Nukes @ the Beeb, and today's items from Larwyn & Maria

Larwyn's links
Iran mulled nuclear bomb in 1988, and it's at it now: An alarm signal from Rafsanjani?

What gives with the odd reporting about United 93 in the Times of London?

The Motoons: One Year Later

Vanderleun takes a bull by the horns: QUICK. DON'T THINK OF A BLACK ELEPHANT

A few links on Foley: Mark Foley Flashback: If I Were One Of Those Sickos. Mark Foley Thread - Blurt Out Your Thoughts. Foley setup? What did the GOP leadership know? Foleygate! Altered Images! What's Going On Here?

HIV Called "Gay Disease". Michael Fumento wrote about this 13 years ago in his book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics

The Coming Storm - Jefferson - The ties that bind

Muslims had better start worrying about

From the Ladies
Via Janette, Chomsky mocking

Via Armies of Liberation, A FOCUS ON THE AFRICAN SLAVES IN THE ARAB WORLD (emphasis added)

A comparison of the Muslim slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Muslim slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.

While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Transsahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!

While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.

While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.

While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).

While Christian Reformers spearheaded the antislavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilized her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.

Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit the Muslim slave trade.

By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Muslim slave trade could exceed 180 million. Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalized slavery from their statute books.

And this only after international pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organizations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries.

Reports on slavery in Sudan, Mauritania for instance needs looking into. Recently, a former slave from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Mende Nazer, had her autobiography: "Slave: My True Story" published. Mende Nazer was an alleged slave in Sudan. She was made famous by her transfer to England to serve a diplomatic family.

Maria's articles:
BILL PARDONED TERROR

SECRETS FOR SALE - CHEAP

HILLARY'S HASTY REJOINDER

A bit of bobnoxiousness: Memo to the NY Times: Conservatism is Caused by Fighting It

Socks

In a lighter mode, Maria would like to stay at the Hotel Fox in Copenhagen Denmark. To me, it looks like a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't be able to sleep there.

Dog Owners Warned Over Sugar-Free Items

And last, but not least,
Two more Americans get the Nobel Prize for Medicine: Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello won the 2006 Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for discovering how to control the flow of genetic information in a cell.