The blood of innocents

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Irfan Husain

islamic-women.jpgAISHA Ibrahim Duhulow was 13 years old when she was buried up to her neck in the Somali port city of Kismayu on Oct 27 and stoned to death by 50 men belonging to the Islamic group Al Shahab.

A truckload of stones was brought to the field where this murder took place. When a few members of the thousand-strong spectators tried to save the girl, Al Shahab gunmen opened fire, accidentally shooting a little boy.

It did not take long to kill Aisha. She had been accused of fornication, although according to her bereft father, she had gone to complain of being raped by three men. Her rapists remain at large, and there has been no attempt to apprehend them.

Read more



Comments

A question of faith

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Irfan Husain

prayer.jpgAmong the many changes in attitudes that took place in the West in the wake of 9/11, one was in the way people viewed religion. For the evangelical Christians, the attacks on America by people thought to be Muslims were seen as a new offensive in a centuries-old conflict. But for many atheists and agnostics, 9/11 was a reminder of the bloodshed that has historically accompanied all religious belief, particularly monotheistic faiths.

In England, particularly, Christianity has been at a low ebb for a long time, with church attendance down to under a million in a population of 60 million. Indeed, going to church on Sunday is now more of a social occasion than a religious experience.

With this background, it is easy to see why people simply cannot grasp the motivation of Muslims who are willing to kill and be killed in the name of their faith. To them, this kind of behaviour is not only abhorrent, but also completely irrational.

Read more



Comments

The Rot Within

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Anwaar Hussain

tree_phixr2.jpgThe Muslim world stayed at the pinnacle of glories in science and technology for about 300 years from 900-1200 AD. Muslims’ scientific skills bloomed in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba, among other cities. Momentous progress was made in such areas as medicine, agronomy, botany, mathematics, chemistry, jurisprudence and philosophy. While the Christian Europe lagged behind pathetically, Muslim thinkers and scientists competed with Chinese for scholastic and scientific leadership.

That was then, of course. So horrendous has been the decline since then that, shuffling along like decapods, the leaders of a millennium ago are virtually scraping the bottom of humanity in the same fields. Perhaps a comparative look at the preoccupation of the Muslim world vis-à-vis the rest of the world would give us a fair idea as to the causes of this pervasive decay.

Here is what the rest of the world is busy in;

Read more



Comments

The End of the Myths

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Bill Noxid

army-header.jpgIt took a particularly long time to find any hint of reality on television yesterday. I decided that I wasn’t interested in watching the still complicit media and criminally culpable government pretend to morn the deaths of September 11, so my options were even more limited than usual. All of the cable networks were obviously covering themselves ( MSNBC even went as far as to cover itself covering itself minute by minute seven years ago ) and CSPAN was at the Pentagon. What fantastic choices… a seven year ditch or a false-flag memorial park. Therefore, unless I felt like tracking Ike, CNBC financial was my only remaining option.

To my surprise however, CNBC turned out to be a reasonably good choice. Not that the unfortunate masses of this country would know about anything other than lipstick and pigs but this imaginary economy is collapsing like the house of cards that it is, and they were actually talking about it for a change. I suspect after eight years of blowing smoke up each other’s behinds about how great the economy is, they’ve run out of ways to convince themselves this isn’t really happening. Even Jim Cramer, when asked by Erin Burnett if we were really at risk of Great Depression II, gave a very enthusiastic full body nod in the affirmative…

Read more



Comments

Defend Science!

Post Information
Print & pdf

An Urgent Call by Scientists

microscope2.gifIN THE UNITED STATES TODAY SCIENCE, AS SCIENCE, IS UNDER ATTACK AS NEVER BEFORE.

The signs of this are everywhere. The attacks are coming at an accelerating pace, and include frequent interventions by powerful forces, in and out of the Bush Administration, who seem all too willing to deny scientific truths, disrupt scientific investigations, block scientific progress, undermine scientific education, and sacrifice the very integrity of the scientific process itself — all in the pursuit of implementing their particular political agenda. And today this dominant political agenda is profoundly allied and intertwined with an extremist (and extremely anti-science) ideological agenda put forward by powerful fundamentalist religious forces commonly known as the Religious Right. These fundamentalists now have extensive influence and representatives in major institutions of the U.S. government, including Congress and the White House. This itself goes a long way towards explaining why science itself is under such unprecedented attack.

It is commonplace under the current Administration for the government to deny funding, censor scientific reports, or in other ways undermine scientific research which might turn up facts which they don’t want to hear; to manipulate, distort, or outright suppress scientific findings they find objectionable; to attempt to reshape government scientific panels to obtain policy recommendations on issues ranging from health to the environment, based less on actual scientific findings than on the requirements of the Administration’s agenda.

Read more



Comments

Do they really think the earth is flat?

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Brendan O’Neill

flat-earth-society1.jpg In the 21st Century, the term “flat-earther” is used to describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?

Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands out. On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon’s orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.

Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists. Welcome to the world of the flat-earther. Our attitude towards those who once upon a time believed in the flatness of the earth is apparent in a new Microsoft advert. Depicting an olden-days ship sailing on rough seas, presumably heading towards the “edge of the world”, the advert is part of a $300m campaign aimed at rescuing the reputation of Windows Vista by comparing its critics to flat-earthers.

Read more



Comments



Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
.: ARTICLE BLOCKED :.
ON MARCH 2008
Who links to my website?