Jing-reed's Musings from Thailand

The Travels of Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta was a Muslim Moroccan explorer, known for his extensive travels, accounts of which were published in the Rihla [lit. "Journey"]. Over a period of thirty years, he visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands; his journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, and to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance surpassing threefold his near-contemporary Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta is considered the greatest traveller of all time.

Tim Mackintosh Smith follows in the footsteps of 14th Century Moroccan scholar Ibn Battutah, who covered 75,000 miles, 40 countries and three continents in a 30-year odyssey. Beginning in north Africa, Tim visits Battutah's birthplace of Tangier in Morocco, and stumbles on a performance of medieval trance music. In Egypt, he goes to a remote village where Battutah had an astonishing prophetic dream and visits the world's oldest university in Cairo, then on to India and eventually to China [by way of Dubai and a visit to the 'Ibn Battuta Shopping Mall'].

Following The Footsteps of Ibn Battutah [1/3]

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Following The Footsteps of Ibn Battutah [2/3]

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Following The Footsteps of Ibn Battutah [3/3]

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"Book of Mormon Book of Lies"

Book of Mormon Book of Lies   [Amazon]

"The Book of Mormon is one of the boldest hoaxes of all time. And millions of people have fallen for it.
Joseph Smith Jr. claimed that an angel gifted him—an uneducated farm boy—with ancient golden plates and the ability to translate their hieroglyphics. From that improbable premise sprang The Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with its millions of followers, known as Mormons. In Book of Mormon, Book of Lies, authors Meredith Ray Sheets and Kendal M. Sheets expose The Book of Mormon and the story surrounding its creation as one of the greatest deceptions in the history of America, if not the entire world.

The result of twenty-five years of research, Book of Mormon, Book of Lies will alter the course of global religion, finance, and politics. Book of Lies proves that Smith’s manuscript, which he published in 1830, is nothing more than cleverly disguised plagiarism of The Travels of Marco Polo, the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World as recorded by his son, histories of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and travel journals . . . all readily available to Smith. In Book of Lies, Meredith Sheets, a retired petroleum executive, and Kendal M. Sheets, an experienced intellectual property attorney, compare content from historic books with the content of The Book of Mormon. The results are astonishing. For the first time ever, the authors show exactly how the American-born religion of Mormonism and its religious scriptures were created by man and not by God."


Historical facts , linguistics, and archaeology all indicate that the Mormon religion is based on a fabrication of lies and deception, but will that convince someone who believes in the LDS faith?   Sort of doubt it.


Mormon Doctrine Has Been Plagiarized
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The Lost Book of Abraham

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DNA vs. The Book of Mormon

Tutankhamun's Fireball

Yet another intriguing scientific mystery from the BBC's 'Horizon' series.

Tut's gem

"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it was older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation. Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass was itself a scientific enigma. How did it get there and who or what made it? "


BBC Horizon Tutankhamun's Fireball

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Muslim Riots

Below is a comment from Muslim Riots and 14th Century Christians on Unreasonable Faith and which, to me, makes more sense than ALL of noise put out by the countless journalists and polticians that have commented on the recent Muslim riots.

The Vicar says:
September 14, 2012 at 3:52 pm

"We’ve explicitly invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’ve been fighting (mostly bombing, and usually with unmanned drones) in Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. (We bomb children and weddings and farmers. We even send the drones back a few minutes later to bomb the people who come to help cope with the explosions of the initial bombs.) We stand with Israel even when they invade their neighbors and despite their treatment of the Palestinians. Our politicians are saber-rattling against Iran, and we’re already flying drones into their airspace and hacking their computers. Everywhere we go, we loot and destroy and prop up despicable dictators. We don’t invade North Korea, we don’t get into conflicts with China, when there are riots in the west we don’t send in troops, but we take every opportunity to send troops or drones or both to Islamic countries. The Muslims look at all that, and they conclude that we’re targeting Islam.

For the most part they’re wrong — although I have no doubt that there’s a fairly large segment of the U.S. which really does want to kill Muslims specifically. But our case that we aren’t deliberately targeting Muslims would be a lot stronger if we actually came out and told the truth: “we will do anything to make sure that a few large companies control natural resources, we’re racist against anyone who isn’t caucasian, and we want to keep poor and powerless people that way so they aren’t a challenge. Your countries have lots of resources and are largely filled with poor, brown-skinned people. Your religion is just a coincidence.”

Of course, we could also stop bombing, really pull our troops out of other countries (where they shouldn’t be in the first place), and in general stop trying to control the entire world. But I’m trying to stay realistic."

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Whoops - Mrs. God ???

"In this excerpt from NOVAs two-hour special, The Bibles Buried Secrets, archeologist William Dever describes evidence that the ancient Israelite God, YHWH, had a female counterpart. "

In the complete 'Bibles Buried Secrets' [available on YouTube] Nova shows how ancient Judaism changed from polytheistic to monotheistic, and along the way Jehovah [YHWH] got rid of his wife. Contemporary Judaism, Christianity and Islam would all probably prefer to ignore this newest archeological and historical evidence.

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Americans Leave Iraq — II

Last U.S. troops leave Iraq, ending war

"The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country still grappling with political uncertainty.

The war launched in March 2003 with missiles striking Baghdad to oust dictator Saddam Hussein closes with a fragile democracy still facing insurgents, sectarian tensions and the challenge of defining its place in the Arab region.

The final column of around 100 mostly U.S. military MRAP armored vehicles carrying 500 U.S. troops trundled across the southern Iraq desert through the night along an empty highway and across the Kuwaiti border.

Honking their horns, the last batch of around 25 American military trucks and tractor trailers carrying Bradley fighting vehicles crossed the border early on Sunday, their crews waving at fellow troops along the route.

"I just can't wait to call my wife and kids and let them know I am safe," Rodolfo Ruiz said as the border came into sight. Soon afterwards, he told his men the mission was over, "Hey guys, you made it."

For President Barack Obama, the military pullout is the fulfillment of an election promise to bring troops home from a conflict inherited from his predecessor, the most unpopular war since Vietnam and one that tainted America's standing worldwide."



..."the most unpopular war since Vietnam and one that tainted America's standing worldwide."

As Americans mark the end of the Iraq war, they should acknowledge the loss of countless innocent Iraqi lives — losses for which the United States bears responsibility.

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Americans Leave Iraq

It is accepted that Saddam Hussein was a monster, but many of the actions by the Americans during the war and occupation of Iraq have been monstrous as well.

Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq

"One by one, the Marines sat down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America’s time in Iraq: the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.

...The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.

The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers.  . . . "

'Ullu Chods' of the World, Unite !

Pak bans dirty texting: just say no to monkey crotch

"You cannot SMS ullu chod [owl fucker] in Pakistan anymore. Nor can you SMS monkey crotch if you had any reason to do so.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has banned 1,795 expletives on SMS, ordering telecom companies to filter out SMS-es containing these offending words with effect from 21 November 2011. The letter includes a list of 1,109 English words, more pornographic terms than expletives, and another 586 Urdu words which are more colourful sexual expletives of the standard South Asian kind rather than the plain garden variety pornography.

A letter from the PTA, dated 14 November and signed by its Director General (Services), Muhammed Talib Doger invokes the “Protection from Spam, Unsolicited, Fraudulent and Obnoxious Communication Regulations, 2009″ to pass the order. . . . . "

The Express Tribune also comments on this latest revelation from Pakistani PTA. 


Pakistanis can still rape, pillage, murder, throw acid in the faces of women who piss them off [as long as they sing the praises of Allah], but mentioning 'owl fuckers',  'Athletes Foot', willies, condoms and more than a thousand other 'offensive' words will be forbidden.

US Troops Out of Iraq

Obama: All US Troops Out of Iraq by End of Year

"Speaking from the White House, President Barack Obama announced today that all US troops in Iraq would be withdrawn by the end of the year. The final drawdown will leave behind thousands of private security contractors and State Department employees.

"As promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year," Obama said during his announcement. "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over."  . . . . .

Between 4,500 and 5,000 private security contractors will remain in Iraq to protect two US consulates and the embassy in Baghdad, according to Denis McDonough, Obama's deputy national security adviser."

The State Department will have 16,000 civilian employees on the ground in Iraq and is preparing for its largest overseas operation since the end of World War II, according to a Washington Post report.

While onlookers in Washington were expecting today's announcement, the official end of the Iraq war is bittersweet for Americans who opposed the costly, bloody conflict in the first place.  "Today's announcement marks the end of a war that should never have happened," , , , , ,


A pertinent comment to the above article:

"Sure, the private contractors remain making impressive salaries while our troops come home to fight for decent health care and affordable housing. Big business wins another war ! "

9-11: Was There an Alternative?

9-11: Was There an Alternative?  [Noam Chomsky]


"9-11: Was There an Alternative?" , published in November 2001 and arguably the single most influential post 9-11 book, internationally renowned thinker Noam Chomsky bridged the information gap around the World Trade Center attacks, cutting through the tangle of political opportunism, expedient patriotism, and general conformity that choked off American discourse in the months immediately following. Chomsky placed the attacks in context, marshaling his deep and nuanced knowledge of American foreign policy to trace the history of American political aggression--in the Middle East and throughout Latin America as well as in Indonesia, in Afghanistan, in India and Pakistan--at the same time warning against America’s increasing reliance on military rhetoric and violence in its response to the attacks, and making the critical point that the mainstream media and public intellectuals were failing to make: any escalation of violence as a response to violence will inevitably lead to further, and bloodier, attacks on innocents in America and around the world.

This new edition of 9-11, published on the tenth anniversary of the attacks and featuring a new preface by Chomsky, reminds us that today, just as much as ten years ago, information and clarity remain our most valuable tools in the struggle to prevent future violence against the innocent, both at home and abroad."

     Chomsky - How To Fight Terrorism

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