American Muslims The Washington Post's ‘On Faith' section carries this story about the difficulties American Muslims are facing when they travel outside the US and then seek to return. Security concerns and personal travel seem to work at cross purposes and lead to problems. Security concerns usually win. One take-away point for American Muslims is that they do need to pay attention to what's going on the world around them. Travel to Yemen as a recent convert, for example, is not a wise thing to do these days, particularly if you're studying Arabic at the same school as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Christmas Day bomber. Could security do a better job in screening, be less categoric in its anti-terror profiling? Probably yes. Just how it is to do so, however, is not entirely clear. – xrdarabia.org BBC's bias Israel has just launched a new assault on Gaza – 13 airstrikes – and here is how the BBC reports it: “Israeli warplanes have carried out at least 13 airstrikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources have told the BBC.” Gaza is not besieged by Israel, you see. It's ‘Hamas-ruled'. It makes it so much more acceptable to target it than if it were, say, ‘densely populated by civilians'. The story and its propaganda content has been expanded since it was first published. The article states: “Palestinians and rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans died in the conflict, while Israel puts the figure at 1,166.” Now, since the Israelis haven't been on the ground counting the casualties, how would they know the total numbers? In fact, they don't know how many people were killed under their bombs. If so, then why does the BBC bother reporting the Israeli figures at all? These are merely meant to whitewash the crimes they have perpetrated; this transparent, yet it seems that the BBC lends credibility to those figures. Notice also the “Gazans died” as opposed to what really happened: they were killed. One denotes intention the other could include natural causes, but the Gaza Massacre was anything but natural, and thus the correct terminology should be “killed”. Notice also: “The BBC's Jon Donnison, in Jerusalem, says Israel appears to be sending a signal that whenever there is militant activity inside Gaza it will respond.” So, is it always the Israelis who “respond”? Has BBC reportage ever reported Palestinians “responding” to Israeli attacks? And why refer to Palestinian resistance actions as “militant”? This is another euphemism meant to hide the nature of the Palestinian actions, i.e., defending themselves of the Israeli colonial project which invariably entails violence and dispossession. “Militant” is a generic term that doesn't indicate the nature of the violence, and again helps hide the nature and origin of the violence in the area. And why is there no reference whatsoever in that report to the continuing siege of Gaza? Malnutrition is now becoming rampant; children's development is becoming stunted (most youngsters are now shorter than their parents). Now, while respecting a ceasefire the situation has not improved, then what are the Palestinians supposed to do? Starve in silence? Unfortunately, the BBC's reportage only mentions the manifestations of violence while it is mostly silent on its causes. – pulsemedia.org Iraq to Afghanistan The US Army plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next year and a half to refurbish and move equipment out of Iraq as the military focus shifts to a build-up in Afghanistan. Third Army Commander Lt. Gen. William Webster told Pentagon reporters Friday there are 2.8 million pieces of equipment in 88,000 containers that need to be moved out of Iraq, calling it the largest operation “since the build-up for World War II.” The equipment drawdown coincides with the troop drawdown President Obama outlined in 2009. The president wants 50,000 troops left in Iraq by the end of the summer while surging 30,000 forces into Afghanistan in that same period. The rest of the US presence in Iraq is supposed to be gone by the end of 2011. – airforcepundit.blogspot.com Windows Phone 7 Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft's rejuvenated mobile push this year, hatred of the “Windows Phone 7 Series” moniker has been nearly universal – it's too long, it trips you up every time you try to say it (seriously, just listen to any of our podcasts), and the “Series” bit doesn't make a whole lot of sense anyhow. Happily, Microsoft has heard the world loud and clear on this one, officially changing the name today to the simpler, happier, more logical “Windows Phone 7.” The branding move doesn't have any technical or strategic significance, as far as we can tell – it truly is just a name change, that's all – so you can expect the same software to launch later this year that we've already been anticipating... you just won't have to deal with a tongue twister every time you're trying to tell a friend about it.
