Tag Archives: Egypt

News

Peer-reviewed journal notes that Ida is not part of human ancestry

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This story comes to me from Lone Wolf Archer.

Probably the two best peer-reviewed science journals in the world are Science and Nature. Well, Nature is now reporting on a new piece of research just released showing that the Ida fossil, which was touted by Darwinists as THE MISSING LINK, is actually not a part of human ancestry at all. It’s related to lemur ancestry!

Here’s the Nature story:

A 37-million-year-old fossil primate from Egypt, described today in Nature1, moves a controversial German fossil known as Ida out of the human lineage.

Teeth and ankle bones of the new Egyptian specimen show that the 47-million-year-old Ida, formally called Darwinius masillae, is not in the lineage of early apes and monkeys (haplorhines), but instead belongs to ancestors (adapiforms) of today’s lemurs and lorises.

Lone Wolf Archer has more here, including a link to a longer story that explains the details.

News

Obama administration backs restrictions on free speech at the United Nations

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Story from the Weekly Standard. (H/T Confederate Yankee via ECM)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression. The newly-minted American policy was rolled out at the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council, which ended in Geneva on Friday.

[…]In introducing the resolution on Thursday, October 1–adopted by consensus the following day–the ranking U.S. diplomat, Chargé d’Affaires Douglas Griffiths, crowed:

“The United States is very pleased to present this joint project with Egypt. This initiative is a manifestation of the Obama administration’s commitment to multilateral engagement throughout the United Nations and of our genuine desire to seek and build cooperation based upon mutual interest and mutual respect in pursuit of our shared common principles of tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

His Egyptian counterpart, Ambassador Hisham Badr, was equally pleased–for all the wrong reasons. He praised the development by telling the Council that “freedom of expression . . . has been sometimes misused,” insisting on limits consistent with the “true nature of this right” and demanding that the “the media must . . . conduct . . . itself in a professional and ethical manner.”

[…]Pakistan’s Ambassador Zamir Akram, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, made it clear that they understand the resolution and its protection against religious stereotyping as allowing free speech to be trumped by anything that defames or negatively stereotypes religion. The idea of protecting the human rights “of religions” instead of individuals is a favorite of those countries that do not protect free speech and which use religion–as defined by government–to curtail it.

Speaking as a Christian who values religious liberty, I would not use the power of the state to silence the free speech of people who “offend” me by disagreeing with me. That’s fine with me. In any case, these “human rights” laws are almost never used to defend the free speech of Christians. The fact that Egypt and Pakistan approve of Obama’s plan doesn’t fill me with confidence about who is likely to benefit.

Now might be a good time to review how restrictions on free speech worked out in Canada, where offended Muslims sue news publications and news magazines for citing the actual words of radical Imams or publishing the Mohammed cartoons.

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News

Muslims kidnap two girls in Egypt and force them to convert to Islam

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Story from the Assyrian International News Agency. (H/T Jihad Watch)

Excerpt:

“At 10 o’clock of the same morning someone called me and asked if I was Amira’s mother. He introduced himself as Sheikh Mohammed, and said that my daughter is fine and will convert to Islam,” the mother said. “When I cried and begged him to let me have my daughter back, he said he would let me see her again after her conversion to Islam, and ended the call. I tried calling that cell phone back several time, but there never was a reply.”

The mother went to El-Sennin Mosque in her neighbourhood at 1.30 PM, after the Muslim noon prayers, and asked a bearded man emerging from the Mosque regarding Sheikh Mohammed, he laughed and said they have more than fifty Sheikh Mohammeds.

“When I started to cry at the Mosque entrance, one of them came to me and said ‘Listen, mother of Amira, I am warning you not to report the abduction to the police or do anything, the price will be your son Meena (9 years old) being slaughtered in front of your own eyes. I am not threatening, I’m talking seriously.'” He further said “Listen, your daughter Amira will convert to Islam next Friday, and we are now preparing her for that. Now go home and stay indoors until everything is quietly over.”

…The first to report (AINA 7-18-2009) on the lucrative business of the ‘brokers’ of Islamization of Christians, was the independent Egyptian newspaper Al Fagr (the Dawn) in its May 19 2008 issue, citing the city of Alexandria as an example.

Al Fagr reporter Tamer Salah-el-Din highlighted how the operation, which is funded by Muslim businessmen, is carried out with the collusion of State Security and Mosque sheikhs. The ‘trading rates’ cashed by brokers for each Christian male and female conversion to Islam, at the time of writing this report, was 7000 Egyptian pounds for males and 6000 for females. The rates for Coptic girls fluctuate depending on how good-looking she is and her family’s social status.

All religions are not the same.