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POPSSilent No More: Iranian Student Sentenced To Death
The protests Mr Batebi took part in nine years ago frightened Iran’s rulers. The students were angry about censorship, the persecution of intellectuals and the thugs who beat up any student overheard disparaging the regime. Mr Batebi thinks Iran could well turn solidly democratic some day. In neighbouring states, religious extremism is popular. In Iran, he says, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not. He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog,* with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.” http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-KjyoxDgwc6uQN8Q8PTn1n8dj8oA-?cq=1
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POPSTwo American Children Released From Taliban Madrassa Two American Children Escorted from Taliban Madrassa by American Consulate in Karachi for Flight to NYC "Karachi Kids" Documentary Spurs Action Two American children were escorted by the American consulate officers in Karachi, Pakistan Tuesday night Pakistan time and boarded a flight to Dubai, UAE and then boarded a direct flight to NYC, Noor Elahi Khan and Mahboob Elahi Khan are expected to arrive in Atlanta on a Delta flight this afternoon at 4:30 PM.
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POPSOsama Bin Laden Suspect 'We Can't Kick Out' Is Freed U was arrested trying to fly out to Saudi Arabia on false passports and was due to be extradited to America before US prosecutors dropped the case. Judges at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission have ruled there were "credible grounds" for believing MI5's claims. The conditions are being kept top secret but MI5 and police successfully argued he should not be allowed to live in London. The town in which he lives and any details which could lead to him being identified are also being kept secret. U will have to wear an electronic tag and is banned from using the internet or a mobile phone after refusing to turn his back on extremism.
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POPSGroup Claims MLK Was GOP The article goes on: In "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.," which was published after his death from his written material and records, King called the Republican national convention that nominated Goldwater a "frenzied wedding ... of the KKK and the radical right." "The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism," King said in the book. Doesn't sound very Republican to me.
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POPS Only As Strong As The Weakest Link Beyond policies, though, a president should unite, not divide; however, Obama’s severe case of liberalism segregates the country into left and right. Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) recently stated he might vote for Obama, but he refuses to endorse him. Why? Because the congressman believes Obama is the most exclusive club’s liberalist. As such, he doesn’t believe he can represent his constituency if he endorses the Democratic nominee. Others have joined the Boren ranks. If he can’t convince his own party to band together, how will he unite a country? Failing to acknowledge weaknesses does not translate into an absence of flaws, and finding the strongest links doesn’t prevent the chain from breaking. We have the choice to either anticipate the weak link or we can wait … wait until the last moment when the chain is most strained … wait until the instant the country is most vulnerable … wait until it can no longer hold … wait until it snaps. Visit www.armstrongwilliams.com .
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POPSAgainst Islamic Extremism It is for this reason that one must approach Islam from Islamic sources if one wants to understand it. This doesn’t mean one will have to accept all that one reads, nor that one can’t be critical after you have studied it: but you will then be able to be critical of something which is true and representative of the faith, not something made up.
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POPSLieberman Pushing Internet Censorship; Bill in Congress NY Times editorial opposing his attempt to censor the internet. Tell your Senators to oppose this pending legislation , which is a ruse for censorship. Pardon me, but if "Al Qaeda" and "bin Laden" post videos on the internet at radical sites (per neocon propaganda fronts like SITE, and reported by ABC News), why can they not find them? (Those sites are not on YouTube or easily obtained). Answer: Because then there would be no propaganda to support the "war on terrorism" and "homeland security". All of this comes against the backdrop of a troubling Congressional antiterrorism bill that also focuses on the Internet. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House last year by a 404-to-6 vote, would establish a commission to study the terrorist threat and propose legislation. The bill, which the Senate has not acted on, has a finding that the Internet p
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POPSRead this clip and try not to say WTF!! I mean, are you kidding me!? Rachel Ray and Dunkin Donuts were offering "symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism" because she was wearing a black and white scarf. After this one, it's going to take a whole to shock me :) Honestly, i just tagged this clip dunkin donuts, rachel ray and terrorism - WTF indeed!!
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POPSPakistan, Islamic Militants Agree To Peace Deal The North West Frontier Province's government is led by a Pashtun nationalist party which is a junior partner in the federal coalition and a key player in the peace effort. The ruling parties blame the more forceful tactics of President Pervez Musharraf, a stalwart U.S. ally, for stoking Islamic extremism and the spread of militant religious movements to previous peaceful area, such as Swat. But Western officials have expressed concern that any deals will be poorly enforced and simply allow Taliban and Al Qaeda militants to execute more attacks in Afghanistan and plot terror strikes in the West.
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POPSA "single Muslim authority in Europe" "Elsewhere in the piece, the author makes the link between Islam as a “universal” religion and Muslims as “global citizens”. There is, in other words, a specific link between the proposal, which amounts to the creation of a global caliphate although Ceric does not use this term, and the general cosmopolitan ideology of globalism of which European integration is a key part. To put it bluntly, the stronger national identities, the weaker Islamic identity – and vice-versa."
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POPSIslamic Hatred in the Heartland Some of these sound very familiar. Such a person as this is invited to speak at our *universities* to present their ideologies and anti-Americanism...and then those who disagree with them rise up in response and protest and are called intolerant, racists, ignorant, backwards, etc... This is called sowing the seeds for our own destruction. The very freedoms that make us great are being used to bring up (and out) the very worst from within us.
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POPSIs Eco-therapy for you? "Melissa Pickett, an eco-therapist in Santa Fe, N.M., who says she treats dozens of patients a month, said sometimes she has to tell extreme greenies to chill out for their own good. "The global warming craze will cause your clients to go into extremism fueled by fear," she says." "And with eco-therapy around, that extremism can get expensive. Eco-therapy can cost as much as traditional psychotherapy, upwards of $100 an hour. There's a lot of green in being green." "But Pickett said eco-therapy helps those grappling with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness about the environment." "People break down and cry. They develop obsessive-compulsive behavior. They have nightmares," Pickett said. "And these are normally high-functioning people." She pushes her eco-disturbed patients to take shorter showers, turn off lights and computers, consume less, buy less and learn as much as they can about global warming.
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POPSZiauddin Sardar on the Quilliam Foundation for ex-jihadis Sardar, whose writing I am only a little bit familiar with, is highly critical of any "lionizing" of former members of Islamic extremist groups, since it implicitly devalues the commitment to peace and pluralism exhibited by most "ordinary" Muslims.
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POPSWhy I Left Greenpeace-Patrick Moore Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride. We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.
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POPSHypothosis gains validity from objections.
Do extremism and an unconditional adherence to religious dogma result from a failure of a portion of the frontal lobe to fully develop or, if fully developed, to activate? Studies suggest that faithful adherence to a single reasoning strategy on tests such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test means that parts of the frontal lobes are inactive, have failed to fully develop, or have even been damaged. Thus, unqualified disdain for divergent beliefs,for personal interpretation, and for creative theories like Darwin’s theory of evolution, may indeed have, at least a partial, biological explanation: a reduced utilization of that section of the brain which has played such a vital role in humanity’s creative advances—the frontal lobes. By unconditionally obeying religious tenets—or any dogma—some people may be relying on the phylo-genetically older, more posterior portions of the brain that store knowledge and enable consistent or stable behaviors and, unknowingly, circumventing the portion whi
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POPSTime Magazine Sells Out To Global Alarmists $1.2 Trillion Al Gore Tax coming before summer! Gore and the radical Climate Alarmists are using unfounded science and the willing spin of the media elites to push a massive, $1.2 Trillion Global Warming Tax. We have less than two months to stop the new tax. But the fact is, as this TIME article shows, the entire political, entertainment and media establishments are lining up to push this oppressive new Carbon Tax down our throats. answer your questions about global warming.
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POPSThe Middle East has Culture The writer does not equate terrorism with hooliganism, rather he is illustrating how our perceptions of the Middle East are influenced by stories and images. We can never conceive of the best if we are only shown the worst.
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POPSComic "Your stealing their Land. Try being reasonable" "You don't simply bundle people onto trucks and drive them away ... I prefer to advocate a more positive policy ... to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave." Ariel Sharon, quoted by David Bernstein in Forcible Removal of Arabs gaining support in Israel", The (London) Times, August 24, 1988, page 7. Cited in Imperial Israel And The Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion, by Nur Masalha; Chapter 2, footnote 117. "I would have carried on autonomy talks for ten years and meanwhile we would have reached a half million people in Judea and Samaria." Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir in an interview with Joseph Harif, for Ma'ariv, 26 June 1992; cited by Avi Shlaim, "Prelude to the Accord: Likud, Labour, and the Palestinians," Journal of Palestine Studies, p 23 (1994).
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POPSPolitical Junkies: Why it Feels Good to Be an Extremist In The Political Brain , psychologist Drew Western summarizes fMRI experiments exploring the neuro-psychology of systematic bias and rationalization in the brains of political extremists. Finding ways to dismiss contradictory evidence triggers pleasant emotional releases in partisans' brains, eventually becoming a pleasurable, learned behavior. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn't seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased "reasoning." These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their "fix," giving new meaning to the term political junkie.
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POPSLosing Hearts and Minds; Empowering Extremism Before anyone asks why we aren't winning the War on Terror yet, consider these sad headlines. All around the world, reasonable people are being dragged into the slipstream of extremism. The cause is blatant moral bankruptcy. Greed, corruption and exploitation, fortified behind the twin bastions of ignorance and righteousness, are discrediting the institutions that are instrumental in overcoming extremism, intolerance, and global violence. Particularly America remains the store house of the world's hopes and dreams. We are not merely a nation but an ideal, and we must live up to our promise. Obama and McCain are both men of admirable morals and transparent character. Meanwhile, as Hillary obfuscates over her finances, we must realize she lacks the moral authority needed to restore America's international credibility. Being Righteous is not nearly as important as being Right.
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