Archive for June 30th, 2008
Mugabe’s new term
The Associated Press: Mugabe looks for support at African summit
The African Union summit got under way in this Egyptian Red Sea resort a day after Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term following the widely discredited runoff Friday in which he was the only candidate. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew after his supporters became targets of brutal state-sponsored violence.
The campaign was brutal enough, as to arrive in Britain where it involved “surveillance, threats against family members in Zimbabwe, menacing late-night phone calls and bogus messages saying that fundraising activities are cancelled or disrupted“.
Meanwhile opposition leader Tsvangirai considers that Mugabe must negotiate and looks like the African summit will press Mugabe to do the same.
This is why news like this, make me vomit. Ok, perhaps they are doing that not to be considered racists…
Tags Technorati: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai, state-sponsored violence, dictatorships
India: the “Disappearing Daughters” report
Selective abortion causes severe imbalance of sexes in Indian regions
A new report by the British charity ActionAid indicates that unborn baby girls are being disproportionately aborted in some areas of India, while significant numbers who live until birth are being deliberately neglected and left to die. In one area in the state of Punjab, there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys among high cast families, the report claims.
ActionAid joined Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC) to produce the Disappearing Daughters report, the BBC says. After interviewing more than 6,000 households in sites across five states in northwestern India, researchers found that the proportion of girls to boys was noticeably below the natural rate of 950 girls to every 1,000 boys.
In three of the five study sites, the ratio of girls to boys was under 800 per 1,000.
It’s curious the lack of coverage this girls’ murder have in Western press. But it is more important that what can be considered at first:
Societies that practice sex selection in favor of males (sometimes called son preference or female deselection) are quite common, especially in China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, New Guinea, and many other developing countries in Asia and North Africa [1][2]; sex selection in favor of females appears to be rare or non-existent, although some legends of Amazons say that they practiced male infanticide. In 2005, 90 million women were estimated to be missing in seven Asian countries alone due, apparently, to prenatal sex selective abortion.[3] [2]
Tags Technorati: Disappearing Daughters’ report, selective abortion, Punjab, India, ActionAid, International Development Research Center, China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, New Guinea, protect the children
Another Muslim attack on Egyptian Coptic monastery
Islam Watch – “Islamist Carnage and Rampage in Egyptian Monastery”
The peaceful fourth century monastery of Deir Abu-Fana (St Epiphanius) was the target of an atrocious attack by a group of some 70 Arabs’, as tribal communities that live in the desert are called, armed with automatic weapons, on Saturday 31 May. At 5:00pm the attack started at the farmlands surrounding the monastery buildings. The plants and fields were destroyed, and the monks and workers assaulted. The gas-fired irrigation pumps were broken and the gas used to torch the monastery buildings and cells. The attack converged on the central compound; three cells were burnt and the mushroom produce building destroyed, as well as a tractor owned by the monastery. The tractor is a major means of transport for the monks among the sand dunes.
The attackers set the Church of the Pope Kyrillos on fire, destroyed the altar, tore and torched the bibles and icons, and ruined the wire fence recently built to protect the monastery.
Father Bakhoum, 35, was shot in the shoulder and leg, Father Fini was injured in the arm, and the two cadets Brother Sawiris, 30, and Brother Michael, 25, were injured in their arms and legs. One of the attackers, Khalil Ibrahim Mohamed, 39, was killed.
When they finally left, the attackers abducted three monks, Fathers Youa’nnis, Maximous, and Andrawes, as well as Ibrahim Taqqi who is the brother of one of the monks and was incidentally visiting the monastery at the time. (Read it all).
Tags Technorati: Egypt, Coptic Christians, Islamism, violence, religious persecution,
Spreading Islam… by sex
I fear that our mut`ah advocate may have hit upon a policy more dangerous to American civilization than WMDs or even the intellectual appeal of Islam purely as a religion: the siren song of sex. Men are notoriously weak in this regard, and if mut`ah is allowed to exist, even sub rosa, how long will it be before irreligious, or even lapsed Christian, American males begin to see the sexual advantages of Shi`i Islam? Some would certainly argue that mut`ah is a more realistic marriage institution for the male of the species than that rather more demanding serial monogamy which Christianity has mandated. And even in these days of rising ethanol demand, a handful of corn is not that hard to come by.
or by pushing modern legal systems to recognise polygamy:
This raises what many consider to be the two major assaults on the Judeo-Christian West today: from without, the push for sharia law; from within, the push to redefine the institution of marriage. Both are major areas of concern, and both must be firmly resisted.
Just don’t try to do it if you are NOT Muslim… or you can get burned. And not by love precisely…
Tags Technorati: polygamy, mut’ah, Islamic temporary marriage, Australia, US
What Spanish Vicepresident De La Vega does not understand about the veil
Spanish Minister for Equality, Bibiana Aído, clarified her own statements on the veil, because Spanish VP, De La Vega remarked that “Spanish Government respects Islamic veil”. She mustn’t have seen this ad then:
Caption: “You can’t stop them. But you can protect yourself. Your creator has your best interests at heart.”
France 24 has posted this image, which is circulating via e-mail in Egypt to promote the use of the hijab and niqab by Egyptian women. The message is the same as that of Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, who in 2006 outraged Australians by comparing un-veiled women to uncovered meat.
As usual, the notion of men having the responsibility to control themselves, or even being able to do so, is completely absent.
And in case she would have seen it, I don’t think she would have said anything different: Spanish Islamic Council supported Zapatero on the March 9th elections.
Related: Photo of Ahmadinejad’s wife. Really well protected.
Tags Technorati: hijab, Islamic veil, Bibiana Aído, De La Vega, Human Rights, women’s rights, Zapatero, Spain, leftists
