender of the death penalty for apostasy
This morning the Jihad Watch Hate Mail Bag contained five copies of this message from a supporter of the traditional Islamic laws mandating death for those who leave Islam. The subject line was "Jewish Pigs." I have not altered the message in any way except for those two asterisks.
you idiot, if you are working for the united states secret ervice and then you decide to leave and give all your knoledge to the enemy what is the punishment for this person according to usa law? dont you puish soldiers for going awol? if your so bothered about apostasy then f**koff and dont enter islam, we dont ned people who are wavering about the one who created them.
(buy the way i'm anti terrorist and pro democracy but i love my religion
Logged and noted. I wonder, however: what "knoledge" might an apostate from Islam have that he could give to the "enemy"? Why would a private individual who converted to Christianity, like Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan, be regarded in the same way as someone who betrayed his country by giving away secrets vital to national security?
Posted at April 20, 2006 05:47 AM
ON THE NET...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618469/posts
"Cops Raid High School In Kansas...Arrest 5 Students (Foiled Massacre)"
ap ^ | 4-20-06 | my favorite headache
Posted on 04/20/2006 12:34:48 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=3600
Group Profile:
"Free Aceh Movement (GAM)
Mothertongue Name: Gerakin Aceh Merdeka (GAM)
Aliases: Aceh Security Disturbance Movement
Base of Operation: Indonesia; Malaysia; Sweden"
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/calthomas/2006/04/20/194382.html
"Getting serious about energy"
Apr 20, 2006
by Cal Thomas
COMMENTARY SNIPPET: "Various congressional investigations and reporting have revealed that the United States is subsidizing its own destruction because some of the biggest oil-producing states underwrite terrorism."
COMMENTARY SNIPPET #2: "Americans have always responded to major threats and challenges. Properly framed, they could be made to understand this threat as the greatest challenge the nation has ever faced."
PERSECUTION.ORG - COUNTRY INFO - CHINAhttp://www.persecution.org/newsite/countryinfodetail.php?countrycode=16&PHPSESSID=8b34d46b623016677cda6714beb75f61
---
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200604/INT20060420a.html
"Rights Violations Hang Over Hu Visit"
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
April 20, 2006
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