Ramadan 2015 began at sunset yesterday and continues for 30 days; the Ramadan calendar of the Fiqh Council of North America shows that Ramadan 2015 begins on June 18 and ends on Friday, July 17. Muslims, ever contentious about nearly every matter, even disagree among themselves as to when Ramadan should begin.
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| Bushman Oto Benga on display at the Bronx Zoo in 1906 |
Geller drew national attention last month after an off-duty police officer working security thwarted an attack at her organization's contest for Prophet Mohammed drawings in Garland, Texas. She's president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which includes subsidiary programs Stop Islamization of America and Stop Islamization of Nations.More HERE.
"They targeted me for violating Sharia blasphemy laws. They mean to kill everyone who doesn't do their bidding and abide by their law voluntarily," Geller told CNN's Erin Burnett after learning of the alleged plot.
"This is a showdown for American freedom. Will we stand against this savagery or bow down to them and silence ourselves?"
Geller said that she's had an "army of security" since last month's Texas incident.
"This is what is required just to show a cartoon in America, 2015," she said. "It's striking. It's devastating, and people need to understand what's at stake. I mean, if we surrender on this point, what will we surrender next?"
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| Art by Bosch Fawstin |
...[A] group of 14 U.S. senators, led by the indefatigable Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, have written a letter to Obama urging him to allow 65,000 Syrians in as refugees. This would require a dramatic expansion of the refugee program, and virtually guarantee that a sizable number of ISIS fighters would slip in among them. Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy has given them the moniker “Jihad Caucus” because practically speaking, Jihad is what this request will bring.Read the entire article HERE.
The 14 senators demanding this massive influx of Syrians are:
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Al Franken (D-MN)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Christopher Coons (D-DE)
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Edward Markey (D-MA)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Mazie Hirono (D-HI)...
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| Graphic by at Denise Lu @ the Washington Post |
After rioters burned Baltimore, killings pile up largely under the radarI encourage you to read the entire May 17, 2015 article, copied and pasted below the fold for those of you who don't have subscriptions to the Washington Post.
BALTIMORE — Andre Hunt counseled troubled kids through the Boys and Girls Club. He volunteered at the local NAACP chapter. A barber, he befriended the son of an assistant high school principal, swapping tales of football and life while the boy grew into adulthood under the clips of his shears.
“He was like a big brother to my son,” the mother, Karima Carrington, said of her trips to Cut Masters on Liberty Heights Avenue.
The 28-year-old Hunt was lured out of the barbershop, according to his attorney, and shot in the back of the head on the afternoon of April 29. He was among more than 30 people slain in Baltimore in 30 days, an alarming number of killings and part of an undercurrent of violence here.
Although riots and protests after the death of Freddie Gray, who was injured in police custody, brought national attention to the city, the slayings have attracted little notice.
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From mid-April to mid-May, 31 people were killed, and 39 others were wounded by gunfire. Twice, 10 people were shot on a single day. As of Friday, the deadly burst has pushed the city’s homicide count to 91, 21 above last year at the same time. In the District, 40 people had been slain as of Friday, not including four people found dead Thursday in cases police said are being investigated as homicides but are awaiting a ruling by the medical examiner.
Baltimore has historically been a violent city, earning a moniker of “Mob Town” during gang riots of the 1850s. Homicides topped 300 for 10 consecutive years in the 1990s. Although the annual figure has fallen to the low 200s, the city remains among the top tier in per capita murders, ranking fifth in 2013, behind Detroit, New Orleans, Newark and St. Louis....
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| Syrian and Iraqi areas currently controlled by ISIS (in dark red) |
Astoundingly, the newly declassified report states that for “THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.Read the rest HERE.
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The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset.
While a number of analysts and journalists have documented long ago the role of western intelligence agencies in the formation and training of the armed opposition in Syria, this is the highest level internal U.S. intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see ISIS as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The document matter-of-factly states just that scenario....
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
Frustrated that coverage of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant isn’t reflecting reality on the ground, senior Obama administration officials are urging television networks to update their footage of the radical militant group.Read the rest HERE.
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| Art by Bosch Fawstin |
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| [image credit] |
Recently, two "free-range" children (age 10 and age 6) were held in custody for hours in Montgomery County, Maryland, as the parents frenetically sought the whereabouts of this children.Does Obama speak about Islam differently than how he speaks on Christianity?
This is not about the truth or falsity of his claims. This is about whether or not the manner in which he speaks about these two subjects reveals an underlying set of feelings or beliefs or values on these two religions. Does he speak about Christianity differently than he does about Islam? If so, in what way?
See The Death of the American Dream in 22 Numbers by Michael Snyder. Can you dispute the points made? If not, do you have any ideas whatsoever for remedying this situation — or for protecting oneself and family?The Bells, Op. 35, is a choral symphony written in 1913. The words are from the poem "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe, freely translated into Russian by the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. Sung in Russian.
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I. Allegro ma non tanto: The Silver Sleigh Bell
II. Lento: The Mellow Wedding Bells
III. Presto: The Loud ASlarum [sic] Bells
IV. Lento: The Mournful Iron Bells
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| Crocuses in our front yard |
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| Crocuses in our front yard |
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| Daffodils in our side yard |
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| Daffodil at the west side of our house |
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| Bag of dry dog food = $316 |
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| iPhone 5 = $14,127 |
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| Jar of instant coffee = $190 |
