Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?

(The Commentator)On Friday, the Guardian ran a piece in its opinion section by none other than Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas in Gaza and now, it appears, a perfectly acceptable room-mate for the leading voice in Britain’s Liberal-Left.

Direct quotations from the Hamas Charter (source: Yale Law School)
“ Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).“
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.“
“The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).“

Let’s not even get into the question of Hamas‘s attitude to gays and women – they support hanging the former and suppressing the latter. (By the way, it’s the gay pride festival today in Tel Aviv, and of course Gaza – no, sorry that last bit was a joke, a sick one, but not as sick as the Guardian editors who commissioned Hamas to write a piece for them.)(MORE Commentator)

“We will hold sacred the beliefs held sacred by others.” - Obama's State Department Purges Section on Religious Freedom from Its Human Rights Reports.

(other) “We will hold sacred the beliefs held sacred by others.” - Obama's State Department Purges Section on Religious Freedom from Its Human Rights Reports.(CNS).HT: AlwaysOnWatch.The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports. The new human rights reports--purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered--are also the human rights reports that cover the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.
For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report – a full two years behind the times – or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011. Leonard Leo, who recently completed a term as chairman of the USCIRF, says that removing the sections on religious freedom from the State Department's Country Reports on Human Roghts is a bad idea. Since 1998, when Congress created USCIRF, the State Department has been required to issue a separate yearly report specifically on International Religious Freedom. But a section reporting on religious freedom has also always been included in the State Department's legally required annual country-by-country reports on human rights--that is, until now.
And this is the first year the State Department would have needed to report on the effect the Arab Spring has had on religious freedom in the Middle East--had its reports, as always before, included a section on religious freedom. “The commission that I served on has some real concerns about that bifurcation, because the human rights reports receive a lot of attention, and to have pulled religious freedom out of it means that fewer people will obtain information about what’s going on with that particular freedom or right. So you don’t have the whole picture because they split it up now,” Leo told CNSNews.com. Former U.S. diplomat Thomas Farr says it’s possible that the move to totally separate religious freedom from the human rights reports could simply be a bureaucratic maneuver. But another possibility is much more likely. “The other possibility is the Obama administration is downplaying international religious freedom,” Farr said. Far more resources have been allocated by the Obama administration to other human rights issues than have been directed toward religious freedom. “(T)he ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, for example, who is the official charged by the law to lead U.S. religious freedom policy, did not even step foot into her office until two-and-a-half years were gone of a four-year administration,” he said. “Whereas other human rights priorities of the administration, such as the ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, were in place within months. So that tells you something.“It tells me that this has never been a priority for the Obama administration, and it’s not now,” he said. “So it seems to me plausible to at least question the removal of religious freedom from the human rights report, although, as I say, there could be other explanations, less insidious, if you will.”The State Department, meanwhile, has given no indication of when -- or if -- the next International Religious Freedom Report will be released. Hmmmmm........Try Never...Obama “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”Read the full story here.

Three Card Monty

Sexual assaults on women in Tahrir Square increasing

(EOZ) Today_there_is_a mass demonstration of thousands in Tahrir Square in Cairo against what many Egyptians felt was a light sentence for Hosni Mubarak in his trial.
The women in the protest better watch out.
From AP:

Her screams were not drowned out by the clamor of the crazed mob of nearly 200 men around her.
An endless number of hands reached toward the woman in the red shirt in an assault scene that lasted less than 15 minutes but felt more like an hour.
She was pushed by the sea of men for about a block into a side street from Tahrir Square. Many of the men were trying to break up the frenzy, but it was impossible to tell who was helping and who was assaulting.
Pushed against the wall, the unknown woman's head finally disappeared. Her screams grew fainter, then stopped. Her slender tall frame had clearly given way. She apparently had passed out. The helping hands finally splashed the attackers with bottles of water to chase them away.
The assault late Tuesday was witnessed by an Associated Press reporter who was almost overwhelmed by the crowd herself and had to be pulled to safety by men who ferried her out of the melee in an open Jeep.
Reports of assaults on women in Tahrir, the epicentre of the uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down last year, have been on the rise with a new round of mass protests to denounce a mixed verdict against the ousted leader and his sons in a trial last week.
No official numbers exist for attacks on women in the square because police do not go near the area, and women rarely report such incidents.
But activists and protesters have reported a number of particularly violent assaults on women in the past week. Many suspect such assaults are organised by opponents of the protests to weaken the spirit of the protesters and drive people away.
Mahmoud said two of his female friends were cornered Monday and pushed into a small passageway by a group of men in the same area where the woman in the red shirt was assaulted.
One was groped while the other was seriously assaulted, Mahmoud said, refusing to divulge specifics other than to insist she wasn't raped.
Mona Seif, a well-known activist who has been trying to promote awareness about the problem, said Wednesday she was told about three different incidents in the past five days, including two that were violent.
In one incident, the attackers ripped the woman's clothes off and trampled on her companions, she said.
Women, who participated in the 18-day uprising that ended with Mubarak's 11 February 2011 ouster as leading activists, protesters, medics and even fighters to ward off attacks by security agents or affiliated thugs on Tahrir, have found themselves facing the same groping and assaults that have long plagued Egypt's streets during subsequent protests in the square.
Women also have been targeted in recent crackdowns on protesters by military and security troops, a practice commonly used by Mubarak security that grew even more aggressive in the days following his ouster.
In a defining image of the post-Mubarak state violence against women, troops were captured on video stomping with their boots on the bare chest of a woman, with only her blue bra showing, as other troops pulled her by the arms across the ground.
A 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights says two-thirds of women in Egypt experienced sexual harassment on a daily basis.

It isn't only political protests that have men attacking women. They do it on religious holidays, too.
And if you think that women who cover their bodies and hair are less likely to be attacked, think again.
The article does say that some Egyptians are fed up, and organizing patrols to protect women in Tahrir Square.

...But America's Secretary of State is worried about the lives of Israeli women... why? It's political.
America and Israel has differences recognized by our courts, but gender difference helps respect women. Feminism does not respect women. Feminism oppresses equivalently.

Georgina Bloomberg on Soda Ban: ‘People Should Be Allowed to Make Their Own Bad Choices’

In the week or so since Mayor Bloomberg unveiled his plan to ban the sale of unnecessarily large sweetened beverages, the local media has been flush with rants from deli-cart owners, Coca Cola execs, and Joe Blow on the street. Which is hardly surprising. But Bloomberg might not have expected to some of the criticism to come from his own family "His intentions are good. And, it’s the kind of thing that the public will thank him for in twenty years," the mayor's 29-year-old daughter, Georgina, told us at a cocktail soiree hosted by Stefano Tonchi for Gucci’s Frida Gianni last night. "However," she continued, "people should be allowed to make their own bad choices."

Bloomberg the Younger suggested that her father adopt a more market-based approach to fighting obesity. "Ideally," she said, "he would lower the cost of healthy food instead of banning unhealthy food. If people were able to afford to eat nutritious food, I think they would make better choices."
As for her? "I really like Fresca," she said.

If we all were Billionaires then we could be this arrogantly stupid and people would listen to us. If they really cared about the people... and they don't... they'd allow people to buy what they want on the free market and the money would go towards marketing healthy lives. Feminist progressives like this girl don't really care. The men are pissed... and they want to smoke a J and these Democrats have made K2 illegal... Legalize Marijuana already! Stop picking on the working guy. You know your Dad is trying to make it harder for someone to share a bottle of Coke. You are trying to make NYC an upscale playground for people like you and your Dad. Do you really think NYC has the money to subsidize healthy food? I pray to G-d that her ilk will not be running the country. Yeah... the country club is full of elitists... and they sometimes have big mouths.