Utror Valley near Kalam http://laf.ee/wp

As a young child I remember going to Swat on summer vacation twice. It was an enchanting place with beautiful landscapes so unfamiliar to one who lived in the plains.

Swat Valley http://3.bp.blogspot.com

Saidu Sharif, Kalam, the names of the town’s were like from fairy tales. I still have those wonderful images of my childhood whenever I hear the name Swat.

Kalam www.swatvalley.com

Swat used to be different from the other regions in the north frontier of Pakistan. They used to not have the rigid view of life and religion.

Bahrain Swat racismandnationalconsciousnessnews

My wife tells me of her visit to Swat long ago (before we had met), with her family, and how they met the family of the Wali-e-Swat (the then ruler of Swat) and the love she saw among the people. She especially remembers at mealtime how all the women of the Wali’s household, servants and ladies, sat together to…

Despite the perilous state of American newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch advertising department took an ethical stand and refused to distribute the DVD of a film that for two years has troubled American Muslims.

The film, called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” was distributed to an estimated 28 million people via 70 American newspapers, primarily in states crucial to the coming presidential election. The only other newspaper reported to have refused the DVD was the News & Record in Greensboro, NC.

The Miami Herald reported that its own decision to distribute the DVD angered the Muslim community there:

We feel that it’s going to incite more hate and bigotry against our community,” said Altaf Ali, Florida chapter director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The DVD does not do enough to differentiate between terrorists and mainstream Muslims, he said.

The Herald’s description of the DVD says it includes…

…montages of terrorist training camps and suicide bombers…

Interesting recent story from The Journal-News in Hillsboro, Ill.

Here’s the lede:

For the purpose of Thursday night’s emergency exercise drill, the Continuing Recovery Center in Irving had become Irving Mosque, the home-base for a radical, heavily armed group with suspected terrorist ties.

According to the story, about 120 people in 30 different first-responder agencies took part in the drill, about 70 miles northeast of St. Louis. Some of those agencies included the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, the Illinois State Police Statewide Terrorism Intelligence Center, the Illinois Secretary of State Law Enforcement, the Illinois Secretary of State Bomb Squad, Madison County HazMat and Madison County Unified Command.

My favorite quote in the story (the only quote in the story) comes from Montgomery County EMA director Diana Holmes who said the exercise “went very well”:

I would like to thank everyone involved, and especially the folks in Irving who allowed us to use their community for this…