No One Expects the Muslim Inquisition

By DANIEL GREENFIELD – “Monty Python may have surprised us with the Spanish Inquisition, but today there is hardly anyone who doesn’t expect the Muslim Inquisition. It is almost hard to imagine that there was a time not so long ago when it was possible to catch sight of Muslim terrorists in films and when it was permissible to crack jokes about Mohammed and the mountain.

Today a few strokes of a pen can put you on the run, not in Islambad or Ridyah, but as far away as Seattle. And the mere whisper of a mosque protest can put you in a jail cell for ‘breach of peace’. Peace being another way of saying Islam.

Ever since Mohammed couched his demand for surrender to the Byzantine Emperor with the words, ‘Aslim Taslam’– appeasing Muslims often comes gift wrapped as ‘peace’.”  Read more.

Four Myths about the Crusades

By Paul F. Crawford – “In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that ‘when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.’ He cited the ‘contemporaneous descriptions of the event’ as describing ‘soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.’ This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was ‘still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.’

This view of the crusades is not unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature. One otherwise generally reliable Western civilization textbook claims that ‘the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.'(1) The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the best of whom were torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them. Even the historical supplements for role-playing games — drawing on supposedly more reliable sources — contain statements such as ‘The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed — literally — task of slaughtering unbelievers’;(2) ‘The Crusades were an early sort of imperialism’;(3) and ‘Confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.'(4) The most famous semi-popular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose with the judgment that the crusades were ‘nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.'(5)

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone ‘knows’ about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.” Read more.

Anti-Christian Violence in Punjab, Young Woman Raped, Protestant Pastor Attacked

“Lahore (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Anti-Christian violence continues in Pakistan, after Easter was celebrated in memory of Shahbaz Bhatti, the country’s Minority Affairs minister assassinated in March. Yesterday, an extremist group ambushed a Protestant clergyman travelling with his family, seriously wounding his 24-year-old son. A few days ago, a young Christian woman was abducted and raped over several days by a man claiming to be a police officer. After she was let go, he fled without leaving a trace…

Rev Ashraf Paul, 55, and his family were driving down Ferozepur Road. At one point, two men on motorbikes intercepted the vehicle, firing at the clergyman’s car, which was hit at least five times. His 24-year-old son, Sarfaz, was critically wounded.”  Read more.

Forensic Psychiatrist on Obama’s ‘Birth Certificate’ Speech: President Was ‘Nervous’, ‘Odd’ – Why?

Dr. Keith Ablow, Forensic Psychiatrist: “If you listen to [President Obama’s speech after the release of the birth certificate] and you don’t get into the forensic pathology related to the document itself, from a psychological standpoint it’s a curious speech.  He doesn’t say one in a billion people — one in a million — will find fault with this because there are outliers for everything.  He says 25% of people might have  a prob, that’s a very curious sort of calculus, like why?  Why would only the majority of Americans consider this to be sufficient evidence of his birth?  I wasn’t interested in looking at the birth certificate so much until the speech, which was preceded by a huge rambling series of excuses about why we shouldn’t look at it too closely…

If you’d had inserted two sentences to say, ‘Look of course it’s not real but we have things to do in the country’ I’d say that’s consistent with the tone of the speech… I found him to be quirky, a little nervous, summoning, odd, pauses and smiles… Why be bemused?  Why not just release it two years ago?  It’s not bemusing…”

‘Massive Crop Losses’ Feared from South Drought

By Carey Gillam – “KANSAS CITY (Reuters) – A devastating drought intensified across Texas over the last week, with high winds and heat causing ‘massive crop losses,’ and weather experts said Thursday that little relief was in sight.

The latest report from a consortium of national climate experts, dubbed the Drought Monitor, said drought worsened along the Texas border with Oklahoma, and in western, central and southern Texas.

Ranchers were struggling to feed and water cattle, and farmers were left to watch their crops shrivel into the dusty soil. Some experts estimated that producers were giving up on up to 70 percent of the state’s wheat acreage.

‘There are some scary things going on in Texas,’ said Brian Fuchs, climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center, which released its weekly drought analysis Thursday morning.”  Read more.

White House Releases ‘Obama’s Long Form Birth Certificate’, Some Already Questioning Authenticity

Update:  The more I look into this, the more it seems to me that this document was tampered with and it’s only a matter of time before this is confirmed by independent experts.  Why did the White House release an altered document?  Read more – Something’s VERY Fishy About Obama’s Official Long Form Birth Certificate…

By Bryan Keith Nixon – “I AM NOT A BIRTHER! But this one is too interesting to ignore. Upon hearing all the fuss about the newly released Certificate of Live Birth, I decided to open it up in Adobe Illustrator and see just what we were given by the White House. Judge for yourself.”  Source.

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University Campuses are ‘Hotbeds of Islamic Extremism’

By Duncan Gardham – “Islamic fundamentalism is being allowed to flourish at universities, endangering national security, MPs and peers said yesterday.

Academics are turning a blind eye to radicals because they do not want to spy on students, a report claimed.

Despite ‘damning evidence’ of a serious problem, little progress had been made in tackling the unsustainable situation, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homeland Security said.

They urged the Government to tackle the issue on campuses with ‘utmost urgency’.

Such extremism ‘endangers our security at home and has international implications that are serious enough to threaten our alliance relationships’, said the group, which includes the former home secretary Lord Reid.”  Read more.

Dozens of Unexplained Deaths of Farm Animals in Honduras

“The director of the National Health Service (SENASA), Heriberto Amador announced that in about 48 hours, they should have answers to the recent unexplained deaths of dozens of farm animals in the areas of Agua Caliente, El Porvenir, and Francisco Morazan.

‘We believe that within 24 to 48 hours we will have the lab results to confirm whether the deaths are due to some disease or nutritional problems,’ he said.”  Read more.

Chief Nuclear Engineer Postulates that Fukushima Reactor 3 Explosion was Nuclear

Chief nuclear engineer A. Gundersen postulates that the Fukushima Reactor No. 3 explosion may have been nuclear and not just a hydrogen explosion.  Pieces of nuclear fuel rods were discovered as far away as 2 miles from the plant, which would have happened with a detonation, but unlikely with a deflagration.