KUWAIT CITY — Kuwaiti lawmakers yesterday called on the deputy premier and state minister for cabinet affairs, Mohammad Daifallah Sharar, to quit over allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
Parliament in December ordered the Audit Bureau, the state's accounting watchdog, to investigate allegations that Sharar was to blame for squandering hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds. The charges were made during a questioning by liberal MPs Ahmad Al Mulaifi and Ali Al Rashed who claimed the minister had either taken part in alleged graft or failed to stop corruption in departments under his authority.
In its report, the Audit Bureau confirmed a number of the claims and complained that it did not receive enough cooperation from some government agencies. "The report confirms our claims ... I call on the minister to act in a brave manner, take responsibility and quit," Rashed told yesterday's special session held to discuss the report. "This is an historic opportunity to declare war on corruption ... The minister should be held accountable and I advise him to resign, it's time to leave," MP Waleed Al Tabtabai said.
But Sharar told the house he had already sent parts of the report to the public prosecution to launch a criminal investigation into the allegations.
MPs backing Sharar accused his opponents of targeting the minister for personal reasons and because he "belongs to Kuwaiti tribes." Sharar comfortably survived a no-confidence vote following similar questioning in March 2003. But Health Minister Mohammad Al Jarallah resigned last week after facing a stormy grilling in parliament over allegations of graft, in the third such case in two years.
Under the no-confidence motion filed by the lawmakers, the minister has two weeks to resign before the 50-man house meets to vote on whether he should stay. Jarallah was questioned by an MP over allegations of mismanagement, squandering public funds and the deterioration of health services.
Former finance minister Mahmoud Al Nuri narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in March 2004, a serious challenge to the government which took power in 2003 in the state.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 12:28:57 AM ||
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I knew, just from the headline, that he wasn't named Al Sabah.
It's Pavel Felgenhauer again, citing an unnamed "high Kremlin source." I hope he's wrong here. During an apparently hum-drum meeting last week, Putin & Looneyshenko supposedly had some more interesting and far-reaching behind-the-scenes discussions about their oft-stated intent to unite their countries. EFL.
Putin and Lukashenko apparently agreed on a joint strategy to prevent popular democratic revolutions from overthrowing their regimes. The Kremlin insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me that a tentative agreement has been reached that would drastically speed up the process of merging Russia and Belarus into a bastion opposing Western-sponsored democratic change.
In a year or so, a referendum will be held in Russia and Belarus to merge the two nations. The Russian Constitution will be rewritten, and the State Duma will be disbanded to create a new joint parliament. The countries' defense and foreign ministries will be merged. ... Lukashenko will run with Putin as vice president, assured that the Kremlin will be his after Putin's seven-year term ends. ... [F]ear of regime change is driving the two leaders together, though they do not particularly like each other.
The ruling elite is split today, and not in Putin's favor. Over the last year, discontent has spread rapidly, engulfing previously loyal parts of the bureaucracy. It's not well known to the general public, but no secret to insiders: The middle ranks of the military, security services and law enforcement are today disgusted with Kremlin policies and no longer support Putin's regime.
Kremlin insiders feel their growing isolation. If the men with guns are increasingly disloyal, any serious crisis may, as in Kyrgyzstan or in Georgia, lead to sudden regime collapse. There will be no one willing to fight for Putin if some future stupid reform brings the masses onto the streets.
Enter Lukashenko, who built a loyal military in Belarus that is ready to batter dissenters anytime. During serious internal crises, Putin has tended in previous years to keep a low profile, but in the future, Vice President Lukashenko could step in, airlift his rogues from Minsk to Moscow and save the regime. This marriage of convenience may help Putin stay in power, while ending Lukashenko's present international isolation.
Ironically, for Russian nationalists, writing off Central Asia and the Caucasus opens the door to a more secure ideological foundation of pan-Slavicism, leaving a west-leaning Ukraine as the only particularly bitter pill to swallow (though the Russian-majority areas of northern Kazakhstan are sadly missed as well). A proposed name for this neo-Soviet state is the Union of Sovereign Slavic Republics, which preserves the old acronym both in English and (I'm told -- can any Russophones confirm or deny?) in Russian. Regardless of this particular article's validity, there is definitely trouble in Moscow's future. Gadzooks, what if we actually come to miss Putin? Now that's scary.
Posted by: Rex Rufus ||
04/12/2005 4:06:45 PM ||
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My Russian is incredibly old, but I think it's something like "Soyuz Suverenniye Slavyanskie Respubliki." (No idea if I used the correct endings for the adjectives.) So yes, you would get "CCCP." Maybe they've got a lot of letterhead sitting around from the Soviet period that they want to put to use.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
04/12/2005 22:33 Comments ||
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Two gunmen have been killed in Chechnya in the area bordering Daghestan. A reconnaissance group detected gunmen in the Nozhai-Yurt region near Mount Dzhouber at about 22:10 Moscow time on Sunday, a spokesman for the North Caucasian counter-terrorist operation control headquarters, general Ilya Shabalkin, told Itar-Tass. Two gunmen were killed in fighting there. The bandits' firearms and portable antiaircraft gun were found on the scene. According to the preliminary information, one of the gunmen supposedly is an Arab mercenary, Shabalkin said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2005 1:43:08 AM ||
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Need to rework the headline. Article describes it as an AA "gun" rather than missle.
For several years Kremlin spokespersons have identified Turkey as the primary source of foreign jihadi volunteers (always referred to as naemniky, "mercenaries" in official proclamations) fighting alongside their Chechen adversaries. One spokesman claimed "We keep killing armed Turkish citizens on Chechen territory" and another described Turkey as "a record breaker for producing foreign mercenaries killed in Chechnya." While skeptics might be tempted to dismiss such claims as mere bluster in light of Turkey's well known secular tendencies, the evidence is mounting that Turkish volunteer fighters make up a sizeable component of the foreign element fighting alongside the indigenous Chechen insurgents in Russia.
While it is widely recognized that the 100-200 foreign jihadis fighting alongside the approximately 1,200 Chechen insurgents are led by Arab emirs (commanders) such as the slain Amir Khattab (a Saudi whose mother was Turkish according to jihadist websites), Abu Walid (Saudi killed April 2004), and Abu Hafs al Urdani (aka "Amjet" a Jordanian), the Russian government has consistently maintained that Turks play a prominent role among the foreign "terrorists" in Chechnya.
To support their claims, Russian security services have produced Turkish passports found on the bodies of several slain fighters and have given the names and personal details of Turkish jihadis killed in Chechnya. Among others, Russian spokespersons referenced one Ziya Pece, a Turk who was found dead with a grenade launcher following a fire fight with Federal forces. Russian officials have also provided detailed information on 24 Turkish fighters killed between 1999 and 2004, and Russian soldiers in Chechnya have spoken of engaging a unit of 40 skilled Turkish fighters. If this were not compelling enough evidence, Russian security forces have also produced a living Turkish jihadi named Ali Yaman who was captured in the Chechen village of Gekhi-Chu.
Surprisingly, this evidence is not refuted by Chechen or Turkish jihadi sources and on the contrary has been corroborated on such forums as the kavkaz.org website produced by Arab and Chechen extremists linked to the field commander Shamil Basayev. The following excerpt from a kavkaz interview with a Turkish jihadi commander in Chechnya is illuminating and suggests the existence of a Turkish jamaat known as the "Ottoman platoon" in the Arab-dominated International Islamic Brigade (it also corroborates the above Russian claim that Federal forces have killed 24 Turks in Chechnya):
"Interview with the Chief of the Turkish Jamaat 'Osmanly' (Ottoman) fighting in Chechnya against the troops of Russian invaders, Amir Commander Muhtar, by the Kavkaz Center news agency:
(Interviewer) Are there many Turks in Chechnya today? Some mass media were reporting that there are about 20 of you guys.
(Amir Muhtar) Out of the first Jamaat that was fighting in 1995-1996 seven mujahideen have remained. Back then there were 13 of us. They are actually the core of the Turkish jamaat in Chechnya today. Twenty-four Turks have already died in this war. Among them was Zachariah, Muhammed-Fatih, Halil âŠThree mujahideen became shaheeds (martyrs) during the battle with commandos from Pskov in the vicinity of Ulus-Kert. Some died before that in the battles in Jokhar (Grozny). Five were wounded."
In February 2004 a Turkish jihadi website devoted to Chechnya also announced the martyrdom (shehid olmak) of three Turkish mujahideen in just two weeks. Another site that has been removed left the following account of the combat that led to the martyrdom of three Turkish jihadi fighters:
"Last night we had news from verifiable sources that a group of Turkish mujahideen came across Russian soldiers north of Vedeno in a small village. After stumbling on them a fire fight ensued and one Algerian and three Turkish brothers died. The Algerian's name is Hassam and the Turkish brothers' names are Ebu Derda, Huzeyfe and Zennun. These brothers fought in Commander Ramazan's unit in the Dagestan conflict."
For several years now Turkish jihadi websites have actually been posting the martyrdom epitaphs of Turkish fighters who died in the Chechen cihad. Much of the jihadist rhetoric found on these Islamist sites will be familiar to those who follow the martyrdom obituaries of foreign jihadis who have died fighting in Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones. The following account, for example, describes the fate of a Turkish fighter who followed the well worn path of roaming Turkish jihadis in the Balkans before being killed:
"Shaheed Bilal Al-Qaiseri (Uthman Karkush). 23 years old from Qaiseri, Turkey. Martyred during the Withdrawal from Grozny, February 2000:
Bilal fought for six months in Bosnia during 1995 from where he unsuccessfully attempted to travel to Chechnya. He went to fight for the Jihad in Kosova but returned after a month when the fighting ceased. He came to Chechnya in August 1999 where he participated in the Dagestan Operations in Botlikh. After the Mujahideen withdrew, he was planning to return to Turkey when Russia invaded Chechnya. He participated in the fighting in Argun and, subsequently, Grozny. Before and throughout Ramadan he cooked for the Mujahideen in his group. During the fighting he was distinguished for his bravery. After seeing a dream in which he was married, he decided to marry a Chechen, but Shahaadah (martyrdom) was destined for him instead. He was severely injured during the withdrawal from Grozny in the village of Katyr Yurt where his room received a direct hit from Russian Grad Artillery. He was later martyred from his injuries in the village of Shami Yurt."
The following epitah, which describes a Turkish martyr "with some Chechen ancestry" speaks of a deeper and less obvious current in the Turkish jihadi movement that delineates Turkish volunteer fighters from the majority of trans-national Arab jihadis fighting in Chechnya:
"Shamil (Afooq Qainar). 25 years old from Istanbul, Turkey.
Martyred in Grozny, November 1999:
With some Chechen ancestory, he deeply loved Chechnya and was more often alongside Chechens than Turks. He had also participated in the Chechen Jihad of 1996-99. With his good manners, polite demeanor and modesty, he got along well with everyone. He also took part in the Dagestan Jihad in the Novalak Region where, notably, his group fought their way out of a Russian siege at a cost of 25 Shaheed (martyrs). He was martyred in the second month of this War (November 1999) in Grozny."
While it might be overlooked, the fact that the slain Shamil is, like many of his compatriots, of Chechen extraction, is of tremendous importance. It would seem that many Turks who volunteer to fight on the behalf of the Chechens do so because they have ethnic origins in the Caucasus region or identify with the Chechens as irkdashlar (kin).
In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia instigated a brutal policy of ethnic cleansing that saw tens of thousands of indigenous Caucasian highlanders expelled to Anatolia. While public expressions of Laz, Circassian, Kosovar, Bosniak, Tatar and Chechen ethnic identity were subsequently discouraged in officially homogenous Republican Turkey, folk traditions such as the famous Caucasian highlander sword dances, Albanian borek (pastry), Crimean Tatar destans (legends), and ritualized commemoration of past victimization at the hands of Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians and others continued.
It was only with the liberalization of Turkey under President Turgut Ozal in the early 1990s that these historical sub-ethnic grievances could be expressed in the public sphere. As this unprecedented celebration of ethnicity and commemoration of past repression took place in a liberalizing Turkey, Turks were confronted with horrifying images from the Balkans and Caucasus. Stories of rape camps in Bosnia, mass graves in Kosovo, and televised images of columns of pitiful Chechen refugees in Russia struck many Turks as a replay of the apocalyptic destruction of millions of Balkan-Caucasian-Ukrainian Muslims by Orthodox Christians in the 19th century.
As a result, informants interviewed by the author in Turkey in the summer of 2004 claimed that many young men from villages in Eastern Turkey inhabited by people of Caucasian origin were told by their family patriarchs to go and fight for their honor, faith, and ancestral homeland in Chechnya. Moreover, with the advent of the internet in Turkey, gruesome images of horribly mutilated Chechen women and children, mass burials and vandalized mosques appeared on Islamist and secular-nationalist websites alike and enraged many traditionalists in the country. In this climate, both nationalists and religious extremists exploited many Turks' sense of ethnic or religious solidarity with their Chechen "brothers and sisters" and invoked strong feelings of namus (a traditional sense of machismo, pride and honor among Turks that comes from the defense of faith, family, motherland, and honor of one's women).
Like the Turks who continue to fight and die in Chechnya, the websites that glorify the defense of the Chechens run the gamut from the anti-American/Zionist rhetoric of the Islamists to the nationalist irredentism of the Pan-Turkists. But the latter predominate. The pro-Chechen websites with an ethnic dimension tend to feature images of Turks wearing traditional Caucasian folk costumes and 19th century anti-Russian heroes. Others with a slightly more nationalist bent (such as www.kafka.4t.com/photos.html) blend images of Ataturk and Alparslan Turkes (the founder of the Turkish Boz Kurt-Grey Wolves extreme nationalist party) with images from Chechnya. As these sites make clear, many Turks who fight in Chechnya are engaging in the same sort of volunteerism that led Albanian Americans to go fight in Kosovo in 1999 under the auspices of Homeland Calling and other widely recognized diasporic organizations.
This ethnic diaspora narrative might also explain some of the Arab jihadi participation in Chechnya. Many Chechen refugees settled in Ottoman Jordan following their expulsion from Russia in the 19th century. Jordanian Arabs of Chechen extraction, such as the influential Sheikh Muhammad Fatih, have played an important role in the Chechen jihad as warriors, preachers, and fund raisers.
Notwithstanding the involvement of Turks in the Chechen conflict, it would be erroneous to interpret this as proof that secular Turkey faces a serious Islamist problem. Turkish jihadis who have fought in Chechnya have found the Wahhabi Puritanism of their Arab jihadi comrades-in-arms unsettling, and many secular Turks partake in "jihad tours" simply to gain prestige at home in their tight knit families or neighborhoods. In addition, the vast majority of Turks interviewed tended to view Chechens as "terrorists" who reminded them of the hated Kurdish PKK/Kadek militants.
Finally, the involvement of two Turkish extremists (Azad Ekinci and Habib Akdas) who had a history of jihadi activity in Chechnya in the bloody al-Qaeda bombings in Istanbul in November 2003 further undermined the Chechen cause in the country. Indeed for all the romantic notions, some Turks have of volunteering to fight on behalf of the Chechens, the carnage wreaked on innocent Turks by El Kaide Turka (Turkish al-Qaeda) clearly demonstrates that jihadism has a potentially unpredictable effect on those who are attracted to it.
This article starring:
ABU HAFS AL URDANI
Chechnya
ABU WALID
Chechnya
AFUQ QAINAR
Chechnya
ALI YAMAN
Chechnya
AMIR KHATTAB
Chechnya
AZAD EKINCI
Chechnya
AZAD EKINCI
El Kaide Turka
BILAL AL QAISERI
Chechnya
COMANDER MUHTAR
Chechnya
COMANDER RAMAZAN
Chechnya
EBU DERDA
Chechnya
HABIB AKDAS
Chechnya
HABIB AKDAS
El Kaide Turka
HALIL
Chechnya
HASA
Chechnya
HASAM
Chechnya
HUZEYFE
Chechnya
MUHAMED FATIH
Chechnya
SHAMIL BASAIEV
Chechnya
SHEIKH MUHAMAD FATIH
Chechnya
UTHMAN KARKUSH
Chechnya
ZACHARIAH
Chechnya
ZENNUN
Chechnya
ZIYA PECE
Chechnya
El Kaide Turka
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2005 1:16:16 AM ||
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Shortly before his death in March 2005, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov made some interesting remarks about the spreading political violence in the Russian republics of the Northwest Caucasus. Maskhadov described the necessity of "broadening the front of military resistance" after the Russian invasion of Chechnya in 1999: "On my orders, additional sectors were established: Ingush, Kabardino-Balkar, Daghestan, etc. Emirs [commanders] of these fronts were appointed, and they are all subordinate to the military leadership of the Chechen resistance."
There was something strange about these remarks. The republics in question were relatively quiet in the early years of the war, and Maskhadov frequently presented himself as an opponent of spreading the war from Chechnya to its neighbors. The "admission" may have been an attempt to apply pressure on the Kremlin to negotiate by presenting the Chechens as controlling the growing cycle of violence. Nevertheless, urban warfare between militants and security forces has become common in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR).
Yet there may be nothing new about what is perceived as the widening of the Chechen war. Both the KBR and the neighboring Karachai—Cherkessian Republic (KCR) have supplied a steady source of fighters to the conflict in Chechnya. Many began their careers in the Islamic Peacekeeping Army that invaded Dagestan in 1999. While Chechens are routinely blamed for all bombings and other terrorist acts, it is the Turkic-speaking Karachays and Balkars that have actually been prosecuted for these incidents. An example is the 1999 apartment block bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk, where blame was laid on Chechnya but all the individuals actually charged for these acts hail from Karachaevo-Cherkessia or Kabardino-Balkaria.
Jamaats (Islamic communities) began to emerge in the KCR and KBR in 1996 as a reaction to the opening of the former Soviet Republics to the outside world of Islam. With the established structures of "official Islam" held in distrust, a younger generation began to seek connections with "true Islam", which to many meant adoption of Salafist beliefs current in the Arabian heartland of the faith but foreign to the North Caucasus. Some jamaats are entirely peaceful, while others have felt the lure of the message of jihad and adopted armed revolt. The Yarmuk Jamaat is of the latter type, having been formed in 2002 from Balkar followers of Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelayev in the Pankisi Gorge.
Other young Muslims have turned to the leadership of the self-described Emir of Muslims of Kabardino-Balkaria, Musa Mukhozhev. Mukhozhev's Salafist Islam has experienced a sudden growth in popularity as many young people abandon the region's traditional Sufi beliefs. Russia's new Interior Minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev (himself a Tatar Muslim) has disparaged the republic as a breeding-ground for foreign-supported "Wahhabism". The FSB (former KGB) directorate for the KBR alleges U.S., Turkish, and Middle Eastern involvement in intelligence and sabotage activities in the republic. Despite these characterizations and allegations, Islam remains barely visible in the KBR after decades of Soviet secularism.
The KBR government has imposed restrictions on Islam that recall Soviet rule. All mosques save one in Nalchik have been closed, and the wearing of beards or praying outside the home marks an individual for arrest. Some young Muslims detained by police have had crosses shaved into their scalps. A list of 400 people deemed security threats has been compiled, though some suspect the list contains many non-militants whom the regime dislikes. Mukhozhev notes that "It is very hard for us to keep the youth from retaliating. The authorities' policy cannot be described as sensible — rather, it is provocative." The FSB maintains that the KBR has become a base for terrorism and religious extremism.
In August 2004, the Yarmuk Jamaat announced the beginning of military operations in the KBR. The statement rejected terrorism, calling it the preferred method of Russian security services: "We are not fighting against women or children, like Russian invaders are doing in Ichkeria (Chechnya). We are not blowing up sleeping people, like (the) FSB of the Russian Federation does." (The last sentence refers to alleged FSB responsibility for the 1999 apartment bombings). The author expresses anger at the Russian forces, but focuses on the divisive corruption of the "mafia clans" that lead the republic: "These mere apologies for rulers, who sold themselves to the invaders, have made drug addiction, prostitution, poverty, crime, depravity, drunkenness and unemployment prosper in our Republic."
Following the assault on the Narcotics Police of Nalchik on December 13, 2004 that left four policemen dead and a large quantity of weapons in rebel hands the jamaat released another statement alleging the Narcotics Police were actually involved in the distribution of drugs in the republic. The effect of narcotics sales on young people and the crime-rate of the republic were discussed in detail, with death being described as the appropriate penalty for the narcotics agents/drug-dealers under the Shari'a.
A January 21 statement is the most detailed exposition of Yarmuk's aims. It begins with a summary of historic injustices suffered by the Muslims of the Northwest Caucasus at Russian hands while maintaining that Shari'a law has been the legitimate legal code in the region since 1807. The authors avoid reference to radical Islamic thought, preferring to establish the orthodoxy of their movement by citing the Hanafite legal code (one of the four accepted schools of Sunni Islamic law) as justification for beginning a "defensive [and hence obligatory] jihad." Emphasizing personal reasoning and exercise of judgment, the Hanafite code differs greatly from the rigid and inflexible terms of the Hanbalite legal school followed in Saudi Arabia. The Hanafite interpretation is traditional in the Caucasus, and is a touchstone in the author's appeal to historic resentment of Russian rule.
The Yarmuk statements are an unusual blend of Islamic militancy and local concerns (extending even to the scandalous behavior of a local pop singer). They describe an indigenous movement that derives its purpose from regional and traditional interpretations of Islam rather than imported "Wahhabism". Indeed, foreign solutions to the problems of the KBR are explicitly rejected — Western democracy is deemed to practice a double standard in its dealings with the Russian Federation, while there is "nothing but betrayal to be expected from the fattened womanlike 'sheikhs' of the East."
The Yarmuk manifestoes call for political change through moral revolution. Even the Russians are warned that their rule in the North Caucasus is crippling them, "morally and physically". The KBR's large Orthodox minority and tiny Jewish community are both offered the protection of dhimmi status under Shari'a law. The statements were probably the work of Yarmuk leader Muslim Atayev and his associate Ilyas Bichukayev, both graduates of the University of Nalchik. The two were both killed in a day-long gun battle in Nalchik on January 27.
The Balkar population of the KBR was subject to total deportation to Central Asia by the Soviets in 1944. Though they were gradually allowed to return to their homelands after Kruschev's reforms, land concerns and subordinate status remain contentious issues between Karbards and Balkars. There were suggestions of an ethnic component to the December 2004 attack on the Narcotics Police in Nalchik since the attackers were Balkar and the four murdered officers were Kabards, but this was perhaps inevitable since Kabards dominate all the republic's security services. The Yarmuk statements contain no hint of the Balkar nationalism that was so prominent a decade ago. In a recent poll of Karbardino-Balkarians, only 1% mentioned ethnic problems as the "hottest problem" in the republic, even though they were allowed to give two answers.
The Balkarian enclave around Mount Elbrus (Europe's highest peak) is the home of many Yarmuk members, including the late Muslim Atayev. In mid-March 2005 the region was the special focus of a Russian counterterrorism sweep designed to preempt retaliation for Maskhadov's death. The characterization of the Elbrus Balkars as Wahhabites has been used by the KBR regime to remove the tourist town of Prielbrusye (and its revenues) from local administration, placing it under the direct control of the capital Nalchik, 120 kilometers away.
A Balkar insurgency would present different challenges than those faced by the resistance in Chechnya. The Balkar homelands within the republic are small and geographically divided. Balkars represent only 10% of the KBR's population and remain surrounded by Russian and Kabard communities. It is, in fact, the ultimate triumph of Soviet gerrymandering; a gift from Stalin to Putin. It is partly for this reason that efforts are being made by the mainly Balkar Yarmuk Jamaat to reach out to the Kabard (Circassian) community in the name of Islam and a brotherhood of Caucasian "Mountaineers". The anti-religious measures of the government have affected Kabardian Muslims as well as Balkars. According to a statement from the Jamaat the new leader of the Yarmuk War Council is a Kabard.
Maskhadov's remarks seemed to contain the seed of a new strategy by the Chechen resistance: offering Chechen experience and leadership to militants in neighboring republics in order to expand the war and divert Russian military resources from Chechnya. Anti-Islamic measures, mass unemployment and police brutality ensure a constant flow of recruits to the jamaats. Though never part of the idealistic Pan-Caucasian camp of the late Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and others, Maskhadov saw clearly how Russian repressive measures might give the disparate peoples of the mountain republics a common cause. Though Maskhadov may have ordered the creation of these new fronts, it is the remarkably well-traveled Basayev who has demonstrated operational control. Basayev spent six weeks in KBR in 2003, narrowly escaping capture in a firefight at Baksan.
Both Russians and Islamists accuse the other of provoking war in the KBR. Russia has steadily increased the number of soldiers, police and secret services in the republics over the last year and incidents of torture, arbitrary arrest, and disappearances are now commonplace. The Yarmuk statements suggest that Islam will serve as a rallying point for young people tired of repressive rule, corruption and lack of economic opportunity. The war in Chechnya continues to serve as the catalyst for the violence, and the Kremlin's pursuit of a military solution there ensures an escalating cycle of insurgency and repression in Kabardino-Balkaria.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2005 1:11:55 AM ||
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SEOUL (Yonhap) - A former South Korean intelligence agency chief who disappeared in 1979 was killed at a chicken farm in the suburbs of Paris by a team of South Korean agents, a weekly news magazine here reported Monday. Sisa Journal quoted a former agent who allegedly led the team at the time as saying that his team abducted Kim Hyung-wook, who was then chief of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), at a restaurant near a casino in downtown Paris on Oct. 7, 1979.
"Kim, we hates to do dis, but you knows too much!"
"Nuttin'! I dunno nuttin'!"
``We were waiting at the entrance of the restaurant at a time when Kim was supposed to meet a South Korean actress and succeeded in kidnapping him by disguising ourselves as a guide sent by the actress,'' the man, identified only by his family name Lee, told the magazine. ``We then anesthetized him inside a Cadillac and pushed his body into a grinder at a chicken farm located 4 kilometers northwest of Paris at about 11 p.m., to feed chickens.''
"[Gurgle!] Shay, where am I?... [Sniff! Sniff!]... Smellzh like chicken poop!... An' wasshat shound?.. Shound like a... a... grinder!... Aaaaaiiiiieeeee!... Rosebud!
Lee said he killed Kim in a team with an agent called Kwak, who was sent to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and trained to be a special assassin.
"Moshe! There's somebody here name Kwak. Sez he needs special assassin training!"
Posted by: classer ||
04/12/2005 5:14:52 AM ||
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Cid Martel of the Dutch Disease blog has kindly sent along this revealing translation of a Dutch story from Trouw. Cid explains: "A small Dutch Christian party called ChristenUnie (ChristianUnion) is trying to figure out how to deal with Muslims. Some feel Muslims are a threat, others think that Christians need to be open to people from other cultures. There was a debate recently between the party leader and the director of Milli Gorus. It started out fine but suddenly Haci Karacear, the director, dropped his mask."
I don't expect any "awake" state anytime soon. More like a hangover, after years of kool-aid drinking, not going away soon. It may take quite a few season changes for EUros to find their balls and take a stand.
HT to Drudge
Mr. Smith came to Washington again Monday, as an alias for a Central Intelligence Agency officer who works covertly. Senators, however, may have blown his cover.
During questioning on John R. Bolton's nomination to be President Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton and members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee referred to "Mr. Smith" as one official among several who were involved in a dispute over what Democrats asserted was Bolton's inappropriate treatment of an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him.
"We referred to this other analyst at the CIA, whom I'll try and call Mr. Smith here, I hope I can keep that straight," Bolton said at one point.
Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., both mentioned a name, Fulton Armstrong, that had not previously come up in public accounts of the intelligence flap.
It is not clear whether Armstrong is the undercover officer, but an exchange between Kerry and Bolton suggests that he may be. In questioning Bolton, Kerry read from a transcript of closed-door interviews that committee staffers conducted with State Department officials prior to Monday's hearing.
"Did Otto Reich share his belief that Fulton Armstrong should be removed from his position? The answer is yes," Kerry said, characterizing one interview. "Did John Bolton share that view?" Kerry said, and then said the answer again was yes.
"As I said, I had lost confidence in Mr. Smith, and I conveyed that," Bolton replied evenly. "I thought that was the honest thing to do." Will there be a MSM and investigative mau-mauing over this?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2005 9:32:32 AM ||
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Kerry should know better. After all he spend Christmas in Cambodia.
I think they should publically refuse to discuss any security and intel issues while Mr Kerry 'blabbermouth' is in the room.
by Greg Moore, Wall Street Journal EFL. Go read it all, it's heartbreaking.
. . . My release from Fort Drum came earlier than expected, so when I pulled into my driveway at noon the house was empty. I dropped my bags inside and walked alone through the rooms, soaking in the images and smells that had been only a memory during ten months in Iraq.
My older son's first-grade teacher had been wonderful to me while I was away. She sent school updates and pictures via e-mail almost weekly. So when I popped my head into her classroom she came running and gave me a "welcome home" hug.
"Easton is practicing a song. Why don't you surprise him?"
My heart was racing. I followed the sound of the piano and the little voices singing, then stood and watched. Trickles of love and pride started involuntarily down my cheeks as I listened to my son. He has gotten so big. The anticipation built as I waited for him to see me.
The little girl next to him was the first to notice the uniformed man standing in the doorway. The image she saw and the facts she had been told were doing battle in her brain. Then her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open.
"Easton! Easton . . . your Daddy's here!" she said in an electrified whisper.
My son's head snapped around. The excitement and disbelief on his face is something I will never forget. I motioned him to me and he ran into my open arms. There was no hiding my tears, and I didn't care to. This was the day I had waited for. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
04/12/2005 6:13:10 AM ||
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#1
He hits every note. Beautifully written. He expresses, perfectly, what every returning soldier should be able to experience - and that quiet resolve that has made them so successful and such role models of honor. Welcome Home, Greg.
#3
I have read so many great pieces written by the soldiers, both while they are in-country and after they have come home. This one was hard to read though. My nephew had the same Christmas wish after my brother died (medical issue, he wasn't in the military). I'm glad that Mr. Moore's son's wish came true.
#5
I live 10 minute's away from a A.F.B. and when the troops come home in the military bus into the base...many line the road, with flag's cheering them all on and a BIG WELCOME home from thsoe who wait hour's along the roadside. There are many more stories like this out there- this one was TOPS.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea ||
04/12/2005 20:09 Comments ||
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Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 12:08:10 AM ||
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#1
All well and good, but when will we finally stop placing all our hopes in technology and hire intelligent, college-educated screeners like the ones El Al uses?
They've been doing it for 30 years, and it works: ask each passenger a few basic questions-- where are you headed, what are you doing there, why is it you have no baggage for your one-way ticket, Mr Atta? -- and ferret out the nervous and the liars. The screeners need some psychology training but not much else. Pay 'em maybe $60k each, hire a lot of psych and social work grads, maybe some ex-military as well.
Total annual cost might be 30,000 screeners nationwide x FTE cost of 100k/screener = ~$3B per year. Low-tech? Sure, and a helluva lot more effective.
#2
I wouldn't argue against the principle, Lex. I'd vastly prefer the El Al approach to what we have at terminal 1 at O'Hare today. But you still have to screen the bags, and using some technology to sniff for stuff is good.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 0:40 Comments ||
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#3
Agreed. But technology will never be more than 99% effective, and that failure rate's far too high.
Note that the other beauty of the screener approach is that focuses heavily on the target demographic groups without applying any racial profiling. Grannies need not be strip searched; nervous young men who can't get their story straight get further questioning.
OTOH you avoid false positives like the syrian musicians who flew from Detroit to Vegas and LA a couple years back. A screener at Detroit metro airport who's actually from Detroit and knows the local arab culture and music scene could have asked them a few music-related questions and would have determined quickly that the group actually were the musicians they claimed to be.
#6
They've been doing it for 30 years, and it works: ask each passenger a few basic questions-- where are you headed, what are you doing there, why is it..
As long as a large and vocal number of people are more concerned with "sensitivity" than security, this isn't going to happen.
..focuses heavily on the target demographic groups without applying any racial profiling.
I can practically guarantee that any action that focused on a "group" would not go unchallenged.
#7
It's not focused on any group, rather individuals who appear nervous and/or whose story doesn't check out. As I mentioned, this works to the great advantage of not only grannies but also normal legitimate muslim travelers like those syrian musicians traveling from Detroit to LA a year ago
China will support India's candidacy for permanent membership of an expanded United Nations Security Council, said an Indian government document. According to the document, which was drawn up after a meeting between Chinese vice foreign minister Wu Dawei and Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran, China understands and supports Indian aspirations to become a permanent UNSC member. "If the Indian side expresses its aspirations, the Chinese side will be happy to see this outcome," it said, adding, "On the issue of India becoming the permanent member of the Security Council, there will be no obstacle on the Chinese side." But China had carefully sidestepped the issue of veto power being granted to countries aspiring to become permanent UNSC members.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 ||
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#1
Not particularly surprising, here. China knows India to be reflexively anti-American, whatever its temporary accommodations (at the present time) to obtain American armaments and munitions. Note that South Korea, which is as anti-American as they get, has a token troop presence in Iraq. India doesn't. Pretty telling, in my book.
#2
I think China is trying to pre-empt a US-India axis. The Indian nationals I have known weren't particulalry anti-American. In fact, without exception they wanted to work in the USA.
#3
India's reflexive anti-Americanism is a legacy of our support for Pakistan and the Soviet-Indian axis during the Cold War. Ancient history, time to move forward, and the younger and more clear-sighted Indians see this.
#4
phil_b: I think China is trying to pre-empt a US-India axis. The Indian nationals I have known weren't particulalry anti-American. In fact, without exception they wanted to work in the USA.
I could reword this quite easily and it would also be true: I think India is trying to pre-empt a US-China axis. The Chinese nationals I have known weren't particulalry anti-American. In fact, without exception they wanted to work in the USA.
Look - Americans are an open book. Orientals - Arabs, Indians, Chinese, et al - are much more guarded about what they say to outsiders. Indians (and the Chinese, et al) are pretty sectarian, in the religious, geographical and racial senses - the kind of universalist Anglo-American ethos we have cuts no ice with them. Let's face it - inside every Indian isn't an American (or Englishman) waiting to jump out.
#6
I thought two things when I read this. First, China might be pushing for India knowing it would be easier to derail Japan's bid if they don't seem to be simply blocking all new seats. Second, if China went to war over Tiawan they'd find their sea lanes crushed. Is there a reasonable way India could assist in getting oil from the MIddle East to China?
#7
rjschwarz - seems like Pakistan's key, not India. Chinese are building pipelines to the west and are now participating in the building of terminals from the Gulf all the way to Burma.
Read this analysis from an Indian editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/opinion/11chanda.html
#8
I dont think there is or was an IMINENT US-Indian axis to preempt, but at the same time general Chinese aggressiveness in foreign policy would tend to alarm all its neighbors, and lead to de facto US-Indian cooperation. US-Indian relations improved with the WOT, but were not helped by Iraq, or by Indian dissatisfaction with US support for Pakistan (though I dont see what reasonable alternative US policy on Pakistan the Indians present). China from 2000 until the last couple of months was playing the nice reasonable country, projecting soft power and trying to reconcile India, among others. Lately theyve been playing up nationalism, for domestic reasons I assume. With rising tensions with US and Japan (and by extension Australia) it would make sense to mend fences with India, even if no imminent US-Indian alliance.
There are still long run reasons for India and China to distrust each other, from competing needs for energy, to differing visions for Nepal, Burman, etc and the MSM seems to be missing this, IMHO. But resolving the frontier issue and improving economic relations seems like a win-win for now.
#9
Zhang, both Indians and Chinese have a strong sense of their cultural and racial superiority. China is an economic powerhouse, while India is a succesful democracy. While the USA has to engage both, India is more of a natural ally. A post-communist China would be a different matter.
#10
LH: Lately theyve been playing up nationalism, for domestic reasons I assume.
I think it's got nothing to do with short-term domestic political reasons and everything to do with the re-assertion of China's self-image. China - both the leadership and the people - sees itself as the paramount nation on earth. The Chinese now believe that they are powerful enough to throw their weight around. Deng Xiaoping never said that China should never unleash its ambitions - he said merely that China should bide its time. That was 20 years ago. For the Chinese leadership and much of the Chinese populace, that time has come.
#11
LH: US-Indian relations improved with the WOT, but were not helped by Iraq, or by Indian dissatisfaction with US support for Pakistan (though I dont see what reasonable alternative US policy on Pakistan the Indians present).
Indians fundamentally see Uncle Sam as an imperialist exploiter out to steal whatever it can. Bottom line is that they think we are rich because they are poor. India is cooperating in some areas with Uncle Sam, but with great discomfort. But they are doing so because they need the weaponry and the investment, not because of any common values, given that they think the principal American value is that of imperialist exploitation.
Iqbal Riza, former head of the UN Secretary General's office, has been criticised for having "acted imprudently" and "in contravention" of his own directives when he ordered the destruction of important record that had a bearing on the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Oil for Food Programme for Iraq has concluded. In its second interim report, the committee headed by Paul A. Volcker said that Riza, a member of the Pakistan foreign service who resigned in protest against the actions of the Bhutto government during the 1977 PNA agitation, had granted his assistant's request to "shred three years of his chronological files from 1997 to 1999." The committee said, "The shredding of the documents continued until December 2004, well after the Secretary General's preservation instruction of June 1, 2004, though Mr Riza denies knowing this continued destruction. In light of the Secretary General's initiation of a formal investigation into the Programme, Mr Riza should have been aware, at the time he authorised the destruction, of his files' potential materiality to an inquiry into the Programme."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 ||
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The lameness factor of these cowards is off the scale. Why the little games? There's nothing to mitigate, anymore. It's so clear and plain it boggles. Corruption. In the next Websters, it'll say See UN.
When it finally sinks in and all non-idiotarian Americans "get it", the UN won't know what hit it.
#2
Unfortunately, .com, I don't believe the twits will catch on. Their niavete and their belief that the UN is the only place for foreign relations is just too strong. People believe in institutions because of "facts and faith" and it's damn near impossible to shake some people's "faith". Their faith that the UN is ultimately what will cure all the problems in the world is just too strong.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2005 7:32 Comments ||
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Stern warning? Severe reprimand? Double secret probation?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 8:48 Comments ||
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Watch the Marburg outbreak closely. Not only does it appear to have started through a UN WHO child vaccination program, but UN WHO's inability to take decisive action will take us beyond the window of opportunity to contain it. Yet again the corpses pile up due to UN ineptitude.
#7
..has been criticised for having âacted imprudentlyâ and âin contraventionâ of his own directives when he ordered the destruction of important record that had a bearing on the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal,..
Why not just say that there was a coverup? Saves the usage of all those words, yet still retains clarity...
The Philippines summoned the second-highest ranking US official in the country on Tuesday to protest over remarks he made comparing the volatile southern island of Mindanao with Afghanistan.
The Philippine Foreign Affairs Department handed Joseph Mussomeli, the US embassy's charge d'affaires, a strongly-worded protest describing his comments as "grossly inaccurate, patently unfair and prejudicial".
Mr Mussomeli told reporters after a 15-minute meeting with a Foreign Ministry official that he had been misunderstood.
"There's nothing to apologise for," he said.
"That is not what I said - there is not a single criticism of the Philippine Government or the Philippine people."
In a transcript of Mr Mussomeli's interview with SBS Television last week that was posted on the US embassy website, he said: "The threat is more long term - that Mindanao is such a lawless, certain portions of Mindanao, are so lawless, so porous the borders that you run the risk of it becoming like an Afghanistan situation".
Mindanao is home to several home-grown Muslim rebel groups, which security forces suspect have links with foreign Islamic militant groups such as the regional Jemaah Islamiah network.
Parts of the island are controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest Muslim rebel group that is due to resume peace talks with the Government in the coming weeks to end a three-decade-old conflict.
On Monday, dozens of US Army commandos returned to Basilan island off the southern Mindanao coast to hold a three-week anti-terrorism exercise with about 100 Philippine troops.
About 1,200 US troops were based in Basilan, a stronghold of the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group, from February to July 2002 to help Philippine troops hunt down an Abu Sayyaf group holding two American missionaries.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
04/12/2005 11:57:52 PM ||
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Last-minute squabbles over electoral law and key cabinet posts forced Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister on Monday to delay the formation of a new government to lead the country to May general elections.
"Nope. Nope. Can't do it."
Omar Karami had promised to announce the new lineup on Monday after talks with President Emile Lahoud, but official sources said the meeting had been postponed while politicians iron out lingering disagreements. "An announcement is not planned because problems surfaced over the election law and some ministers no longer want to join or want particular portfolios," said one source. "Contacts went on late into the night. A new round has begun this morning and we hope we'd have a clearer picture later today."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 ||
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emulating big daddy? JPost - reg req'd, posting it all, so you can feel my outrage and disgust
Hamas has begun operating a "vice and virtue commando" in the Gaza Strip to safeguard Islamic values, Palestinian security officials and residents told The Jerusalem Post. Like death and martyrdom for someone's perceived honor-diminishment- pathetic losers and misanthropes
The new force, called the Anti-Corruption Unit, is believed to be behind the gruesome murder over the weekend of Yusra al-Azzami, a 22-year-old university student from the northern Gaza Strip. Her "crime" was that she was seen in public with her fiance. Oooohhhhh the hussy!. Sick F*&kers
Although "honor killings" are not a new phenomenon in Palestinian society, the perpetrators were almost always relatives of the victims. But this is the first time that one of the Palestinian groups has openly acted against a woman suspected of "immoral behavior."
Hamas's "morality" patrolmen first spotted the young couple strolling along the beach in Gaza City, together with Azzami's younger sister. After enjoying the spectacular sunset over the sea, they got into the future husband's car and started driving towards Azzami's home. According to eyewitness accounts, five masked gunmen who were in another car gave chase, opening fire at Azzami, who was sitting in the front seat next to her fiance. She died instantly.
The fiance and sister were later brutally beaten and moderately injured by the attackers.
The incident took place at a busy intersection in Gaza City.
What happened immediately afterwards left many passersby traumatized. The assailants dragged the young woman's body out of the car, pouncing upon it mercilessly with clubs and iron bars.
"It was the most horrific crime I've seen in my life," said a university student who witnessed the attack. "What they did to the body while it was lying on the ground was barbaric. This does not represent Islam." The student, who asked not to be named, said he and several other people at the scene were too afraid to interfere. "We waited until the gunmen left the area before we called the police and an ambulance," he added.
The Palestinian Authority police, who have since arrested two suspects, confirmed that the attack was carried out by Hamas vigilantes who have been waging a campaign of intimidation against people exhibiting un-Islamic behavior.
"They are behaving like the Taliban in Afghanistan," a senior police officer told the Post. "We won't allow them to take the law into their own hands, because we are not in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or Iran." Both Saudi Arabia and Iran have special "vice and "virtue" police who roam through parks and public places to upbraid and sometimes beat unrelated couples.
The police officer said the identities of the other three accomplices were known and efforts were being made to apprehend them. "They all belong to a Hamas unit that claims it wants to enforce Islamic values in the Gaza Strip," he said. "We hope Hamas will help us track down the murderers and bring them to trial."
However, Azzami's family and political activists accused Hamas of harboring the murderers and called on the Islamic movement to hand them over to the police. A statement signed by various political groups, including the ruling Fatah faction, condemned the murder and urged Hamas to disown the culprits.
"We are demanding a public apology from Hamas for this heinous crime against an innocent woman," said a cousin of the victim. "We have also appealed to the Palestinian leadership to impose the death penalty against the murderers. We are living in a jungle and this has to end."
The cousin noted that Azzami was planning to get married next month and that her family had permitted her to see her fiance that day only because she was accompanied by her sister.
Diab al-Lohe, a senior Fatah operative in the Gaza Strip, called on all factions not to provide political backing for murderers and bandits. He also urged the PA security forces to work toward restoring law and order in the Gaza Strip, which, he said, has been hit by an unprecedented wave of crime in recent months.
Hamas initially denied any link to the murder, but later admitted that the assailants belonged to one of its groups. It also admitted that the murderers were responsible for cracking down on men and women who defy Islamic teachings by appearing in public together.
Another police officer involved in the investigation said the two suspects who were detained shortly after the murder had confessed to belonging to Hamas's Anti-Corruption Unit.
He said the suspects and their three accomplices were all from the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City and that they had been instructed to conduct surveillance of the beach to assure that unrelated men and women were not mixing.
"The murderers thought that Azzami and her fiance were on a date," the officer explained. "They had no idea that they were engaged and were planning to marry soon."
glad they have their own state? These subhuman's need a whacking on a replacement-scale
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2005 7:27:59 PM ||
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#1
should've HT'd LGF
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2005 19:37 Comments ||
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"...This does not represent Islam."
To me is does. This is the full and true image of the ROP.
The only possible answer to this is the slow death of ALL responsible for this vile, immoral, satanic act by being beat with iron bars on the spot they murdered this poor woman. That it will never happen and they will all be let go out of the back door of the jail with a wink and nod is sickening.
#3
Interestingly enough, no mention was made of any comment from Mazen. Does he approve? Does he disapprove? Does he even dare to publicly proclaim disapproval? ;)
Yes, it has been a long time since I wrote. But then you were so hard to find for a while. And since you surfaced -- in your case the word has real meaning -- we have both been so busy. So let's calm down and catch up.
Is it true that you watched on television as Jalal Talabani was elected to your old job as president of Iraq? You know, better than anyone, the extraordinary significance of a Kurd's becoming the head of state there in "the beating heart of Arab nationalism." And you know that I know that you know.
When we talked about the Kurds, I wrote afterward that you treated any mention of them "as an insult" to your very presence -- that you responded to concern about their rights as if you "had been accused of kicking at a snarling stray dog." That discussion was in 1975, before you dropped poison gas on them as part of the 1987-88 campaign of genocide you code-named Anfal.
Not only has this non-Arab minority from the mountains of northern Iraq survived; it has prospered under 14 years of U.S. protection and guidance. To see the worldly and wily Talabani become your head jailer is a moment to have lived for and to savor. And we both know that Talabani will do just that.
But the moment represents much more. This is matrix-breaking stuff, Saddam. It is the nail in the coffin for the racist myth of pan-Arabism that you (okay, okay, you and others) propagated to justify brute force as the lowest common denominator of power in the Middle East.
Your claim to defend "Arabism" by persecuting the Kurds (and going to war against the Persians in Iran) was always a cover for the fact that you and your Baathist sidekicks also represent a minority in Iraq. Like the Kurds, Sunni Arabs make up about one-fifth of the population.
Here's my point: The Middle East is a giant mosaic of religious and ethnic minorities that have until now known only how to persecute or be persecuted. Frequently the claim of cultural, political and religious cohesiveness contained in pan-Arabist ideology such as yours is put forward to mask the true diversity and conflicts of the people known as Arabs.
Suppressing diversity is what you were all about. The same is true for your ideological brothers yet personal enemies, the ruling Baathists in Syria, who represent a minority Alawite sect that can rule only by force. No wonder they see themselves as imperiled by democracy arriving next door. Let's hope for once they are right.
Your neighbors tolerated or actively supported your brutality and corruption simply because you were a Sunni Arab. For them, that gave you a license to kill, rob, rape or imprison not only the Kurds (though they are Sunnis) but also the majority Shiites (though they are Arab).
What you saw on television Wednesday is said to have set you to twirling your beard. But it gets worse: Talabani's accession to the ceremonial presidency is only part of the deal that the Kurds and Shiites struck last week to form a new transitional government.
When the details are released, you will choke to learn that the Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari, has agreed that the Kurds will maintain their regional militia -- to be funded by the central government -- and their regional political institutions, as well as key government departments in what Kurdish leaders now insist on calling "the Federal Republic of Iraq."
You will protest, of course, that this mongrelized electoral dealmaking will bring the breakup of Iraq as it exists today. I can't deny that possibility. The Kurds have come so far and gained so much confidence since I used to visit them in their besieged mountain hideouts that they will now begin to dream of independence.
But they have much to gain from staying in a decentralized, federal Iraq, and perhaps even more to give. By showing that minority rights can be protected by the rule of law and democratic practice -- not just by brute force -- Iraq can change the Middle East.
I close with regrets: Too bad the Arab summit was held two weeks before Talabani's election. We will have to wait to see the faces of Arab leaders welcoming a Kurdish president of Iraq into their midst. Seeing that would be almost as sweet as it would have been to see you watch Talabani get elected.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/12/2005 3:26:16 PM ||
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During the nearly four years since Sept. 11, 2001, I have been looking closely at the situation of Muslims all over the world.
The new threat of terrorism that has sprung up in many parts of the Muslim world is a constant source of worry and anxiety, not only to me but to millions of other Muslims the world over. The last two years in fact have seen terrorist acts in our own country. Such acts are alien to Islam and its ideology; they cannot be justified in any way since there is no justification for the murder of innocents. At the same time, there are those in the Muslim world who believe that "terrorist actions" are a direct reaction to — and a result of — attacks on Muslims in other places. There is no excuse for those "terrorist actions"; they lack any validity and violate every principle of Islamic behavior.
Yes, indeed, I am well aware and do not deny that Muslims have been — and are — under siege in Palestine and Chechnya and even in certain parts of the Western world where they have been alarmed and frightened by a "rising tide of Islamophobia" emanating from some government officials, sections of the media and a few right-wing Christian leaders.
John Ashcroft, the former US attorney general, has made some very insulting remarks about Islam. The Reverend Franklin Graham, a man with many followers, branded Islam a "very evil and wicked religion". Jerry Falwell, founder of the infamous, intolerant and narrow-minded so-called Moral Majority, even went so far as to accuse the Prophet (peace be upon him) of being a terrorist.
In Bosnia, Muslims were expelled from their homes and butchered. In the Indian state of Gujarat, Hindu mobs massacred more than 2,000 Muslims in 2002. In the interest of fairness, however, we must admit that Muslim extremists have also victimized non-Muslims. Inexcusable events have taken place in the US, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Only last Friday, a Christian priest and his driver were gunned down in cold blood in Peshawar, Pakistan.
In his new book, Dr. Akbar S. Ahmed faults both Muslims and non-Muslims for what he calls "hyper-asabiyah", excessive tribal, religious or nationalist loyalty. According to Dr. Ahmed, who holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington, D.C., too much asabiyah can be dangerous. It must be tempered and diluted by the Islamic values regulating human relations — justice (adl), knowledge (ilm) and balance and compassion (ihsan).
In spite of Muslim differences and conflicts with Christians, Jews and Hindus, Dr. Ahmed says the "real battle of the 21st century" will not be between religions but between exclusivists on one side and inclusivists on the other. Exclusivists such as the terrorists who carried out the Madrid bombing concentrate on the differences between their religion and everyone else's, especially that of the despised enemy. They draw clear lines between themselves and "others". Inclusivists, on the other hand, concentrate on the similarity between themselves and others despite religious and national distinction. They draw on the famous Qur'anic "diversity verse" which says that God made humankind "into diverse nations and tribes" so that the various nations and tribes could "come to know each other, not despise each other". (49:13). Another Qur'anic verse that they emphasize is 2:256 which states clearly that there is "no compulsion in religion".
The inclusivists are unfortunately now being silenced by an aggressive exclusivist minority which is betraying Islam's concept of justice and mercy and its guarantee of equal rights to women and minorities. According to Dr. Ahmed, the exclusivists' ideas have also resulted in increased violence as well as the persecution and silencing of scholars who do not agree with their interpretation of Islam. By taking this path, the exclusivists have negated all the principles of tolerance and compassion for which Islam has historically been noted and then added fuel to the flame by resorting to violence.
It is pointless, in the face of such well-publicized exclusivist actions, for us to say that Islam is a religion of peace. We — including our religious scholars — must speak out and make the point strongly that exclusivism has nothing to do with us or with Islam. We can begin to do this by saying "No to terror." We should make people aware not only of the dangers of listening to the preachers of hate and intolerance but also of following them. Meaningful dialogue within our Muslim societies is probably the best way of countering this danger but in order to have a meaningful dialogue, we must be well prepared, able to quote the Qur'an in its proper context and possess an intellectual understanding of what we are opposing. Dr. Ahmed calls for a new global positioning in which Muslims put themselves in place of non-Muslims who fear them. Non-Muslims need to listen to what Muslims are saying instead of ceaselessly telling them how — and what — to think. Along these lines, the need for consistent international morality must not be overlooked. If we can solve the problems in Palestine and Iraq, the terrorists will have much of the ground cut from beneath them. If we can stop the menace of Islamophobia, we could then engage in meaningful and inclusive discussions with other groups and religions.
No solution to any of these problems lies in the expert using of words at conferences. Important as that may be, it must be followed by a determined, cooperative effort by all concerned. Muslims must get rid of grievances against their fellow Muslims. And Muslims, instead of wallowing in self-pity and a lack of self-confidence, must face their own reality, remove ignorance from their midst, and ensure good governance along with the dignity of Islam. This would put into practice the same inclusivist Islamic values that all Muslims must incorporate into their daily lives in order to defeat the exclusivists. Achieving this — or even just beginning it — would create a new mindset and a new way of thinking among us. At that time, I can assure you, we will assuredly not be under siege.
#1
It's not such a black-n-white thing. One feels we can be exclusive to muslims, inclusive of everyone else. We are the world, baby, but we don't need or want you.
#2
"The Reverend Franklin Graham, a man with many followers, branded Islam a âvery evil and wicked religionâ. Jerry Falwell, founder of the infamous, intolerant and narrow-minded so-called Moral Majority, even went so far as to accuse the Prophet (peace be upon him) of being a terrorist."
Now, I don't think much of Franklin Graham and find Falwell laughable, but I think they both nailed it there.
Canyon County commissioners are considering whether they can use a federal law designed to target organized crime to sue local businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
The commissioners, led by Robert Vasquez, agreed Friday to pay a Chicago lawyer $2,500 to look into the feasibility of a lawsuit based on that law.
"I know that there are companies hiring illegal aliens because they make applications for welfare and tell us where they are working," Vasquez said. By going after companies under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, Vasquez hopes he can force companies to cover the county's costs for things such as indigent medical care.
"The cost has to be measured against the outlay of tax dollars in all capacities. By that, I mean the county is currently expending $900,000 a year for illegal aliens in our county jail alone," Vasquez said. "Ultimately a lawsuit could be a moneysaving move. If nothing else, it certainly enforces the law of the land, which I am bound by oath to do."
The American-born Vasquez has said he is of Mexican, Spanish and French descent.
Officials with the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor and the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce refused to comment. Nampa Chamber of Commerce leaders did not immediately return phone calls from The Associated Press. Caldwell and Nampa both lie in Canyon County, which is near Boise.
If Chicago-based lawyer Howard Foster tells the commissioners that a RICO suit would be viable, Vasquez said he would ask other local officials to step in.
"At that point, we will discuss it with the prosecuting attorney's office, include them in the process and proceed accordingly. I will also contact other county commissioners to see if they would be interested in taking part," Vasquez said.
Neither U.S. Attorney Tom Moss nor his spokeswoman, Jean McNeil, was available for comment Friday.
But Stephanie Lounsbury, a Nampa resident and member of the Idaho Community Action Network, said Vasquez' tactics would not win him many fans.
"Immigration is an American experience and acceptance is an American value," Lounsbury said. "I think that employers know there's a problem and they need real solutions, not an attack. We should work toward comprehensive immigration reform."
Foster said he would likely send a memo to commissioners in the next few weeks with his advice on the feasibility of a RICO Act lawsuit. In the past seven years, Foster has brought five such lawsuits against companies around the nation.
But the pending lawsuits -- against Tyson Foods in Tennessee, against Mohawk Carpets in Georgia, against Zirkle Fruit Co. in Washington -- have all been brought on behalf of employees who claim the use of undocumented workers is lowering wages. Another suit, against IBP, formerly called Iowa Beef Processors, was thrown out in Illinois, and a lawsuit against a Connecticut cleaning company was resolved out of court. Foster said he doesn't know of any RICO Act case that has been filed on behalf of a county or other government agency.
Canyon County's claim may hinge on why illegal immigrants have settled in the area -- whether to work, be with family or for other reasons.
"The county isn't suing regarding wages. They've asked me to write a memo and tell them whether they have standing under RICO to recoup costs the county has incurred for illegal immigrants," Foster said. "There are definitely limits -- the law can only go so far. And the courts around the country have been pretty tough in saying who has standing and who does not."
It's not the first time Vasquez has taken controversial action against illegal immigration. He spearheaded the commission's request earlier this year to have Gov. Dirk Kempthorne declare Canyon County a disaster area in anticipation of an "imminent invasion" of illegal immigrants. Kempthorne turned down that request.
At the time, the commission approved a resolution blaming illegal immigrants for increasing crime, spreading infectious diseases and causing fatal car accidents.
And last year, Vasquez tried to bill the Mexican government $2 million for reimbursement of jail and medical treatment costs he claimed the county provided to Mexican citizens. The effort failed.
Vasquez has formed an exploratory committee to look at a bid for the 1st District congressional seat. The incumbent, Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, in December filed the required papers to begin a campaign for governor.
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
04/12/2005 9:12:00 AM ||
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I hope they prevail. Numerous large employers have made elaborate efforts to bring illegals into my state. They consider it their god given right and have no concern whatsoever for the havoc the practice creates in small communities because they don't have to live amidst the problems. Throw the book at the pigs and all who promote and profit from the practice I'd say. Immigrants are great but citizens who systematically bring in illegals to profit should be shut down and prosecuted. Right now they have little to fear and the profit available is great. That dynamic needs to change. Our govenment needs to publically recognize the problem and act immediately to stop it.
#2
But Stephanie Lounsbury, a Nampa resident and member of the Idaho Community Action Network, said Vasquezâ tactics would not win him many fans.
"Immigration is an American experience and acceptance is an American value,"
Dear Stephanie, Slavery was also once an American experience. We grew out of it, though with some lethal side effects. And it now appears that most Americans are no longer buying your line either on ILLEGAL immigration.
#3
"Immigration is an American experience and acceptance is an American value," Lounsbury said. "I think that employers know thereâs a problem and they need real solutions, not an attack. We should work toward comprehensive immigration reform."
Standard tactic of these people to confuse the illegal alien issue with legal immigration. Yes LEGAL immigration is part of what made america great. ILLEGAL aliens (I refuse to call the immigrants because they have not earned that desination) are a net-drain on our resoures and are not part of the 'american experience'. 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform' is a keyword for amnesty.
Isn't hiring illegal aliens already against the law? Make a few high-profile arrests.
#4
Yes LEGAL immigration is part of what made america great. ILLEGAL aliens..
This is all par for the course. Whenever the subject of illegal immigration comes up with these types, they'll RARELY, if ever, say anything about the fact that the people in question entered the country illegally. It's always immigration is this, immigration is that, blah blah blah, with little to no emphasis on the illegal aspect. What's infuriating is that they'll repeat this pile of crap over and over.
#5
When did it become illegal to immigrate to the US?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
04/12/2005 10:41 Comments ||
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Oh, maybe, when it avoided the approved methods of application and approval for immigration established by the representatives of the elected government. And how does Mexico treat unapproved immigrates?
The Mexican constitution which addresses foreigners as - "Chapter III
Of Foreigners
Article 33 - Foreigners are those who do not possess the qualities determined in Article 30. They have the right to the guarantees of Chapter I of the first title of this Constitution, but the Executive of the Union has the exclusive right to expel from the national territory, immediately and without necessity of judicial proceedings, all foreigners whose stay it judges inconvenient."
#7
When did it become illegal to immigrate to the US?
Never. But we have procedures for it. The illegals are the ones who think they're better than the rest of us; that laws don't apply to them.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
04/12/2005 12:15 Comments ||
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Mrs. Davis, the principle is the same as standing in line to buy a ticket to enter Disneyworld versus slipping over the wall. The ones who flout the rules and consume the goodies just make things more expensive and less enjoyable for the ones who follow the rules. Illegal immigration (trespassing, breaking and entering, committing fraud, grand theft are all also terms that apply but are seldom used.) The real reason that the rule of law is breaking down in this country is that there is a political party in this country that believes rules and laws are optional.
#9
Mrs Davis, there are plenty of opportunities to come here legally. There's a two year waiting list in Phoenix just to get an interview for a green card.
The ironic thing is the people who are following the rules and doing the paperwork can't get the benefits and other goodies that the illegals are getting.
Case in point: if my husband tries to apply for any kind of government assistance, I have to reimburse the state for it. For the next 10 years, no less, even if we get divorced. (Yeah, I got a real incentive to make sure this is my first and only marriage! ;) ) Meanwhile, he gets the honor of working and paying US taxes so that illegals can get benefits he's not entitled to receive.
I wish someone out there could explain the logic of that to him, because I'm not having much luck when I try.
One scenario in Iraq goes like this: Insurgents finally succeed in concocting chemical weapons and use them against U.S. troops. Not only could it happen, it nearly did, American arms investigators say.
They say Iraqi resistance groups have tried to manufacture "CW," and one might have managed it if the Americans hadn't swooped down on them. The danger has even spilled over into Jordan, where authorities say a plot hatched in Iraq aimed to kill thousands with "poison clouds." The threat demands "sustained attention," says the chief U.S. arms investigator.
The insurgents' work on chemical arms was disclosed in the final report of Charles A. Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, the account of its fruitless 18-month hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In a little-noted annex of the 350,000-word document, the joint CIA-Pentagon teams tell of having broken up an insurgent group last June that for six months tried to make weapons agents.
The group had recruited a Baghdad chemist and obtained chemicals from farmers who looted state companies and from shops in Baghdad's chemicals market, the report said. They first tried to make tabun, a nerve agent, but couldn't get the ingredients. Then the chemist, who had no weapons-making experience, was unable to manufacture the blistering agent mustard, although he had the right chemicals, the report said.
The insurgents hired another chemist, who succeeded in making ricin base, a poisonous plant extract, from castor beans, but at that point a U.S. raid on the laboratory, at Baghdad's al-Abud trading complex, disrupted the network.
The raiders did not capture leaders and financiers of the "al-Abud network," who the report said included Sattam Hamid Farhan al-Gaaod, an international trader said to have been close to ousted president Saddam Hussein. The insurgents also apparently took away nine mortar rounds that had been loaded with the insecticide malathion, the report said.
The U.S. command in Baghdad says no further progress has been made tracking the group since the Duelfer report was issued last October.
"The most alarming aspect of the al-Abud network is how quickly and effectively the group was able to mobilize key resources and tap relevant expertise to develop a program for weaponizing CW agents," the report said.
It said that with time the insurgents might have mastered weapons-making, with "devastating" consequences for U.S. forces.
The Duelfer account also said various sources reported insurgents were trying to produce chemical weapons elsewhere in Iraq.
In November, U.S. and Iraqi forces retaking the city of Fallujah reported apparent evidence of that: an insurgent "chemical lab" where they found the poisonous industrial compound hydrogen cyanide and a book of instructions for making potential chemical weapons.
Weeks earlier, in mid-October, Jordanian authorities said they had foiled planned chemical attacks by suicide bombers on Jordanian government targets. They said the plot was conceived by alleged terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive in Iraq. Nine alleged accomplices are on trial in Amman.
The prosecution claims the explosions would have created "poison clouds" and killed thousands. The compounds reported seized were mostly ingredients for explosives, however, not chemical weapons, although the list includes "pesticides," possibly a weak substitute for more effective chemical agents.
The Duelfer report warned that chemical weapons-makers from the old Iraqi regime might help insurgents make more sophisticated agents. The U.S. government has been planning to keep Iraqi weapons scientists occupied with nonmilitary projects, but that program thus far involves only 125 of them, of an estimated 500 targeted.
Some outside experts suggest the likelihood and impact of insurgent-brewed weapons may be overstated.
Not only are chemical weapons difficult to make, but "they are notoriously difficult to use," said John Eldridge, editor of Janes Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence.
"They use rocket launchers," this British expert said of the insurgents, "and trying to put a chemical warhead into a rocket is pretty difficult."
British researcher Richard Guthrie, of Sweden's Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, also cited the difficulty of working with the deadly nerve agent sarin, which is colorless and odorless, requiring advanced equipment to know when it is leaking.
Neither saw much tactical need for the insurgents to go to such lengths, but Guthrie saw a possible psychological edge.
"A lot of high-level attention is paid to chemical and biological terrorist issues," he said. "If you're an insurgent group planning priorities and tactics, and the signal is sent that this is what people are scared of, you put more effort into doing that."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2005 4:29:15 AM ||
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"If youâre an insurgent group planning priorities and tactics, and the signal is sent that this is what people are scared of, you put more effort into doing that."
All the more reason to dispatch "insurgents" when they are found.
Before his arrest last month, Ahmed Hassan Reja was a bombmaker who played a key role in the fight against coalition and Iraqi government forces. Now he sits cross-legged on the floor, blindfolded and barefoot, in an Iraqi prison.
Reja, 27, was captured after he deployed the insurgency's principal and most-destructive weapon: cheap, strategically placed bombs. His head bent, one hand bandaged from an abortive blast, Reja describes himself as part of a 12-man cell in the Islamic Army in Iraq, which is loosely affiliated with Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Largely uneducated, he says he is ignorant of Islamic Army leadership beyond his own cell and unclear on who would lead Iraq if insurgents prevail. The Interior Ministry says Reja is the face of the enemy.
Reja says he was paid about $15 per assignment to set and explode the small but devastating bombs called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. He says he successfully detonated two IEDs against U.S. and Polish military convoys, and that he was captured March 23 while attempting to bomb a Baghdad pharmacist who the insurgents believed was a U.S. collaborator.
Reja says he believed in the fight that landed him in an Iraqi prison, where he is being held without formal charges. The Interior Ministry made him available for an interview, although Iraq's Human Rights Ministry says blindfolding a prisoner during an interview was a violation of his human rights.
"I consider myself a freedom fighter for the independence of my country," Reja says. Married with two young children and a mother to support, he says he worked as the caretaker at the Al-Sadeek Mosque in the farm village of Latifiyah south of Baghdad while training with the Islamic Army.
The insurgency relies on young men such as Reja to deploy IEDs and VBIEDs — vehicle-borne IEDs, or car bombs — on the streets of Baghdad and on desert highways that U.S. forces patrol.
"The greatest threat we face are the IEDs," says Marine Col. Bill Jurney at a forward operating base in Fallujah, where the U.S. military launched an incursion in November to root out Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters.
At Camp Fallujah, the Marine headquarters just south of the river town, an elite team of U.S. explosive ordnance-disposal specialists is called on almost every day. Marine Staff Sgts. Jason Taylor, 34, of Jacksonville, N.C., and Matthew Small, 25, of Richlands, N.C., say that during a six-month period last year, their squads were called out on 317 missions to disarm enemy bombs. Back in Iraq for just a month, they already have been on 147 missions.
Team leaders Taylor and Small say enemy bombmakers are becoming more adept. They now are able to detonate hidden explosives from up to 3 miles away, compared with just 100-300 yards a year ago. They say insurgents have progressed from using basic detonators such as wireless doorbells and car-alarm systems to cell phones and two-way radios.
"They've learned how to adapt any power source that is a communications device to relay that to the explosives device," Taylor says.
That makes people who place the bombs harder to find after an explosion. It also helps protect the detonator. In response, U.S. forces are developing innovative methods to counteract IEDs, Taylor says.
⢠They are suppressing electronic signals insurgents can use to detonate explosives and employing air patrols to pre-emptively explode roadside bombs.
⢠They have launched "black bag" ops — intelligence-driven operations — such as infiltrating the Iraqi bombmakers' supply chains to provide them with non-detonating blast caps and other material.
⢠Coalition patrols are developing better intelligence on who is making the bombs. "We know who the bombmakers are. We have a good idea of the villages they live in. We target them," Taylor says.
Last week in Tarmiya, after an Army patrol survived an IED that detonated in front of the patrol's vehicles, two Apache helicopter crews chased a vehicle they saw racing away from the bomb scene.
According to an Army statement, soldiers detained three Iraqis who had a detonator and camcorder that showed the insurgents planting an IED. Just before the blast, the videotape carried the spoken words, "By the help of God, we will execute them," the statement said.
Back in Baghdad, Reja blames his capture on a small slip-up.
He says he had started to arm a bomb at the Iraqi pharmacy when he realized he had a dead battery that would be unable to process the detonation signal. After buying a new battery, Reja says, he forgot he'd attached a small explosive, the blast cap, to the detonator cord. Once the new battery was inserted, the cap exploded in his hands.
The Interior Minister's interrogation chief, Brig. Rawad Al-Dulaimi, says men like Reja are criminals, not religious jihadis or sympathizers of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein. "I do not really say there is no religious or political (element), but it is very limited," Dulaimi says.
He says the threat to Iraqi security today stems primarily from Saddam's decision just before the war began two years ago to release an estimated 50,000 criminals from prison. He also says efforts by the Iraqi police and army to contend with this hardened element have been professional.
But activists have criticized the crackdown. In a 94-page report released in January, Human Rights Watch accused Iraq's government of "systematic use of arbitrary arrest, prolonged pre-trial detention ... without judicial review, torture and ill-treatment of detainees ... and abysmal conditions."
The Interior Ministry also is under fire from the government's Human Rights Ministry, which is challenging its airing on national TV of videotaped confessions of captured insurgents. Reja is scheduled to appear on an upcoming program. Aad Sultan, a Human Rights Ministry spokesman, calls the televised confessions "illegal." Last week, he vowed to protest: "I will obtain a judges' approval to stop that (TV) show."
Sultan described the blindfolding of Reja during his interview with USA TODAY as "a clear violation" of international human rights standards. "This ministry does not support such practices," he says.
Reja describes his treatment during incarceration as "fairly good." Hunched over on the floor, he speaks in a monotone, though he flinches when a security officer slams a door or pounds a stapler on a desk. While Reja still opposes the presence of U.S. forces here, he expresses some regret for his actions.
Speaking disjointedly, through a translator, he says, "I am regretting the things I have done. And I am advising my colleagues to surrender because this is hopeless work. ... My mistake was to be captured rather than surrender."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2005 1:19:31 AM ||
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This reporter - along with the USAToday editors - is a classic jihadi symp and demonstrates the MSM runs a close second.
#2
Lessee....did the human rights groups have any comments before 2003? And my son, the Marine, seemed to be more troubled by mines in the "Wild West" near the Syrian border. But there's not much media coverage out that far.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/12/2005 7:40 Comments ||
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Now this is a hoot ... the Human Rights Ministry of Iraq is opposing "its own" government on the subject of security versus rights ...
I love when these low life rotters (human rights activsits {sic}) declare something illegal. In this case putting this mass murder's confession on Iraqi TV
There is a danger of a military coup in Israel if the trend of right-wing figures refusing to serve in the military widens "and more and more religious Jews that answer to rabbis enter the General Staff," Labor MK Danny Yatom warned on Friday.
Yatom, a major general in the reserves and a former head of the Mossad, made his remarks at a discussion of Tzvi Emitai's book "Code Blue" at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. The book describes a situation in which the radical right gains control of the Israel Defense Forces and overthrows the government.
Yatom was asked if he believed a coup could happen in Israel. He answered that up until a year ago, the possibility did not occupy his attention, but that recent developments forced him to conclude that the danger exists.
Among the developments, Yatom cited "rabbis that call for refusal to serve and counsel soldiers not to return to their units, or that officers in the reserves say they will listen to the rabbis inciting rebellion." "We are standing before a new reality, and if we remain weak, there is such a danger," Yatom said.
For a growing number of soldiers, rabbinical decrees are more significant than army orders, according to Yatom "Religious soldiers are among the best fighters we have, but if the messianic ideology grows stronger among them, if soldiers really do not return to their units after Passover, it will be only the beginning, and the next step will be a coup," he added.
That has to be stepped on hard.
Major General Danny Rothschild (res.) expressed similar views, remarking that rabbis' calls to refuse orders made a military coup a real possibility. He said it was important to open a discussion on the matter among the public and the IDF, in order to prevent such an event.
How 'bout jugging the rabbis involved and charging them with treason?
But the chair of the Likud Young Guard, Yoel Hasson, called Yatom's remarks cheap populism. He said the remarks were incitement against draftees who risk their lives. He called for a complaint to be filed against Yatom in the Knesset's Ethics Committee. National Religious MK Zevulun Orlev called Yatom's remarks "incitement against the religious nationalist public, which has no need to apologize for its loyalty to the state."
"No, no! Certainly not!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 12:24:38 AM ||
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BS.
There is as much a chance of a coup in Israel as in the US.
#2
Guys who are told by their rabbis not to serve in the military are going to mount a coup. Right. Given the amount of self-destructive Byzantine weirdness on the Israeli left, it is a wonder that Israel still exists as a sovereign nation. It can thank the rank incompetence of the Arab nation (combined with the well-developed Arab instinct for self-preservation, whatever boasts they like to make about wanting to die for Allah).
Every settler family that moves to "Gush Nitzanim" as part of a collective move would be given a plot of 500 square meters under a proposed plan, Haaretz has learned, and families that owned agricultural tracts in Gush Katif and have heirs who want to continue to farm would receive larger tracts, of 1.2 dunams. Recipients of large plots would be given the right to build two homes as well as monetary compensation for the homes they left behind, but not compensation for the land.
As part of the compensation package, the settlers would also receive "development expenses" for free, a benefit valued at tens of thousands of dollars, as well as the "Negev Grant" of $30,000, which the Evacuation Compensation Law grants anyone settling from Ashkelon southward. These benefits are part of the package being put together for an en masse move of Gush Katif settlers to the Nitzanim area, just north of Ashkelon.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will inform the settlers next week upon his return from the U.S. if he approves of the Nitzanim plan. Attorney Avi Drexler, who conceived the plan, said that "if the prime minister adopts the plan and gets it approved, the whole evacuation scenario will be different, and I say this based on many talks with central figures in Gush Katif."
An important milestone is the next High Court discussion of the petitions against the Evacuation Compensation Law. That discussion, which will be presided over by 11 judges, is scheduled for early next month. Senior sources involved in the Nitzanim plan say the settlers prefer to wait at least until then to find out if they will be accorded any kind of financial relief from the High Court, instead of having to negotiate over it with the government.
One senior legal source said that many details of the agreement are not yet settled. Senior sources connected to the plan say that the critical question which could decide whether the plan materializes is what housing solutions will be given to the settlers in the interim.
According to current plans of the disengagement administration, the settlers are to be housed initially in hotels. The settlers, however, vehemently oppose this. A different solution would have the settlers housed in prefabricated "cara-villas" on individually owned plots, where their future homes will be built.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 12:13:06 AM ||
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500 M^2?
"acre
n 1: a unit of area (4840 square yards) used in English-speaking countries"
The Knesset may have to approve amendments to the peace agreements signed between Israel and Egypt in Camp David in 1979, Army Radio said predawn on Tuesday. MKs may have to change security agreements to allow Egyptian forces to secure the Philadelphi Route in Gaza. The legal counselor for the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Miri Frenkel, is to hand down her recommendation Tuesday morning, in which she writes that the move can only be achieved through a change in legislation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2005 12:11:05 AM ||
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I blame John AshcroftDon Rumsfeldthe Coalition Provisional Authority somebody else. Surely it was Allan's will.
Rare photo prints of Kashmir life taken almost 60 years ago by Henri Cartier-Bresson were destroyed in a fire that engulfed a tourist guest house in the state, officials said Monday. Two rebels stormed the complex on April 6 to attack passengers housed in a guest house a day before the launch of the bus service. Eight people were injured in the attack before both rebels were killed. No passengers were hurt. The four black and white original prints, taken when the French photographer toured India in 1948 and given to the state tourism office, were housed in a building for passengers awaiting the launch of a bus service in divided Kashmir, said state tourism director general Salim Beigh.
Tourism motto: "Welcome to war-torn Kashmir! Now duck!"
Among the pictures was a touching image of veiled women praying against a backdrop of cloud-draped mountains in the summer capital Srinagar.
"O Allan (wxyz)! This pitcher of femalians stirs me to passion. The jinns are upon me again."
Other lost photographs include people worshipping in Kashmir's Hazratbal mosque, which houses a hair of the Prophet Mohammed's beard, and life along the region's main river, the Jhelum.
"I mean, there's pitchers of folks prayin'. And plantin'. O Allan (wxyz), my Saudi-funded imam jes' tole me that's e-e-e-vil!"
"The immaculate collection of photographs on Kashmir is gone forever," Beigh said, adding that they were probably "priceless."
Priceless, yes, but merely a down payment on the new Peace Processor®
Cartier-Bresson died in August 2004, aged 96. He was in the Far East for three years from 1948 and in India at the time of Mahatma Gandhi's funeral, according to a biography published by the Paris-based Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson. He was also one of the founders and a former president of Magnum, a cooperative photo agency. The negatives were not housed at the tourism office and are likely with the photographer's estate, Beigh said. The framed photographs were hanging in Beigh's office chambers in the tourist reception centre and every morning he said he would look at the pictures thinking "How could a man have captured such frames?" "They were living images. Very beautiful," he said. Jagdish Meheta, 65, who owns Kashmir's Meheta Studios, said the prints were made by Cartier-Bresson at their studio in the 1940s. "My father and grandfather made the prints and did the framing. They told me they were very precious pictures. I used to visit the reception centre to view these photographs often." The raging fire also destroyed manuscripts of books written by British authors in late 1800 and a famous mural by Kashmiri artist G.R. Santosh, depicting one of Kashmir's famed folk legends.
I'd like to note that that was a fairly big fire for two local yokel "gun-toting militants" to set all by themselves while holding hostages in an allegedly heavily secured facility. Makes you wonder if they were the diversion while the infero team got its firebug on. I also find myself speculating that the pictures and books might be gracing someone's guest house right about now...
Posted by: seafarious ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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my new proposal, which I'll bring up too many times, I'm sure....is that if Islamic males are too unable to handle the unfettered female, then a U.S. female should file a class suit against them, prohibiting their visas or immigration. Call it a pre-emptory suit, like restraining order. If nothing else, it exposes the mysoginistic taste of Islam
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2005 22:07 Comments ||
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Nawab Akbar Bugti has said he trusts Sher Ali Mazari, but that he (Bugti) had not named him (Mazari) to the three-member committee. Praising Mazari, Akbar Bugti said he had been trying to bring the government and the Bugti tribe closer for many years. "I have complete faith in him (Mazari) and I have blood relations with him as well," Akbar Bugti said, adding that the Jamhoori Watan Party viewed Mazari's reconciliation efforts with appreciation and acknowledged the positive role he had played in resolving government-Bugti issues. Akbar Bugti also reiterated that the press had misquoted him and that the statement that he had no trust in Mazari was wrongly attributed to him. "I had only said that Mazari was not named to the three-member monitoring committee," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 ||
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Sos ya get close to this Mazari cannoli. Buy him a few beers and make nice. When he warms up ya tell him the Boss has had his eye on 'im, sees he's a guy who can go places, a man we can trust, a man worthy of respect - if he's got the stones. Lay it on thick, he'll bite. If he doesn't go rabbit, ya let him see the big picture, how the Boss sez things are gonna be, one way or the other. Paint him a pretty picture sos he knows it's his big chance - then get eye contact and tell him it's the only way to keep breathin', too. Den ya give him the envelope and the keys to the black Caddy. Tell 'im the cases of Raid! and Roach Motels are in the trunk...
If he runs - Jimmy "Four Toes" will be waiting outside to ice 'im with the 10 gauge - that is if he doesn't try to blow his foot off again. Don't follow too close coming out the door, okay? Jimmy's a little high-strung, but he's the Boss' nephew. Whatcha gonna do?
I actually disagree with that, regardless of the fact that I sympathize with the women being beaten and killed and raped and all sort of other horrible things. It's barbarism, not terrorism.
The National Assembly (NA) on Monday adopted a resolution asking the government declare the act of stopping women from participating in social and healthy activities terrorism. Treasury member Mehnaz Rafi presented the resolution against the backdrop of the Gujranwala marathon where Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) activists led by MNA Qazi Hameedullah forcibly prevented women from participating in the marathon. The Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) also supported the resolution, but at the same time criticised the government for backing off from important issues including the inclusion of the religion column in the new passport. It also urged the government to let Qazi Hameedullah, being a member of the House, attend NA proceedings.
Mehnaz Rafi's resolution stated that the House called stopping women's participation in social and healthy activities a violation of women's rights. It recommended the government call such incidents terrorism and take punitive action against people involved in such terrorist activities. She said Pakistan was created by the Muslim League and that the constitution guaranteed every citizen equal rights without any discrimination. Aitzaz Ahsan said the PPPP supported the motion, but also demanded Qazi Hameedullah be allowed to take part in NA proceedings. He said the clergy was against creation of Pakistan and Quaid-e-Azam. He said the clergy had no licence to impose self-proclaimed restrictions on women. He said it was due to the clergy's narrow mindedness that Muslims lacked in knowledge.
This article starring:
QAZI HAMIDULLAH
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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President Pervez Musharraf said on Monday that there was no problem in Sui and that "only one worthless man" was trying to protect his sardari in the area.
That'd be our old friend Foster Brooks, of course...
Addressing a public meeting at Kasur, the president said a record number of development projects had been started and completed in Balochistan province over the last four years, but anti-social elements did not want a developed province and wanted to keep the masses backward. President Musharraf said the government wanted to resolve the Balochistan issue by political dialogue, but pot shots taken at the army or national installations would be answered with bullets. The government would safeguard its installations and the army at all cost, the president added. The Frontier Constabulary (FC) recently clashed with Bugti tribesmen in Dera Bugti and Sui, resulting in casualties on both sides. Bugti tribesmen had also besieged an FC fort. Bugti chief Nawab Akbar Bugti had claimed that FC shelling had killed several civilians, but the FC refuted the claim, saying it were the Bugti tribesmen who had misdirected their fire and killed the civilians. The FC said it fired in the area from where it was taking fire. The government then sent its representatives to meet Akbar Bugti and both parties formed a committee to resolve the situation, with Pakistan Muslim League Secretary General Mushahid Hussain being a part of it.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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PESHAWAR: A marathon will not be allowed in the NWFP and those trying to organise the race will be thrown in River Kabul, NWFP Senior Minister Sirajul Haq said on Monday.
"We ain't havin' none o' that sin and debauchery here, by Gar!"
He was addressing a public meeting at Pabbi in Nowshera District after distributing princely largesse compensation cheques among people affected by floods. "The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) government will prevent acts of obscenity in the province as per the desire of the masses," he said.
"Them wimmin got titties! We know they do! They just wanna get out there an' seduce men! 'At's all they think about! You can tell, 'cuz they got them titties..."
Siraj said the federal government was not taking interest in compensating the victims, rather hallow slogans and lip service was being done in this respect. The NWFP senior minister said the recent wave of inflation, including the increase in petroleum prices, had created unrest among the public and they had resorted to agitation due to the centre's flawed policies. He said the enlightenment policy of President General Pervez Musharraf was creating various social evils in the country that posed direct challenge to the religious and cultural values of the people. He said that giving women the right to lead prayers as was done in the US recently was an anti-Islamic act that was hurting the feelings of the ummah. He said the MMA would not allow such shameful acts in Pakistan.
"We're on to their games! People who don't wind their turbans tight enough don't notice that stuff, but we do! An' we ain't gonna stand for it!"
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CAIRO: A five-nation African summit in Egypt on the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has been postponed because some leaders could not attend it, an Egyptian official said on Monday. Egypt had planned to host the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on April 20 and had invited the leaders of Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan. "It was agreed that it would be postponed because that time would not be convenient because several leaders have previous arrangements," said the official, who asked not to be identified.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
SEOUL (Yonhap) - A former South Korean intelligence agency chief who disappeared in 1979 was killed at a chicken farm in the suburbs of Paris by a team of South Korean agents, a weekly news magazine here reported Monday. Sisa Journal quoted a former agent who allegedly led the team at the time as saying that his team abducted Kim Hyung-wook, who was then chief of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), at a restaurant near a casino in downtown Paris on Oct. 7, 1979.
China will support India's candidacy for permanent membership of an expanded United Nations Security Council, said an Indian government document. According to the document, which was drawn up after a meeting between Chinese vice foreign minister Wu Dawei and Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran, China understands and supports Indian aspirations to become a permanent UNSC member. "If the Indian side expresses its aspirations, the Chinese side will be happy to see this outcome," it said, adding, "On the issue of India becoming the permanent member of the Security Council, there will be no obstacle on the Chinese side." But China had carefully sidestepped the issue of veto power being granted to countries aspiring to become permanent UNSC members.
Last-minute squabbles over electoral law and key cabinet posts forced Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister on Monday to delay the formation of a new government to lead the country to May general elections. 
Nawab Akbar Bugti has said he trusts Sher Ali Mazari, but that he (Bugti) had not named him (Mazari) to the three-member committee. Praising Mazari, Akbar Bugti said he had been trying to bring the government and the Bugti tribe closer for many years. "I have complete faith in him (Mazari) and I have blood relations with him as well," Akbar Bugti said, adding that the Jamhoori Watan Party viewed Mazari's reconciliation efforts with appreciation and acknowledged the positive role he had played in resolving government-Bugti issues. Akbar Bugti also reiterated that the press had misquoted him and that the statement that he had no trust in Mazari was wrongly attributed to him. "I had only said that Mazari was not named to the three-member monitoring committee," he added.
Addressing a public meeting at Kasur, the president said a record number of development projects had been started and completed in Balochistan province over the last four years, but anti-social elements did not want a developed province and wanted to keep the masses backward. President Musharraf said the government wanted to resolve the Balochistan issue by political dialogue, but pot shots taken at the army or national installations would be answered with bullets. The government would safeguard its installations and the army at all cost, the president added. The Frontier Constabulary (FC) recently clashed with Bugti tribesmen in Dera Bugti and Sui, resulting in casualties on both sides. Bugti tribesmen had also besieged an FC fort. Bugti chief Nawab 
PESHAWAR: A marathon will not be allowed in the NWFP and those trying to organise the race will be thrown in River Kabul, NWFP Senior Minister 
CAIRO: A five-nation African summit in Egypt on the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has been postponed because some leaders could not attend it, an Egyptian official said on Monday. Egypt had planned to host the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on April 20 and had invited the leaders of Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan. "It was agreed that it would be postponed because that time would not be convenient because several leaders have previous arrangements," said the official, who asked not to be identified.
