Two former lawmakers--one from BNP and the other from Jamaat--were sued for extortion in Sylhet and Satkhira on Friday night. They are Ilyas Ali of Sylhet and Gazi Nazrul Islam of Satkhira.
Our staff correspondent from Sylhet reported that Asab Uddin, a close associate of Awami League leader Mujibur Rahman, filed an extortion case against Ilyas Ali and two others with Biswanath Police Station. The other accused are BNP Biswanath unit Vice-president Siraj Khan and Assistant General secretary Abul Hossain. Police arrested Siraj Khan at his home at village Dashghar at midnight on Friday. He was yesterday produced before a magistrate's court that sent him to jail hajat.
In his case the complainant, who was a chairman candidate in Daulatpur Union election in 2003, alleged that former BNP lawmaker Ilyas Ali called him to his village home on January 31, 2003 and asked him to pay Tk 20 lakh in toll. Otherwise he would not be allowed to contest the polls scheduled for February 25 the same year. He further alleged that Siraj Khan and Abul Hossain, on behalf of Ilyas Ali, took Tk 5 lakh from him on February 7, 2003.
In Satkhira, another extortion case was filed against former Jamaat-e-Islami lawmaker Gazi Nazrul Islam with Shyamnagar Police Station, according to the UNB. Alamgir Hossain of Ismailpur village under Shyamnagar upazila filed the case accusing the former MP of taking Tk 1.5 lakh in toll from him in the name of leasing out 1 acre of khas land. But he did not keep his promise.
Earlier on April 16 and 22, two extortion cases were filed against the ex-lawmaker. Gazi Nazrul surrendered to the joint forces on March 9 after his name was published in the second list of corruption suspects. He is now in Satkhira jail.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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Awami League (AL) President Sheikh Hasina, now in London, has sought general election as early as possible to establish an elected government to fight poverty and corruption--two potential enemies facing the country. "Without an elected government, poverty and corruption cannot be eradicated," she said in an interview with David Front of Al Jazeera television on Friday.
Hasina admitted the presence of corruption in the country, but hastened to add that it can be curbed by an elected, transparent and accountable government. She observed that the country cannot run long without elections. Asked if she fears harassment once she arrives in Bangladesh, the AL president said, "My people are with me."
Hasina, who was previously barred from entering the country by the current caretaker administration, is now planning to return home any day after May 3. She will deliver a lecture at London School of Economics on May 1 and meet Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon on May 3.
Meanwhile, Awami League presidium member Suranjit Sengupta and BNP leader Brig Gen (Retd) Hannan Shah have urged Law and Information Adviser Barrister Mainul Hosein to disclose the names of their party leaders who suggested reforms by keeping Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia abroad.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that Venezuela was ready to become the sole energy supplier to Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Haiti, presenting the countries with his most generous offer yet of oil-funded diplomacy in the region. Chavez said he hoped to sign a deal with the four countries, his main leftist allies in the region, during the summit of The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas he is hosting this weekend in Caracas.
The bloc, known as ALBA, was formed in 2004 by Chavez and his Cuban mentor Fidel Castro to promote trade and cooperation along socialist lines and to oppose a US-backed free trade area. It has since grown to include Bolivia and Nicaragua. Ecuador has also expressed interest and Haiti was attending the two-day summit that started Saturday as an observer.
"The time has come for this oil, this energy, these resources to in some way serve the development and happiness of our people and the union of our territories," said Chavez, whose nation is a major oil exporter with vast reserves. "I've come here to propose to the member countries of ALBA - and in that we are already including Haiti - that Venezuela guarantee ... the supply of all your energy needs," said Chavez. "100 percent."
Under the proposal, Venezuela was ready to finance up to 50 percent of the total oil bill and would also create a matching fund to finance agricultural projects, food production and small-to-medium size industries, Chavez said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
he's promised about 170% of Venezuela's oil output to various and sundry losers socialist allies, few of whom can refine that sh*t he's pumping
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/29/2007 7:14 Comments ||
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#2
This should not be too much of a problem since the economies of true leftists (China is not such anymore) are such basket cases that they use little energy.
#5
Hugo, you neglected to include Pelosi and her collection of leftists on your 'energy assistance list'. Must have been an oversight.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
04/29/2007 11:08 Comments ||
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#6
Under the proposal, Venezuela was ready to finance up to 50 percent of the total oil bill and would also create a matching fund to finance agricultural projects, food production and small-to-medium size industries, Chavez said.
#8
I love it, let him try to prop up all those failing economies, it'l put him in debt for the next hundred years.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/29/2007 18:12 Comments ||
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#9
it'l put him in debt for the next hundred years
since he won't be alive to repair that damage, I'd be happy with a 9mm martyrdom on the next available date
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/29/2007 18:14 Comments ||
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#10
If he wants to sell his oil for 1/2 the going rate, who cares. Who's going to pump it when the old rigs go sour? Who's going to crack it for him when his old refineries break down? He can't refine enough for himself, much less Cuba too.
Turkish police reportedly released an American Christian from prison late Friday, April 27, after he and three other evangelists were detained in Istanbul this week for charges that included "missionary activity" and "insulting Islam." Compass Direct News, a Christian news agency investigating reports of persecution, said David Byle was released more than 48 hours after he was arrested along with a Korean and two Turkish Christians. The Korean was due to be deported, but more detains were not immediately known, Compass Direct News said.
The arrests come amid a tense national debate over the legitimacy of Christian missionary activity, sparked by the gruesome killing of three Christian men [by] Muslim militants at a Christian publishing house in southeastern Turkey last week. "Missionaries are more dangerous than terror organizations," Niyazi Guney, Ministry of Justice director general of laws, reportedly commented only a day after the murders.
Police detained the four men after a young woman, angered that her male companion was discussing Christianity with the evangelists, complained to police that the group was "disturbing the peace," Compass Direct News quoted Byle as saying. "With about 40 people in front of me, I said that I had just come back from the funerals in Malatya and Izmir and I met with the widows of the Christians who were killed [on April 18 at a Christian publishing house in Malatya]," Byle reportedly added. "I said I was amazed with how gentle they were and how forgiving they were of their husbands killers."
Byle reportedly said that no one in the crowd had a problem with his message when he told them that forgiveness was the only hope for the world. It was only during follow-up conversations that difficulties arose for the street preachers, he reportedly said. The gal [who complained to the police] happened to be linked to a right-wing group," Byle said in comments from jail. Among the detained was also a man identified as Muharrem Kavak, while others apparently requested anonymity for security concerns. Two of the four Christians were released within hours, while Byle and the Korean were reportedly held till late Friday, April 27.
Byle said that an official police report charged the evangelists with missionary activity, disturbing the peace and insulting Islam. A representative from the US Consulate in Istanbul confirmed the charges to Compass Direct News after visiting the police station where Byle was being held yesterday. "The third charge is missionary activity, but thats not against the law, so Im not sure how they are going to work that one," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.
This was not an isolated incident, Compass Direct News claimed. In September 2006, Byle and a team of five street evangelists were reportedly physically attacked while in Istanbuls Kadikoy district. Their assailants escaped after inflicting only minor wounds, and local police helped the Christians receive treatment at a nearby hospital.
Christians comprise about 0.2 percent of Turkeys predominantly Muslim population, and the arrests were expected to add to concern within the embattled community.
#1
In light of how much terrorism is caused by the Religion of Peace [spit], it's pretty hard to insult Islam any worse than it insults itself. Turkey really needs to fight or fuck fish or cut bait. Either they're a modern secular nation with a glimmer of hope to join the EU or they're just another backwater Neanderthal Islamic shithole that we need to bomb. Time for Turkey to decide so we can act accordingly.
#2
Every smattering of abuse and publicity that these Christians get probably results in a bunch of Muslims making discreet inquiries as to how they can convert.
#3
At the same time, folks, these stories should make it very clear to us: there are a lot of people in Turkey who are hell-bent on making that country an Islamic state. Ataturk, the military, and the many people today who want Turkey to remain a westernized, secular state are in big trouble.
And so are we.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/29/2007 17:29 Comments ||
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#4
In a breathtaking bit of Orwellian doublethink, insulting Islam has come to mean saying true things about Islam. This is forbidden to non-Muslims.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
04/29/2007 20:29 Comments ||
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Turkey came under mounting pressure from the European Union last night to rein in the influence of its generals, after the country's powerful pro-secular military threatened to intervene in the Islamic-oriented government amid growing turmoil over the election of a new President. Olli Rehn, the European Union enlargement commissioner, who has been a keen supporter of Ankara's eventual accession to the bloc, warned the military to stay out of politics, saying the election was a 'test case' for the Turkish military's respect for democracy.
That might be true, but everyone knows the EU will never allow Turkey in regardless, so he's bluffing with a pair of threes.
Rehn issued the salvo after Turkey's general staff weighed in on the dispute, saying they would not flinch at intervention if it meant upholding the Muslim state's cherished secular values.
The country's secular elite has voiced grave concerns over the government's choice of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as a presidential candidate, given the politician's Islamist beliefs - his wife and daughter wear the headscarf.
'The Chief of the General Staff is answerable to the Prime Minister,' declared Cemil Cicek, justice Minister in the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is a former Islamist but has pledged his commitment to Turkey's secular political system. Military intervention would be 'inconceivable in a democratic state,' Cicek said.
Within hours of Gul's failure to win enough votes in a first round of balloting on Friday, the military, which has staged four coups in the past 50 years, posted a statement on its website invoking its role as defender of the country's secular traditions as laid out by Turkey's modern soldier-statesman founder, Mustafa Ataturk. 'In recent days, the problem during the presidential election has focused on secularism discussions,' the statement said. 'This situation has been anxiously followed by the Turkish armed forces. The Turkish armed forces maintains its firm determination to carry out its clearly specified duties to protect these principles and has absolute loyalty and belief in this determination.'
The statement then went on to list the ruling AK party's perceived violations of secularism, including the fact that some headmasters had been allowed to order the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday.
Many fear that if elected, Gul would be in a position to do away with the checks and balances built into system by eroding the secular nature of the courts and other autonomous bodies and appointing Islamic-oriented candidates to powerful civil service positions. In the first round of the election last week, Gul failed to reach the two-thirds vote he needed to win. A second vote is scheduled for Wednesday, when he will need a simple majority.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
The Turkish military is more concerned about saving its country than the piss ants of the EU enlargement commission.
Besides, didn't I get spam from them regarding 'enlargement'?
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/29/2007 0:23 Comments ||
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#2
The Generals want to prevent Islamist takeover. And these dimmwits in the EU want to promote total Islamization ? Nothing but looney tunes left in EU.
#3
This is no small measure in understanding the nature of fine military. You may want to give them a leg up if they are true. they look true to me.
Turkey is due some mercy right?
#6
The US should be ready to take advantage of this situation if the generals do seize power. Think of it this way:
Coup. Followed by pissy EU statement. Then the US proposes that Turkey give up on the EU, and join with Iraq in form the nucleus of a Middle East Common Market.
While the generals are still in charge, have them and Iraq create a MECM parliament that would insure that because Turkey is Sunni, but Iraq is Shiite, that the MECM is Turkey-style secular, that the Kurds, Turkmen, and Christians are given a fair shake, and free trade reigns.
Then, Turkey returns to democracy, but with the Islamists effectively locked out of the process as such.
Turkey's Islamic-rooted government criticized the powerful military on Saturday, saying a statement by the armed forces that expressed concern over disputed presidential elections was not acceptable in a democracy.
The military, part of the pro-secular establishment, said late Friday that it was monitoring the elections and indicated it was willing to become more openly involved in the process, a statement that startled many analysts who described it as an ultimatum to the government to rein in officials who promote Islamic initiatives. "It should not be forgotten that the Turkish armed forces is one of the sides in this debate and the absolute defender of secularism," the military statement said. "When necessary, they will display their attitudes and actions very clearly. No one should doubt that."
Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, the government spokesman, said the military warning to the government was "not acceptable in a democratic order."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
And right on cue Europe comes out swinging against the pro-secularist statements by the Turkish military.
Europe will be transmogrified into Eurabia even sooner than I thought.
Some 700,000 Turks waving the red national flag flooded central Istanbul on Sunday [29 April 2007] to demand the resignation of the government, saying the Islamic roots of Turkey's leaders threatened to destroy the country's modern foundations. "They want to drag Turkey to the dark ages," said 63-year-old Ahmet Yurdakul, a retired government employee who attended the protest. Sunday's crowd chanted that the presidential palace was "closed to imams."
A second night of rioting and vandalism in the Estonian capital injured 66 people, including six policeman, following the government's decision to remove a Soviet war memorial revered by minority Russians. More than 500 people, many of them adolescents, were detained throughout the night as groups of vandals prowled the streets of downtown Tallinn breaking shop windows and looting stores, police spokeswoman Julia Garanza said Saturday.
The trouble was sparked by the government's plan to remove a World War II statue - dubbed the Bronze Soldier - and exhume a number of Soviet soldiers buried next to it in downtown Tallinn. Estonia's Russians - less than one-third of the country's 1.3 million population - regard the monument as a shrine to Red Army soldiers who died fighting the Nazis, but ethnic Estonians consider it a painful reminder of hardships during a half-century of Soviet rule.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Shouldn't that header read "Russian organized thugs riot in Estonia"?
#2
And this is any different than the minority Sunnis in Iraq still trying to exert their power?
The Estonians remember when the Red Army invaded in June 1940 not as liberators but as part of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany.
#3
Oddly enough, I think that the Russians will find it much easier to get along with the Estonians if the Estonians brutally crack down on their Russian minority and even expel many of them.
This is because Russians are more comfortable with authoritarian regimes than they are liberal societies. They see the end of Saddam as a tragedy, because the "clarity" of his dictatorship was replaced with the "uncertainty" of democracy.
Senators Maulana Samiul Haq and Mushahid Hussain Sayed on Saturday got involved in a verbal brawl at the close of a meeting of the Senates Foreign Relations Committee.
The argument centred on Haq being denied a British visa, which he blamed Sayed for. Sayed, on the other hand, alleged that he had called in several favours to convince the British High Commission to allow Haq to join one of the committees tours. Prof Khurshid Ahmed tried to calm the situation but failed while senators Gulshan Saeed and Mehtab Abbasi merely watched the altercation.
This article starring:
Gulshan Saeed
MAULANA SAMIUL HAQ
Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islam Sami
Mehtab Abbasi
Mushahid Hussain Sayed
Prof Khurshid Ahmed
Posted by: Fred ||
04/29/2007 00:00 ||
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A Malaysian state has closed down a museum exhibition on ghosts, ghouls and supernatural beings after Islamic clerics claimed it was detrimental to Muslims' faith, newspapers have reported.
The exhibition at the state museum in southern Negeri Sembilan had drawn some 25,000 visitors since it opened March 10. But it also attracted criticism from religious scholars who charged the show was un-Islamic and based in fantasy, the New Straits Times reported. Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Rais Yatim also disapproved of the exhibition, saying it was not beneficial to the community.
But the museum claimed its aim was to educate the public. The exhibition capitalized on widespread fascination in Malaysia with otherworldly creatures from local legends and mythology. Reports said artifacts on display included alleged vampire carcasses and a mythical phoenix bird.
The Negeri Sembilan state government decided to halt the show after the National Fatwa Council ruled it was forbidden under Islam as it could undermine Muslims' faith, The Star newspaper reported.
Some 60 percent of this Southeast Asian country's 26 million people are Muslims, who are subject to Islamic laws and fatwa council edicts even if they have not been enshrined in national or Islamic Sharia law.
Abdul Shukor Husin, chairman of the fatwa council which advises the government on Islamic regulations, said spirits and supernatural beings involved the "invisible world" and were beyond the comprehension of the human mind. "We don't want to promote a belief in 'tahyul' (supernatural) and 'khurafat' (superstition) which we do not know about. We do not need to focus on such things or play them up by having such exhibitions," he was quoted as saying.
The U.S. Air Force, faced with a goal of dramatically reducing tobacco use by 2010, is getting set to implement its first widespread ban on such products. The Air Force Material Command will soon start a three-phase program that will eventually eliminate the use of tobacco products at its bases, according to Lt. Col. Sherry Sasser, chief of health promotions for the Air Force Surgeon Generals office.
Sasser said Thursday in a telephone interview that the move which doesnt have a specific start date yet was approved last week at a Community Action Information Board meeting. The quarterly meetings are held by the services to discuss issues and implement changes. It boils down to dollars. It boils down to resources, said Sasser, citing statistics that the Air Force loses more than $80 million annually in productivity because of airmen who use tobacco products. There is not one positive health benefit from using tobacco. Not one.
The plan by the AFMC has been months in the making, she said. The 31st Medical Group at Aviano Air Base implemented a ban on its airmen smoking in uniform in March, and other bases have banned smoking in on-base dorms. But such moves have never been tried by a major command. AFMC, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, includes 10 bases in the States. Among them are Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., Robins Air Force Base, Ga., and Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
The first phase of the AFMC program, Sasser said, is banning tobacco use by personnel in uniform. Bans in dorms and government housing would follow, with the final phase being the elimination of such products on base.
The plan drew decidedly mixed reactions at Aviano on Friday. That sucks, said Staff Sgt. Joe Barnes with the 31st Communications Squadron. I smoke during the duty day. Smoking is the only chance I get to go outside and take a break.
I think its great, said Tech. Sgt. William Dellick of the 31st Maintenance Operations Squadron. Its a bad image.
I dont think its right, said Tech. Sgt. Kent Klotz from the 31st Logistics Operations Squadron. Its not an illegal substance, so people should be allowed to use it. I dont think people should be allowed to smoke in government buildings, but this is different.
Its good, said Senior Airman Matt Marquardt, also from the 31st LRS. I dont smoke. I think its stupid. It impairs the mission when people take 50 smoke breaks a day. It should have been done 10 years ago.
Sasser estimated about 27 percent of airmen use tobacco products. The services goal is to reduce that number to 12 percent within three years. Ultimately, we would like to be smoke-free, she said.
#1
Another idiotic anti-freedom move by imposing totalitarian ideology on those that are supposed to defend individual freedom. My wife smokes. The price of cigarettes in the commissary is higher than it is on the civilian economy. All of the local base is supposed to be a smoke-free environment, except in very limited "smoking allowed" areas. I don't give a damn if There is not one positive health benefit from using tobacco - Not one. Smoking isn't illegal. Restricting personnel from engaging in a legal act is tyranny, whether it's smoking or anything else. The Air Force needs to understand that its duty is to protect individual freedoms, not trample them.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/29/2007 16:03 Comments ||
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#2
The Air Force is using smoking as an excuse to RIF lots of personnel, because they are way over their projected needs. If they can force them out because they smoke, it's a lot cheaper than paying them to leave.
#3
Hmmmm, it seems to me that banning smokes or other forms of tobacco use on AF bases is probably a bad idea. I mean, think about the implications - do you really want someone with the shakes from nicotine withdrawal working on anything from bombs to airplanes to refueling tankers just because they can't take a break for a smoke or a chew?
Personally, I want military personnel as relaxed and focused as possible - and nicotine opens brain synapses, allowing clearer, calmer thought processes and also eases tensions and stress (all at the same time it's trying to kill you, of course, but then there's that pesky job and the enemy trying to do the same thing).
#6
Moose, unfortunately, has more than a grain of truth in his assessment. PBD 723 mandated a reduction of approximately 40,000 over 5 years. A key element of the AF's approach to this transformation was taking a significant number of aircraft off flying status. Congress was having none of it. So, when you can't get rid of whole squadrons, it gets a little more difficult to meet your manpower goals. Using tobacco use an excuse to reduce the force is just a convenient, and, for many senior officers, pleasing mechanism. Too many senior officers forget that the AF mission is "to fly and to fight" rather than control the private lives of its airmen.
The tobacco ban is typical of the moralistic bent of AF senior command. This has been done before. First, slot machines were removed from the clubs and then drinking became demonized. The result was the virtual death of service clubs. So now, if anyone wants a drink, they go off base. Another example of the AF as nanny is the neverending fixation on weight as opposed to physical fitness, but that is a rant in and of itself.
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.
Two former lawmakers--one from BNP and the other from Jamaat--were sued for extortion in Sylhet and Satkhira on Friday night. They are Ilyas Ali of Sylhet and Gazi Nazrul Islam of Satkhira.
Awami League (AL) President Sheikh Hasina, now in London, has sought general election as early as possible to establish an elected government to fight poverty and corruption--two potential enemies facing the country. "Without an elected government, poverty and corruption cannot be eradicated," she said in an interview with David Front of Al Jazeera television on Friday.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday that Venezuela was ready to become the sole energy supplier to Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Haiti, presenting the countries with his most generous offer yet of oil-funded diplomacy in the region. Chavez said he hoped to sign a deal with the four countries, his main leftist allies in the region, during the summit of The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas he is hosting this weekend in Caracas. 
Turkey came under mounting pressure from the European Union last night to rein in the influence of its generals, after the country's powerful pro-secular military threatened to intervene in the Islamic-oriented government amid growing turmoil over the election of a new President. Olli Rehn, the European Union enlargement commissioner, who has been a keen supporter of Ankara's eventual accession to the bloc, warned the military to stay out of politics, saying the election was a 'test case' for the Turkish military's respect for democracy.
Senators 
