"We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now," said David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer who was a specialist adviser for the Bush administration and is now a consultant to the Obama White House. (Source)

An Azeri immigrant in Russia's northern city of Saint Petersburg has been charged with hiring hit men to kill his 21-year-old daughter for wearing a mini-skirt, police say...Russia has experienced a revival of conservative religious tradition since the fall of the Soviet Union both within its Russian Orthodox and large Muslim communities. (Source)

A LEADING female Afghan politician was shot dead after leaving a provincial council meeting in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, that her colleagues had begged her not to attend.Sitara Achakzai was attacked by two gunmen on Sunday as she arrived at her home in a rickshaw, a vehicle colleagues said she chose to use to avoid attracting attention.The Taliban claimed responsibility. (Source)

PERSONAL COMMENT: Empowering women is probably the best way to dilute the virulent effects of a religion that is written by men. Unfortunately for Afghan women, Sitara Achakzai has been murdered

THE NEXT few months will be crucial in defusing a global terrorist threat that would be even deadlier than the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a leading Washington counter-terrorism expert warns. David Kilcullen ? a former Australian army lieutenant colonel who helped devise the US troop surge that revitalised the American campaign in Iraq ? fears Pakistan is at risk of falling under al-Qaeda control. (Source)

Personal Comment: While Islamic fundamentalists are inching their way to getting their hands on nuclear weapons, many of us still insist that beliefs should remain unchallenged, regardless of how destructive they may prove to be.

Last month, I wrote about Freedom Of Speech, Religion and the UN arguing against the dangers of such anti-blasphemy resolutions. Alas, the UN passed this resolution. It is 'non-binding' and it is up to each nation to decide what to do about blasphemy.

Like I said: I also want to protect human beings from being discriminated against and they should NOT be subject to physical violence because of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof. This issue, however, is not about protecting people from other people. It is about taking our right to think for ourselves and to speak our minds. The push for anti-blasphemy laws is not about protecting people from other people. It is about immunising religious ideas from intellectual probing and enquiry. We cannot protect ideas from other ideas. The ability to explore a full range of ideas is important because truth cannot be arrived upon unless all points are considered first.

Regardless, here is the resolution. It is ironic that the term Human Rights is written in the same document when stopping people to think for themselves is the biggest human rights abuse I can think of.

It is non-binding but it is the next step to it being binding, isn't it?

"THE Pope has compared attempts to purge religion from public life to the mockery Jesus faced from the mob. Increasingly, secular Western societies risked drifting into a "desert of godlessness", Pope Benedict XVI warned in an uncompromising Good Friday address. (Source)"

Is a world with religion better than a world without religion? The Pope says yes. The Pope warns us about a world without religion but how much better is the world now with religions dominating the minds of many people? I ask: Is religion really effective in making people behave well? Many of the crimes we see now are caused purely by religious beliefs.The Islamic fundamentalists are motivated to kill purely because of Koranic verses that instruct them to subdue infidels and non believers. Just this week, a mother shoots her son from the back because she believed she was the anti-Christ. By killing her son, she sends him to Heaven. She has a record of being mentally ill and so many people might dismiss her actions as being just simply crazy. However, her beliefs that an anti-Christ exists and there is life after death led her to do what she did. Would she have killed her son if she did not believe in these religious ideas?