How Many Retards Does it Take?

Apparently 59,837,407

I hope you all choke on the poverty and taxation he imposes and has already imposed.

I hope you choke when you realize you are all indirectly responsible for your own failures.

And for those people who do not take it seriously - please, get a grip on reality, it is considerably worse that you can imagine.

To Protect Peace

Pakistani minister personally offers reward for anti-Islam filmmaker's death

From Nasir Habib, CNN

updated 10:25 AM EDT, Sun September 23, 2012

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- A Pakistan government minister has personally offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who kills the man who made the anti-Islam movie that is drawing ire throughout the Muslim world.

Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour announced the bounty at a news conference Saturday, but he made clear to CNN he was speaking for himself and not as a government representative.

Asked whether he was concerned about committing or condoning a crime as a government official, Bilour said, "I am a Muslim first, then a government representative."

Opinion: Pakistanis can debunk myths about Islam peacefully

He said he invited the Taliban and al Qaeda to carry out the assassination.

I am a Muslim first, then a government representative

Sen. Zahid Khan, a spokesman for Bilour's political party, said the minister's action is not representative of the Awami National Party.

"We believe in nonviolence. How could we make such announcements?" Khan said. "Our party has been fighting against militancy and extremism for years. How could we invite Taliban and al Qaeda to kill someone? Taliban and al Qaeda are our enemies who have killed our loved ones."

"We have lots of concerns over the statement of our colleague," he added.

The leftist Awami National Party is a coalition partner in the federal government led by President's Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party. The ANP is a ruling party in northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Photos: Anti-U.S. demonstrations worldwide

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemns the bounty issued by Bilour, Gilani's spokesman said Sunday.

Shafqat Jalil said the prime minister will take up the issue with the head of the Awami National Party.

Bilour did not mention the filmmaker by name, but he was likely referring to Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who U.S. officials say is behind the privately produced film.

Nakoula and his family have already left their California home and gone into hiding amid the worldwide storm of protest, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced.

Actress in anti-Islamic film files lawsuit against filmmaker














Islam

Obama's Libya Story Falling Apart

I think it already fell apart, but whatever -

Obama’s Shaky Libya Narrative

by Eli Lake Sep 21, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Sources say the attack on the Libyan ambassador was pre-meditated, with the possible collaboration of a Libyan politician. Eli Lake on the continuing collapse of the official U.S. line.

Ten days after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House’s official story about the incident appears to be falling apart.

In the days following the killing of the U.S. ambassador and two ex-Navy SEALs, President Obama and top State Department officials portrayed the attack as a spontaneous reaction to an Internet video depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammad as a lascivious brute. The protests, White House spokesman Jay Carney said last week, were “in response to a video—a film—that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.”

Now there is mounting evidence that the White House’s initial portrayal of the attacks as a mere outgrowth of protest was incorrect—or, at the very least, incomplete. The administration’s story itself has recently begun to shift, with Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, telling Congress on Wednesday that the attackers may have had links to al Qaeda and Carney characterizing the incident as a “terrorist attack.” (Hillary Clinton announced on Thursday that she was putting together a panel to look into the incident.)

But other indications that the White House’s early narrative was faulty are also beginning to emerge. One current U.S. intelligence officer working on the investigation into the incident told The Daily Beast that the attackers had staked out and monitored the U.S. consulate in Benghazi before the attack, a move that suggests pre-planning.

What’s more, two U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the intelligence community is currently analyzing an intercept between a Libyan politician whose sympathies are with al Qaeda and the Libyan militia known as the February 17 Brigade—which had been charged with providing local security to the consulate. In the intercept, the Libyan politician apparently asks an officer in the brigade to have his men stand down for a pending attack—another piece of evidence implying the violence was planned in advance. (Plenty of Libyans, of course, did try to protect the consulate. “Many of those Libyans died in the gunfight fighting off the attackers,” one of the officials said. “But there were some bad apples there as well.”)

 “I think this is a case of an administration saying what they wished to be true before waiting for all the facts to come in,” says one senior retired CIA official.

On the other hand, a U.S. intelligence official stressed that it was still early days for the investigation. “It is important to accept that with events like this it takes time to figure out what happened and determine which data points are relevant and accurate,” this intelligence official said. “That process is happening right now.” The National Security Council declined comment, and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

One other aspect of the administration’s story appears shaky as well. Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice responded to allegations that there wasn’t enough security at the embassy by saying, “Tragically, two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security. That was their function. And indeed, there were many other colleagues who were doing the same with them.”

Rice was referring to two ex-Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who died during the violence.

But two former special operators and a former intelligence officer, two of whom had worked with Doherty, told The Daily Beast that Doherty and Woods’s job was not to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens. That job falls to Regional Security Officers or RSOs. During the fighting, some RSOs who were supposed to protect the ambassador apparently became separated from him.

“Glen died for Tyrone and Tyrone died for Glen,” one of the former special operators told The Daily Beast. “They fought bravely, but they did not die protecting the ambassador.”

obama

Obama Lied

The Obama Administration's fabricated story on the killing of bin Laden fell apart when one of the Seal team members involved in the shotting, told a different version.

The Obama Administration lied to the American people and the world.

Lied.

America basher’s backfire: Killed by flag smoke

By ANDY SOLTIS

 
Post Wire Services
September 18, 2012

In an apparent case of red, white and blue revenge, a Pakistani protester died yesterday after inhaling smoke from a burning American flag during an anti-US rally.

Abdullah Ismail succumbed at Mayo Hospital in Lahore a day after attending the fierce protest at the city’s Mall Road, where an estimated 10,000 people rallied.

Witnesses said Ismail had complained of feeling ill after breathing fumes from burning flags, Pakistan’s Express Tribune reported.

Another Pakistani protester was killed during clashes with police yesterday after demonstrators set a press club ablaze, apparently angry that their protest of an anti-Islam film wasn’t getting enough media coverage.

Hundreds set fire to the club in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Upper Dir area, authorities said. Police said cops charged the crowd, beating them with batons.

The mob then set a government office ablaze.

The protester died and several were wounded when police and the demonstrators exchanged gunfire, police said.

Also yesterday, a man died after being shot in the head Sunday during a march in which hundreds of people broke through a barricade to get to the US Consulate in the southern city of Karachi.

There were more clashes in Karachi yesterday as demonstrators from the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party tried to reach the consulate.

Police lobbed tear gas, fired rounds in the air and made 40 arrests. No injuries were reported.

Pakistanis have also held many peaceful protests against the film, which critically portrays the prophet Mohammed. One held in the southwest town of Chaman yesterday was attended by about 3,000 students and teachers.

The chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court ordered the state telecommunications authority to block the film on YouTube because it is considered blasphemous.

Befuddled and Confused: Obama Administration on Parade

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not premeditated, directly contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.

“Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo,” Rice told me this morning on “This Week.”

“In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated,” Rice said, referring to protests in Egypt Tuesday over a film that depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud. Protesters in Cairo breached the walls of the U.S. American Embassy, tearing apart an American flag.

_________________________________________________________

So what this woman would have youi believe is -
- all the protests in the Arab world, and in fact, everywhere, are spontaneous.  People in regions without internet or phones, somehow know.  That everyone just plugs into the atmosphere some how and knows. 
- that when people protest in Libya they carry rpg's with them. 
- that trucks of men with weapons routinely show up to protest

And that when the Libyan President said:


"The way these perpetrators acted and moved -- I think we, and they're choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, I think we have no, this leaves us with no doubt that this was pre-planned, determined," Magariaf said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"And you believe that this was the work of Al Qaeda, and you believe that it was led by foreigners. Is that what you’re telling us?" CBS host Bob Schieffer asked.
"It was planned, definitely. It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago. And they were planning this criminal act since their arrival," Magariaf said.

Apparently he didn't know what he was talking about.

And that when US diplomats were warned several days before, the threats were ignored:

 

Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.

Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.

He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn't good for international business.

"The situation is frightening, it scares us," Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials. He did not say how they responded.

 

and when al-qaida says it carried out the attack in Libya

 

Al-Qaeda said the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in revenge for the killing of the network’s number two Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, SITE Intelligence Group reported Saturday, as Libyan authorities have identified 50 people who were involved in the attack.

 

 

Does Obama know how foolish he looks.  Does he realize how much respect is lost when his administration stares into the face of al-qaida and denies it was responsible.

 

All we need is Biden prancing about.

 

 

 

 

Obama: World Respect

In February, Obama said, “One of the proudest things of my three years in office is helping to restore a sense of respect for America around the world, a belief that we are not just defined by the size of our military.”

Three years ago in Cairo, Obama stressed his leadership would be dramatically different than former President George W. Bush’s: “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”



Apparently the Muslim world didn't pay any attention to his claims of being a unifier.

Nor did the rest of the world fall into prostration -

Germany:  Merkle said he was a man she could not trust.
India:  FM - his policy is barking up the wrong tree and he should mind his own business.
Russia:  He should be more interested in his country and leave the rest of the world alone.
China:  The US has no right to explain human rights to anyone.
Canada:  The PM rarely speaks to Obama and is rarely spoken to by Obama.
England:  the attitude in Downing Street and Whitehall is one of disregard.  He only becomes necessary when the PM visits the US or Obama decides to go to England.
Australia:  dictated to about prisoners and keeping terrorists in their prison system.  Their Parliament voted against the imposition of the prisoners by the US, onto Australian territory as a risk and threat.
France:  Under Sarkozy the relationship was near 0.
Italy:  barely registered on a friendship scale.  Distrust and animosity between the US and Italian government over a range of issues).

Let's see ... who else.  Built up respect?  No.  He has harmed our nation world-wide.

Parallel Universes

http://freebeacon.com/carney-protests-not-directed-at-the-united-states/

Carney: Protests not directed at the United States

'This is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at U.S. policy, this is in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Honor' victim: Husband issued death sentence after I askedfor divorce

Peter Wilkinson and Atika Shubert , CNN

August 23, 2012

(CNN) -- Zara married for love, against her family's wishes, more than a decade ago in the Middle East. Shortly after the marriage, she and her husband, along with their two children, moved to Britain for work. There, she says, her husband began to drink, heavily. He became violent, holding a knife to her throat, she says.

"He started raping me, which affected me mentally, lots of stress and the relationship between me and my sons. I couldn't speak out because I learned that to speak out against your husband to anyone outside, it is big shame."

"So, I was struggling between eastern culture with what I learned and western culture where I should live freedom, equality, justice. I found it difficult."

She still finds it difficult. Zara is not her real name. She spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, saying she fears for her life.

During her marriage, she says, the violence continued. She showed CNN police reports she eventually filed, but she decided not to pursue a case, and her husband was never charged. Roughly eight years into the marriage, she ran away and met another man. She decided to ask for a divorce.

"I told him I want a divorce. I don't want to cheat on you. The relationship is broken. I said, all I want is relationship with my sons."

She says her husband initially agreed but insisted they both go back to their home in the Middle East, to explain to their families.

"He gathered all his family in his house. And I was shocked to see 60 or 70 people at his house. His mother called me by very bad names. She called me a prostitute in front of my sons.

"I remember when my mother-in-law looked at my face and held my sons in her hands, big hands. She told me: 'My son is a doctor. You should hold your head up. Who are you to cheat on my son? Who are you?'

"After that, she told me: 'I will look after them, you don't deserve to be a mother. And my sons were looking at me.'"

Then, Zara says, her husband issued a death sentence, calling her father in the neighboring town, demanding she be killed for dishonoring her family -- an "honor" murder.

"He told my father, if you are a man, clean your shame. If you are a man, kill your daughter."

Her sister warned her not to return home, she says. But she called her father to hear his voice one last time.

"He told me: 'I miss you, I want to see you.' He didn't tell me what he heard from my husband [about ordering her death]. Because he knows I would run away. I was scared. He said 'come, I want to protect you.'"

Zara was ready to flee her home in the Middle East. But she decided to see her father one last time, even though she knew it might have been a trap. A part of her, she says, almost wished for death.

"I felt rubbish. Just rubbish! I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear because I didn't want my father, or my brother, or my cousin to kill me. My son will carry my shame.

"My father told my mother: 'The problem, I know, she didn't cheat on her husband. The problem is she brought us shame, shame that cannot even be cleaned by blood. I know she's innocent. But we can't clean this shame."

Faced with this impossible choice, Zara says her father realized he had no alternative.

"My father sent me away because he knew that I would be killed by my uncles or my cousins. There is no other option. He doesn't want to get rid of me. But he wants to get rid of shame ... that I brought my family because of my stupidity, to be honest with my husband that I love another man. That's my crime."

So Zara's father banished her from their home in the Middle East and sent her back to Britain. Meanwhile, Zara's husband filed for divorce in the Sharia court of the couple's hometown in the Middle East.

This meant she was separated from her children, she says, without her knowledge or consent.

Much of Zara's story is hard to verify with her former husband. CNN has seen court documents and her applications for asylum, but Zara's case workers with a British women's aid agency say we cannot ask her husband for a response, for fear it may trigger a violent reaction.

Zara has not returned to the Middle East since leaving five years ago. When she left, her sister wrote to her imploring her never to return. "It will be your grave," she wrote.

Zara has now gained residency in Britain and has chosen to leave Islam, a decision that has cut her off from her children, who are now teenagers.

When she last spoke to them, she says they told her they wanted no more contact with her. "They don't want to hear my voice. It was very painful to hear that. I felt like I got divorced twice: From a husband and my sons. I'm not angry with them. I don't know. But I'm tired. I'm tired of culture and religion. I'm very tired to be a woman. I'm very tired to be a mother."

She is defiant when asked if she believes she will see her sons again. "I gave birth to my sons and I am a mother. I will not give up my right as a mother. I will fight until the end. They will be proud of me and I will be proud of them. I am sure about this."

Zara says she does not hate her husband or her own relatives, even though she still fears they may kill her for bringing shame on the family. She sees them all as victims -- like her -- of a brutal, unrelenting tradition, one that leading Muslim thinkers insist has no place in Islam.

One that has no place in Islam, or in the world.  Yet, it is Islam where we find this barbaric behavior.  The perpetrators may not be acting in accordance with the Koran, but they are all Muslim and they all believe they are doing the will of their belief.

In fact, honor killings predated Islam, but seem to proliferate under a system that relegates women to a second-class human being.

 

Egypt wants money from the world

In one word, the answer should be:   NO.

Here is the answer - if you want OUR money (whoever the OUR may be) YOU MUST accept the conditions.  You don't get to go to the bank and dictate TERMS to them (however much we wish we could).

Protect visitors, encourage tourism, stop with religious attacks on the paganism of the pyramids, ensure visitors are not slaughtered on the steps of Hatshepsuts tomb.  If you do this, people will want to visit.  Otherwise, enjoy your sandbox, because that is all you have.

 

 

August 22, 2012

Egypt Requests $4.8 Billion From I.M.F.

By KAREEM FAHIM

CAIRO — The Egyptian government on Wednesday requested a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, in the country’s latest attempt to secure financing for an economy badly damaged by political upheaval since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s prime minister, Hesham Qandil, said that he hoped to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund by December.

This year, Egypt requested a smaller loan but said at the time that the amount could increase because of the country’s falling revenues from tourism and increasingly scarce foreign investment.

Speaking at a news conference with the monetary fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, Mr. Qandil said that Ms. Lagarde’s visit sent a message to the world that Egypt was “stabilizing.”

The loan has been a contentious issue in Egypt, where there is much popular resentment against conditions required by Western lenders.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful political party, had previously voiced reservations about accepting the I.M.F. loan.

But the country’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader, has seemingly put aside those reservations as he grapples with Egypt’s deepening financial crisis.

While the terms of a possible agreement are still being discussed, Mr. Qandil said that the interest rate on the loan, to be disbursed in several parts, would be 1.1 percent.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have lent the Egyptian government at least $3 billion.

Ms. Lagarde said that I.M.F. officials would travel to Egypt next month to discuss the loan further.

"Egypt faces considerable challenges, including the need to restart growth, and reduce budget and balance of payments deficits," she said in a statement.
 

 

egypt

White House: Control the News, Ask the Questions

White House SetsGround Rules for Local Interviews

by Keith Koffler on August 21, 2012, 11:20 am

The White House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President Obama and the reporter will talk.

In interviews with three local TV stations Monday, two from states critical to Obama’s reelection effort, Obama held forth on the possibility of “sequestration” if he and Congress fail to reach a budget deal, allowing him to make his favorite political point that Republicans are willing to cause grievous harm to the economy and jobs in order to protect the rich from tax increases.

Obama Monday threw the White House press corps a bone by suddenly appearing in the briefing room for 22 minutes and taking questions from a total of four reporters. It was his first press conference at the White House – albeit in miniature – since March, and only his second of the year. Obama before Monday had taken exactly one substantive question from White House reporters since June.

But the three other interviews Obama also held Monday pointed to the advantage he gets by focusing on local press, with whom he has been speaking more regularly.

Under sequestration, if a budget deal is not reached by the end of the year, harsh automatic spending cuts will occur. Each of the network reporters were from cities with major military facilities that could be unduly impacted if sequestration occurs.

Two of the reporters were from Norfolk, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida, both presidential battleground states. The third was from San Diego.

The reporters mostly made no effort to hide the arrangement. “The president invited me to talk about sequestration,” NBC 7 San Diego’s reporter told her audience. In the interview, she set Obama up with a perfectly pitched softball the president couldn’t have been more eager to take a swing at:

“What do you want individual San Diegans to know about sequestration?” she asked.

Donna Deegan of FCN Jacksonville initially seemed to apologize for not broaching the appointed subject right away.

“Mr. President, I know we were asked to talk about sequestration today,” she said, but then added she wanted to talk about something else first. Finally, she got to it:

“Let’s talk a little bit about sequestration, because I know that’s why you invited us here,” she said.

Obama used an interview with WVEC Norfolk to specifically bash Republicans.

“The only thing that’s standing in the way of us getting this done right now is the unwillingess on the part of some members of Congress, and folks in in the Republican Party, to give up on some tax breaks for people like me who don’t need them,” he said.

The reporters were able to ask about other topics. But with their face time with the president limited to under ten minutes, and Obama well rehearsed to discuss at length his favored topic, there was little room for much else to come up.

obama

Pakistan: Religion and Law

Christian Girl’sBlasphemy Arrest Incites a Furor in Pakistan

New York Times

B.K. Bangash/Associated Press

By DECLAN WALSH and SALMAN MASOOD
Published: August 20, 2012

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The arrest and imprisonment of a Christian girl accused of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws stoked a public furor on Monday, renewing international scrutiny of growing intolerance toward minorities in the country.

The police jailed the girl, Rimsha Masih, and her mother on Friday after hundreds of Muslim protesters surrounded the police station here where they were being held, demanding that Ms. Masih face charges under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. A local cleric had said Ms. Masih had burned pages of the Noorani Qaida, a religious textbook used to teach the Koran to children.

By Monday night, as Pakistani Muslims celebrated the feast of Id al-Fitr, Ms. Masih and her mother were being held in Adiala jail, a grim facility in nearby Rawalpindi, awaiting their fate. Meanwhile, a number of the girl’s Christian neighbors had fled their homes, fearing for their lives, human rights workers said.

Senior government and police officials agreed with Christian leaders that the accusations against Ms. Masih were baseless and predicted that the case would ultimately be dropped.

Still, the case has already grabbed global headlines and inspired a hail of Twitter posts, even though several details are in dispute.

Christian, and some Muslim, neighbors said Ms. Masih was 11 years old and had Down syndrome. Senior police officers dismissed those claims; one described her as 16 and “100 percent mentally fit.”

Whatever the truth, experts said Ms. Masih’s plight highlighted a wider problem. “This case exemplifies the absurdity and tragedy of the blasphemy law, which is an instrument of abuse against the most vulnerable in society,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch.

While non-Muslims have long been vulnerable to persecution in Pakistan, the state’s ability to protect them is diminishing. Last week, gunmen executed 25 Shiites after taking them off a bus near Mansehra, in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. On Saturday, Hindu leaders in Sindh called on the government to protect their community from forced conversions by Muslim extremists.

But it is the emotionally charged blasphemy issue that has most polarized society. Ever since the governor of Punjab Province, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down by his own bodyguard in January 2011 for his support of blasphemy reforms, the space for public debate has narrowed in Pakistan.

Violent mobs led by clerics have framed the argument, as appears to have happened in Ms. Masih’s case.

Neighbors said the girl’s family were sweepers — work shunned by Muslims but common among poor Christians — and lived in a slum area in Islamabad.

Malik Amjad, landlord of the family’s rented house, said the controversy started early last week after his nephew saw Ms. Masih holding a burned copy of the Noorani Qaida. The nephew informed a local cleric, Khalid Jadoon, Mr. Amjad said.

Desecration of Muslim holy texts is illegal in Pakistan and punishable by death. But Mr. Amjad said the incident bothered few local residents initially and caught fire only at the instigation of the cleric and two conservative shopkeepers.

“He tried to shame people by saying, ‘What good are your prayers if the Koran is being burnt?’ ” Mr. Amjad said.

Mr. Amjad said he handed the girl over to the police for her own protection and criticized the cleric’s role. “He exaggerated the incident and provoked people,” he said.

It was not clear how, or even if, Ms. Masih had come across the burned religious book. One neighbor, Malik Shahid, said it might have simply become accidentally swept up in a trash pile she was collecting.

The Pakistani police often are forced to register blasphemy cases against their wishes, human rights campaigners say, either to save the accused blasphemer or their own officers from attack.

In July, a large crowd, prompted by inflammatory statements from local mosques, swarmed a police station in Bahawalpur district in southern Punjab, searching for a blasphemy suspect who was being interrogated by police. The mob seized the man, beat him to death and burned his body outside the station.

A similar mob attack occurred in June in Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, although in that case the police beat back the protesters.

The turmoil comes just days after Pakistanis marked the country’s 65th independence anniversary amid muted ceremonies and considerable soul-searching across the political spectrum.

“Desecrating graves, arresting 11 year old with Down syndrome, targeting of Shias — the list goes on. This is not what r religion is about,” Shireen Mazari, a staunch nationalist commentator, said on Twitter.

The adviser to the prime minister on national harmony, Dr. Paul Bhatti, said he hoped to defuse Ms. Masih’s situation through talks with moderate Muslim leaders. Dr. Bhatti is the brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, a minister for minorities who was gunned down outside his Islamabad home in early 2011, weeks after Mr. Taseer’s death.

Even if Ms. Masih avoids blasphemy charges, her family is unlikely to ever return home. Although nobody has been executed under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, even suspected blasphemers are in danger for the rest of their lives.

Several have been killed by vigilantes; others have been forced to flee Pakistan.

pakistan

There was NO Arab Spring: The Obama Legacy

And it isn't ONLY in Egypt.  The Hamas in Gaza have stated they will resume using crucifixion as an execution method.  And who knows how many others.

Arab Spring run amok: 'Brotherhood'

starts crucifixions

Opponents of Egypt's Muslim president executed 'naked on trees'

Published: 1 day ago

by Michael Carl

The Arab Spring takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood has run amok, with reports from several different media agencies that the radical Muslims have begun crucifying opponents of newly installed President Mohammed Morsi.

Middle East media confirm that during a recent rampage, Muslim Brotherhood operatives “crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.”

Raymond Ibrahim, a fellow with the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, said the crucifixions are the product of who the Middle Eastern media call “partisans.”

“Arabic media call them ‘supporters,’ ‘followers’ and ‘partisans’ of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Ibraham said.

Ibrahim also says the victims can be anyone, including Egyptian Christians.

“It’s anyone who is resisting the new government,” Ibrahim said. “In this particular case, the people attacked and crucified were secular protesters upset because of Morsi’s hostile campaign against the media, especially of Tawfik Okasha, who was constantly exposing him on his station, until Morsi shut him down.”

Ibrahim said extra brutality is reserved for Christians, but the crucifixions are because of Islamic doctrine and are required by the Quran. The time and other details about the crucifixions were not readily available.

Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Clare Lopez cited chapter and verse from the Quran to explain that crucifixions are not simply normal for Islam, they’re demanded.

“Crucifixion is a hadd punishment, stipulated in the Quran, Sura 5:33, and therefore an obligatory part of Shariah,” Lopez said. “It’s been a traditional punishment within Islam since the beginning, even though it’s not exclusively Islamic. The Romans used it too.

“So, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood haven’t the option to not include crucifixion within their legal code. It’s obligatory to comply with Shariah. And yes, it’s for shock value also to be sure,” Lopez said.

Lopez includes a warning for Egypt’s Christians and compares the coming treatment of the Christians to the Jews in Germany.

“The Copts must get out of Egypt as soon as possible – for the many millions who will not be able to get out, I expect things will continue to deteriorate – just as they did for Germany’s and Europe’s Jews from the 1930s onward,” Lopez said.

“The warnings were there long before the ghettos and round-ups and one-way train trips to the concentration camps began in the 1940s,” she said.

Author Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, an analyst of the Middle East and Islam, fully agrees and also cites the Quran.

“The Christians are in serious trouble, because the Quran in Sura 9:29 commands Muslims to wage war against them and subjugate them, and they’re also identified with the hated West and the U.S.,” Geller said.

Geller also turned to Sura 5:33.

Islamic hardliners

“These are Islamic hardliners who do everything by the Quran. The Quran says, ‘Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land,” Geller said.

International Christian Concern’s Middle East analyst Aidan Clay believes there is a relationship between the recent attacks on the regime’s enemies, a recent Sinai military skirmish and Morsi’s moves against the ranking generals.

The “Sinai skirmish” involved suspected Hamas guerrillas trying to cross into Gaza from Egypt. The Israeli Defense Force and intelligence learned of the attempted crossing in advance and stopped the incursion. Sixteen Egyptian border guards were killed in the attempted Rafah border crossing incident.

“It’s hard to believe that President Morsi could have dismissed Field Marshall Mohammed Tantawi without the help of lower-ranking military officers. The military’s sense of prestige, which millions of Egyptians still take great pride in, took a battering following the militant attack in Sinai that killed 16 soldiers,” Clay said.

“The military should have been prepared for the attack. Israel was. And the blame has largely been placed on Tantawi for his negligence and for embarrassing the military establishment,” he said.

Lopez agrees that Israel’s preparedness is a slap against the Egyptian army.

“That border skirmish that resulted in deaths of Egyptian border guards was known ahead of time by Israeli intelligence, which warned their Egyptian military counterparts,” Lopez said.

She notes that Israeli intelligence avoided contact with the Muslim Brotherhood in the incident because the attacks were a Hamas plot.

Lopez added that even after notification, the Egyptian army didn’t act.

“The Egyptian military did nothing, even as Israel expected. Thus the attack was carried out, Israel was totally prepared and responded and the result was Egyptian military deaths,” Lopez said.

Responding to ‘crisis’

She added that Morsi wasted no time in responding to the “crisis.”

“Morsi jumped on the incident as the perfect reason to purge the top ranks of the Egyptian military, install his own MB-sympathizers in positions across the top, chief of staff and intel chief,” she said. “Some call it an internal coup d’etat – and I agree. It put Morsi in sole control of the legislative branch (there is no parliament right now) and in control of the political power in Egypt. The new defense minister is a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer. Things are moving very fast.”

Clay said there are mixed feelings among the military top brass in Egypt. He said some still support Tantawi; some have called for change.

“While many senior military officers maintained their support for Tantawi, his reputation took a dive among many younger officers who saw the need for a replacement. It wasn’t just the attack in Sinai that led to this, but the military’s reputation has been on the decline since a few months following the country’s uprising early last year,” Clay said.

“For some, the Sinai attack was the final straw and Morsi may have viewed it as an opportune time to remove Tantawi and other high-ranking officers from key positions,” Clay said.

He noted that Morsi, not the military, took the lead in responding to the Sinai attacks.

“In doing so, while also forcing Tantawi out of his cabinet, Morsi has set a precedent that it is he who decides who runs the army,” Clay said.

“While the generals will still advise Morsi, he can decide whether or not to listen to them. It’s apparent that Morsi is quickly becoming Egypt’s sole leader which means control of the country will be in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

However, Geller believes Morsi had a second motive for his action.

Reign of terror

“I suspect that Morsi’s action was timed in part to forestall any further military action against the jihadis,” Geller said, adding that the results will make Egypt’s government more monolithic than it already was.

“Morsi is instituting a reign of terror to consolidate his power,” Geller said.

American Enterprise Institute Middle East analyst Michael Rubin agreed: Morsi is after the power.

“Morsi certainly wants absolute control. The Egyptian army have never been saints, but Morsi will broker no checks to his power as the Muslim Brotherhood writes a constitution and imposes its dream of an Islamic state on Egypt,” Rubin said.

Lopez says this all means that Morsi is shedding his “moderate” veneer.

“The point I would make is that Morsi is not bothering to play ‘moderate’ anymore. He’s moving very aggressively to consolidate power for the Muslim Brotherhood,” Lopez said.

She added that Morsi is now free to act without any concern for public opinion.

“He doesn’t seem to care who thinks what anymore. He knows he’s got the USG and president in his corner no matter what he does. He doesn’t have to pretend, no need for ‘plausible deniability.’ He also knows he’s got the majority of the Egyptian people behind him,” Lopez said.

Rubin believes, however, that Morsi will still try to play the “moderate” to continue to gain U.S. support.

Playing the moderate?

“Morsi is going to play the moderate and the mediator for the world media, all the while complaining that he can’t take more forceful action against the extremists because the radical fringe won’t allow him to do more,” Rubin said.

“It’s nonsense, of course, but still an explanation that will satisfy American diplomats, safe behind the walls of their compound,” Rubin said.

Lopez added to Rubin’s explanation, but points to the White House as the main cheerleader for Morsi and the Brotherhood.

“This is exactly what many of us expected him to do (consolidate power) and I think the White House knew, too, and not only expected but wanted Morsi and the Brotherhood to take over Egypt,” Lopez said.

“As far as I know, the White House invitation for Morsi in September still stands – nor have I heard the slightest hint of criticism from any top U.S. government leadership figure about Morsi’s coup. He knows he’s on solid ground with this administration,” Lopez said.