So I finished the latest and hopefully last Harry Potter book yesterday, it was pretty good. Like the the previous one I am not sure how the would make it into a movie, but after seeing Order of the Phoenix I hope they don't go chop crazy.
Let me tell you at the end Harry finds out his father is Darth Vader! No spoilers here, being I am a big reading advocate I say go read the book. It took me 9 hours over 3 days. It looks huge (760+- pages) but the action keeps the flow pretty quick. Plus once your into the story you don't want to put the book down (though it can get heavy after a couple of hours, its like a brick). It is a classic good verses evil story where the hero struggles with his purpose. I know the hardcore Bible thumpers are whiny about the whole witchcraft thing but it's a fictional book! Much like T.V. and movies if you can't teach your kid about fantasy vs. reality maybe you should give the thing child to your parents and tell them to try again!
I think she ended it well, but I would have liked the epilogue to be a little different. I know she wanted to wrap up but so many characters were left out I thought a few more key details would have been nice. What happens with who and so on.
The book does contain a lot of death and blood spilling, so I would say pg-13 is right on for future readers.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Movies: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
I have seen a lot of movies in my life, but lately things have been well, lousy.
Let's go back a few weeks to the well anticipated "Spiderman 3". This would fall under the BAD category. I saw it twice to make sure. Dancing emo spiderboy ruined it FOREVER. Even the great special fx couldn't save this movie from the horrible acting of Toby M. and Kirsten D. I wanted to like it, I am a nerd after all and comic books are a staple of nerddom.
Pirates 3, doesn't bode much better. It was more fun than "S3" but in the long run it "P3" sits well flat of the first. Poor acting isn't the problem here. It's poor plot, story and directing. With the open ending and talk of "P4" haven't we beat this dead horse enough.
"Knocked Up" was almost a knock out. It's great for a couple of adults who want to see a funny movie. I laughed a lot watching this one. But the overkill of grossout humor and stupid jr. high mentality kind of jokes go a little to far leaving you wanting a little more from less.
"Hostel 2" was just crap. Even if you like horror movies this movie was UGLY. Long drawn out story for mediocre violence, arrghh it just frustrates me how bad it was. Crap crap crap that's it I'm moving on... man it sucked!
I mentioned a Good movie and will make due by giving you "Evan Almighty". In some ways Evan is better than Bruce, though it really cannot be compared with Bruce because it's not so much a sequel but a spin-off. Evan is masterfully played by Steve Carrell, who I think has a bright future in hollywood. The cast is well chosen and fits perfectly in their respective places. It's a movie I'd bring the family to (if I wanted or had one) but maybe 10 and up age wise. 4 out of 5 stars for Evan. Go see it, see it again, then let me know what you think.
Let's go back a few weeks to the well anticipated "Spiderman 3". This would fall under the BAD category. I saw it twice to make sure. Dancing emo spiderboy ruined it FOREVER. Even the great special fx couldn't save this movie from the horrible acting of Toby M. and Kirsten D. I wanted to like it, I am a nerd after all and comic books are a staple of nerddom.
Pirates 3, doesn't bode much better. It was more fun than "S3" but in the long run it "P3" sits well flat of the first. Poor acting isn't the problem here. It's poor plot, story and directing. With the open ending and talk of "P4" haven't we beat this dead horse enough.
"Knocked Up" was almost a knock out. It's great for a couple of adults who want to see a funny movie. I laughed a lot watching this one. But the overkill of grossout humor and stupid jr. high mentality kind of jokes go a little to far leaving you wanting a little more from less.
"Hostel 2" was just crap. Even if you like horror movies this movie was UGLY. Long drawn out story for mediocre violence, arrghh it just frustrates me how bad it was. Crap crap crap that's it I'm moving on... man it sucked!
I mentioned a Good movie and will make due by giving you "Evan Almighty". In some ways Evan is better than Bruce, though it really cannot be compared with Bruce because it's not so much a sequel but a spin-off. Evan is masterfully played by Steve Carrell, who I think has a bright future in hollywood. The cast is well chosen and fits perfectly in their respective places. It's a movie I'd bring the family to (if I wanted or had one) but maybe 10 and up age wise. 4 out of 5 stars for Evan. Go see it, see it again, then let me know what you think.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Chinese SPY unloading our secrets
So I first heard of this on the radio, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The Chicoms now have our next generation stealth submarine tech. He also gave them the next gen of AEGIS: The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System is a US Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency program developed to provide a last line of defense against ballistic missiles. Which the chicoms have already integrated onto two of their naval vessels. We have to watch them. They instigate problems between the US and others (Iraq, Iran, Russia, N. Korea) to keep us from looking at the BIG picture of what they are doing. I stand by my previous statements that we will go to war with China in the next 50 years! The question is; Will we have let our defences down and not be able to stop the chicoms from taking over the world, or will we grow a pair and stop pretending our enemies don't exist? Chinese, Muslim or whoever intends to ruin the Greatest Nation on God's green Earth.
Engineer guilty in military secrets case
By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press WriterThu May 10, 4:29 PM ET
Jurors convicted a Chinese-born engineer Thursday of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, including data on an electronic propulsion system that could make submarines virtually undetectable.
Chi Mak also was found guilty of being an unregistered foreign agent. Prosecutors had dropped a charge of actually exporting defense articles.
When the verdict was read, Mak at first showed no emotion but then appeared to hold back tears as defense attorney Marilyn Bednarsky teared up and rubbed his back. Defense attorney Ron Kaye's face was flush.
Mak faces up to 35 years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 10.
Mak, 66, acknowledged during the trial that he copied classified documents from his employer, a defense contractor, and kept copies in his office. He maintained he didn't realize at the time that making the copies was illegal.
Kaye said the defense team still believes Mak is innocent.
"We believe the facts of the case have been manipulated, and we believe Mr. Mak didn't necessarily get a fair trial," Kaye said.
In many instances, the government was allowed to present classified information to U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in his chambers, and the defense team did not receive some classified information about a request by the FBI to bug Chi Mak's house, Kaye said.
"We were confident from the start and we're very happy with the verdict," Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples said.
Authorities believe Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, took thousands of pages of documents from his employer, Power Paragon of Anaheim, and gave them to his brother, who prosecutors say passed them along to Chinese authorities for years.
Mak was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in their luggage containing sensitive military documents.
Staples said the government may use the verdict to try to negotiate plea bargains with members of his family who are awaiting trial this month. Mak's wife, brother and other relatives have pleaded not guilty.
The six-week trial featured testimony from a parade of FBI agents, U.S. Navy officials and encryption and espionage experts.
Key to the case was the government's allegation that Mak confessed to the conspiracy — and even identified his Chinese government handler and specific restricted documents — during an untaped jailhouse interview two days after his arrest.
Mak testified he never confessed during that interview, but admitted that he lied repeatedly in an earlier taped interview about the number of times he had visited China and when he told authorities he didn't have friends or relatives there. He said he felt intimidated during the interrogation.
"This is why I lied," he said. "They were pushing me that night."
Mak's attorneys had focused on the propulsion system documents found in his brother's luggage at Los Angeles International Airport.
Mak said he believed he was doing nothing wrong by giving the documents to his brother to take out of the country because they were papers that had been presented previously at international conferences.
Engineer guilty in military secrets case
By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press WriterThu May 10, 4:29 PM ET
Jurors convicted a Chinese-born engineer Thursday of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, including data on an electronic propulsion system that could make submarines virtually undetectable.
Chi Mak also was found guilty of being an unregistered foreign agent. Prosecutors had dropped a charge of actually exporting defense articles.
When the verdict was read, Mak at first showed no emotion but then appeared to hold back tears as defense attorney Marilyn Bednarsky teared up and rubbed his back. Defense attorney Ron Kaye's face was flush.
Mak faces up to 35 years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 10.
Mak, 66, acknowledged during the trial that he copied classified documents from his employer, a defense contractor, and kept copies in his office. He maintained he didn't realize at the time that making the copies was illegal.
Kaye said the defense team still believes Mak is innocent.
"We believe the facts of the case have been manipulated, and we believe Mr. Mak didn't necessarily get a fair trial," Kaye said.
In many instances, the government was allowed to present classified information to U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in his chambers, and the defense team did not receive some classified information about a request by the FBI to bug Chi Mak's house, Kaye said.
"We were confident from the start and we're very happy with the verdict," Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples said.
Authorities believe Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, took thousands of pages of documents from his employer, Power Paragon of Anaheim, and gave them to his brother, who prosecutors say passed them along to Chinese authorities for years.
Mak was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in their luggage containing sensitive military documents.
Staples said the government may use the verdict to try to negotiate plea bargains with members of his family who are awaiting trial this month. Mak's wife, brother and other relatives have pleaded not guilty.
The six-week trial featured testimony from a parade of FBI agents, U.S. Navy officials and encryption and espionage experts.
Key to the case was the government's allegation that Mak confessed to the conspiracy — and even identified his Chinese government handler and specific restricted documents — during an untaped jailhouse interview two days after his arrest.
Mak testified he never confessed during that interview, but admitted that he lied repeatedly in an earlier taped interview about the number of times he had visited China and when he told authorities he didn't have friends or relatives there. He said he felt intimidated during the interrogation.
"This is why I lied," he said. "They were pushing me that night."
Mak's attorneys had focused on the propulsion system documents found in his brother's luggage at Los Angeles International Airport.
Mak said he believed he was doing nothing wrong by giving the documents to his brother to take out of the country because they were papers that had been presented previously at international conferences.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Women & Mooselimbs part II
I found this article in WaPo (Washington Post). Read it all, it's coming to a home near you. Sure middle eastern guys can be swarthy and seem really nice but after you say "I Do".
You won't!
For Some Muslim Wives, Abuse Knows No Borders Traditional Pressures Can Persist in U.S.
By Pamela ConstableWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, May 8, 2007; A01
One was a shy, slender young woman who spoke no English when she was brought from Pakistan to enter an arranged marriage with a stranger in Virginia. The other was a self-confident professional, born in Turkey but raised in the United States, who thought she knew what she was doing when she married an educated Muslim man in Maryland.
Yet both women fell under the sway of the same powerful pressures that sometimes reach around the globe to keep Muslim wives in the Washington region imprisoned in abusive marriages, unable to fight the gossip and shame that come with defying their culture and religion, isolated from help that is just a three-digit phone number away.
"My husband beat. He show knife. I am scared for him, for all family," said Shamim, 21, the Pakistani bride, who was rescued by police. She is being sheltered and tutored in English at a private home. "They say no money, no call mother at home. I cook for all, I not eat. I not know 911 what is. I think I go crazy."
Shireen, the woman in Maryland, speaks with articulate chagrin about how the crushing weight of social expectation kept her in a relationship that soon turned violent. Both women's last names are being withheld at their request.
"I was perfectly happy living alone, but the family kept pushing me to marry. I wanted to show them I was a good Muslim girl," said Shireen, now 37 and divorced. When her husband became abusive, she said, relatives told her to be a better wife. When she took him to court, she said, "everyone abandoned me. I was the one who had done something wrong."
Domestic abuse is hardly unique to Muslim immigrant communities; it is a sad fact of life in families of all backgrounds and origins. Yet, according to social workers, Islamic clerics and women's advocates, women from Muslim-majority cultures face extra pressure to submit to violent husbands and intense social ostracism if they muster the courage to file charges or flee.
A major obstacle to recognizing and fighting abuse, experts said, can be Islam itself. The religion prizes female modesty and fidelity while allowing men to divorce at will and have several wives at once. Many Muslims also believe that men have the right to beat their wives. An often-quoted verse in the Koran says a husband may chastise a disobedient wife, but the phrasing in Arabic is open to several interpretations.
"Many batterers manipulate Islamic law or use its perceived authority to control their wives. A man who has the power to divorce can really twist the knife," said Mazna Hussain, an attorney for abused women at the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church. "Muslim women want to be faithful to their religion, and the idea that you cannot disobey the word of God is very compelling, even if you are in an abusive relationship."
Mosques are a central focus of community life for Muslim immigrants, and the influence of their male clerics is enormous. Only a handful of these imams have spoken out on the problem of abuse, a source of shame and denial among their flocks.
In Sterling, Imam Mohamed Magid at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society offers counseling to engaged couples, ensuring they understand their mutual rights and duties. In Silver Spring, Imam Faizul Khan at the Islamic Society of the Washington Area holds weekly counseling sessions for troubled couples.
"For many years, our community did not face these issues. Women suffered in silence and fear. Even today, many imams think it could never happen in their mosque," Khan said. "Islam gives equal rights to men and women, but there are myths in Muslim society that men are superior and violence is permitted. This is wrong, and it needs to be said."
Khan and others are also trying to bring men into the debate by forming a group called Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence. But they said recruiting participants is not easy. Even when taken to court on charges of abuse, several experts said, many Muslim men will argue that they were within their rights or are being victimized by vindictive spouses.
Another powerful barrier to change can be the grip of Muslim culture, with its gossip among extended families and its tradition of arranged marriages, in which brides often are sent to live with their in-laws. Immigrant brides are frequently cut off from their families and isolated in new households, where they occupy the lowest social rung and might be forced to act as servants.
Social workers and government officials said there are numerous programs in the area to help Muslim women who are abused, such as hotlines with links to Arabic and Urdu speakers and shelters that serve meat slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. But if a young woman is brought to the United States, speaking no English and surrounded by in-laws, she might be as far from help as if she were living in a Pakistani or Moroccan village.
"Many women are kept inside, with no one to turn to," said Catherine Juhel, a counselor at the Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help (FAITH), an assistance program for Muslim women in Herndon. "They don't know the language or the laws here, only what their husband tells them. Often they come from a society where if you go to the police, they will bring you right back home. How can they be sure it would be any different here?"
A cudgel often wielded by abusive Muslim husbands in the United States is their power over the legal immigration status of their wives. Many brides arrive with temporary "marriage" visas obtained through husbands who are U.S. residents or citizens. Lawyers and social workers say an angry or demanding husband might threaten to "call immigration" and have the wife deported, raising the horrifying specter of her returning home in shame.
Many imported Muslim wives do not know that there are U.S. laws allowing them to seek residency alone if they can prove they have been abused by their spouses. Several legal-aid organizations in the region handle these petitions free of charge, and they help women seek protective orders and child custody.
A closely related problem is nervousness about the prospect of leaving home. In many Muslim societies, women are protected and housed by their fathers and then by their husbands; if they date or live alone, they risk being tarred as prostitutes. To seek shelter from strangers in an alien country might seem a worse fate than enduring abuse in familiar surroundings.
"Sometimes women do not want to go to shelters. Even if the man is beating her and the children, she may feel it is their Islamic duty to remain home and respect him," said Ambreen Ahmad, director of FAITH. "We try to show them that in Islam, their rights are protected and their duty is only to God. When they finally understand, they are so relieved they cry and cry. It is like breaking shackles."
In the case of Shamim, it took a series of contacts with sympathetic relatives and women's rights activists for her to summon the nerve to call 911. When she finally did, the police came in a patrol car, helped her pack while her husband and in-laws watched in astonishment, and escorted her to a friend's home.
"Now I am freedom," Shamim said, grinning broadly as she took a tea break recently from her English studies. "I stay America. Not go home. In home, everyone blame woman, it is my culture. Everyone blame me."
Yet even U.S.-educated women can be browbeaten into enduring abuse for fear of shaming their families or facing cruel gossip at the mosque. Organizations that help them escape are viewed by some conservative Muslims here as dangerous saboteurs of Muslim values and family.
In Shireen's case, even a college degree and a good job could not fend off the demands of family and community bent on fitting her into a traditional Muslim mold. Now that she finally has freed herself from an unhappy match, she said, she has become a pariah to the family that once hovered around her.
"I know I was stupid to give in, but you get overwhelmed by all the pressure," she said. "Now I have been totally shunned. I embarrassed my husband in the eyes of the community. It doesn't matter why I left him or what he did to me. Even in America, you can't always get away from home."
You won't!
For Some Muslim Wives, Abuse Knows No Borders Traditional Pressures Can Persist in U.S.
By Pamela ConstableWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, May 8, 2007; A01
One was a shy, slender young woman who spoke no English when she was brought from Pakistan to enter an arranged marriage with a stranger in Virginia. The other was a self-confident professional, born in Turkey but raised in the United States, who thought she knew what she was doing when she married an educated Muslim man in Maryland.
Yet both women fell under the sway of the same powerful pressures that sometimes reach around the globe to keep Muslim wives in the Washington region imprisoned in abusive marriages, unable to fight the gossip and shame that come with defying their culture and religion, isolated from help that is just a three-digit phone number away.
"My husband beat. He show knife. I am scared for him, for all family," said Shamim, 21, the Pakistani bride, who was rescued by police. She is being sheltered and tutored in English at a private home. "They say no money, no call mother at home. I cook for all, I not eat. I not know 911 what is. I think I go crazy."
Shireen, the woman in Maryland, speaks with articulate chagrin about how the crushing weight of social expectation kept her in a relationship that soon turned violent. Both women's last names are being withheld at their request.
"I was perfectly happy living alone, but the family kept pushing me to marry. I wanted to show them I was a good Muslim girl," said Shireen, now 37 and divorced. When her husband became abusive, she said, relatives told her to be a better wife. When she took him to court, she said, "everyone abandoned me. I was the one who had done something wrong."
Domestic abuse is hardly unique to Muslim immigrant communities; it is a sad fact of life in families of all backgrounds and origins. Yet, according to social workers, Islamic clerics and women's advocates, women from Muslim-majority cultures face extra pressure to submit to violent husbands and intense social ostracism if they muster the courage to file charges or flee.
A major obstacle to recognizing and fighting abuse, experts said, can be Islam itself. The religion prizes female modesty and fidelity while allowing men to divorce at will and have several wives at once. Many Muslims also believe that men have the right to beat their wives. An often-quoted verse in the Koran says a husband may chastise a disobedient wife, but the phrasing in Arabic is open to several interpretations.
"Many batterers manipulate Islamic law or use its perceived authority to control their wives. A man who has the power to divorce can really twist the knife," said Mazna Hussain, an attorney for abused women at the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church. "Muslim women want to be faithful to their religion, and the idea that you cannot disobey the word of God is very compelling, even if you are in an abusive relationship."
Mosques are a central focus of community life for Muslim immigrants, and the influence of their male clerics is enormous. Only a handful of these imams have spoken out on the problem of abuse, a source of shame and denial among their flocks.
In Sterling, Imam Mohamed Magid at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society offers counseling to engaged couples, ensuring they understand their mutual rights and duties. In Silver Spring, Imam Faizul Khan at the Islamic Society of the Washington Area holds weekly counseling sessions for troubled couples.
"For many years, our community did not face these issues. Women suffered in silence and fear. Even today, many imams think it could never happen in their mosque," Khan said. "Islam gives equal rights to men and women, but there are myths in Muslim society that men are superior and violence is permitted. This is wrong, and it needs to be said."
Khan and others are also trying to bring men into the debate by forming a group called Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence. But they said recruiting participants is not easy. Even when taken to court on charges of abuse, several experts said, many Muslim men will argue that they were within their rights or are being victimized by vindictive spouses.
Another powerful barrier to change can be the grip of Muslim culture, with its gossip among extended families and its tradition of arranged marriages, in which brides often are sent to live with their in-laws. Immigrant brides are frequently cut off from their families and isolated in new households, where they occupy the lowest social rung and might be forced to act as servants.
Social workers and government officials said there are numerous programs in the area to help Muslim women who are abused, such as hotlines with links to Arabic and Urdu speakers and shelters that serve meat slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. But if a young woman is brought to the United States, speaking no English and surrounded by in-laws, she might be as far from help as if she were living in a Pakistani or Moroccan village.
"Many women are kept inside, with no one to turn to," said Catherine Juhel, a counselor at the Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help (FAITH), an assistance program for Muslim women in Herndon. "They don't know the language or the laws here, only what their husband tells them. Often they come from a society where if you go to the police, they will bring you right back home. How can they be sure it would be any different here?"
A cudgel often wielded by abusive Muslim husbands in the United States is their power over the legal immigration status of their wives. Many brides arrive with temporary "marriage" visas obtained through husbands who are U.S. residents or citizens. Lawyers and social workers say an angry or demanding husband might threaten to "call immigration" and have the wife deported, raising the horrifying specter of her returning home in shame.
Many imported Muslim wives do not know that there are U.S. laws allowing them to seek residency alone if they can prove they have been abused by their spouses. Several legal-aid organizations in the region handle these petitions free of charge, and they help women seek protective orders and child custody.
A closely related problem is nervousness about the prospect of leaving home. In many Muslim societies, women are protected and housed by their fathers and then by their husbands; if they date or live alone, they risk being tarred as prostitutes. To seek shelter from strangers in an alien country might seem a worse fate than enduring abuse in familiar surroundings.
"Sometimes women do not want to go to shelters. Even if the man is beating her and the children, she may feel it is their Islamic duty to remain home and respect him," said Ambreen Ahmad, director of FAITH. "We try to show them that in Islam, their rights are protected and their duty is only to God. When they finally understand, they are so relieved they cry and cry. It is like breaking shackles."
In the case of Shamim, it took a series of contacts with sympathetic relatives and women's rights activists for her to summon the nerve to call 911. When she finally did, the police came in a patrol car, helped her pack while her husband and in-laws watched in astonishment, and escorted her to a friend's home.
"Now I am freedom," Shamim said, grinning broadly as she took a tea break recently from her English studies. "I stay America. Not go home. In home, everyone blame woman, it is my culture. Everyone blame me."
Yet even U.S.-educated women can be browbeaten into enduring abuse for fear of shaming their families or facing cruel gossip at the mosque. Organizations that help them escape are viewed by some conservative Muslims here as dangerous saboteurs of Muslim values and family.
In Shireen's case, even a college degree and a good job could not fend off the demands of family and community bent on fitting her into a traditional Muslim mold. Now that she finally has freed herself from an unhappy match, she said, she has become a pariah to the family that once hovered around her.
"I know I was stupid to give in, but you get overwhelmed by all the pressure," she said. "Now I have been totally shunned. I embarrassed my husband in the eyes of the community. It doesn't matter why I left him or what he did to me. Even in America, you can't always get away from home."
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Whoa! (more to come)
The one on the left is the ANDROID!I'm gonna read up on this and post more soon.
You can read about it at the drudge report.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Women and Mooselimbs don't mix
UPDATE: NEW NEW NEW
Johann Hari: How multiculturalism is betraying women
It would be easy to congratulate ourselves on our tolerance of the fanatically intolerant
Published: 30 April 2007
Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose. The crux case centres on a woman called Nishal, a 26-year-old Moroccan immigrant to Germany with two kids and a psychotic husband. Since their wedding night, this husband beat the hell out of her. She crawled to the police covered in wounds, and they ordered the husband to stay away from her. He refused. He terrorised her with death threats.
So Nishal went to the courts to request an early divorce, hoping that once they were no longer married he would leave her alone. A judge who believed in the rights of women would find it very easy to make a judgement: you're free from this man, case dismissed.
But Judge Christa Datz-Winter followed the logic of multiculturalism instead. She said she would not grant an early divorce because - despite the police documentation of extreme violence and continued threats - there was no "unreasonable hardship" here.
Why? Because the woman, as a Muslim, should have "expected" it, the judge explained. She read out passages from the Koran to show that Muslim husbands have the "right to use corporal punishment". Look at Sura 4, verse 34, she said to Nishal, where the Koran says he can hammer you. That's your culture. Goodbye, and enjoy your beatings.
This is not a freakish exception. Germany's only state-level Minister for Integration, Armin Laschet, says this is only "the last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by the German courts".
The German magazine Der Spiegel has documented a long list of these multicultural verdicts.
Here are just a few:
A Lebanese-German who strangled his daughter Ibthahale and then beat her unconscious with a bludgeon because she didn't want to marry the man he had picked out for her was sentenced to mere probation. His "cultural background" was cited by the judge as a mitigating factor.
A Turkish-German who stabbed his wife Zeynep to death in Frankfurt was given the lowest possible sentence, because, the judge said, the murdered woman had violated his "male honour, derived from his Anatolian moral concepts". The bitch. A Lebanese-German who raped his wife Fatima while whipping her with a belt was sentenced to probation, with the judge citing his ... you get the idea.
Their victims are forced to ask - like Soujourner Truth, the female slave who famously challenged early women's rights activists to consider black women as their sisters - "Ain't I a woman?"
In Germany today, Muslim women have been reduced to third-class citizens stripped of core legal protections - because of the doctrine of multiculturalism, which says a society should be divided into separate cultures with different norms according to ethnic origin.
A Lebanese-German who strangled his daughter Ibthahale and then beat her unconscious with a bludgeon because she didn't want to marry the man he had picked out for her was sentenced to mere probation. His "cultural background" was cited by the judge as a mitigating factor.
A Turkish-German who stabbed his wife Zeynep to death in Frankfurt was given the lowest possible sentence, because, the judge said, the murdered woman had violated his "male honour, derived from his Anatolian moral concepts". The bitch. A Lebanese-German who raped his wife Fatima while whipping her with a belt was sentenced to probation, with the judge citing his ... you get the idea.
Their victims are forced to ask - like Soujourner Truth, the female slave who famously challenged early women's rights activists to consider black women as their sisters - "Ain't I a woman?"
In Germany today, Muslim women have been reduced to third-class citizens stripped of core legal protections - because of the doctrine of multiculturalism, which says a society should be divided into separate cultures with different norms according to ethnic origin.
Too often this issue is mixed up with other debates and gets waved through for the sake of politeness. The right loves mashing "mass immigration and multiculturalism" into one sound-bite. Well, I think Britain should take more immigrants and refugees, not fewer - but multiculturalism is a disastrous way to greet them.
These German cases highlight the flaw at the core of multiculturalism. It assumes that immigrants have one homogenous culture which they should all follow - and it allows the most reactionary and revolting men in their midst to define what that culture is. Across Europe, many imams are offering advice to Muslim men on how to beat Muslim women. For example, in Spain, the popular Imam Mohammed Kamal Mustafa warns that you shouldn't use "whips that are too thick" because they leave scars that can be detected by the "infidels". That might be Mustafa's culture - but it isn't Nishal's. It isn't the culture of the women who scream and weep as they are beaten.
And yes, we should admit that this is disproportionately a problem among Muslim, Sikh and Hindu immigrants who arrive from countries which have not had women's rights movements. Listen to Jasvinder Sanghera, who founded the best British charity helping Asian women after her sister was beaten and beaten and then burned herself to death. She says: "It's a betrayal of these women to be PC about this. Look at the figures. Asian women in Britain are three times more likely to commit suicide than their white friends. That's because of all this."
Yet the brave campaigners who have tried to help these women - like the Labour MP Ann Cryer - have been smeared as racist. In fact, the real racists are the people who vehemently condemn misogyny and homophobia when it comes from white people but mysteriously fall silent when it comes from black and Asian men.
Indeed, in the name of this warm, welcoming multiculturalism, the German courts have explicitly compared Muslim women to the brain-damaged. The highest administrative court in North Rhine-Westphalia has agreed that Muslim parents have the "right" to forbid their daughter from going on a school trip unless she was accompanied by a male family member at all times. The judges said the girl was like "a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her disability, can only travel with a companion".
As the Iranian author Azar Nafisi puts it: "I very much resent it when people - maybe with good intentions or from a progressive point of view - keep telling me, 'It's their culture' ... It's like saying the culture of Massachusetts is burning witches." She is horrified by the moves in Canada to introduce shariah courts to enforce family law for Muslims.
Multiculturalists believe that they are defending immigrants. But in reality, they are betraying at least 55 per cent of them - the women and the gays. It is multiculturalists, for example, who are the biggest champions of the Government's massive expansion of "faith" schools, where children will be segregated according to parental superstition and often taught the most literalist and cruel strain of a "faith".
What will girls and gay pupils be taught there? Will they have Sura 4, verse 34 drilled into them, along with the passages from the hadith where Mohammed calls for gay people to be executed? We know Catholic schools often push the most vile aspects of their faith at children; why should Muslim schools be different?
We desperately need to empower Muslim women to reinterpret the Koran in less literalist and vicious ways, or to leave their religion all together, as they wish. But multiculturalism hobbles them before they even begin, by saying they should stick to the "authentic" culture represented by the imams.
Yes, it would be easy to keep our heads down, go with this multicultural drift, and congratulate ourselves on our tolerance of the fanatically intolerant. But I can give you a few good reasons not to. Their names are Nishal and Ibthahale and Zeynep and Fatima, and, yes, they were women.
j.hari@ independent.co.uk
I know I promised this a while back but here we go. Women and islame don't mix, mohammad had several wives who he abused. The youngest of which was SIX YEARS OLD, and yes he consummated it.
An obedient muslame woman
(muslim)Woman Raped (by mooselimb) for reading the Bible
AN Iraqi Muslim man allegedly raped a Muslim woman as "punishment" for her reading the Bible.
Campbelltown District Court in Sydney's west yesterday heard Abdul Reda Al Shawany twice sexually assaulted the woman, a practising Muslim, and then said to her: "Let your Jesus help you."
Al Shawany, 52, has plead not guilty to two counts of having sexual intercourse without consent between September 1 and 27, 2002, at a unit in Warwick Farm. At the first day of the week-long trial yesterday, Crown prosecutor Michael O'Brien outlined the case and told how the woman allegedly kept the clothes and underwear she was wearing on the day of the alleged rape in a plastic bag for about three years.
The woman initially reported the matter to police but did not want to take it further because she felt "ashamed", Mr O'Brien said. She later changed her mind and Al Shawany, of Hillsdale, was arrested in July 2005 and the woman provided police with the clothing. The Crown alleges swab samples from the accused had the same DNA as the semen sample taken from the woman's clothing. "The complainant was born a Muslim and raised a Muslim and was a Muslim all her life," Mr O'Brien said. He said when the woman came to Australia from the Middle East she began listening to Christian teachers and reading the Bible.
He said the woman - who wears the Muslim hijab - had received threats from members of her faith for reading the Bible but had not converted to Christianity. It is alleged she met Al Shawany, who she had first met overseas, at Warwick Farm railway station in September 2002 after he told her he had some mail for her from overseas. Al Shawany allegedly then took her to a Warwick Farm unit and pushed her in the head as she entered. "She was wearing a hijab. The accused grabbed the hijab, the veil, and pulled it tight across her mouth," Mr O'Brien told the court. "She fell to the floor and she couldn't scream because she had a hijab tight across her mouth." Al Shawany allegedly raped the woman and later allegedly said: "Let your Jesus help you."
In a police interview, Al Shawany denied having sexual intercourse with the woman or threatening her.
Al Shawany's barrister Chris Pike told the court his client was a hardworking businessman with close ties to the community who strenuously denied the charges. "My client is not a zealot," Mr Pike said.
The woman gave evidence in closed court yesterday and is expected to return to the witness stand when the trial before Judge David Knox continues today
These women were just getting a petition signed, now their in jail!
Iran arrests four women activists: news agency(Reuters)2 April 2007
TEHERAN - Four women’s rights activists were arrested on Monday for collecting signatures for a campaign demanding equal legal rights for women in Iran, an Iranian news agency reported. The ILNA news agency said the women were collecting names for a so-called ‘one million signature campaign’ demanding changes in what activists say are discriminatory laws against women in the Islamic Republic. ‘Four women activists were arrested in Teheran’s Laleh Park this afternoon (Monday),’ ILNA reported. The report could not be independently confirmed. Iran denies discriminating against sexes and says its laws are based on Islamic sharia. A Web site www.nobelwomeninitiative.org reported the Iranian women activists launched the campaign in August 2006. Iran arrested more than 30 women activists last month when they protested outside a Teheran court in support of five other women detained last year. The authorities said it was an ‘unauthorised rally’.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, rebuked Iran for those arrests.
I can find HUNDREDS of stories like these. If you're a woman dating a muslim man RUN, I am sure you have heard of the made for TV movie with sally field "Not without my Daughter" (based on a true story) look it up.
In Tamil Nadu town, fundamentalists play moral cops, even kill to have way
Jaya Menon
Posted online: Monday, March 26, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST
Melapalayam (Tirunelveli), March 25 Over a fortnight ago, 35-year-old Mumtaz was killed by a group of young men in Melapalayam in south Tamil Nadu.
They murdered her when she was returning from a local beedi company after collecting leaves and tobacco. They accosted her on the road, warned her against a affair she was allegedly having with a married man and the local manager of a beedi company. She just told them to mind their own business.
They first threw stones at her. Then, some of them came closer and stabbed her. Mumtaz died on the spot.
In Melapalayam, which the police say has been a hotbed of fundamentalism with a strong presence of Al Umma, there has been little outrage. “Many in the town believe that Mumtaz deserved it,” said Abdul Subahan (18), the district secretary of the student wing of Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazham, a political outfit which police think is linked to Al Umma.
Residents of the town say Mumtaz had been given “sufficient warning” to keep away from her “paramour.” But she had not.
Her sister Nabeena said: “People in the town are saying she deserved it. We don’t know what to think.”
Her mother, Zubeida Hussein, who had left her daughter a few months ago after she began receiving threats, said: “Our heads bow in shame.” The mob murder on March 9 by the self-styled ‘moral police’ was not the first honour killing in this small town. Mumtaz is just the first woman victim. In August 1997, Selvakumar, a homeopath doctor, was killed for having “relationships” with Muslim women. The same day, 16 Al Umma sympathizers hacked to death two RSS workers who were karsevaks in the Babri Masjid demolition.
• In 2001, Sathyaseelan was murdered by nine Al Umma members for “having contacts with a Muslim woman.”
• Two months ago, three youths, all Al Umma sympathizers, were arrested after they threatened another single woman in the town “on suspicion” that she was having an “illicit” relationship with a married man. “They snatched her mobile phone and extorted Rs. 1,000 from her and told her to behave herself,” says Inspector Stanley Jones, the investigating officer in the Mumtaz murder case.
The Melapalayam town chief, Khaludeen, felt the youths should have brought the case before the local Jamaat. “Only a year back we threw a woman out of the town with her seven-month-old baby boy whom she begot through an illicit relationship,” he said. According to him, the married man accused of getting her pregnant, had “sworn” on Allah that he was not responsible. “Once a man swears on Allah, we believe him,” said Khaludeen. But the woman had to leave the town.
Said Dr Bhagat Singh, the TMMK’s district secretary: “The youths (accused of killing Mumtaz) should not have taken law into their hands. They read the Quran and make their own interpretations. To prevent such incidents, the Government should introduce the practice of stoning immoral women to death. Many Middle-East countries follow this practice and keep women under check. That’s the only way to handle such issues.” Two days after Mumtaz’s murder, the police arrested S Rasool Moideen (22), Shahul Hameed (21), his brother K Noushad Ali (19), K Imran (19), Mohamed Hussain alias Allappa (23) and Mohamed Moideen, all from Melapalayam. Two of them are college students. The police are searching for Shahul Hameed (27), who is said to be the mastermind. Police say Al Umma, the fundamentalist outfit which had become weak after the arrest of more than 100 of its members in the Coimbatore case, has been rejuvenated and is trying to enforce edicts on the Muslim community in Melapalayam. “We believe there are some agencies trying to lay down stiff rules for the society. They don’t represent the larger community and behave like outlaws,” said N K Senthamarai Kannan, the Tirunelveli District Superintendent of Police. “Unless someone comes forward with a complaint, we cannot do anything. They (the town residents) don’t have the courage to initiate the legal process as they feel they have to co-exist with the community,” he said.
I have been doing lots of studying on islame, so if you have any questions let me know, if I don't have the answer I will find it for you.
On a different point, if you can get a permit to carry a gun DO IT NOW, don't be a victim most of the time it is easier for women to get them, even in California.
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