New Hampshire Health News Digest

US Realignment With Sunnis Is Far Advanced - by Gareth Porter : Two major revelations this past week show how far the George W. Bush administration has already shifted its policy toward realignment with Sunni forces to balance the influence of pro-Iranian Shi'ites in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad revealed in an interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that he has put the future of military assistance to a Shi'ite-dominated government on the table in the high-stakes U.S. effort to force Shi'ite party leaders to give up control over key security ministries. Khalilzad told Ignatius that, unless the 'security ministries' in the new Iraqi government are allocated to candidates who are 'not regarded as sectarian,' the United States would be forced to reevaluate its assistance to the government. 'We are saying, if you choose the wrong candidates, that will affect U.S. aid,' Khalilzad said. Khalilzad had previously demanded that the I...

Seed: Practical Joking : "The authors begin their evolutionary tale of laughter well before humor came into the mix, arguing that laughter is a more basic function than even language. 'Not only does it precede language developmentally...it probably preceded language in terms of evolution,' Wilson said. 'So, there was a time in our history when we were laughing before we were talking.' Laughter-like behavior started before we split from apes, the researchers say. As they tickle each other and horse around, apes give a pant-grunt, which Wilson said is a clear precursor to laughter. Wilson added that neural activity associated with laughter occurs in an ancient part of the brain, further demonstrating that laughter developed long ago. The Binghamton team estimates that laughter evolved into its modern form somewhere between two- and four-million years ago, after our transition to two-footed walking but before the beginning of human language. Wilson and Gervais believe...

Political bias affects brain activity, study finds - LiveScience - MSNBC.com Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view. Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered. [...] The results were announced today. "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Bias on both sides The test subjects on both side...

Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - August 16, 2004 Washington Times - Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered. The recent discovery by the Bush administration’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition. Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam’s system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away. The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once t...

Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says - December 15, 2005 - The New York Sun - NY Newspaper New York Sun - Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says. The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was incorrect. The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. “He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria,” General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. “No one went to Syria to find it.” From July 2002 to June 2005, when he retired, General Yaalon was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force, the top job in the Israeli military, analogous to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the American military. He is now a military fellow at the Washing...

Say Anything - North Dakota’s Most Popular Political Blog � Iraqi General Claims WMD’s Went To Syria : "Iraqi General Claims WMD’s Went To Syria By Rob on January 26, 2006 at 1:58 pm An Iraqi General - George Sadas who was apparently “number 2″ in Iraq’s air force - is claiming that Saddam moved his WMD’s into Syria by loading them into stripped out civilian air craft and flying them across the border. One thing that often gets overlooked when the case for war with Iraq is debated is that while it is clear that our intelligence on Saddam’s WMD’s was clearly wrong that fact does not necessarily imply that Saddam didn’t have any WMD’s. We know, for a fact, that at one time Saddam did have chemical and biological weapons. He used some of them, both on his own people and during wars with other middle eastern nations. Unfortunately, many political opportunists and media pundits have chosen to spin the fact that we haven’t found any WMD’s in Iraq into Saddam never having them. Which...

Counter-Terrorism Operations : "Interpreting the Koran January 25, 2006: Many counter-terrorism operators are becoming expert in the complexities of Islamic theology. Partly, this is due to there being over fifty different sects in Islam. Only a few of these sects back Islamic terrorism. It’s well known that the Wahhabi sect, from Saudi Arabia, is one of the most conservative and intolerant forms of Islam. What is less well known is that there are several different versions of the Islamic scriptures, the Koran, in circulation. Some of them are more conducive to aggression and terrorism than others. The original version of the Koran, created in the early days of the Prophet Mohammed’s religious life, was a lot mellower than any subsequent version. Once Islam began to spread rapidly, often via the use of force, another version of the Koran appeared, one that was more agreeable to the use of violence in spreading Islam, and dealing with non-believers (infidels). Things got worse in ...

Recreational drugs | Smoking out the truth | Economist.com : Smoking out the truth Jan 26th 2006 From The Economist print edition Why some people smoke more than others do ANSWERING the question of why people smoke tobacco is reasonably easy. Tobacco plants have evolved a chemical called nicotine that locks into particular molecular receptors in the outer membranes of certain animal nerve cells. Once there, it stimulates those cells in ways that they were never intended to be stimulated. If the animal in question is an insect, the result is lethal—which, from the plant's point of view, is a good outcome. But in a big, bulky animal such as a human, a small amount of nicotine produces a pleasant sensation (though enough of the stuff can kill a human, too). Nicotine has a second effect, though. It induces semi-permanent changes in the ways the nerves it stimulates talk to each other. The result is that those nerves are uncomfortable without it, and the owners of those nerves become ad...

Drinking and Smoking a Dangerous Duo - Forbes.com : WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment for alcoholism could change radically as researchers learn more about the interplay between smoking and drinking, and how the two addictions feed each other to devastating effect on the brain. New evidence suggests that alcohol and nicotine work on the same inhibitory amino acids in the brain, which makes the inclination to do both doubly strong. However, experts think that could mean both addictions could be battled simultaneously, and not separately, in the future. 'While among non-drinkers smoking rates are 20 to 30 percent in the Western world, rates are up to 80 or 90 percent among alcoholic patients,' noted Dieter J. Meyerhoff, a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and an organizer of a recent symposium on the phenomenon. 'There is research that suggests this is not by chance,' he said. "

Downtown Chicago Cigar-Friendly Bars Even though the smoking ban took effect on Monday, for the next two years there are still several places you can light up. Cigar smokers will lament that stogies (or smoking of any kind) are no longer allowed at the Drake or the Ritz, but The Four Seasons (with its excellent ventilation system), Sullivan's Steakhouse, and others welcome you. Click here for complete listing. // posted by The Local Tourist @ 4:13 PM Comments: Post a Comment

Triumph of the Redistributionist Left | csmonitor.com Triumph of the Redistributionist Left Even with Republicans in control, trends are decidedly in favor of massive redistribution of wealth. By Patrick Chisholm | csmonitor.com The political left in America is emerging victorious. No, this isn't about the damage that Jack Abramoff's mischief has done to the political right. Nor is it about President Bush's lousy poll numbers. And it doesn't refer to Democrats' recent win of two governorships. It's about something much deeper; namely, that the era of big government is far from over. Trends are decidedly in favor of that quintessential leftist goal: massive redistribution of wealth. Republicans' capture of both Congress and the White House was, understandably, a demoralizing blow to the left. But the latter can take solace that "Republican" is no longer synonymous with spending restraint, free markets, and other ideals of the political right. While ...

The Australian: Pub smoking ban 'raises risk to children at home' [January 23, 2006] : Brendan O'Keefe BANS on smoking in hotels and restaurants have increased passive smoking among children because people now smoke more at home. Academics Jerome Adda and Francesca Cornaglia, in a claimed world-first study, say that 'bans in recreational public places can perversely increase tobacco exposure of non-smokers'. In a paper published by the Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences, where Dr Adda and Dr Cornaglia were visiting scholars last year, the academics say bans 'displace smokers to private places where they contaminate non-smokers'. 'Children seem to be particularly affected,' they wrote. 'The level of cotinine (a nicotine by-product measurable in saliva) in children considerably increases as a result of bans in recreational public places.' A total ban on smoking in public recreation places results in an incre...

Wired News: It's Caveat Vendor at EBay France : PARIS -- A French court hit an eBay auctioneer with thousands of euros in fines, highlighting legal uncertainties for millions of online vendors across the country. Authorities say the defendant, who was charged and convicted this week of operating a business without a license, was a professional art dealer who failed to register as a commercial vendor, thus dodging numerous regulations and taxes. The defendant, through his lawyer, insists on his innocence, arguing that his sale of some 470 art objects through eBay did not trigger the registration requirement. An eBay spokeswoman in France would not comment on the court case, but said concerned eBay users should consult with French fiscal authorities if they had questions. EBay also has published guidelines drafted by the French online consumer advocacy group Le Forum des droits sur l'Internet (Internet Rights Forum) on its French site. This week's court ruling stemmed from th...

Techdirt:Stopping Crime By Getting Kids To Play More Video Games Stopping Crime By Getting Kids To Play More Video Games Culture Contributed by Mike on Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 @ 04:23PM from the gives-them-something-to-do dept. We've discussed how little evidence there really is about video games leading to youth violence. While studies have been spun to show both sides, there's no actual link being shown. In some cases there are correlations, but it's usually easy to explain -- during a game, of course people are going to get excited and involved in the game play. However, for many it appears to be a way to let out aggression, not build up new aggression that gets let out on real people. This is clearly supported in the fact that youth violence has continued to drop significantly as video games have become ever more popular. Despite the efforts of some who want to blame video games for anything a child ever does wrong, it appears that some police officers are recogn...

ABC News: U.S. Strike Killed al Qaeda Bomb Maker ABC News has learned that Pakistani officials now believe that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week's U.S. missile attack in eastern Pakistan. Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of four known major al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit in the village of Damadola early last Friday morning. The United States had posted a $5 million reward for Mursi's capture. He is described by authorities as the man who ran al Qaeda's infamous Derunta training camp in Afghanistan, where he used dogs and other animals as subjects for experiments with poison and chemicals. His explosives training manual is still regarded as the bible for al Qaeda terrorists around the world. "He wants to cause mayhem, major death, and he puts his expertise on the line. So the fact that we took him out is significant...

The sugar police-Editorials/Op-Ed-The Washington Times, America's Newspaper he sugar police TODAY'S EDITORIAL December 19, 2005 In an appalling extension of the nanny state, New York is slated to become the first city to monitor diabetics' blood-sugar levels. It plans to register them like HIV or tuberculosis sufferers and nag them when their levels aren't healthy enough. Drop the cupcake; here come the sugar police. Sensible people will laugh at this, but New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, an appointee of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is dead serious about the Big Apple's sweet tooth. He's the man behind New York's onerous smoking ban; he doesn't shy from alleging "epidemics." Since Mr. Frieden recently told the New York Sun that diabetes and obesity will be the signature issues of his second term, this begs a question: Will diabetes be the next big thing for public-health bureaucracies? This much is for certain: For years, t...

The States Step In As Medicare Falters The States Step In As Medicare Falters Seniors Being Turned Away, Overcharged Under New Prescription Drug Program By Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 14, 2006; Page A01 Two weeks into the new Medicare prescription drug program, many of the nation's sickest and poorest elderly and disabled people are being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines. Computer glitches, overloaded telephone lines and poorly trained pharmacists are being blamed for mix-ups that have resulted in the worst of unintended consequences: As many as 6.4 million low-income seniors, who until Dec. 31 received their medications free, suddenly find themselves navigating an insurance maze of large deductibles, co-payments and outright denial of coverage. Pharmacist Rich Harvie fills a prescription in Montpelier, Vt. Medicare's drug program h...

Reunified Islam: Unlikely but Not Entirely Radical Restoration of Caliphate, Attacked by Bush, Resonates With Mainstream Muslims By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service ISTANBUL -- The plan was to fly a hijacked plane into a national landmark on live television. The year was 1998, the country was Turkey, and the rented plane ended up grounded by weather. Court records show the Islamic extremist who planned to commandeer the cockpit did not actually know how to fly. But if the audacious scheme prefigured Sept. 11, 2001, it also highlighted a cause that, seven years later, President Bush has used to define the war against terrorism. What the ill-prepared Turkish plotters told investigators they aimed to do was strike a dramatic blow toward reviving Islam's caliphate, the institution that had nominally governed the world's Muslims for nearly all of the almost 1,400 years since the death of the prophet Muhammad. The goal of reuniting Muslims under a single flag stands at the h...

lgf: Major Terror Plot Ignored (Again) From Little Green Footballs... In December we had this story at LGF, from a South African site: Algerian Group Suspected of Planning US Attacks. Rome - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday. The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2,700 people, Pisanu said. The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama. But as Cliff Kincaid and Brent Baker point out, the story was almost totally ignored by US media. “U.S. terror attacks foiled,” read the headline in Englan...

lgf: Major Terror Plot Ignored (Again) From Little Green Footballs... In December we had this story at LGF, from a South African site: Algerian Group Suspected of Planning US Attacks. Rome - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday. The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11 2001 strikes by al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed about 2,700 people, Pisanu said. The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama. But as Cliff Kincaid and Brent Baker point out, the story was almost totally ignored by US media. “U.S. terror attacks foiled,” read the headline in Englan...

City considers ‘red-tagging’ problem houses BY DEENA WINTER / Lincoln Journal Star It’s not a scarlet letter. But it is a bunch of letters on a red tag stuck to one’s house — if the occupants have gotten into trouble with the law for things like parties, noise or litter. City leaders are floating the idea of slapping so-called “red tags” on houses to serve notice to inhabitants, neighbors and landlords that they’re in trouble with the law. And they’d better not get into trouble again anytime soon. The idea was suggested by Ed Caudill, a 21-year North Bottoms resident and neighborhood activist who hopes to reduce the parties, litter and noise in his neighborhood, where the many small, old rental houses are popular with University of Nebraska-Lincoln students. Caudill got the idea from Tucson, Ariz., where police have the authority to stick red tags on disorderly houses — or properties where five or more people are gathered or where there’s excessive noise, traffic, obstruction of street...

New source of global warming gas found: plants - Yahoo! News LONDON (Reuters) - German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change. The culprits are plants. They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

Local Insurgents Tell of Clashes With Al Qaeda's Forces in Iraq - New York Times : "Local Insurgents Tell of Clashes With Al Qaeda's Forces in Iraq By SABRINA TAVERNISE and DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11 - The story told by the two Iraqi guerrillas cut to the heart of the war that Iraqi and American officials now believe is raging inside the Iraqi insurgency. In October, the two insurgents said in interviews, a group of local fighters from the Islamic Army gathered for an open-air meeting on a street corner in Taji, a city north of Baghdad. Across from the Iraqis stood the men from Al Qaeda, mostly Arabs from outside Iraq. Some of them wore suicide belts. The men from the Islamic Army accused the Qaeda fighters of murdering their comrades. 'Al Qaeda killed two people from our group,' said an Islamic Army fighter who uses the nom de guerre Abu Lil and who claimed that he attended the meeting. 'They repeatedly kill our people.' The encounter ended angr...

Muslims Clash Over Oakland Liquor Stores By JUSTIN M. NORTON Associated Press Writer OAKLAND, Calif. They weren't your ordinary thugs. Dressed in bow ties and dark suits, nearly a dozen men carrying metal pipes entered a corner store, shattered refrigerator cases and smashed bottles of liquor, wine and beer, terrifying the clerk but stealing nothing. The just wanted to leave a message: Stop selling alcohol to fellow Muslims. In urban America, friction between poor residents and immigrant store owners is nothing new. Nor are complaints that inner- city neighborhoods are glutted with markets that sell alcohol and contribute to violent crime, vagrancy and other social ills. But the recent attack at San Pablo Liquor _ and an identical vandalism spree at another West Oakland store later that evening, along with an arson fire there and the kidnapping of the owner a few days later _ have injected religion into the debate. The two episodes highlighted tensions _ and different interpretatio...

ThreatsWatch.Org: InBrief: Blowback from the Ramadi Attack Blowback from the Ramadi Attack Sunnis point fingers at al-Qaeda for deadly attack on police recruits By Bill Roggio The city of Ramadi is the last bastion of the insurgency and al-Qaeda in Anbar province. Yesterday’s deadly attack on prospective police recruits waiting outside the recruiting center may go a long way to erode that support. The Washington Post reports “at least 80 Sunni Arabs were killed and 61 wounded” by the suicide bomber, and residents of Ramadi are furious. Tribal leaders, who are very influential in the Iraqi culture, were killed during the attacks. The responsibility for the attack is being placed directly on al-Qaeda’s shoulders. “Neither the Americans nor the Shiites have any benefit in doing this. It is Zarqawi,” said the brother of one of the wounded. According to the Washington Post, “Another group of people beat a doctor in the hospital after he told an Iraqi journalist that U.S. forces were to blam...

BBC NEWS | Americas | JFK assassination 'was Cuba plot' JFK assassination 'was Cuba plot' Kennedy with his wife Jackie and daughter Caroline Kennedy's assassination was a defining moment in US history A new documentary exploring the death of John F Kennedy claims his assassin was directed and paid by Cuba. Rendezvous with Death, based on new evidence from Cuban, Russian and US sources, took three years to research. One source, ex-Cuban agent Oscar Marino, said Havana had exploited Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested but shot dead before he could be tried. Conspiracy theories on the killing have variously accused Cuba, Russia and the US of acting alone or jointly. According to Oscar Marino, the Cubans wanted Kennedy dead because he opposed the revolution and allegedly sought to have its leader Fidel Castro killed. Mr Marino told film director Wilfried Huismann that he knew for certain the assassination was an operation run by the Cuban secret service G2, but he decli...

Americans Find Being Fat Not Unattractive - Yahoo! News Americans Find Being Fat Not Unattractive By CANDICE CHOI, Associated Press Thin is still in, but apparently fat is nowhere near as out as it used to be. A survey finds America's attitudes toward overweight people are shifting from rejection toward acceptance. Over a 20-year period, the percentage of Americans who said they find overweight people less attractive steadily dropped from 55 percent to 24 percent, the market research firm NPD Group found. With about two-thirds of U.S. adults overweight, Americans seem more accepting of heavier body types, researchers say. The NPD survey of 1,900 people representative of the U.S. population also found other more relaxed attitudes about weight and diet. While body image remains a constant obsession, the national preoccupation with being thin has waned since the late 1980s and early 1990s, said the NPD's Harry Balzer. Those were the days when fast food chains rushed to install sal...

Telegraph | News | Syria 'tried to fuel holy war in Iraq against US and Britain' : "Syria 'tried to fuel holy war in Iraq against US and Britain' By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 11/01/2006) President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secretly incited Iraq's top Shia leader to declare holy war against US and British forces, according to Washington's former administrator in the country. In his new book, My Year in Iraq, Paul Bremer said he heard the explosive intelligence in October 2003 as sectarian tensions soared across the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Paul Bremer News of Assad's actions ‘stunned’ the US administration in Iraq The report came from an extremely senior source, the supreme leader of Iraq's majority Shia community, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. According to Mr Bremer, the news was passed to him by Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a senior Shia politician involved in negotiations with the ayatollah. The Syrian leader had apparent...

The Globe and Mail: Chinese ban on Wikipedia prevents research, users say : "Beijing — Chinese students and intellectuals are expressing outrage at Beijing's decision to prohibit access to Wikipedia, the fast-growing on-line encyclopedia that has become a basic resource for many in China. Wikipedia, which offers more than 2.2 million articles in 100 languages, has emerged as an important source of scholarly knowledge in China and many other countries. But its stubborn neutrality and independence on political issues such as Tibet and Taiwan has repeatedly drawn the wrath of the Communist authorities. The latest blocking of the website, the third shutdown of the site in China in the past two years, has now continued for more than 10 weeks without any explanation and without any indication whether the ban is temporary or permanent. 'What idiots these officials are!' said one message on a Chinese site. 'They are killing our culture with censorship.'"

Chicago Tribune | For some women, kicking coffee is not so easy For some women, kicking coffee is not so easy By Jonathan Bor Sun Reporter Published December 9, 2005 Most pregnant women have little trouble kicking caffeine once their doctors warn them that the common stimulant found in coffee, tea, cola, chocolate and other foods could endanger their babies' health. But researchers have found a group who does have trouble - women with a family history of alcohol abuse. "It's not just an academic issue," said Dr. Roland R. Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine whose earlier research established caffeine as an addictive substance. "These are people who want to quit, should quit and can't quit." Griffith, whose study appears in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry, said the finding suggests that alcoholism and caffeine addiction share a common genetic factor. It also suggests that pregnant w...

International News Article | Reuters.com W.House: Iran could face Security Council Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:23 AM ET165 Printer Friendly | Email Article | Reprints | RSS Top News Alito: 'No one is above the law' Bush urges critics be responsible on Iraq White House: Iran could face Security Council VIDEO: Bush call for debate on Iraq VIDEO: Turkey struggles with bird flu PICTURES: Prayers for Israeli PM Ariel Sharon PICTURES: Traditional Ekonkon Dance in Senegal MORE WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If Iran continues on its current nuclear course, it will leave the international community no choice but to refer Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible actions, the White House said on Tuesday. The United States was reacting after Iran removed U.N. seals at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant and resumed nuclear fuel research on Tuesday. "If the regime in Iran continues on the current course and fails to abide by its international obligations there is no other c...

Iran Focus-News - Women - Iran to hang teenage girl attacked by rapists Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece. The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005. Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless. She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand. As the girls tried to escape, the men o...

FrontPage magazine.com :: Muslim Rape Wave in Sweden by Fjordman Swedish girls Malin and Amanda were on their way to a party on New Year's Eve when they were assaulted, raped and beaten half to death by four Somali immigrants. Sweden's largest newspaper has presented the perpetrators as "two men from Sweden, one from Finland and one from Somalia", a testimony as to how bad the informal censorship is in stories related to immigration in Sweden. Similar incidents are reported with shocking frequency, to the point where some observers fear that law and order is completely breaking down in the country. The number of rape charges in Sweden has tripled in just above twenty years. Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six - 6 - times as common today as they were a generation ago. Most other kinds of violent crime have rapidly increased, too. Instability is spreading to most urban and suburban areas. According to a new study from the Crime Prevention Council, ...

Michelle Malkin: VIDEO: A VETERAN TELLS OFF MURTHA/MORAN : By Michelle Malkin January 07, 2006 06:05 AM This. Is. Priceless. As I noted in the post just below, Sgt. Mark Seavey confronted Democrat Reps. Jim Moran and John Murtha at a town hall meeting in Arlington, Va., earlier this week and left the moonbats momentarily speechless. Greyhawk transcribed Sgt. Seavey's comments. I have now isolated and captured the video clip from C-Span for educational purposes and for posterity: Download the video (.wmv file). seaveypic.jpg Sgt. Mark Seavey to Murtha and Moran: 'I don't know who you two are talking to but the morale of the troops is very high.' My favorite moments were the look on Rep. Jim 'Bad Boy' Moran's face when Sgt. Seavey challenged the Dems' 'demoralized troops' meme and noted that Moran didn't bother to send a single word of praise or attend a homecoming event when 200 of his Moran's constituents returned from duty in Afghan...

Saddam's Terror Training Camps Saddam's Terror Training Camps What the documents captured from the former Iraqi regime reveal--and why they should all be made public. by Stephen F. Hayes 01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17 THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials. The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, c...

Michael Ledeen on Osama bin Laden on National Review Online The pope once remarked that there were times when dramatic change was impossible, and at such moments anyone who tried to achieve it was like the fool beating his head against a stone wall. But there were other times when the acts of a single individual could change the world. He knew he was living at such a time, and he saw his mission as inspiring individuals to take those actions, and change the world for the better. That was one reason why his famous call, "be not afraid," was so right for those times, and why a handful of brave individuals famously changed the world. This historical moment is not easy to understand, since we are in transition from a relatively stable world, dominated by a handful of major powers, to something we cannot yet define, since it is up to us to shape it. It seems clear, however, that there is a greater rapidity of change, accompanied — inevitably — by the passing of the leaders of t...

Telegraph | News | Son killed 'for not changing to Islam' : By Catriona Davies A mother described yesterday hearing her son shot dead after he refused to convert to Islam. Ruth Marriott told an inquest into her son's death that she heard gunshots on the day Adrian was shot five times in the head a few weeks before his 21st birthday. Mr Marriott, an accountancy student and gang member, was killed in a park near his home in Brixton, south London, in June 2004. Three members of a rival gang, known as the Muslim Boys, were cleared in September last year of conspiracy to murder Mr Marriott after the prosecution offered no evidence at the Old Bailey. His mother told the inquest at Southwark Coroners' Court yesterday: 'We heard the shooting. We heard gun fire. 'The thought did strike me that Adrian could be involved, but it was a fleeting thought. Then we heard from police the following evening what had happened. 'Adrian was told on the Sunday prior to his death th...

Americans Said to Meet Rebels, Exploiting Rift - New York Times Americans Said to Meet Rebels, Exploiting Rift By DEXTER FILKINS and SABRINA TAVERNISE BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 6 - American officials are talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift that has opened between homegrown insurgents and radical groups like Al Qaeda, and to draw the local leaders into the political process, according to a Western diplomat, an Iraqi political leader and an Iraqi insurgent leader. Clashes between Iraqi groups and Al Qaeda have broken out in several cities across the Sunni Triangle, including Taji, Yusefiya, Qaim and Ramadi, and they appear to have intensified in recent months, according to interviews with insurgents and with American and Iraqi officials. In an interview on Friday, a Western diplomat who supports the talks said that the Americans had opened face-to-face discussions with insurgents in the field, and that they were communicating with senior insurgent leaders through inter...

Beautiful Atrocities: I LOST MY HEAD OVER ISLAM : "I LOST MY HEAD OVER ISLAM Dear Stupid British Homos, I see you're having the PC vapors after the renegade Gay & Lesbian Humanist Assn said - are you ready? - Islam is homophobic. No. Shit. Sherlock. As a fellow homo, this seems gratuitous, but in PC England it's so over the top that GLHA execs resigned in disgrace & issued groveling apologies, gay luminaries voiced concern, & something sinister called London-wide Race Hate Crime Forum is pursuing prosecution. Here's an excerpt of GLHA's vile filth, which actually suggested that medieval Muslim immigrants who don't send their daughters to school & think Jews perpetrated the WTC attacks don't share Western values: 'What is wrong with being fearful of Islam? (There is a lot to fear) ... What does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?' Holy crap. An outraged gay Muslim group [si...