Hulleye Comes By!

A recent shot from Cassini, in the orbit of Saturn, some 930 million miles away. The pale blue dot, of course, is Earth.

Looking for Musharraf on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Well, here are two clips seperated because of the Commercial break.

Part 1 of 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XK2qRsA_Vak
Part 2 of 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=o9UILI8M8jw

newsweek article: the rise of jihadistan. 

Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they—and Al Qaeda’s leaders—can operate freely.

keep reading.

because everyone has made such a fuss on this entire pope’s speech debacle, i’m going to a quote an article i recently read at Gush Shalom. written by a man named Uri Avnery. he is an israeli author and activist. this article is not only well worth a read (when you have 6 minutes), it is not only a good historical vision, it is an essential element in the re-creation of understanding and peace in this dangerous world that has been fabricated and manipulated by politics in the interest of capitalism, where there is no longer any consideration for the value of human life nor the suffering of human beings. enjoy.

Since the days when Roman emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became emperor in the year 306 - exactly 1700 years ago - encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the emperor accept his superiority.

The struggle between the emperors and the popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some emperors dismissed or expelled a pope, some popes dismissed or excommunicated an emperor. One of the emperors, Henry IV, “walked to Canossa”, standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope’s castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when emperors and popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week’s speech by the Pope, which aroused a worldwide storm, went well with Bush’s crusade against “Islamofascism”, in the context of the “clash of civilizations”.

In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God’s actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this “war of civilizations”.

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the Prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted - of all people - a Byzantine emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?

When Manuel II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. On 29 May 1453, only a few years after Manuel’s death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul), fell to the Turks, putting an end to the empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim “Axis of Evil”. Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

Is there any truth in Manuel’s argument?

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur’an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, Verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant Verse 257) which says: “There must be no coercion in matters of faith.”

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the Prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur’an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: “You will recognize them by their fruits.” The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to “spread the faith by the sword”?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favourites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today’s Palestinians.

There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the “spreading of the faith by the sword”?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics reconquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi (”Spanish”) Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the “peoples of the book”. In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times “by the sword” to get them to abandon their faith.

The story about “spreading the faith by the sword” is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?

There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of “Islamofascism” and the “global war on terror” - when “terrorism” has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush’s handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world’s oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers’ expedition becomes a Crusade.

The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?

Tavis Smiley interviews Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on “his oil-for-poor program, U.S. foreign relations policy, his controversial anti-Bush comments and criticism of the United Nations.”

for anyone who’s interested in listening to carol off’s interview with pervez musharraf, you can listen to it here. (real audio stream only, sorry).

also, in case anyone is interested, or is keeping track, Rice gets caught in her lies today by the pdf of the actual memo from Richard Clark that demonstrates contradiction about statements made about clinton and pakistan.

somebody has wayyyy too much time on their hands.

here is an extensive list of movies, with screenshots, over the past 100 years which feature chess. it’s absolutely fascinating how extensive the game is in our culture.

In a country with a long history of corporate problems and financial issues, the inexpensive and flexible nature of open source software is gaining a lot of ground. “Two years ago, New Delhi said the best way to improve computer literacy in India was to adopt open source software in schools. Although Kerala is the first to introduce such a program statewide, 18 of India’s 28 states either are using Linux or have pilot projects for its use in various government departments and schools. The education ministries in most states, and in Delhi the federal ministries of defense, transport, communication, and health, are all using the software on server computers.

i love the concept of open source technologies. i love it even more when its applied to non-software applications. in this case, prosthetics. it’s unreal to know that “state of the art” prosthetics for upper torso’s haven’t really changed since the early 1900’s. i’m glad to see some reform in this area.

richard hammond has just suffered a major brain injury from a car crash in which he was going at close to 300mph. sad news. he is best known for being a presenter on the BBC show, Top Gear.

Violating the Human Rights of Kashmiris seems to be another thing that India and Pakistan have in common. From Human Rights Watch:

In Azad Kashmir, a region largely closed to international scrutiny until a devastating earthquake hit last year, the Pakistani government represses democratic freedoms, muzzles the press and practices routine torture, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Based on research in Azad Kashmir (which means “free Kashmir”) and Pakistan, the 71-page report, “‘With Friends Like These …’: Human Rights Violations in Azad Kashmir,” uncovers abuses by the Pakistani military, intelligence services and militant organizations.

“Although ‘azad’ means ‘free,’ the residents of Azad Kashmir are anything but,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Pakistani authorities govern Azad Kashmir with strict controls on basic freedoms.”

thanks 3qd

classic but worth revisiting.

Great, so now smoker’s got one more thing they will have to read off the back of their cigarette packs.

Smokers may be at greater risk of HIV infection than non-smokers, reveals an analysis of published research issued ahead of print in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. Cigarette smoking has already been linked to a higher than normal chance of contracting other infections generally, including those that have been sexually transmitted.

you all remember the floating bed? well, this dude designed an almost floating bed.

so everyone knows microsoft loves distributing damn encarta cd’s every chance it gets. this dude started to IM with the encarta bot and tried to outsmart it. little did he know he wouldn’t get very far. so he asked him what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow was? check out the image below to see the response much to his astonishment.

if you don’t get the joke, too bad.

in case anyone is interested, karen armstrong has written an op-ed in the guardian in response to the pope’s speech and comments.

found via ifaqeer.

and in today’s news in religion aside from burning effigy’s,

• World doesn’t end, sect upset - A Kenyan sect that predicted the world would end Tuesday in a nuclear war ended the day in some confusion.
• Sharia could come via democracy: Dutch minister - Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has provoked an angry response by stating it has to be possible for Sharia Law to be introduced in the Netherlands via democratic means.
• Cult leader’s trail of lies - Cult leader Debra Geileskey has been allegedly travelling on a false passport claiming to be a diplomat from a fictitious country called Caledonia Australis: had postage stamps issued from the fictitious country, used them to send mail to the US.

The Best of Borat. If you’re wondering why the Kazakhstan government is so upset, this 25 minute compilation should give you a pretty good idea. This is also why Sacha Baron Cohen is genius.

the top ten dumbest secret identities ever.

Susan Okie in the New England Journal of Medicine:

In a world with many celebrities but few heroes, Bill Gates has attained heroic status by committing much of his enormous fortune to the advancement of global equity. He and his wife have targeted the causes of health disparities between rich and poor, and their foundation has become a driving force in international aid and in research on AIDS and other diseases. In June, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s likely impact on global health was amplified when Warren Buffett, the world’s second-richest man, announced plans to give most of his fortune to the foundation established by the richest one.

Buffett’s gift, worth about $37 billion, will double the foundation’s endowment from $29 billion to approximately $60 billion, making it by far the world’s largest charitable foundation. The gift will also increase the foundation’s annual giving from $1.36 billion last year to about $3 billion, or approximately $1 per year for every person in the poorer half of the world’s population. By comparison, the World Bank estimates that total health-related aid to developing countries in 2004 (from governments, international organizations, and private sources) was about $12.7 billion.

More here.

this is a fascinating list of unusual recorded deaths. after skimming through the list, these are some of my favourites.

• 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.
• 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, who fell in a pit trap, was crushed by a bull that fell in the same pit.
• 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.
• 1997: David Bailey, an Irish man died when he was urinated on by a rat while attempting to retreive a lost golf ball from a ditch. Bailey apparently startled the rat, causing it to dart up his pant leg and urinate on him. After the incident, Bailey’s companions urged him to immediately shower, but Bailey refused stating that he had no bites or scratches. He died two weeks later from kidney failure brought on by an acute case of leptospirosis.
• 2003: Brian Wells, pizza deliveryman, was killed by a time bomb which was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb then exploded, killing him.

The first five pages of the transformers movie leaked and scanned also including new photos of Ironhide and Ratchet.

i don’t know how many of you are the daily show or jon stewart fans, but he did a show after the fifth anniversary of 9-11 in which he ripped apart the president and how he marked the anniversary. what most of you probably don’t remember is the first show he did after 9-11 itself. it is not an intellectual viewpoint though it is an engaged, traumatized, and hopeful New Yorker’s viewpoint. go through it and i hope you understand what he is trying to say.

i’ll let one of my favourite blogs do the usual roundup of the things they do so well in order to remember what all has happened from five years ago. good job guys.

personal note: we all remember what happened five years ago today and we shall not forget. hopefully we won’t forget the other wars that the US has used which have pillaged the rest of the planet and we don’t hear about them because they are not important enough for the media. Both the US and UK failed to stop the murder of a large number of civilians in what most of the neutral world sees as Israel’s disproportionate response to Hizbullah’s capture of two IDF soldiers. Afghanistan has been abandoned again and the Taliban are returning. Iraq is at the brink of Civil war. Kashmiris have had their legitimate freedom struggle labelled as ‘terrorism’. Innocent people die everywhere in the world in terrorist attacks on a daily basis.

i wish people wouldn’t have to be killed so i can “live happily” in north america.

a bit of geek humour. you can now buy a t-shirt.

Somehow I doubt you’ll see this cited on Fox as an example of our present grave danger in North America.

fact of the day for you: the first official international cricket match ever played was between the united states and canada.

i doubt most of you will believe me, so go ahead and google it. anyway, it would seem, as per this article that it’s making a come back.

Came across a very neat photo journal on BBC of a prison in La Paz, Bolivia.

San Pedro prison, the biggest in Bolivia’s main city, La Paz, is home to about 1,500 inmates.

Once you pass the thick walls and the security gates, any resemblance to a normal jail disappears: there are children playing, market stalls, restaurants, hairdressers and even a hotel. It looks more like the streets of El Alto, Bolivia’s poorest neighbourhood that sprawls on the outskirts of La Paz, than a prison.

The prison is divided into eight sectors and facilities range from miserable to luxurious.

There are no guards, no uniforms or metal bars on the cell windows. This relative freedom comes at a price: inmates have to pay for their cells, so most of them have to work inside the jail, selling groceries or working in the food stalls. Others work as hairdressers, laundry staff, carpenters, shoe-shine boys or TV and radio repairmen.