The Amboy Times

Obama + MSM = True Love

You know it's bad when even SNL satires the medias love affair with Obama.

Via Michelle Malkin.

Berlin gallery shuts after Muslim threats

Hat tip, Strappado. Another artist is terrorized for offending Muslims.

A Berlin gallery has temporarily closed an exhibition of satirical works by a group of Danish artists after six Muslim youths threatened violence unless one of the posters depicting the Kaaba shrine in Mecca was removed, it said on Thursday. The Galerie Nord in central Berlin said it had closed its "Zionist Occupied Government" show of works by Surrend, a group of artists who say they poke fun at powerful people and ideological conflicts.

The exhibition, titled "ZOG — Surrend," aims to attack neo-Nazi propaganda and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory named ZOG — short for "Zionist Occupied Government."

The Kaaba poster also showed people walking around the cube-shaped shrine under speech bubbles containing the ZOG slogan.

On Tuesday, four days after the exhibition opened, a group of angry Muslims stormed into the gallery, shouting demands that one of the 21 posters should be removed, said the gallery.

"They were very agrressive and shouted at an employee that the poster should be taken down otherwise they would throw stones and use violence," the gallery's artistic director Ralf Hartmann told Reuters.

The Muslims objected to a depiction of the Kaaba -- the ancient shrine in Mecca's Grand Mosque which Muslims face to say their prayers -- which gave a "bitingly satirical commentary against radicalism," said the gallery in a statement.

Surrend's web site. Gallerie Nord web site. Additional source.

Ricin Found in Vegas

Here's a history of ricin incidents.

Police in Las Vegas, Nevada, are investigating the discovery of what they said is the deadly poison ricin in a hotel room.

Authorities were called to an Extended Stay America hotel around 3 p.m. PT Thursday after a man brought a bag with a small container to the manager's office. The man said he found it while retrieving items from a hotel room.

The substance is "100 percent ricin," said Capt. Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. "We don't know who [the ricin] belongs to or why it would be here at this time."

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Friday there does not appear to be a link to terrorists.

So they were going to use it for....?

Update: Homeland Security is investigating.

Homeland Security officials joined local police in the investigation. Officials from the FBI, Las Vegas Health District, a hazardous materials team and the National Guard were also at the scene.

 

A woman who answered the phone at the motel declined comment.

 

Ricin is made from the waste left over from processing castor beans, and can be extremely lethal. As little as 500 micrograms, or about the size of the head of a pin, can kill a human, according to the CDC.

Obama on Muslim Prayer

From STACLU.

Kristoff from the New York Times a year ago:

Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

This is just one example of what Pamela is talking about when she says “Obama’s narrative is being altered, enhanced and manipulated to whitewash troubling facts.”

From Atlas.

My objective is to unearth Obama's relationship to Islam. Islam is a political ideology and it is incompatible with democracy.

Mosques are being used to electioneer for Obama. Arabs and Muslims in Islamic countries endorse Obama. Unindicted co-conspirator and Hamas sympathizer, CAIR, endorses him. Why would they endorse an apostate? There is no record of Obama ever having been baptized. Did he leave Islam and become Christian?

Read the rest of Atlas' post and Obama's connection to Louis Farrakahn.

William F Buckley: RIP

Whether you agreed with Buckley or not, there was no denying his rapier wit, command of the language, and  his uncanny ability to bring the public discourse to it's highest level. He will be sorely missed.

William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.

Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.

Yet on the platform he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.

"For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television," fellow conservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said at the time the show ended. "He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement."

Fifty years earlier, few could have imagined such a triumph. Conservatives had been marginalized by a generation of discredited stands — from opposing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to the isolationism which preceded the U.S. entry into WW II.  Liberals so dominated intellectual thought that the critic Lionel Trilling claimed there were "no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation."

Buckley founded the biweekly magazine National Review in 1955, declaring that he proposed to stand "athwart history, yelling `Stop' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it." Not only did he help revive conservative ideology, especially unbending anti-Communism and free market economics, his persona was a dynamic break from such dour right-wing predecessors as Sen. Robert Taft.

Michelle Malkin has a nice tribute, as does Hot Air, and of course, NRO.

Oblogatory Anecdotes

Buckley on the Charlie Rose Show.

Buckley v Chomsky.

Chavez v English Words

The dictator of Venezuela fears the "dictatorship of Hollywood".

President Hugo Chavez's government is taking its battle against U.S. "imperialism" into Venezuelans' dictionaries, urging state phone company workers to avoid English-language business and tech terms.

Through a campaign launched Monday, newly nationalized CANTV hopes to wean employees and others from words like "staff" ("equipo" is preferred), "marketing" ("mercadeo") and "password" ("contrasena").

Stickers and banners printed up by the company exhort Venezuelans to "Say it in Spanish. Say it with pride."

The Communications and Information Ministry said in a statement that Venezuelans must recover Spanish words that are "threatened by sectors that have started a battle for the cultural domination of our nations."

Other English words targeted include "mouse" (the company prefers "raton"), "meeting" ("reunion") and "sponsor" ("patrocinador") - all of which have become common in Latin American countries.

The leftist president has sought to counter what he calls U.S. cultural imperialism on all fronts, financing Venezuelan cinema as an alternative to the "dictatorship of Hollywood" and forcing radio stations to play more Venezuelan music.

English is still taught in schools alongside other languages, however. And Chavez himself often breaks playfully into English during speeches, sometimes to salute his close friend, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, saying: "How are you, Fidel?"

No tan bueno.

15 Years Ago: The World Trade Center Bombing

It was our first warning.

Fifteen years ago today, Osama bin Laden struck his first blow against the United States. His henchmen drove a rental truck full of explosives into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center. The resulting terrorist attack killed six and injured over a thousand people. Ramzi Yousef masterminded the plot in four months while spending about ten thousand dollars on the scene.

First thought to be an accident, investigators found the vehicle identification number on a three hundred pound piece of metal remains of the rental truck. The FBI traced the number to the rental agency and arrested Mohammed Salameh when he returned to collect a four hundred dollar deposit on the truck. The four men directly involved were all arrested and sentenced to 240 years of prison.

Other voices: Michelle Malkin, Lawhawk , Debbie Schlussel , Jammie Wearing Fool, Global War of Terror, Reluctant Optimist.

Barefoot Women and You Tube

These are the newest additions to the List of Things That Offend Muslims. Our first little atrocity is committed by You Tube, thanks to J, Simon, and Micheal Rittenhouse for telling me about it.

Pakistan has ordered all Internet service providers to block the YouTube website for containing "blasphemous" content and material considered offensive to Islam, officials said Sunday.

An inter-ministerial committee has decided to block YouTube because it contained "blasphemous content, videos and documents," a government official told Agence France-Presse. "The site will remain blocked till further orders.

...which are to be obeyed without question.

Next is the great threat of women without socks. Brought to us by previous contributor, Flanders Fields.

The State Security Forces (SSF) arrested a woman for not wearing socks.  When her sister attempted to get her detained sister released by taking a pair of socks to the SSF local station where the woman was held, both women were beaten up by male agents and imprisoned until next morning.

The two were referred to a judge for arraignment the next day.  Compliance with the so-called Islamic dress codes by Iranian women is a must and the violators will be punished accordingly.

Thousands of women have been warned for wearing tight outfits, short coats and skimpy headscarves and for flouting the Islamic dress code, which requires every post-pubescent woman to cover their hair and body contours.

Wearing boots with short pants, hats or scarves which do not fully cover hair and neck instead of the proper head veil and putting on unusual make-up that contradicts public chastity is forbidden.

The mullahs' regime has in recent months stepped up execution of youths in a clear warning to those deemed to be a threat to the society.   

Flanders also contributes these gems of tolerance.

Witch hunting is not a thing of the past, at least not in Saudi Arabia. A court in the oil-rich kingdom handed down a death sentence against Fawza Falih, a woman accused of witchcraft, stunning NGO Human Rights Watch which has reacted by appealing to Saudi King Abdullah to stop the execution.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 for allegedly causing impotence in one of her accusers.

Ms Falih said that she was beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not understand because she cannot read.

Saudi Arabia does not have a written criminal code and witchcraft is not defined as a crime. Yet the Saudi court in charge of the case passed a death sentence exercising its own discretionary powers to protect the nation’s principles, soul and identity.

For Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, this case underscores Saudi judges’ inability to carry out objective criminal investigations.

“Fawza Falih’s case is an example of how the authorities failed to comply even with existing safeguards in the Saudi justice system,” he added.

The Daily Atheist offers up this one.

A Muslim store worker at Marks & Spencer refused to serve a customer buying a children's book on biblical stories because she said it was "unclean".

 

Sally Friday, a customer at a branch of one of the famous stores, felt publicly humiliated when she tried to pay for First Bible Stories as a gift for her young grandson.

When the grandmother put the book on the counter, the assistant refused to touch it, declared it was unclean and then summoned another member of staff to deal with the purchase.

I suppose barefoot witches selling Bibles on You Tube would completely destroy Islamic society.

This one almost slipped through the cracks.

Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.

The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

 

From STACLU.
The photo was taken from a 2006 trip to Kenya to visit his cousin Odinga.   Very Presidential outfit, doncha think?

Hat tip: Sweetness and Light

Semi-Related: Obama's Terrorist Friends

Doritos Offend Muslims

How cheesy.

Furious Muslims have heavily criticised Walkers crisps after it emerged that certain varieties of the manufacturer's products contain trace elements of alcohol.

 

Some crisp types use minute amounts of alcohol as a chemical agent to extract certain flavours.

The report in Asian newspaper Eastern Eye, highlights concerns raised by shopkeeper Besharat Rehman, who owns a halal supermarket in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

Mr Rehman told the paper: "A customer informed us that Sensations Thai Sweet Chilli and Doritos Chilli Heat Wave are not on Walkers' alcohol-free list. Our suppliers were unaware of this.

"Even if it is a trace amount of alcohol, Walkers should make it clear on the packaging so that the customer can make an informed choice.

I'll drink to that.