KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) — Hundreds of angry protesters, some waving ceremonial swords from trucks equipped with loud speakers, gathered Friday outside the presidential palace to denounce a teacher whose class named a teddy bear “Mohammed” — some calling for her execution.
Friday’s demonstrations began as worshippers spilled out of mosques in the capital after Friday prayers. They marched to the palace, which is on the same street as Unity High School, where Gibbons taught grade school students. Those who named the bear were 7 years old.
Gibbons asked the children to pick their favorite name for the new class mascot, which she was using to aid lessons about animals and their habitats.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/11/30/sudan.bears/index.html
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OK, I really am started to get mystified by Islam. I’m all for tolerance and accepting other faiths, but at some point we’ve gotta call BS and not dance around the issue that sometimes Islam produces creepy shit. If parents named their child Mohammed, and the child ends up being a thief or murderer, do you execute the parents for insulting the prophet? What the hell is going on here?
Or is this all some orchestrated “beat down the Western powers” gambit?
Chavez gets shit-canned. Then gets pissy.
Chavez cuts ties with Colombia
CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez cut diplomatic ties with Colombia on Wednesday and said he will not restore them as long as President Alvaro Uribe is in power after Uribe fired him as a mediator in hostage talks.
“I’m telling the world — as long as President Uribe is president of Colombia, I will not have any type of relations with him or with the government of Colombia. I cannot,” Chavez told a political rally in western Venezuela.
Chavez recalled his ambassador from Bogota on Tuesday and branded the pro-U.S. Uribe a “pawn of the empire” for firing him as mediator in talks to free hostages held by Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.
Uribe, a conservative, is Washington’s closest ally in South America. He said on Wednesday that Chavez, his ideological opposite, should stop acting with “rage and vanity.”
The dispute threatens to damage the $6 billion in bilateral trade between the Andean neighbors.

I think this Peta Poster is the cutest thing around.
It also makes me hungry.
Cambridge MA
Mass Ave/Central Square
7:25 PM
I’ve been playing this video game called “Assassin’s Creed” lately. You play a Muslim assassin in the 12th century, and your goal is to assassinate all the Crusaders and Templars in the Holy Land. A lot of the game relies on sneaking around and not being detected by the guards and soldiers and such. It’s a fun game, but part of this game mechanic disturbs me — sometimes you sneak into a group of scholars or monks to get past military checkpoints, and to get closer to your assassination target. You even bow your head and put your hands together to pray when you’re “undercover” as a scholar/monk (your character is the one in the middle, in the image below).

Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Official: Bride, groom stopped in Iraq actually terror suspects

- Soldiers became suspicious because car wouldn’t stop; convoy was all male
- Troops also suspicious that groom refused to life his bride’s veil, official says
- Stubbly-faced man in bride’s gown, three others arrested on terror-related charges
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/26/iraq.bride/index.html
The funny thing is, they got these guys to pose for a PICTURE at the checkpoint before hauling them off? Doesn’t even look like they’re in handcuffs.
When a few doofuses who do this in their SPARE TIME (which is incredibly limited, due to our incredible importance) can write better “short conversations” than regional Townie Town rags like the Improper Bostonian.
Doth I brag?
I’ll let you, Gentle GIKKU Reader, be the judge.

Here in Boston, we get very excited by the word “sex.”
For years, I’ve really been into the verb form of “to party.”
And now, major news organizations have finally woken up to the potential of this amazing word:
Partiers’ fire may have sparked Malibu blaze
A campfire set by people “partying” in the woods may have started a huge wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes near Malibu, California, on Saturday. The fire, fueled by dry Santa Ana winds and low humidity, forced thousands of people to evacuate
Someday, it won’t have quotations around it.
Because I’m all about partying, not “partying.”

Meet “The Gewgaws”: Brad on bass, Allen on Guitar, Heather on drums, Debbie on vocals. Camille, our moral support. We rocked “When You Were Young” on medium, baby.
Unfortunately, right after this photo was taken, I tripped over my Xbox, knocking it over, and scratched the Rock Band game disc beyond repair (and I tried everything from furniture polish to toothpaste to boiling the disc). That was the end of our Rock Band dreams, at least for the evening.
I am now headed to GameStop to buy a new disc.