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Stem cells

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Tuesday, November 28, 2006 10:59:54 PM
No links due to crashing computer.

NYTimes picked up the story about Science magazines double checking scientists' results due to being burned not once but twice by the Korean scientist who faked cloning data. It doesn't help that last week the private organization that claimed they could get embryonic stem cells without killing embryos actually killed embryos to get the cells: The claim was theoretical, not experimental.

The dirty little secret is that stem cells are found in many tissues, and the advantage of getting them from your own tissue is that the DNA matches.

If you get them from an embryo, the DNA doesn't match, so you have to clone...i.e. change the nucleus. But even then, the Mitrochondrial DNA doesn't match.

The second dirty little secret is that to be practical, you need a certain amount of cells.

But cells have a "clock" in them, and when they get old, they die or may turn cancerous after a certain number of divisions.

So if you start with only a few cells, you need a lot more divisions to get enough tissue than if you get it from bone marrow or fat.

Finally, there have been a few experiments with fetal (not embryonic) cells that overgrew when placed into the brains of Parkinson's patients...resulting in tumors or severe twitching. If you saw the movie "Awakenings" about the discovery of LDopa to treat Parkinsons disease, you saw the problem is that these patients eventually develop this side effect and you have to stop the drug. In the fetal transplants, you can't do that. (note: In Awakenings, they had post encephalitis parkinsons'  disease, and had a "smaller treatment window" between side effects and the medicine working... In normal Parkinsons the problem is not as severe, and works for several years before it stops working).

Finally, as this essay points out, if embryonic stem cells really worked they'd have lots of people investing money into the companies.
 .
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The Pope visits Turkey

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Monday, November 27, 2006 7:17:05 PM
The huge protests involving radical Islamicists protesting the Pope's visit ignores history.

Of course, it was the misquoting of the Pope's Reagansburg address that caused the outcry (did the Western reporter even bother to read the entire speech, which was about reason and religion, not about Isalm? Nah. Probably not).

But Turkey's own history shows how "Islam is spread thru the sword",

Most people know about the Armenian holocaust by the Turkish/Ottoman government, but unless you are an Orthodox Christian, you may not be aware of the Christians in Asia Minor during the last two centuries. How many know about the forcable  of   of a million and a half Greek Orthodox Christians from Turkey? Or the history of the Ottoman Empire's long crusade against Christians?

This persecution cannot be blamed on the Ottoman Empire, since the last major anti Greek pogrom occured in 1955, and continues to ignore or fail to prosecute actions by individuals and lower government officials against the Orthodox church.

And no one seems to notice that it was a Turk that tried to assassinate the previous Pope.

One only has to read the anti Christian comments after Janet Daley's excellent article in the Telegraph to notice that the ignorance of basic history allows it to be rewritten so as to make Christianity and Europe the evildoer. Do Muslims kill  Muslims in Iraq? It's the fault of the UK/USA for trying to stop them.

In Catholicism, anyone searching for God and to do God's will is considered to be serving him through the light of their conscience, with partial and incomplete knowledge. That is why John Paul II could encourage a mosque in Rome and respect the Koran.

The similarities between religions probably outweighs their differences, because religion is a response to God that makes us humble to his majesty and loving of our fellow creatures.

The problem comes from the twisting of religion to serve the purposes of power and selfishness.

Benedict, who can sympathize with the Muslim for loving and obeying God, is not blind that Islam since it's inception has been used by the powerful as a club to destroy religions and sects of those who do not agree with those in power.  Yes, the history of Christianity itself is checquered with similar persecutions, but the difference is often such persecutions were opposed openly and powerfully by other Christian leaders who denied that the state's wishes could outweigh the dictates of the gospel.

Benedict is unlikely to blithely state Islam is a religion of peace while ignoring the radicalization of the mosques in Europe. Indeed, the main danger is that the press will not notice that he is intelligent enough to recognize the difference between believers obeying God as they understand him and finding holiness in Islam, and radicals who (as Bush succinctly puts it) tries to hijack a religion of peace into a religion of hatred.

And, of course, despite all the elite's decision that there is a "Christianist" threat, the fact that there is another powerful and intelligent Christian spokesman itself is a powerful contradiction to the MSM's attempt to lable Christianity as the religion of only the stupid. For if you bother to read it, most of Benedict's Regensburg speech was directed after a West that is denying not only religion but Greek reason in the name of nihilism and moral relativism.
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Middle east: One step forward one step back

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Sunday, November 26, 2006 4:34:46 AM
There is a truce in the middle east between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hope for peace in our time?

The problem is, as Carolyn Glick of the Jerusalem Post points out, is that the election of a Democratic Congress was interpreted by Iran and Syria as a green light to continue with their activities against the west: not just Iran getting Russian weapons and continuing their nuclear program, but stepping up the war between their proxies in Iraq and Lebanon. For this, they will be "rewarded" by UN "peacekeepers ignoring Hezbollah receiving missles from Syria while threatening to shoot down Israeli jets monitoring the situation. But then, Europe has many "peace" plans which come down to Israel capitulating their borders for paper promises.

So we see another Lebanese politician assasinated by Syria, undermining the hope of peace continuing in that country.

And the radical left in the US threatens to push for US withdrawal, which will "save American soldiers lives" in the short run, but will send the same message that the surrender of the Sudetenland did in 1938: That the West will not punish aggression, but will retreat and compromise.

Here in the Philippines, the elites are all for peace, having studied the party line at left wing US universities. And, of course, with 1 million Pinoys working in the Middle East, they will push for peace at any price.

Yet western weakness that would encourage terror will not be good for the Philippine, since there are strong links between AlQaeda and the Islamicist groups in Indonesia. What is worse is that the Indonesian population is vulnerable to propaganda from Saudi funded mosques who are trying to replace the easy going Islam of Indonesia with a radical and intolerant form. The release of Bashir, the cleric who gave a theological okay to the Bali bombing, shows the increase of Islamicist influence in that government, as doesl as the whitewash of other terror groups that have killed thousand of Christians or helped with the Bali Bombing while executing Christians

So now the Philippines is worried it will become the next target. Defense Secratary Raul Gonzales is worried about terrorists entering through the airports after the entrance of Indians with illegal papers last week show a weakness in the visa system, and now Bashir has declared a jihad against the Philippines.

"Speaking to his supporters in the town of Kediri, East Java, on November 5, 2006, he (Bashir) stressed the need for his followers to travel to foreign lands where Muslims continue to be subjected to injustices, singling out the Southern Philippines as a prime destination for Muslims to wage Jihad," Gonzalez said.

There is a good argument that the domino theory is still valid here in Asia. The exhaustion of the communists by the American opposition of communist expansion in Viet Nam probably saved Thailand and the Philippines despite American withdrawal, but the irony is that the abandonment of VietNam led to Afghanistan, and Carter's encouragement of the Shah of Iran to leave without a fight. The fruits of those policies are Alqaeda and the Mullahs.

So one wonders how the Philippines will fare in the falling dominos if America again abandons their allies.

One suspects the vacuum here will be filled by the Chinese, who may see American withdrawal in Iraq and softness agains North Korea as a sign to expand both their political and eonomic borders into Southeast Asia.

But then, what do I know?
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They die quietly in Zimbabwe

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Thursday, November 23, 2006 7:31:49 PM
The Dafur situation has gotten a lot of publicity, thanks to activists.

Yet it is not the only place where people are dying in Africa. The situation in Zimbabwe has been terrible and is becoming more desperate, but rarely receives publicity in the US press.

Archbishop Ncube complains that more die in Zimbabwe of famine and disease each week than die in Dafur, but since their blood is not being spilled, and because reporters are prevented from visiting, and mail and the internet are censored, few know about it.

Robert Mugabe was the "liberator" of Zimbabwe, and even though there were leaders seeking peaceful revolution, it was Mugabe who received help from the World Council of Churches and other naive organizations that lauded those spouting rhetoric about "liberation" without looking too closely at their deeds and plans.

For several years, Mugabe was a benign president, and except for his genocidal actions against the minority Ndebele tribe whose revolutionary leaders who were prevented from sharing power, he did fairly well.

However, with age, he reverted to his Marxist roots.
White farms were confiscated in the name of land reform.
Now, we had land reform here in the Philippines: most of my husband's family's land was ordered to be sold to the tenant farmers whose families farmed them for generations.

But in Zimbabwe, Africans move from fiedl to field, since maize exhausts the land after about five yers, they let the fields go fallow and move to another area to start new fields.

The white farms, however, use more modern techniques of farming, including fertilizer, that allowed them to grow the surplus to feed the growing cities. By removing the farmers by fiat, the rule of law was destroyed and replaced by rule of dicator. By stealing the land without paying for it, the result was a boycott by the US and the UK. And what was worse, the land was often given not to the farmworkers but to the cronies of Mugabe, who knew nothing about farming. The result was to intensify the famine.

Mugabe arranged most food aid to be sent thru government channels, allowing him to deny food to villages that voted against him. Needless to say, he won the last election.

However, large pockets of opposition remained in certain parts of the cities.
Hence "operation cleanup", which claimed to remove "illegal" businesses and slums, but in reality was the destruction of many homes, clinics, businesses and "mom and pop" shops in areas that had known pockets of his opponents.

I still have friends there. One African nun wrote me that their main convent and chapel was destroyed. Another Irish nun who ran an HIV clinic had the clinic destroyed.

Those whose homes were destroyed were either left homeless or forced to flee to their rural homes. And, of course, people dying of famine and disease in rural areas without CNN reporters nearby rarely get publicity.

Archbishop Ncube laments: ""Zimbabwe is not a nation at war. It used to be able to feed itself and its neighbours. Zimbabwe used to have one of the highest life expectancy rates in Africa, up with South Africa.

"Now hunger, illness and desperation stalk our land. Cemeteries are filling up throughout the country. But no blood is being spilt. People are just fading away, dying quietly and being buried quietly with no fanfare - and so there is little international media attention.

"These deaths are largely preventable yet without significant intervention, the situation threatens to develop into a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions..."




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another day, another Syrian assasination

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 9:04:39 PM
This time it was a Christian politician in Lebanon.

So the softer Europeans and Democrats want to "open discussions"...

But why should those who started the problem try to give concessions when they are winning?

Enquiring minds want to know.


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The Depopulation of Iran

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 8:02:28 AM
Spengler of the Asian Times is frequently wrong, but always original.



Today he writes about Iran, and notes the demographic decline in that country is similar to what has happened in Europe.

Is this true?

I know only a few odd facts about Iran, mainly from my contacts with Iranian doctors.

One, that the Shah was hated when the newspaper claimed he was loved.

Two: That many Iranians had emigrated because they didn't have "contacts" to get a decent job. This was true before and after the Shah left.

Three: The Mullahs encouraged women to use birth control because they saw that high population growth threatened the country.

Four: Shia Islam allows "temporary" marriages. This originally was for widows of war to find sexual relief and have legitemate children, and the custom was revived after the Iran Iraq war.

Spengler also notes a few facts others have overlooked: The large non Farsi population.

The rest of his argument is outside my knowledge. After all, a lot of Philipinas are prostitutes, and that hasn't stopped the population growth here. So you can take or leave his other arguments.
However, his argument about population decline combined with running out of oil should make one pause to consider the problem, and I haven't read about these things too many other places.

Another column on all this is Hersh's column on Iran.

Like Spengler, he is good at finding things out but often off the mark at the balance and analysis of his facts.

For me, I'm happy if the Democratic triumph stopped the invasion of Iran, but I really don't think they were planning that anyway, despite rumors of the Navy in the Persian gulf.

I figured they were preventing the laying of mines or sinking of ships that would block the sea lanes in case of war, a nuclear accident that explodes one of their plants, a civilian uprising, or Israel hitting a nuclear facility.

Which brings me to this statement in Hersh's article: The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.."

So we come back to Spengler's statement: "Half of Iranians do not speak Persian, and half of those speak Azeri. Azerbaijan's oil wealth is a giant magnet; it must attract either the largest national minority in Iran, or the military attentions of Iran itself. If a Kurdish state asserts itself out of the ruins of Iraq - a long-delayed justice for that ancient and resilient people - Iran's Kurds will be tempted to throw off the Persian yoke...."

Yes, and if the Kurds try it, Turkey will invade.This professor argues they will.
Turkey could use the excuse they are protecting themselves against the Kurdish insurgents, who are a murderous group perhaps because Turkey has killed tens of thousands of Kurd to stop the independence movement. But in reality they would be seizing the oil fields of Mosul, which they thought they should have gotten after World War I.

So, with Syria and Iran actively supporting arms and men to "insurgents" and Saudi looking the other way while their money and sons join the insurgency, the last thing the Iraqi government or the US wants is another neighbor threatening the peace.

But then there is this: Turkey stopped  the US from invading from the north when Iraq was invaded. This allowed thousands of trained Bathists to flee to the Sunni triangle and start the "insurgency".

So Turkey has messed up Iraq and threatens to mess it up again.

And the wild card is ironically the stable Kurdish north, whose peace is partly due to CNN pressuring Bush the first into protecting it, and then Clinton's continuation of that protection

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China in Africa

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Sunday, November 19, 2006 10:38:59 PM
China is expanding into Africa

But at least the MSM is now noticing.

I have an Evil Mugabe blog that no one reads. Mugabe owes his neighbors money, has thrown out the white farmers who supplied food for his cities, has decimated the Ndebele tribe and has thrown his opponants out of their houses and small shops in Operation cleanup.

But China is giving him money and supplying him cheap goods.

In some ways this is bad (There was a rumor that "operation cleanup" which made 70 000 people homeless, was partly to shut down the grey market sales of good quality used goods so the Chinese could sell shoddy goods).

Alas, that means China is propping up a murderous dictator. What will happen when the place implodes? Hopefully they will make a profit from it. You see, for all the talk of Chinese solidarity with African socialists, this is a pure money investment.

(although if I were in defense I would worry about chrome mining monopoly ).

But what China is doing is what they have done to SE Asia for many years.

IN the Philippines, Chinese traders came and essentially ran trade. They still run the country.
See all those round faced pale skined Manila elite? They are the descendents of Chinese traders. By law, foreigners could not run or own businesses, so they married local women, and their dynasties still run the place, a fact unknown unless one is married to a Metziso (partial Spanish/Philippino) or a full blooded local.

In Africa, the shops were long run by people from India. Now they will probably be shut out by Chinese shopkeepers.

What about the African entrepeneur? Well, there are many. The local markets are run by women. But in African the culture frowns upon being rich, and if you are rich, you end up having to employ all your relatives. With modernization, things are changing but it's not certain how much. African government often are socialist since the elites learned socialism in the European universities.

What is needed is Milton Friedman...and that too is not starting, especially in South Africa.
 The NYTImes also
has an article on that.

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Why do they hate us

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Thursday, November 16, 2006 7:20:58 AM

Now that both FoxNews has shown the film "Obsession" about radical Islam, and CNN has had a special on the same subject (Transcript HERE ) there is the possibility that people will become aware of the rabid anti American propaganda in some of the (often state owned) media in many Arab countries that the US considers as allies.

Why do they hate us?

Maybe because these people have been fed on a diet of hatred of the West, of the US and of Israel for twenty years, but the only view they have of the US is, alas, Hollywood.

At the same time, no one seems to have problems when Saudi princes give millions to Georgetown, whose web page openly states as part of their aim is addressing "American foreign policy in the Muslim world." (read: Stop supporting Israel).And no one blinks when they give the University of Arkansas a couple million dollars when Clinton was president to start an Islamic center there. (Right. Arkansas is a famous intellectual center, don't ya know?)

The Saudi money is well spent. We see articles like THIS one in the UKGuardian which explains "why" they hate "us", written conveniently by the head of the Georgetown center.

What do "we" need to do, according to this Georgetown professor?

The US needs to "break out of a cycle of ignorance and Islamophobia". We need to "respect" Islam, we need to "help with economic development and jobs" and we need to "stop interfering with their affairs".

However, a closer look at the complaints show that it does not quite jibe with reality.

We are told we have to stop our "islamophobia". Well, the average American does not "fear" Islam...indeed, before 9-11, we rarely thought about it. We figured live and let live. But now, with the increasing reports of terror and with people slowly realizing that these countries preach hatred, you are seeing a grass roots idea that something is very wrong with these countries.

So we "need to respect Islam"? Well, you know, respect has to be earned. Most Americans see any religion as fine, since all religions teach right and wrong and respect of your neighbor. Why should Islam be different? Oh, you wear a veil. So do Catholic nuns and Huttites. Amish women wear hats. Hasaidic women wear wigs. You do it because you love God? Wonderful. So do I. Or do you do it because your husband is insanely jealous and would beat you if you didn't ....there lies the problem. We don't respect men who push their women around, be they Baptist or Muslim.

The same goes for dietary preferences and fasting. We used to serve our Muslim doctors kosher meals, the same as our Jewish patients. Some people are vegetarian. Big deal. You woship on Friday? Seventh day Adventists and Jews worship on Saturday. Could you work Sunday for me, and I'll work Friday for you. No big deal.

One thing about America is that we DO tend to take religion seriously and try to accomadate it, and respect those who follow the rules, even though we might want to "convert" each other, we are expected to do it politely.

You see, respect is a two way street.

The problem is that respect in this is NOT two way.

When we read what the state owned press in Arab countries says about the US and Jews, or what the actual textbooks in these countries teach their children about Christians and Jews, or what the Immans of the Saudi funded Madrassas in these coutries in Europe or the US or Australia actually say, then we wonder why we should respect such people who obviously hate us.

For example, why do we allow Saudis to give millions to universities to promote understanding of Islam, while a million Pinoys in Saudi have no church? Hello...

Sorry, but this is personal. My cousin worked in Saudi as a nurse, and they found her rosary, and forced her to throw it away.

And this brings us to the second complaint: we need to "help them with economic development and jobs".

Well, can anyone tell me why there are a couple million Indians, Pakistanis, Indos and Pinoys in the Middle East, yet these bozos can't find jobs?

You mean Pinoys and Indians and other poor people can manage to send their kids to school and learn trades but you can't manage to do it? Your women would never bother to work 6000 miles from home to pay school fees for siblings so they can become nurses or teachers like our farmer's kids?

What's wrong with this picture? It's not religion, since many of these exploited immigrant workers are Muslim.

So, sorry, but your complaint doesn't make sense.

Finally, they want us "not to interfere with their countries".

Ummm....I am old enough to remember the oil embargo of the 1970's, in revenge for helping Israel. No, this wasn't "interfering" with the world's economy. Oh I know, manipulating the price of oil doesn't count...

Finally, if you go to the "poll" you see something missing: The country with the second largest Muslim population...a place named India.Hint: The US is actually popular there... Unlike the countries cited, it's a true Sdemocracy. One hopes that a free press and sixty years of democracy will prevent their lies from taking hold despite Saudi funding of radical mosques that recruit local men for terror and to infiltrate Indian society.

so just maybe what what is needed to stop these countries from "hating" the US is a free press. One that does not indoctrinate their people with lies and hatred of the other so that their own faults and problems can be ignored.

When AlJazeerah is considered the most trusted Arab news source, because it is not run by the local governments, you know you are in trouble.

And, as someone who lives overseas, the bad news is that the VOA, the BBC and CNNInternational are not much better at promoting the American point of view overseas.

Calling Bill O'Reilly...Calling Bill O'Reilly...

--Nancy Reyes is a retired physician who lives in the rural Philippines with her husband, eight dogs, three cats and a large extended family. Her website is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket Blog

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Media Bias will lose this war

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Monday, November 13, 2006 4:44:07 AM
The bloggers are fighting but as Strategy page
notes, too many in the media are trying to have the US lose the war, and with this election they may have succeeded.

From 10 000 miles away, I have no access to US News, but CNN International is anti American. There are few if any Americans on that network, and if I see one more Brit smirking while reading the news I will scream.

Yet despite the "spin", it is not clear that there will be a major change in Iraq.
 
What is not clear is what is going on. The press merely reports crimes/massacres, but not who is doing what, and rarely if ever about American successes.

Presumably this is "balanced" by talk radio but that is not available here.

Yet even the local news here noted that this election was more about Republican corruption and failure to address problems than about the war. And even the local news discussed how the Democrats who won were conservative.

Yet Pelosi in today's news seems to be oblivious to all this, appointing Murtha and the Democrats bragging about how they will stop the war.

Excuse me, but I am cynical. The majority of the American people don't like the war, but don't want to cut and run. We already have a large Iraqi population from the last Iraq war, and a lot of Vietnamese.

Yet the left seems oblivious of all of this, and wants to return to the holiday from history of the 1990's...

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Blue dog triumph

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Thursday, November 09, 2006 2:46:44 AM
I had a long essay, but the electricity went out and so did the internet so I closed without saving.

Summary is: The overseas press is gloating (I mean CNNInt and BBC and papers) that Bush lost over Iraq.
The Philippines, who has an active war against terror itself, is less sarcastic.
I mean, here it's not exactly theortetical that aggressive police questioning might prevent the SM  mall or your town fiesta from being bombed.

However, as an Okie, from what I have observed, is that the conservative Democrats who seemed to have won.

And a lot of the disgust against Republicans is that they were arrogant and ignored what people thought.

Changing Iraq might be part of it (given the negative MSM drumbeat, it is probably a part of all of it). But the main reason is that people found reasonable alternative to elitist Republicans.

Essentially, what the overseas media hasn't noticed (But the US press is starting to notice) is that the new Democrats are not from the Kos wing but are blue dog Democrats, who got the vote of the ethnics and middle class.

If Bill Clinton was running in 2008, it would help him. Will it help Hillary? Who knows. She is much to the left of her husband, but good at faking it.

Another thing people didn't notice is the large number of Democratic governors.

Governors don't tend to be moonbats, since they have to deal with the real world.

Most people know how to split the ballot. Just look at Oklahoma, where 4 out of 5 congressmen are Republican, but the governor won reelection easily.

The rejection of party line also has to be taken into consideration.
If the moonbat wing of the Democrats takes over, the Blue dog Democrats will vote for Guilliani.

So I would like to suggest that the MSM start looking at hard working Democratic governors as the next president or at least the next VP...you see, the "trust" level of congress is low, and after Pelosi and friends start ranting and raving (Pelosi does NOT inspire confidence on TV) even Hillary might have trouble.

But what do I know?

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World Traveler

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Sunday, November 05, 2006 12:09:19 AM
The NYtimes
has a story of a poor Gitmo detainee.

Of course he complains of torture of various sorts including "waterboarding"...
that last part makes me suspicious in itself. Why?

Well, before the press "Discovered" waterboarding, I don't remember any detainee claiming it happened to him...so it sound like fiction. Sort of UFO abductees who were examined by state of the art X ray equipment in the 1950's, and then in the 1980's the UFO's had bought CT Scanners...duh. Hysterics often "add" information that is fed to them in earlier interviews, which is why we docs examining girls for abuse have to refrain from asking too many questions. Of course, such fiction is also the mainstay of stories by criminals, and is in the Alqaeda play book.... I report, you decide.

Well, anyway, there is this Turk from Germany who decides to travel to Pakistan to "immerse himself" in Islam, accompanied by a friend.

Now, this guy had married in Turkey the previous summer. The fact he now wants to "study Islam" instead of taking interest in a nubile bride makes one wonder if he is sublimating something...but never mind. Just sounds strange to me...

Then we have an interesting item: Why Pakistan?

Why not Yemen, or Saudi Arabia or, if he is Shia, Iran? Indeed, why not Turkey, where he'd undestand the language. Did he study Urdu?

Another question not answered: Where did this guy work before he became "religious"? Where did he get his money to travel? Who paid the bills? Who were their contacts?

The answer is deep into the article...Ah, the "Tablighi Jamaat" missionary group...who claim to be apolitical, all sweetness and light...
THIS article,  however calls the group a "wolf in sheep's clothing"...

"...For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the "antechamber of fundamentalism."[12] U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly adopting the same attitude. "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States," the deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section said in 2003, "and we have found that Al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past."[13]

Recruitment methods for young jihadists are almost identical. After joining Tablighi Jamaat groups at a local mosque or Islamic center and doing a few local dawa (proselytism) missions, Tablighi officials invite star recruits to the Tablighi center in Raiwind, Pakistan, for four months of additional missionary training. Representatives of terrorist organizations approach the students at the Raiwind center and invite them to undertake military training.[14] Most agree to do so...."

If you read the Middle Eastern Forum article, you will find direct and indirect links between this group and terrorist acts...Of course, the NYTimes article doesn't bother to try to connect the dots. (Hint to NYT: Try Google).

Then there is the question: How did they end up in Afghanistan...he claims he was "kidnapped" and taken there by his Pakistani hosts for ransom.

Finally a story that might ring true. In that corrupt society, making money off a foreigner is completely plausible.

Or maybe he actually went to Afghanistan himself with Pakistani "volunteers" because the mosques immans told them to go (like the UK Jihadis)...we'll never know the truth.

But his laments of innocence, like that of the UK jihadis, points not to the problem of Gitmo as much as to the innocence of a MSM that doesn't even try to point out that there were very real reasons that this guy was picked up and interrogated.

The REAL question is why they left him go...for "lack of evidence"? A judge decided the evidence was "the evidence did not hold up to judicial scrutiny. A Federal District Court judge, Joyce Hens Green, concluded in early 2005 that even the classified portion of his file was “rife with hearsay.”

No wonder the German government refused to have him back. It's like having a sex offender in your neighborhood...yes he might have served his sentence or been declared "innocent" over a technicality (like the kid being too young to testify, and the parents didn't find out about it until later when there was no physical evidence) , but do you want to risk your children around him?

And just in case you are not worried about the USA, this missionary group has 15000 "missionaries" in the usa...
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Who decides for "the people"

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Saturday, November 04, 2006 4:02:58 AM
I watch a lot of TV specials on "primitive people"....one thing they have in common with one another is a lament about how "modern world" is intruding into these edens.

Ah, but do they really ask the locals what they think? And if they actually ask the locals, do they ask the headman, who would lose his power over the locals if they change, or Joe Blow, who might prefer working a little less hard and eating better? Or what about Mrs. Joe Blow, who has to work very hard to keep the family fed, not to mention having a baby every couple years, whether she wants to or not...

The UKTimes
has an article on the "giraffe women" --you know, the ones you see with huge brass rings around their necks that elongate the neck and make them look like giraffes?
These people are from Burma who have fled to Thailand, and now make their livings being gawked at by strangers.

Now, originally, the article claims, the rings served a useful function: It protected their necks from tiger bites...and since small women who often walked thru the forest to springs encumbered by heavy pots were vulnerable to attack, this makes sense.

But now the rings serve no purpose: Except for being on display...
When they arrived a decade ago as refugees from Burmese army offensives ravaging their homeland, the Kayan people meekly accepted their role of being photographed by tourists. Their daughters, however, have grown up to question the humiliation of their tribe. Billboards showing the women’s necks are on roadsides all over the north. They advertise exotic sightseeing for Thai and foreign tourists alike in hill-country villages — in reality refugee camps that the women are forbidden from leaving — along the Burma border.

The women get a small pension for doing this, " ...a fraction of the profits made from selling entry tickets to tourists."

Some of the younger women are rebelling against this tradition, since wearing the rings limits them to working as a freak...

Yet how many other pleas for allowing "primitive" tribes to keep their "traditions" without "interfering" do we hear?

As a missionary, I was criticized for "imposing my religion" (never mind that most of the people had been Christian for two generations). I was criticized for interfering with nature because we saved lives and led to an increas in population. And we were criticized for educating people so they became "alienated" from their own customs.

Yet what is the answer?

TO allow them to stay poor without choice?:THAT was tried, with apartheid.

People don't realize how deep into the countryside globalization has penetrated. Nor is this new.
Thirty years ago, when I was a missionary in Africa, the bottle trucks traveled down our dirt roads to deliver Fanta and other local softdrinks. The patients often traveled to the clinic using the local buses. No TV at that time, but every village had a shortwave radio.

When I adopted my boys from a small town in Colombia twenty years ago, I found that town had a Cocacola bottling plant...and the boys watched the A team. ..and the "intercity" bus played a Bronson movie.

Now I am in the rural Philippines. Fifteen years ago when I first visited, our farm's village had no electricity. Five years later, they not only had electricity, but TV antennas on a lot of the bamboo houses...and one house had a sign :Cellphone here...calls to Saudi...
You see, between Land reform, education, and some of their children seeking jobs overseas, the quaint rice paddies with water buffalo are slowly being replaced by noisy but more efficient handplows and chemical pesticides/fertillizers and high yield rice.

But many locals are seeking easier work in Manila or other towns. Even twelve hours at a factory is better than working in the fields.

So when you think of primitive people, yes, they still exist.
But you can't stop change, and trying to keep people primitive and exotic might not attract younger people who are torn between the placid, communalistic "good old days" when sometimes you died in childbirth or didn't have enough to eat, or the bad new days of machines.



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Picnicing with great grandmom

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Wednesday, November 01, 2006 6:39:14 AM
I have lived overseas several times during the last 60 years and this gives one pause about the changes in the "60's"  cultural desert that we have inherited.
One of the changes is the change of Haloween from an innocent holiday where children dressed like cowboys and clowns and went to neighbors they knew to ask for candy to the present day holiday, where TV feasts on horror movies and witch/occult cartoons for children.

What is missing in all this is any explanation of what the day meant.

In Disney's Fantasia, there is a segment of dancing witches and demons, and at the end, the church bell rings and they disappear. The devil hates to be laughed at, and to defuse him, we give gifts to children; and the next day we celebrate our dead in heaven.

Here in the Phlippines All Saints day is the day to visit graves.
Since Mexicans also celebrate this day, it is presumably a Spanish custom introduced to the lands 300 years ago. However, in Chinese lands people also have a day to visit and picnic at their ancestor's graves, so it is also an "Asian" custom that like many customs was incorporated or "baptised" with Christian meaning.

Here it is not so much a day to mourn as to celebrate our connection with our family.
In Asia, unlike in America, the family is not an enemy to be fled from (or destroyed in the name of politically correct feminism/gender studies) but a procession which grounds us with those who went before us, and those who are born from us and carry our names and our family into the future.

So we visit the graves to honor the ancestors, and to remember them. And as Christians, we say prayers for them.

Traditionally, one visits the grave with other family members, bringing flowers and candles, which one lights, and then says a prayer. The grave site is then cleaned of debris (small branches and weeds and leaves that accumulate) and sometimes the crypt might be repainted or scrubbed clean. The family then often brings chairs and sits and celebrates with a meal. The kids play and have a good time. For after all, isn't great grandmother now with Father God, Mama Mary and Kuya (older Brother) Jesus, and with the others who have died, and aren't they all keeping an eye on us here?

The authorities try to keep order (In Manila they have banned liquor and beer and vendors from cemetaries. Here they are more lenient, so the kids can buy toys and candy and food from the many vendors, and tomorrow we expect a lot of our workmen to come in late with hangovers....but then, we are in the provinces and take these things in stride).

Most people go home to their towns from Manila for the celebration, so there was a lot of worries about terrorist attacks on buses, trains, and ferries, but so far it's been quiet.

So, all in all, a good day, a good celebration, despite the flooded roads from the typhoon a couple days ago.

And a day that Americans could emulate someday as a day to remember the dead in heaven instead of the twisted celebration of evil that Haloween seems to be evolving into...




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