I decided to go to the MPAC UK website today to see what they were saying.

They seem to be a pretty active place, so a good place to catch up on news, especially comment on George Galloways's victory in the by election in Bradford.

George Galloway is a pretty well liked politician

Instead I come across a smear campaign against the local Labour candidate. I think his main crime was being the Labour candidate standing against George Galloway - he was probably the candidate probably even before George Galloway had announced his intention to stand.

Yup, he's done it again. George Galloway is back, having won a by-election in Bradford of all places.

The usual people are all frothing at the mouth, calling him an opportunist and worse.

He also beat a Muslim candidate who should have comfortably won as he was for the party who had comfortably held the seat until George Galloway announced that he will stand.

But all this is still good news.

Not only is George Galloway a man of conviction, the other parties have failed us.

When the arab spring started, I thought that there was a chance it may avoid Syria.

While repressive and the state had a history of cracking down on dissent, I saw some intelligence, and attempts to make Syria not be like all the rest.

However this peace lasted only a few weeks when some elements of the regime cracked down against graffitiing youngsters, which started protests against the regime.

Since then the protests have increased and so has the regimes brutality.

There were words said early on by Bashar al Asad that seemed to suggest he could potentially change the nature of things in Syria and lead to progress that the people could live with.

">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXljiwsKSc]

Fetih 1453 is a high budget turkish movie about the conquest of Constantinople/Istanbul.

It has surprisingly high production values and does a good job at portraying the history without taking too much of an artistic licence - It is shown as a hard slog instead of something jingoistic.

Some people have complained the the rulers of Constantinople are always shown as evil and conniving and this hasnt gone down well in greece.

I havent blogged about the Arab revolts in a while now.

That isnt because its all over or sorted though.

The current big place of action is Syria - tension has been simmering for the past year and thousands have been killed.

Now it seems that Assad Junior is preparing to go the whole hog like his father with a ground assault on the city of Homs which could leave many more dead and injured.

There have been calls for resolutions from major western powers which have been vetoes by China and Russia - the latter claiming that the former are stoking the unrest.

It is a complicated situation where the government forces are clearly in the wrong, and it seems like it will only get worse.

Just something I want to clear up.

A hadith with a weak chain of narration is still a valid hadith. It is not rejected or found to be manufactured - those have different terms for them.

The best example in this is one of parents. If a parent goes weak will you disown them? no.

In the same way, you cant disown a hadith simply because its chain of narration is weak. The historical position is that they are used for guidance and benefits, but not for rules.

PS a weak hadith can rise to a stronger position even as far as hasan if there are other similar ahadith that support its position.

Disclaimer: I am not a scholar.

After almost exactly a year, The Revival website's integration with twitter returns.

Now with more features than before - most new content will be tweeted onto twitter, either using the default account, or allowing users to set their own twitter accounts on their user profile pages.

Just a word of warning for people posting new topics in private forums - make sure you untick the post to twitter option when posting.

This post should also test if this feature works...

After almost a year of on and off attemptsin trying to update the site software to the next version, I present you with... an almost upgrade. (Edit - now a full upgrade as I have decided that its good enough to go live.)

I ran into a few issues more than I wanted to before the site is made live, but I also wante comments and feedback and if people dont think that the problems are too major, the site will be made live and the problems fixed afterwards.

Currently known broken issues:

1. Images in content are not working. Until yesterday in the multiple upgrade attempts, they worked, so I dont know why they are not working now. I need to investigate.

2. Tribune referencing is not broken.

I wonder who will be the first person to reply to this post...

Before, you ask, not my fault - massive failure at the hosts and it took them til a few minutes ago to restore things. read about it if you want here: http://dailystatus.co.uk/.

(That page will also give future updates etc when they run updates etc, so may be useful to bookmark for those that care).

In the meantime, I tried to redirect the site to a google plus page to inform of everything, but I never managed to pull it off. the page will probably remain to exist in the future too.

Osama Bin Laden,
Gaddafi,
Kim Jong Il,
Christopher Hitchens.