My friend Ralph Janke who is from Germany and lives here in Waterloo, pointed me to a very interesting project that he worked on.

The project is funded by the European Union, and therefore uses open source and open data formats.

Alphonse Mingana: Assyrian Orientalist

The blog post titled: Dreamweaver is Dying ends with "Long Live Drupal!"

Although they are different technologies, one being an design tool and HTML editor, and the other a Content Management System/Framework, this shows the shift from tools for static sites that do it all (design, edit, publish), to dynamic sites with dynamic backends.

Via Slashdot.

News from Jerusalem yesterday showed Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks exchanging kicks and punches, with many of them featuring bruises and bloodied faces.

Of course it is odd that these are religious figures fighting inside a holy site, but if one examines the news deeper, he will see that this is a frequent occurance.

Earlier in 2008, Armenian and Greek Orthodox fought like they did yesterday.

While Egypt saw bread riots recently, we see another row caused by bread, namely, burning of bread in Israel.

Not to mention panem et circenses (bread and circus games).

Media bias is a well known fact. Here is an example on how two Canadian news organizations are reporting on Christmas celebrations by the Christian Palestinians in Gaza.

While CBC highlights the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and border closure, CTV has taken a more biased view where it presents Christians are oppressed by Muslims in Gaza, specially under the rule of Hamas.

Ignored are the facts that Christians and Muslims have lived side by side in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East for more than 13 centuries.

Last month, a photo was circulated by email and on blogs that has a pack of pork meat with a sticker saying Halal on it. The packer is a Singapore company and the country of origin is Australia.

Halal حلال is an Arabic word meaning 'permissible', but in non-Arabic speaking Muslim countries it takes a legal meaning derived from Islamic law. Pork is forbidden in Islam, just like Judaism. Hence it can never be "halal" in either sense of the word.

It seems that some bloggers thought it was true, while others thought it was a sick joke.

Nowadays, it is often taken for granted that Muslims are staunch Anti-Semites. Most people in the West either do not know, or deliberately ignore, historical facts to the contrary.

History of Jews in Muslim Lands

Compared to Europe, Jews faired much better in Muslim lands over 1300+ years.

Ossama Bin Laden, head of Al-Qaeda, appeared in a video posted on some sympathetic web sites. This is the first time in 3 years he has done so.

Noting that he looks more youthful, Western media has noticed his shorter trimmed bird, and less grey hair compared to before.

Moreover, Radio Free Europe analyses certain aspects of the video message, including:

I am not a supporter of the Muslim veil (Niqab or Burka, among other names), as I think it is more cultural than religious. But I certainly do not mind someone wearing it for whatever reasons she may think.

Now,
Elections Canada said that veiled women will not have to uncover their faces to have their identity verified for the upcoming elections.

CBC reports:

While Tajikistan universities ban hijab for women, Azerbaijan police burns the beards of men growing them.

Sometimes, the focus on religious freedom issues of Muslims is on Western countries, where there are indeed issues, but let us not forget that despotic regimes in Muslim countries do the same too.