Dr. Paul Williams is being sued by Canada’s McMaster University for things which he said about McMaster and Islam in a radio interview with a Canadian radio station.  This could happen to any one.  Most bloggers who are concerned about terrorism have probably quoted Paul Williams at one time or other.

Apparently it is against the law in Canada to express an opinion, critical facts, about a subject when Canadian law expressly forbids such. The amazing thing is that when interviewed, Dr. Williams, an American citizen was speaking from the confines of his home located on sovereign American soil. According to Williams comment to Savage the legal action has already nearly financially ruined him. Is this the cost of fighting worldwide terrorism? Is this the cost of fighting to keep America and the rest of the free world safe? For this reason Michael Savage, outraged by this event has called upon all to support Williams. Not being one who simply talks, Savage immediately pledged $5000.00 of his personal wealth to the Paul Williams legal defense fund.

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Egyptian blogger ‘Sandmonkey‘ is calling it quits due to the Egyptian government’s crackdown on bloggers and dissenting voices. While anonymous, ‘Sandmonkey’ posts:

I no longer believe that my anonymity is kept, especially with State Secuirty agents lurking around my street and asking questions about me since that day. I ignore that, the same way I ignored all the clicking noises that my phones started to exhibit all of a sudden, or the law suit filed by Judge Mourad on my friends, and instead grew bolder and more reckless at a time where everybody else started being more cautious.

Paranoia or just cause? I believe it’s the latter as I have been a reader of his blog for quite some time now and have watched as he has always seemed to take a dig at the Egyptian government when it comes to foreign policy and domestic issues, as well as paid attention as one Egyptian blogger was arrested.

When ‘Sandmonkey’ has to quit blogging in fear of being arrested, it takes all the calls of some U.S. Liberals who claim someone is stifling their dissent, and I still don’t know who that ‘someone’ is, into greater context and once again presents them as the jokes they are.

‘Sandmonkey’ will be missed, not just as a strong democratic voice in Egypt, but also as a humorous blogger who always put items into the greater context that is missing in today’s world.

Check out the site now, which will certainly remain up since it’s hosted on Freedom’s Zone to help ensure he had a place to blog.

Also check out Atlas’ interview with ‘Sandmonkey’ who speaks on the Egyptian crackdown and what Pelosi’s trip to Syria and Hoyer’s meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood has done to the region.  A small excerpt:

Atlas: Where you shocked when Hoyer met with the Muslim Brotherhood?

SANDMONKEY: Let me tell you something. I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago and I met a couple of Syrian activists. They one thing they told me that was really funny about the Pelosi visit. After Pelosi came to Syria two things happened. People on Syrian TV were saying, “We forced the Americans to knock on the Damascus gate!” Sort of like an admission that we messed things up in Iraq so much that America had to come and beg for their help.

But the day after Pelosi’s visits there were immediate arrests of Syrian activists. That was the fruit she yielded. “Oh the Americans came over and they said they have a different foreign policy  and they’re more interested in placating Bashar’s ego.” And he went out and got [arrested] everyone he wanted because he knew he had an ally in Washington that wouldn’t pressure him as much . . .

ATLAS: We have to educate the American people. You think the American people know this?

SANDMONKEY: No, but do they even care at this point? I don’t think they are interested in the discussion any more. There are people that have made up their mind, they think we need to placate the dictators because America is wrong and everyone else is always right. That’s how they operate.

Sad, very sad.

If you recall the news that an atheist who had reportedly taken on Christianity on YouTube deciding to tackle Islam before his account was suspended, you were probably wondering what it was that he said about Islam that was deemed cancel-worthy.  Webpronews carves it up:

Gisburne is a self-described atheist with, at least from the one video, a deep questioning of Muslim claims about the Koran. To express his doubts about Islam being a religion of peace, Gisburne created a 10-minute video, entitled “Islamic Teachings” that was nothing but violent quotations taken from the Koran instructing followers to kill nonbelievers and speed their way to Hell where Allah will torture them forever.

It would seem quoting the holy book in a sort of testament against itself was over the line for someone working at Google-owned YouTube. Not only was the video deleted without any type of warning to the uploader, but the uploader’s account was also deleted with only the explanation (or accusation) of submitting inappropriate content, a category usually reserved for nudity or video violence.

It is not, however, content within the Koran that YouTube finds wrong which is as plain as day considering the number of Islamists on YouTube preaching directly from the Koran, but rather it was using the Koran to illustrate another point against the religion of Islam that YouTube found demeaning.

Syria has blocked a host of websites that portray views contrary to the nation’s line and deemed “dangerous” to Syrians. Among those closed is the website of Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat and al-Shaffaf. Hotmail is also censored because “it is not possible to control the email on this site.” Why must they control the email on the site?

These closures aren’t surprising by any means, but India shutting down access to some sites is rather shocking. One of those sites, The Jawa Report, I am a partial contributor to. India denied access to the sites following the Mumbai bombings. This site has not been restricted in India, though there is no reason for it to be. There is though no reason for The Jawa Report to be censored in India either since all authors at The Jawa Report are anti-radical Islam.

I must admit I am scratching my head on India’s move and think the nation could have better use of their time than to censor sites that argue against the type of action that recently killed 150+ in Mumbai.

UPDATE: Dr. Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report weighs in and believes his site along with many others were banned due to the commentary of urinating on the Koran that went with the Newsweek allegations later proven false.  That one line in a long article caused mass protests, which was why Shackleford decided to poke fun at the intolerance.  I guess the final joke is on him and the others that participated, yet it says something quite damning about the government of India that I might get into at a later date.

A Blog For All linked with India Banning Bloggers...
Blogs of War linked with India Bans Blogs...
The Jawa Report linked with Why The Jawa Report Was Banned in India and Why it Matters...

So often I am wrong and too often I hate admitting the error of my ways.  This post serves as a way to do that.

Commenter Jimmy the Dhimmi asked what happend to The Jawa Report.  I had been told the only issue with the site being down was that it was just switching servers.  Apparently that was partially wrong because the site also was taken down by Turkish hackers before switching servers.

Nonetheless, The Jawa Report is back up and operational and I must admit that I was wrong to say the site was just down because it was switching servers.

Sean Hackbarth is looking for a new job and a career change.  Sean is one of the good guys I have had the chance to meet while blogging and I wish him the best.  An excerpt of his post announcing his choice to change careers:

Currently I am a bookseller at Barnes & Noble. Since December 1998 I have been constantly involved with customer service. My primary job is to get the book into the customer’s hand. I either find it on the shelf, sitting on a table, get it from a warehouse, or reserve it at another Barnes & Noble.

My loyal readers know I am more than knee-deep in weblogging. Some might not know I have been tapping away on The American Mind since December 1999 which makes it one of the longest-running political weblogs in the nation and Wisconsin.

My biggest strength is my ability to take all the stuff I happen to remember and synthesize, to take disparate ideas and smash them together to come up with a (hopefully) useful solution. That is demonstrated everyday on my weblog where I try to publish insight rather than a regurgitation of what I found on a news web site. At Barnes & Noble that means if the customer provides a vague description of what book she is looking for I can make and educated guess or find alternative titles that would be useful.

If you can help him out that would be great.  From someone who has done the career change twice now and if I can get the gumption to do it a third time, I know how hard it is to make up your mind to change career paths and apply former experience into another career.

Hyscience has been attacked by someone who doesn’t agree with what the crew writes.  The site is back up though and, as always, encourage our readers to also read Hyscience.

Interesting.

Google lifted the veil this week on one of its best-kept secrets: which nations search for what.

Who looks up democracy most avidly? Who seeks out Allah or Christ most faithfully? Who types in “drugs” or “sex” most frequently?

No country’s secrets are spared.

Pakistanis look up “Danish cartoons” more avidly than anyone, according to Google. They also lead the rankings for “sex” – with their neighbor and nuclear rival India seldom far behind.

Even though homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom ranks No. 2 for searches for “gay sex,” behind the Philippines.

President George W. Bush commands at least seven times as many searches in Russia as its own leader, Vladimir Putin. Among the French, Bush generates about 50 percent more look-ups than Chirac; among Iranians, Bush is searched twice as often as the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I played around with Google Trends for a while before writing this post.  Just about every word and term I could think of I queried, or at least until boredom set in.  Check it out.

Hat tip to No Parasan.

(San Jose, California) In the 21st Century equivalent to the smoky back room, Google evaluates websites and assigns a page rank which determines the order of Internet search results. I believe this lawsuit seeks to open the doors to the back room and clear the smoke.

From MercuryNews.com:

Google has mysteriously downgraded the search ranking of a Web site geared to help parents care for young children, causing a “cataclysmic fall” in advertising revenue and the number of monthly page views, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Friday.

The civil suit by KinderStart.com of Norwalk seeks financial damages and more information about Google’s secret method for ranking sites. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, seeks class-action status for other sites that have seen their rankings drop without warning or explanation from the Mountain View search giant.

A Google spokesman told the Associated Press that the company hadn’t seen the suit and had no immediate comment.

Since it launched in May 2000, KinderStart.com had built up its traffic to more than 10 million page views a month, the suit says, with much of the traffic coming from Google search users. But in March 2005, page views plunged 70 percent and advertising revenue fell 80 percent and hasn’t recovered. KinderStart.com suspects that Google erected invisible barriers that divert consumers elsewhere when they type in a search but says Google will not explain what happened.

The drop-off was so sudden that the Web site suspects Google has a flawed method or blocks sites subjectively despite Google’s pledge to provide objective search results.

It will be interesting to see how this case develops. I’d suspect that Google will act to prevent class-action status.

From Interested-Participant.

Probably not the best use of taxpayer money:

A JAIL decision to give £1,000 laptops to 28 top terror suspects was last night branded “disgraceful” and a dangerous waste of money. Belmarsh bosses said the computers were necessary to help the men prepare their legal defences.

But angry critics said the £28,000 would be better spent on upping security at the jail which, the Mirror can reveal, is about a third understaffed. They also fear that the laptops could be used for criminal activity even though there will be no internet access.

The prisoners include those accused of the 21/7 attempted bombings in London, al-Qaeda suspects and members of the bullying Muslim Boys gang.

A source said: “It’s a disgraceful waste of taxpayers’ money. The prison is severely understaffed and £28,000 could have recruited an officer for 18 months. “It’s also dangerous. The prisoners could easily make CD-Roms, which could be handed to visitors, and orchestrate criminal activity from the inside. Inmates are incredibly resourceful. It wouldn’t surprise me if they eventually managed to get the internet on their laptops. [Source]

Legal defense? Nah. My guess is that they just want to watch porn. Then maybe they’ll work on spreading jihad within the prison system.