It looks like the worst has been confirmed - 3 bodies have been found in the West Bank near the city of Hebron. They are suspected to be of the 3 missing Israeli teenagers.

At this moment we do not know who killed them or how they died, but their families must be devastated and the humanity in all of us feels their loss. The people in their kidnap/murder should be treatd as criminals (and I have not come across any evidence that this is definitely by Palestinians - there could be a nutty settler with an axe to grind or who is mentally unhinged...)

However this can also lead to a bigger catastrophe for the Palestinians.

The month of Ramadan has stated and Shaytaan has been locked away.

Now we can focus on the demon within. We all have out issues and problems. Some of them we can clearly categorise as demons.

This is the month where we can build our reserves of patience and challenge the demons within. We wont win all the battles, but any victory over the self is a victory.

People are often easier to anger this month but we need to remember this is the easiest most obvious demon to challenge and beat. Other demons are deeper and may require acquiring more knowledge, overcoming prejudice, finding injustice and improving how we handle ourselves.

They're back.

for now.

...but right now the Muslim world needs to sort its act out.

The whole of North Africa, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and the rest need to fix themselves first. That may be less "romantic" and less popular with the sloganeers, but you can't build a house on sand.

For those not following the not-broadcast news - Israel has been pummelling the Palestinians recently, "searching for" 3 settler teenagers who may or may not have been kidnapped while hitchhiking. Netanyahu has naturally blamed Hamas and Fatah has complied with its masters in closing sections of the West Bank off so that Israeli's can search for the missing teenagers.

There seems to be a lot of rumour going around at the moment and its important to look at the facts.

Since a few days there has been word of mouth information being passed arouns about Cadbury's chocolate being haraam. Some word of mouth has developed further - "all those chocolates found with a red dot on the packet are haraam, those without are allowed", and stories of "Muslims declaring jihad on Cadbury's".

As always, there is rarely smoke without fire and all these stories must have started somewhere.

The smoke is from a story in Malaysia. In Malaysia, a Muslim country, there are tests carried out on products to confirm their suitability for Muslims.

On Friday, a teenager named Michael Piggin walked free from court when the jury at a second trial failed to reach a verdict. The prosecutors have stated they will not seek a retrial.

You can read more about it in this article which gives further details of the trial and what Michael Piggin was accused of:

...planning to carry out a murderous attack on his former school, a cinema, a mosque and a council office near his home in the Midlands.

New leaks in the Guardian suggest that 6 schools in Birmingham will face censure, and two previously considered to be outstanding schools will be rated as "inadequate" - a rating that allowed the government to place the schools under special measures and force changes including replacing of school governors.

These schools were among 21 investigated as part of a "Trojan Horse" plot, where the leaks suggest that nothing has been found:

I turned off a few features on the site a few days ago and since them the site seems to be performant.

(for the techy crowd, I turned off the nodejs integration. I think following an upgrade of nodejs, the site was experiencing some database locking which was then mushrooming into a more or less unusable site).

If you are still experiencing issues, please post them in comments.
 

The local elections are being broadcast as a real breakthrough for UKIP.

Out of approximately 3,500 contested council seats, so far they have gained around 150.

That is 4%.

They are expected to do way better in the EU elections, but their achievements in the Local elections shouldn't be over stated.

Another interesting tidbit is that UKIP have made no headway in London. I suspect that this is because London is actually multicultural and the people dont mind, whereas places with less immigrants have more fears about mlticulturalism and immigration.

Saying that though, their rise is another sign of the tides of racist britain.

I try to avoid making topics about Israel because the wider Muslim world is in conflict and Israel can be dealt with once the rest is sorted out.

But this event isnt something "minor" like demolishing houses, harrasment or exclusion. It is murder of children. You can watch the cold blooded murder in the video available on The Guardian Website.