Going away for 2 weeks

Two weeks at the beach! Time to relax and have a few beers.

Abu Hamza has to pay back Legal Aid Costs

The preacher Abu Hamza is liable for more than £1m of legal aid for his defence at his trial on charges of inciting murder and race hate.

The judge said he accepted that Hamza, who is seeking to appeal against his conviction in the House of Lords, might not be able to pay, but said his judgment would allow the Legal Services Commission to seize his assets.

The judge said he was making an order for the recovery of the full costs of his defence because of the "inaccurate and false information" Hamza had provided the court about his financial interests. His defence solicitors are seeking to recover costs of up to £1,088,944.

The commission was investigating Hamza's finances following the order. These have centred on Hamza's property dealings including the purchase of a £220,000 house in Greenford, west London, while his wife and children lived on benefits in a £600,000 council house.

The radical Islamic preacher was jailed for seven years last February .

What about Ahmed Zhoui repaying his legal aid costs?

Democrat Cat Fight

Hillary's team has questions about Obama's Muslim background

Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?

This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.

"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign."

Don't you just love it when the democrats get into a fight. Will this mean the end of Obama or will he stare Clinton down.

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Obama_2.htm

Fury at Australia cleric comments

From the BBC.

"Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Sydney, urged children to become martyrs for Islam and mocked Jewish people as pigs.

Police are said to be investigating the tapes, which were exposed in a British TV documentary earlier this week.

Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, who has spent the past year living in Lebanon, talks on the controversial videotapes of his desire for children be offered "as soldiers defending Islam".
"Teach them this," he says, "that there is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a Muhajid. "Put in their soft, tender heart the zeal of jihad and the love of martyrdom."

He also ridicules Jewish people as pigs and makes snorting noises, saying they will go to hell."

Australian Islamic cleric Sheikh Hilali also sparked controversy, with remarks on women and white Australians.

How corrupt and cynical to ask for children to die for his warped ideas and his malignant religion. One can surely only dispise a man like this and question the values of his "religion of peace".

The Saga of Sandy Berger

What information exactly was in those documents that were destroyed by Berger?

Why is there not more pressure being placed on this former National Security Advisor to reveal what was behind his bizarre actions--and who might have told him to do it? and why?

How is it that Berger did not go to jail, when his offence was more than justification to throw the book at him?

Why is it that four years after the event we are now only finding out about his incredible duplicity and quite deliberate actions?

What information exactly was in those documents that were destroyed by Berger?

Ronald Cass at RealClearPolitics

This story at bottom is about the security of our nation, about what was - or was not - done to protect us from the most shocking and deadly attack on American citizens by foreign agents in our nation's history. This story is critical not only to understanding our past but also to securing our future. It can help us understand what it is reasonable to expect can be done to keep us and our loved ones safe from harm. It is, in short, as important a story as there is.

It is a story the news media should be desperate to explore, not desperate to avoid. They should want to know the full story, no matter what the implications are for the legacy of a president much loved by an overwhelmingly liberal media or what the risks are for a former First Lady whose future is tied to her husband's past.

It is said that we may never know what national security documents or notes Berger destroyed. But Berger knows. And it is extremely likely that Clinton knows, since he has deliberately gone about covering for his thieving National Security Advisor.

Right up there with "I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman"!

Iran's deadly subversion

The Editorial in today's Washington Times highlights Iran's role in the mess that is Iraq

Evidence mounts of Iran's role in financing terrorist elements in Iraq, and the Bush administration appears to have decided -- correctly, in our view -- that it's time to step up the fight against the most brazen forms of Iranian subversion in Iraqi, particularly paying for roadside bombs that kill and maim American soldiers. President Bush's warning issued to Iran and its rogue-state ally Syria in his address to the nation last week was not made in a vacuum, but in the course of a stepped up U.S. military campaign to deny Iran and its agents the ability to operate freely in Iraq.
U.S. officials say that growing numbers of U.S. troops in Baghdad and other regions of Iraq where Shi'ite militias operate are being killed by explosive devices supplied by Iran. Last month, American forces captured members of an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard transferring explosives to Shi'ite militias. One official captured in Baghdad was the third-ranking man in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds force, which carries out intelligence activities and terrorist training outside Iran. U.S. forces found what appeared to be maps of Baghdad neighborhoods from which Sunnis could be removed, as well as evidence of the force's participation in Hezbollah's war against Israel last summer.

Read further at http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20070114-101502-3675r.htm

Is This Racial Abuse?

South African Herschelle Gibbs has been banned for two tests for making derogatory comments about Pakistanis during Sunday's play in the first test.

"Gibbs has been charged under Level 3.3 of the Code which prohibits using...'any language or gestures that offends, insults, humiliates, intimidates, threatens, disparages or vilifies another person on the basis of that person's race, religion, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin'," an ICC statement said.

Cricket South Africa earlier released a statement saying Gibbs would appear at a separate, internal disciplinary hearing.
"CSA has investigated the matter, and we have heard the remarks made by Herschelle Gibbs in response to verbal abuse directed by a number of Pakistan supporters at Paul Harris while he was fielding on the boundary," the statement quoted CSA chief executive Gerald Majola as saying.
"Herschelle says these remarks were for the ears only of his team mates in his proximity, and were directed in general terms at that section of the crowd that had verbally abused Paul Harris," Majola added.
"He has apologised if he has caused offence to anyone."

This is a bit harsh as Gibbs was making a comment about some idiots in the crowd that had been hurling racial abuse at both him and spin bowler Harris. The comments were made in the middle of the field to his team mates at a time that the stump mikes were supposed to be off. They were not made directly to the spectators and they were the kind of comment anyone of us would have made under the same circumstances.

So what did he say? This remains a mystery as there is no record available of the comments but amongst allegations is that he referred to "fucking Pakistanis", "animals" and "hyenas". Quite understandable as this section of the crowd were waving Pakitani flags and were behaving like animals. I'm not so sure that there was any behavior similar to that of a hyena and, anyway, who would want to insult a hyena by comparing it to these Pakistani supporters?

Gibbs, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is of "mixed" race and more likely would have been at the receiving end of racial taunts throughout his life and would be more sensitive about this sort of behavior than most of his team mates.

The Media

Al-Jazeera journalist detained in Egypt

CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian authorities on Saturday detained an Al-Jazeera journalist for fabricating scenes of torture staged inside mock Egyptian police stations, but the pan-Arab network said the footage was created with actors for a documentary film.

Producer Howaida Taha Matwali, an Egyptian, was banned earlier this past week from traveling to Qatar, the headquarters of the Al-Jazeera network, after airport police seized 50 videotapes she was carrying in her luggage, an Interior Ministry statement said.

Prosecutors ordered her detention Saturday for further questioning, a police official said.
The Interior Ministry viewed the tapes and said they showed "unedited scenes of fabricated torture incidents, and assaults by individuals wearing police uniforms on others playing roles of male and female suspects inside studios decorated to look like police stations."

The Al-Jazeera bureau chief in Egypt, Hussein Abdel-Ghani, said the footage was "reconstruction" which Matwali intended to use in a documentary film about torture in Egypt.

If you ever had doubts about the Media and truthfulness, this is right up there with the AP's man with the green helmet. Amazingly the 'bending' of the truth seems to come mainly from the left orientated MSM. However I do admire the way they are not going to let the truth get in the way of a good story