KABUL, Afghanistan Mar 23, 2006 (AP)— Senior Muslim clerics demanded Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."
...
"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.
Yep. Moderate.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 21:08 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
Hey sanna hosanna, sana sana hey
Sanna hey sanna ho sanna....
An example is to be made. It's supposed to be the ultimate point that makes us leave, give up defeated and rally the west to leave en masse. Letting Iran and Al Q continue on their path to takeover.
There is a horde in Sudan, newly trained and heading for the encircling of Israel. The next target when we run from Iraq and Afghanistan at the demands of our media and voters.
This martrydom may have quite the opposite effect than the islamists believe. But it will provoke the big clash Al Q and Iran seek so strongly. The civilization clash is being provoked on all islamic fronts - they have gathered in decision. And the decision is all out for global khalifate...
Winner to be determined, it doesn't really matter to them. It's the fight that's all.
#4
I suspect that the US has long been prepared with how to deal with a circumstance like this, knowing the pull these eaters of pork have in Afghanistan.
We can parry their attack, block their attack, counterpunch them, or even get nasty with them. That is where finesse and tact come in.
#6
Article: Senior Muslim clerics demanded Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."
The guy knew this was coming. You gotta hand it to him. He's got guts. If the mullahs have their way, they're going to be spread out all over the tarmac.
KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced a limited cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday that included the appointment of an adviser on foreign affairs, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, as foreign minister in place of Abdullah Abdullah. Other changes included new ministers of commerce, rural development, transport, women's affairs, education and vocational and higher education, an official in Karzai's office said.
"The president has appointed a new cabinet as well as members of the Supreme Court and presented it to the Wolesi Jirga for approval," Karzai's office said in a statement, referring to the lower house of parliament. The assembly, formed after legislative elections in September, was not in session on Wednesday and it was not immediately clear when it would debate and vote on Karzai's cabinet members. There were no changes at the defence and finance ministries. Zarar Ahmad Moqbel, who has been acting minister of interior since the resignation in September of the former minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, was made minister. Analysts said the changes were aimed at improving the government's efficiency and came after protracted Earlier, President Hamid Karzai's aide said that Abdullah would be replaced in the proposed Cabinet reshuffle.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
The Algerian parliament has approved a law banning the call to embrace other religions than Islam. This law states to jail anyone "trying to call on a Muslim to embrace another religion," in remarks to the Christianizing (evangelize) campaigns taking place in the country.
The Algerian Ummah council (Senate) approved this decision on Monday. This decision which was approved by the national people's council ( parliament) on March 15th is an attempt to withstand the Christianizing campaign which had witnessed a notable activity recently especially in al-Qabayel area east of the country.
The ratified law stated to sentence imprisonment for two to five years and a fee between 5 to 10 thousands EURO against "anyone urging or forcing or tempting, to convert a Muslim to another religion." The same penalty applies to every person, manufacturer, store or circulate publications or audo-visual or other means aiming at destabilizing attachment to Islam.
The law also bans practicing any religion "except Islam" "outside buildings allocated for that, and links specialized buildings aimed at practice of religion by a prior licensing." One official at the ministry of religious affairs said that the aim of the law is basically to "ban religious activity, and secret religious campaigns."
The Christian community constitutes the largest religious minority in the country. This community accounts for the time being to less than 11,000 after it was hundreds of thousands before Algeria's independence in 1962 including 110 priests and 170 monks distributed all over Algerian lands.
#3
Eventually, the non-muslims will have to return the favor.
Posted by: ed ||
03/23/2006 1:01 Comments ||
Top||
#4
One might even suppose the more curious amongst the ummah might be made more interested to know what the fuss is all about by this sort of heavy handed fiat. Of course, the Algerians are acting in accord with longstanding Islamic norms, so it probably seems appropriate to a lot of Muslims, rather than the mark of self-conscious insecurity it seems to outsiders. Of course it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but who really cares about such things anyway, unless the US is involved, and in that case neither the facts nor the law should stand in the way of world wide condemnation making the actual sources of international law amusing but irrelevent.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
03/23/2006 2:45 Comments ||
Top||
#5
One might even suppose the more curious amongst the ummah might be made more interested to know what the fuss is all about by this sort of heavy handed fiat.
Until one recalls that the ummah actually approves of these laws.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 5:27 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Muslims demand respect for their religion, while they disrespect others. No quid pro quo there.
#7
More and more Berbers see Islam and specially the wahabism promoted by governemnt as a tool of Arab domination.
There is even a timid rebirth of Christianity between them.
The islamo/panarabist governemnt has an interest in islamism since it led the country to poverty and corruption and its only legitimacy derives from "having expelled the infidels" thus the movement towards leaving Islam is a mortal danger to the government.
#8
More and more Berbers see Islam and specially the wahabism promoted by governemnt as a tool of Arab domination.
It took them 1,000 years to realize this?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 7:42 Comments ||
Top||
#9
The real story is that Moslems are leaving Islam in droves, most of whom are converting to Christianity, and this has the Mullahs scared out of their wits.
The irony is that the Christians don't have to prozelytize at all, the wannabe ex-Moslems come looking for them, utterly revolted at everything Islam represents.
#10
Honestly, 'moose, that sounds more like fantasy than reality to me.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 8:16 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Does anyone see wide spread evidence in intellectual curiosity in Muslim countries? I think most Muslims like the fact that Islam has rules for everything. Easier not to have to think.
#12
RC,
I don't know about droves, but I have heard of significant numbers of converts in Nigeria, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. In fact the Persian Gulf has a lot of secret Christians. This is one of the reasons for the rise is Islamic Fundamentalism.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/23/2006 9:11 Comments ||
Top||
#13
There will always be some percentage of the general population who rebel and question everything. The leftists, if you will, but every group has them. Just as there will always be those who fight against change. There are also people who asess everything and gravitate toward a better standard of living. These folks must be frustrated under Islam where only a standard of dying is improved.
#14
Sorry, but people can make claims about secret conversions all day long; they're unfalsifiable. I hereby claim that everyone in China is now secretly worshipping me as a god -- prove they're not!
There no doubt are secret converts, but I don't think they're a significant number.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 9:15 Comments ||
Top||
Christianity, in a free and open "marketplace of ideas" tends to thrive. It has done so world-wide for a couple thousand years. Its has survived, and thrives even today in the midst of unbridled consumerism in the US, that is, when it is allowed to compete fairly (i.e. not banned by the ACLU and similar). Christianity has had centuries of critical examination from inside and out,and has had to deal intellectually with that.
Islam, on the other hand, cannot survive contact with any rational or spiritual opposition. Ineeded, it voida ANY rational or critical thought, and forbids it in most cases. Its creator Muhammed realized that, and set up rules to insulate Islam against outside influence - much like any other cult, c.f. Scientology. Whats not in the book is forbidden and its is forbidden to interpret the book as well.
#18
"More and more Berbers see Islam and specially the wahabism promoted by governemnt as a tool of Arab domination.
It took them 1,000 years to realize this?"
Well first, Wahabism wasnt even invented till about 300 years ago (though it has roots in some older fundamentalist strains of Islam.
Second, Algeria used to be part of the Turkish empire, whose official form of Islam was not Wahabist. And of course the Ottoman empire hardly enforced arab domination.
France took Algeria in 1830, and didnt leave till 1960.
So the Berbers have had at most 46 years to figure this out. And Wahabism, IIUC, didnt become a big force in Algeria till the 1980s.
#20
... much like any other cult, c.f. Scientology. Whats not in the book is forbidden and its is forbidden to interpret the book as well.
I could not agree more with your entire post OldSpook. Fundamentalism, in any guise, is proving to be a significant threat to our modern world. We should all be thankful that Christianity went through its own reformation long before the advent of WMDs. Sadly, Islam has not the least intention of reforming itself and currently seeks WMDs as well. This lethal combination requires swift and decisive action, the sort of which has not been seen since WWII. I fear that many in the intervening generations may have lost much of the self-preservation instinct and discriminatory faculties required to even understand the peril that confronts them. It is exactly the popularity of cults like Scientology that reinforce this notion.
Beware, OS, you "religiosity" is showing. You're gonna get a thorough (10,000 word) thrashing from the Resident Secularist. Or not, heh.
UE7099, your pathetic attempt to conflate "religiosity" with informed and realistic observation is duly noted. Would you like to bet on good Mr. OldSpook's issuing any sort of mealy-mouthed reply with respect to our curtailing domestic freedom of speech over the Mohammed cartoons? You know, one like our state department did.
#28
All any beleiver should require is that everyone be given the freedom to express their belief and freedom to believe as they wish, so long as they do not violate other's freedom to do so, and do not physically impose on each other in doing so, nor violate the commonly accepted (Non-Religious) standards society agrees upon (Sorry Fred Phelps, no interrupting funerals, Sorry Islam - no conversions at swordpoint, sorry Communists - no seizing anything "for the proletariat", Sorry Moloch-ists, no human sacrifices).
In the Bible, Christ knocks at the door and its up to you to open it (or not - you have a CHOICE). He doesnt bash it in and come swinging a scimitar, leaving you unable to choose.
To put things in simpler terms, and speaking personally as a Christian:
I base my values on FAITH. True Faith has no need of goonery or legal enforecment ultimately at the point of a gun, because it to be FAITH, it must be held personally and given voluntarily. To do otherwise would render the term Faith, itself, meaningless.
A coerced profession of faith has about as much validity as a coerced confession of muder. No matter what the means of coersion.
Personally, I have no need to be protected from other religions, nor from secularism or atheism for that matter. Were my faith so weak that I needed such things I could scarecely call it faith. Indeed, my exploration of alternatives has helped my faith: I've been an ardent atheist (in college, when I was a socialistic liberal too), a genuine agnostic (for many years doubt ruled my life), even Zen Buddhist for 5 years. All that has lead to my conversion to Christianity and Catholicism to be all the stronger.
Islam (and most fundamentalism of any stripe) apparently has no faith in its "faithful". How sad an indictment that is of the shallowness of the core of Islam.
#29
Conversely you could say that the faith of the fanatic is the weakest of them all. Only grave doubts can support such all-consuming, passionate and violent superstition.
Religion or philosophy to a fanatic is just window dressing to his unbearably small definition of reality, trying to force the vastness of the universe into his petty dichotomy of good and evil.
#30
Eric Hoffer--- "The True Believer", argued that fanatics of every extreme were all driven alike by deep-seated doubts... and belonging to a mass movement gave them a purpose, and a way to paper over their own inadequacy and self-doubts. And so, they shouted and ranted, and came down like a ton of bricks on anything that threatened those beliefs with special vigor, because a threat to their belief system was a strike at their own, secretly doubting hearts.
Or words to that effect. A useful book. It's helped me to get a grip on a certain mind-set ever since I had to read it in college.
#31
I saw an old article yesterday (from some years ago), in which it was related that some imam was calling for the faithful to arise, because Muslims were converting to Christianity at the rate of 600+/day. I've no idea if this is true, but even out of a base of billions that's still an interesting number. And of course, those that convert, or choose to leave organized religion altogether, are going to be the most clear thinking and creative of the group... those that refuse to allow others to think for them.
KUWAIT CITY - The first woman ever to contest elections in the conservative Gulf state of Kuwait has launched her campaign by breaking a 44-year-old taboo in bringing male and female voters together.
Good for her.
Hundreds of men and women attended the landmark event late Tuesday, which was held according to Kuwaiti tradition in a huge tent where they listened to Jenan Bushehri who is vying to win a seat on the municipal council. It was the first time women have attended an election gathering in Kuwait since polls were held for the first time in this oil-rich emirate in 1962, and the first campaign event ever to be addressed by a woman.
Men and women were however made to sit slightly apart from each other although under the same tent. “I promise I will not disappoint you if you elect me,” Bushehri said in her address.
Kuwaiti women were granted full political rights in a historic vote in parliament in only May 2005. The government subsequently appointed two women members in the municipal council and named the first woman minister.
Bushehri is being challenged by 11 candidates, including another woman, in the April 4 by-election for the only seat up for grabs in the district of Salmiya, some 15 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of Kuwait City. The other woman candidate is Khaleda Al Khader, a physician and mother of eight. Both women belong to the minority Shiite Muslim community who make up about 30 percent of the native population but are just under half the number of voters in the constituency.
Wearing the hijab, the Muslim headcover, Bushehri, 33, called on the audience to fight sectarianism and tribalism and pledged to combat red tape and corruption, allegedly rampant in the civic body. Bushehri, who is married with two daughters, holds a masters in chemical engineering and is working on her doctorate. She heads the food examination department at the municipality.
More qualified than Hilliary to be U.S. Senator.
The council -- a civic body that carries out tasks such as city planning, organization and regulation of housing -- has 16 members, 10 of whom are elected and the rest appointed by the emir.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
DHAKA: Bangladesh's top Sharia-based commercial bank, Islami Bank, has denied it played a role in financing militants after regulators detected that funds had been transferred to suspicious accounts from its branches. The government has ordered a crackdown on sources of funding to thousands of Islamist militants, including members of two outlawed groups whose top leaders have been captured recently, in efforts to wipe out Islamist extremism in the country.
The Islami Bank has come under the spotlight of the central bank's anti-money laundering investigations, as it draws most of its capital from overseas Islamic institutions. "We do not support terrorist activities, and we don't have any involvement with terror financing in any form," Abdur Raquib, executive president of the Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL), told Reuters late on Tuesday. The central bank had probed many of its accounts and the bank itself had conducted a separate investigation, he said. "We have suspended five employees including three branch managers and issued show cause notice to 15 others for their involvement in suspected transactions," Raquib said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
LONDON: One of Britain's leading Muslims demanded on Wednesday the government crackdown on "widespread" child abuse at Islamic schools in Britain.
Easy enough. Shut them all down. Britain doesn't need madrassahs.
Doctor Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain forum, said the 700 or so madrassas were operating "outside the law".
The more reason to shut them down. And to raze the sites.
Siddiqui co-wrote a report on the dangers facing some of the 100,000 youngsters in Britain attending the schools, which are usually attached to mosques.
Shut the mosques violating the law down, too.
"Our understanding is that physical abuse is widespread," he said."We would like to see mosques and madrassas come into contact with local authorities and police and put together guidelines, and the teachers are trained and parents and children are involved and they are told what their rights are if ever an allegation is made."
Any religious school, of whatever religion, should have to adhere to the curriculum and social guidelines of the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
my god your telling me we have 700 of these hate centres here in this dump?? sheesh just another sign of this lame countrys rapidly crumbling society! I give up with us i really do, sighs, this is just outa control and going from bad to worse by each month. Christ why is my country falling apart at the seams like this? I'd like to withdraw my citizenship of this country and move somewhere else, somewhere sane and unaffected by politically correct madness and pro AQ media that you get locked up for not subscribing too. Sad, very sad. :(
#2
When you determine where that is, I wish you would let me know. I'm right behind you. Mexico is pretty close to that, but it's so damned humid down there.
#3
Me too, SUK - compare and contrast the unequivocal damnations in the dailytimes with al-Beebs report:
in DailyTimes we have "Widespread" abuse in "Islamic" schools
versus
"anecdotal reports of abuse," in "Muslim" schools
Then you have the moral equivalence / comparisons with catholic church abuse.
Can you imagine an article on abuse within the church mentioning in passing that child abuse is, of course quite widespread in animist/muslim/other societies.
#6
So how did 700 madrassas get started without authorities becoming aware?
How did 100,000 children become enrolled in unlicensed, abusive "schools" without a parent or relative complaining?
Gotta give a little credit to Siddiqui, though I think he places way too much emphasis on what the British government needs to do. Maybe his co-religionists could start by not opening these cesspools or sending their children to them.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 7:41 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Well rum, sodomy and the lash are British traditions.
Posted by: ed ||
03/23/2006 8:16 Comments ||
Top||
#8
It could be that these madrassahs are billed as simple after-school religious instruction associated with the mosques, much like Christian churches host Sunday schools, and Jewish synagogues host Hebrew schools. The issues are physical abuse of the students and, of course, pushing the children toward jihad against the ever-deserving kufr.
#9
Shep, you're right. I'd be very concerned for my safety these days in the UK. You've let so many of these shit bags in there that you've been over run just like roaches. Between this little piece and the preddeing one about the Farmers with their fertiliser, I think you people better start forming committees (yeah, vigilance committees ) to start rounding these turds up and inviting them to disappear. You have a REAL problem. Of course we here in the states have far too many also. And Canada ? Over run too, eh?
#10
I've never been in a madrassa but testimony over at faithfreedom.org indicates that kids are beaten for not memorizing the Koran fast enough; they are whipped if they ask a question that Islam can't answer; and, they are sodomized if they are attractive to a cleric.
#11
I have a rule, mess with my kids, then I intervene, and you won't like it.
The other day I had a person give me the finger, I broke it for them.
It won't happen again anytime soon, and the next time this particular person thinks of giving anyone else the finger, they'll think twice, three times, or simply not give anyone a finger again.
That's how to educate someone that actions have undesired consequences.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/23/2006 14:13 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Guess where your radical jihadis come from?
Moderate Muslim families who mindlessly send their kids off to these hate schools to get brainwashed.
#14
I disagree about the curriculum, Fred. We home-schooled our youngest for five years (grades 3-8)because the school curriculum was absolutely worthless. Half the answers in the back of the 4th-grade textbook were WRONG. The 7th grade textbook stated that burning hydrogen gave off carbon dioxide and nitrogen (there's no carbon OR nitrogen involved).
The madrassas in England either need to be licensed and controlled, or shut down. "Controlled" doesn't necessarily mean that the government controls the course of study (although failing to provide a complete education to students could, in itself be considered child abuse), but in the behavior of both the students and the teachers. The laws of England do not allow child abuse. Being a Muslim school does not terminate those laws, or make them non-applicable. The teachers involved should be discredited and forced to emigrate back to wherever they came (I doubt many are local-born British citizens). Hanging them would be preferable,and would provide a long-term solution to the problem, but would probably upset the poor, soft-headed darlings in Brussels.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/23/2006 16:21 Comments ||
Top||
There is no place in Chechnya where the militantsÂ’ ringleader Shamil Basayev and his henchmen can feel secure, Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has said.
“The law enforcers, secret services and military now exercise far better control than in the past. The militants cannot feel safe anywhere,” he said.
“Basayev’s hands are in the blood of so many innocent victims, so many people want him to be found, that there is no way back for him,” Kadyrov told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily in an interview.
Basayev is responsible “for shedding the blood of my father and for insulting faith.”
“How could he send his men to the school (in Beslan) and take children hostage?” Kadyrov asked. “These are not the methods for gaining freedom and independence. It is such types as Maskhadov and Basayev, who make the people think that Islam is a bloodthirsty religion. In reality Islam and the sharia laws are the most beautiful and pure thing there can be in a religion,” Kadyrov said.
He is certain that Maskahdov and Basayev were the ones who ordered the May 9, 2004 bomb attack at the stadium in Grozny. The man who caused the bomb to explode is dead. Law enforcers tracked him down in Grozny and exterminated, while the organizer of the attack, Hairulla, still goes unpunished.
Kadyrov named the man who killed Chechnya’s first president – Yunadi Turchayev, the chief of a group of militants in Grozny. When repairs were still in progress at the stadium, he arranged for planting a bomb under the VIP stand.
“He had known that my father would be there some day. On May 9, 2004 such an opportunity offered itself. In any case, I suspect that there was treason on our side (in the law enforcement),” Kadyrov said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 02:02 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born, a physician who defected from the communist state said on Wednesday.
Ri Kwang-chol, who fled to the South last year, told a forum of rights activists that the practice of killing newborns was widespread but denied he himself took part in it. "There are no people with physical defects in North Korea," Ri told members of the New Right Union, which groups local activists and North Korean refugees.
He said babies born with physical disabilities were killed in infancy in hospitals or in homes and were quickly repacked as Soilent Green buried. The practice is encouraged by the state, Ri said, as a way of purifying the masses and eliminating people who might be considered "different."
The group urged the South Korean government to change course away from "silent diplomacy" and immediately begin taking action to pressure the North to improve its human rights record.
The South Korean government has refused to join international condemnation of human rights abuses in the North out of concern that such a move could rattle ties with Pyongyang, which considers any criticism of its human rights as deeply offensive. "The government should stop trying to avoid upsetting Kim Jong-il," said another defector, Kim Young-sun, 67, referring to the North Korean leader. "It should try to upset Kim Jong-il," she said, adding it would be the best way to change the North.
Kim Young-sun is a survivor of the North's Yodok prison camp, notorious for its forced labor and life-sentences for people charged with conspiring against the Kim Jong-il leadership.
Mun Hyon-ok said women from her hometown in the northern region of North Korea bordering China were taken by a ring of human traffickers and probably ended up in China. "And there are women who are selling themselves for a handful of rice," she told the forum.
North Korea has called itself a people's paradise and said criticism of its human rights was motivated by a goal of toppling the leadership of Kim Jong-il.
South Korea has come under fire from human rights groups and some countries for abstaining in votes on U.N. measures to condemn the North's human rights record. Seoul has also avoided the subject in bilateral talks with the North. South Korean officials have said the best way to improve the situation is through quiet diplomacy and encouraging the North to improve its food situation and open up to the international community.
#1
Yet another Failed Commie state fighting for its god-given Stalinist right to have a global economy smaller than its land mass or one of its major cities!?
#2
I've heard of testmony that if a woman who is pregnant is returned from China (after escaping) they would either abort the child or (get this!) induce labor and kill the newborn right in front of the mother.
#3
Do not mock the Juche or you will end up vewy ronery.
Posted by: Kim Chee ||
03/23/2006 5:08 Comments ||
Top||
#4
South Korean officials have said the best way to improve the situation is through quiet diplomacy and encouraging the North to improve its food situation and open up to the international community.
How....EU of them. I mean, that approach is working so well with Iran.
#9
Some day, when the walls of this country-sized concentration camp are torn down, and everyone who survives can go into horrific detail about what is going on, (and has been going on for 50 years) there are people whose political careers are going to be over, because they will be shown to have had an interest in letting it all continue. And even more people will be looking on with shame in their hearts, because they can say "I didn't know"--- but they should have extrapolated from the stories like this that leak out.
What the world will find, when North Korea finally implodes will make what the Allies found in Germany and Poland at the end of WWII look like child's play. The best of us will be horrified and regretful and sorry that it didn't happen sooner...and the worst of us will take careful notes.
Paris, 23 March (AKI) - The French parliament has passed a law that increases from 15 to 18 the age at which females may marry - the same age limit already in place for men. The law, which aims to prevent forced marriages, also extends harsher penalties for marital rape and assault to partners and ex-partners.
Gee, I wonder who this law is aimed at?
Centre-right politicians have hailed the legislation as an important step forward for women's rights, while the opposition regretted that it did not go far enough, French daily Le Monde reported.
MPs also backed measures to counter sex tourism, child pornography and female circumcision. It will also become an offence to confiscate travel or identity documents to prevent a partner leaving.
Seething in 5..4..3..
Posted by: Steve ||
03/23/2006 15:10 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
This won't work unless they raise the age for statuatory rape to 18. They'll just do like the Iranians do and have short duration marriages, followed by rape and an automatic divorce.
#2
NB: This is only who they'll issue marriage licenses for, it does nothing to stop "marriages" that exist only after religious ceremonies.
Read Viking Observer earlier, and apparently one of the welfare scams being pulled is to marry someone, get a civil divorce (but not one in the eyes of Islam) and then "remarry" the second, third, etc. wife. All but the last wife are considered single parents by the welfare state, so...
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 15:59 Comments ||
Top||
#3
SO even in France Socialism is about money, the Few controlling the Money, the Many, and the Money of the Many, NOT Utopianism let alone Universal Utopianism. Does explain, AGAIN, as per DRUDGEREPORT why Cuba's Fidel, his physicians and family members enjoy themselves at lavish on-island retreats while the Cuban people and even Fidel's own Army all starve. CUBA = NORTH KOREA = we'll see how the Pols, Generals, Admirals, lower ranks and Burrcrats react when their own families begin the starvation cycle, which BTW has already begun in NK and is starting to happen in CUBA.
Posters showing an American soldier with blood spurting out of his head are being used by Iraqi insurgents to raise money in Europe. The campaign is called "10 Euros for Resistance." That's about $12, and people in Italy and the Netherlands seem to be chipping in, according to Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y.
"Ten euros for resistance, and people who are giving the money don't care if it buys weapons. It's all for the resistance," Kelly said.
Kelly says that the European countries where the campaign has been launched, as well as some in the Mideast, have done little to stop the fundraising. "It makes me very angry that our supposed allies would be helping and not stop something like this Web site, '10 Euros for the Resistance.' It's wrong," she said.
The cash is moved to Iraq through Syria, helping the insurgents stay on the move, resupply and prepare new attacks on American soldiers, Kelly said.
The only person jailed for life by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague has had his sentence cut on appeal to 40 years. Milomir Stakic, the 44-year-old former mayor of Prijedor in northern Bosnia, was held responsible for the notorious detention camps set up there in 1992.
Pictures of emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire, reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps, shocked the world.
But not the Euros, and especially not the court.
The appeals court said the original sentence was inappropriate. It upheld Stakic's conviction for the extermination and persecution of Prijedor's non-Serb population in order to create a Serbian municipality to join a pure Serbian state. But it also upheld his acquittal of genocide.
Apparently killing 1,500 people isn't enough to qualify for the genocide finals.
It said the evidence was consistent with the trial chamber's conclusion that Stakic "intended to displace but not to destroy" non-Serbs.
They just up and died anyway.
But correspondents say the ruling could mean that Stakic actually spends longer in jail. His life sentence would have been subject to a review after 20 years, but the 40-year sentence has no such provision.
As a top administrator in the Prijedor region, Stakic, oversaw the setting up of the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps, in which more than 1,500 Bosnian Muslims and Croats died.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
A French prosecutor in the trial of 27 people suspected of planning a terrorist attack on the Eiffel Tower Tuesday challenged an attempt by one defendant to have the case against him thrown out. Anne Kostomaroff rejected a claim by 41-year-old Algerian former army officer and chemicals expert Said Arif that the French court could not try him for acts committed outside France. Kostomaroff said Arif was a legitimate defendant before for the French courts because he had allegedly acted as one of a group of defendants accused of committing crimes in France. The prosecutor also rejected a call by Arif's lawyer, Sebastien Bono, not to allow evidence he claimed had been obtained from his client under torture in Damascus. She said the Algerian had been questioned in Damascus at the request of the French authorities and in the presence of a French examining magistrate.
"Sit down, M. le Defense Attorney, and prepare to defend your client. This trial is ON."
#1
Will the defense then accuse the French examining magistrate (who, I believe entirely based on this article, was at the questioning to prevent torture) of abetting or even participating in the alleged torture?
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
03/23/2006 1:01 Comments ||
Top||
Why not start it yourselves? Go in there en masse and clear those pigstys out. With plenty of troops (and some grapeshot if needed).
Oh, yeah, I forgot - it's Frogistan.
What was I thinking?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/23/2006 11:16 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The French have far more serious issues at hand. For example, Radio France 2 ran a report last week on how difficult it is to find a decent meal in medium-priced restaurants.
#8
the Franch authorities have brought on these problems, nurtured and coddled them for decades. They earned their pain. No pain, no gain. Just gotta share it with the Islamists
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2006 19:20 Comments ||
Top||
Red meat for the immigration debate frequently held on Rantburg.
SAN DIEGO (AP) - As the Senate prepares to tackle the most sweeping immigration reforms in years, a top Democrat vowed Wednesday to do everything in his power, including filibuster, to thwart Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposed overhaul.
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would ``use every procedural means at my disposal'' to prevent Frist from bypassing the Judiciary Committee. Frist, R-Tenn., has made clear the Senate will take up his proposal next week if the 18-member committee fails to complete a broader bill. ``If Leader Frist brings a bill to the floor that does not have the approval of the Judiciary Committee, it will not get out of the Senate,'' Reid told reporters at the San Ysidro border crossing, a few steps from Tijuana, Mexico.
Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Frist, did not immediately respond to a call Wednesday evening.
Reid said the overhaul must include heightened border enforcement, a ``guest worker'' program and a ``path to citizenship'' for the estimated 11 million people in the United States illegally. He called legislation by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., a ``good place to start.''
President Bush, in a State of the Union address two years ago, urged Congress to create a worker program under which participants could gain legal status for a specific time and then be required to return home. It would not provide an automatic path to citizenship.
Frist unveiled a bill last week that sidesteps the question of temporary work permits. It would tighten borders, punish employers who hire illegal immigrants and provide more visas.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I didn't vote for Sen. Reid, why should he set the policy for the entire country?
#3
Reid is just looking to make "Bush Republicans look bad" nothing more. He is a dirt ball not a boy scout as he is imaged in the media.
Posted by: SPoD ||
03/23/2006 1:48 Comments ||
Top||
#4
"What is Reid's angle?"
He sees a handy source of 11 million new Democrats.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/23/2006 5:55 Comments ||
Top||
#5
a ``path to citizenship'' for the estimated 11 million people in the United States illegally.
Here's the path: go home, apply according to the law, and get in line. No one who ignores our sovereignty should be given citizenship.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 7:48 Comments ||
Top||
#6
With growing opposition to immigration, the Dems once again choose the losing hand. Add it to 'Let's not listen in to terrorists calling home', the 'Let's close down the Patriot Act', etc list of saying in bigs words - We Are not the Party of the People.
You know, usually the socialist doing these things have in the past done it while owning the government. I don't get the concept of thinking you can do it when you're not in control of the government.
#7
DD "He sees a handy source of 11 million new Democrats."
All immigration and social entitlement programs look like 'new voters' in the eyes of a liberal. Pretty soon there will be (if there isn't already) 'multi-lingual' and 'illiterate-sensitive' voting policies.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/23/2006 8:58 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Good job, Harry! McCain and Kennedy may have been able to sneak their bill through. Now, all eyes and ears are on the debate and which side the Donks will vote on. Count on it being against Joe Six-pack. Karl Rove gets an early Easter present
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2006 9:10 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Not an easy problem. 11 million illegals= 11 million search results!
Results 1 - 10 of about 11,000,000
www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=immigration%20reforms
A top producer at ABC NEWS declared "Bush makes me sick" in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
John Green, currently executive producer of the weekend edition of GOOD MORNING AMERICA, unloaded on the president in an ABC company email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
"If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke," Green complained.
The blunt comments by Green, along with other emails obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT, further reveal the inner workings of the nation's news outlets.
A friend of Green's at ABC says Green is mortified by the email. "John feels so badly about this email. He is a straight shooter and great producer who is always fair. That said, he deeply regrets the sentiment expressed in the email and the embarrassment it causes ABC News."
Developing...
Interesting contrast with my earlier ABC post! LOL
#1
I call BS! He regrets getting caught...nothing else.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
03/23/2006 19:35 Comments ||
Top||
#2
notice John Green never admits his remorse.... I call BS as well - you got punked. NEVER cc: "all employees"
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2006 20:30 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Appears distribution of the ABC executive party line got a little outside the building....whhahahahaha. Well Mr. Green, maybe you are not as well thought of among the rank and file as you once believed.
#4
I say he's entitled to his opinion and to puke if he wants too. The question for ABC News is whether an executive producer with such opinions can and will present fair news coverage. I doubt it.
#6
The question for ABC News is whether an executive producer with such opinions can and will hurt ratings and advertising revenue.
Considering that ratings and revenue have been falling consistently amongst the entire rank and file of MSM companies, which are staffed almost entirely by people sharing the opinion of the gentleman whose email escaped custody... yes I'd say this is a problem. But not enough for the gentleman in question to get the boot just for being indiscrete, I would think.
#7
Will ABC News be unbiased and report it, on GOOD MORNING AMERICA? I doubt it.
Posted by: ed ||
03/23/2006 23:10 Comments ||
Top||
#8
As wid NOLA, when o' when will the Fed, and only the Fed, intervene and oversee anything and everything, to regulate, subsidize, welfarize, and bureaucratize in the name of national = universal safety, securoity, and protection - FEDERALISM = SOCIALISM/CAPITALISM and vice versa, don't ya know!? THE SIMPSONS > "Will someone pul-eeeeessee think of the children". Yep, Yessirree, there are future Motherly OWG Death Camp, Gulag, Reeduc Camp and Brothel Guards out there starving and penniless becuz of Americans' selfish decadent malicious desire to stay alive and hold on to their illegal, non-Govt. provided private wealth and properties. POOR POTUS KERRY ONLY HAS FIVE MANSIONS, D*** YOU; POOR FIDEL ONLY HAS SEVERAL EXPENSIVE HOMES/RETREATS + PRIVATE BODYGUARDS + LOTS OF EXPENSIVE SPANISH HAMS IN CASH-STRAPPED CUBA!
Majority of Viewers Feel Iraq Coverage Is Flawed Elitists Astonished, Vow to Redouble Anti-American Propaganda Campaign
March 23, 2006— Over the last 24 hours, ABC News has been reading hundreds of messages sent in by viewers in response to President Bush's claim that the media are undermining support for war in Iraq. Viewer opinions ran the gamut, but the vast majority believed the media were biased in their Iraq coverage.
"I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this, because it seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good," a woman from West Virginia asked President Bush at a recent town hall.
Teena from Wisconsin agreed. "If we have the capabilities of the media and we can see the blood, bombs, killing and horror, shouldn't we also see the teaching, cleanup, building, training of soldiers Â… and the many other great things I know our soldiers are doing for us?" she wrote.
Many of the postings expressed a desire to get a better sense of the reconstruction effort, and the improvements in daily life for Iraqis. "I think you should cover how many women are now allowed to work, how many kids are now enrolled in school and excelling," wrote Renee from Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M.
Mary Mutschler's son is in the Navy. She wrote from Oregon: "We need to hear about deaths, and what's going on as far as that's concerned. But we need to hear what's going good also."
The latest national poll reveals that 31 percent of Americans believe the media make things in Iraq sound worse than they are. But some of our viewers, like Deborah from Texas, said delivering the bad news served an important purpose. "It is the job of the media," she wrote, "to report what's happening on the war front, and that means insurgent attacks and sectarian violence."
#1
I am forced to watch Fox every morning for about 20 minutes. It's always the same dose of medicine. Under the guise of being pro-American, they show a burned out car and say something like, "in spite of all of the violence, and the nearing of a sectarian civil war, there was one tiny upbeat note this morning when the peace activists were freed." Yeah, one upbeat note.
Never but a positive aside about the poltical process. Never a picture of soldiers being waved at or swarmed by children, never a single picture of a school built or an interview from an Iraqi saying the power is back up, or that something...anything .... good happened. I guess all of that Saudi investment into Fox has paid off.
I wonder to myself - would this war already be over if they didn't only post the same message of "you've already lost the war, go home!" And instead posted the positive news of the fact that Saddam is gone, they have a chance at democracy and the genocide, people shredders and rape rooms have been abolished.
And Fox is the best we've got. CNN etc are blatantly promoting propaganda for the other side. It's really pathetic that our own press puts Tokyo Rose to shame in their ability to shill for the other side.
#2
Agreed. Fox has lost it. Fair & Balanced now means posing two paid (and usually at least one is completely insane) ideologues against each other, which is a pointless waste of air time.
#5
It takes a lot of people to put together a news cast, not to mention to gather the news. Most of them aren't paid a lot of money. The people at Fox, like the people in most industries, work for the industry as much as for any specific company. When they lose their job, they'll be looking for a job at another company in the same industry. It is not a smart career move to alienate yourself from every other company in the industry. So the Fox news tends to be the same as the news everywhere else, just not so much.
It is only in the commentators, who are not employees dependent on Fox for bread on the table, who are balanced.
That is why network news will not change until the entire current generation in management is replaced by a new generation that sees things differently. More likely is that alternative media, talk radio, blogs, reporters of David, will expand at the expense of the MSM. These media are less labor intensive and less eadily influenced by the MSM industrythink.
#6
The 31% figure given is absurdly low - I've seen polls where the MSM's negatives are double that for their incredibly biased "reporting".
Is this supposed to be Step 1 in the rehabilitation of the media?
If so, they flunked miserably. They couldn't resist (after drawing readers in with something approaching reality) pushing their agenda as a closer. ABC. *PTUI*
#7
The majority (60%) of Fox employees political campaign contributions went to Democrats. It just wasn't nearly as skewed as the other networks.
Posted by: ed ||
03/23/2006 12:08 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Just watch the first five or seven minutes of any local newscast. Murder, rape, assaults, vehicular homicide, on and on and on. Why would anyone want to live in any metro area? Its just the form of 'entertainment' that once was dubbed 'news'. Jerry Springer but with blood.
The hack job about unbias news is a joke. Every administration or DoD action is subject to endless hours of anaylsis and criticism. Every bit of good news is handled with 10 shots of the same image of a car bombing or something dragged up again from Abu Ghrab. Where's the criticism and analysis of the failure of the enemy? Where's the loop images of heads being cut off? Wonder how long ESPN would be a viable network if they had Lawn and Garden 'experts' covering the play offs, let alone season play in sports. Yet that what passes as experts on military history, organizations, culture, and operations in MSM.
The internet and its blogs are making hamburger of the what once the image of 'professional' news.
#10
ABC’s “We want to report the news how you want” gimmick is the biggest bunch of crapola since the first huckster said “We just givum what they want.” Does anyone believe that CNN would improve the quality of their product if Debbie from Ohio complained that Wolf Blitzer repeatedly referred to the Cheney hunting non-story as a “crisis”? Pshaww…As if! But you can bet your bottom dollar what stories are covered the next day will depend on how many people respond to their “Question of the Day”.
Get me the pliers son this un is a hooked purdy deep.
#12
These people actually believe ABC News gives a candy-coated crap about being unbiased or being accurate or fair? How touching.
ABC and their ilk don't WANT to be unbiased, fair or accurate; they want to convince their viewers to vote Democrat at the next election. That's the business they're in: producing pablum to influence the masses in favor of the Party.
The only interest ABC could possibly have in viewer responses is to figure out how to better conceal their manipulation of peoples' perceptions and become better propagandists.
This should have gone under Fifth Column...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/23/2006 17:07 Comments ||
Top||
The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East.
Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on charges related to an FBI counterterrorism sting. He has denied any connections to terrorism.
But federal authorities paint him as an intelligent religious scholar with strong ties to some of the world's most notorious terrorists, including Mullah Krekar, the founder of a violent Iraqi terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaida.
The FBI report on bin Laden is undated and heavily redacted. It states that an informant told the FBI that during October 2001 he was approached by someone soliciting intelligence about "flight training schools, access to airports in (redacted)" and information about "how close the individual could get to an aircraft."
The informant said he was instructed that any information could be distributed to "brothers" through two phone numbers in Damascus, Syria. One of the numbers was called repeatedly by Aref from his Albany home, according to federal authorities.
Aref's attorney, Terence L. Kindlon, said the information is "meaningless" because the number appears to have been the headquarters for Islamic Movement for Kurdistan (IMK), which had an office in Damascus where Aref once worked after fleeing Iraq.
"He called IMK all the time," Kindlon said. "He had friends there, guys he went to college with."
Still, federal authorities are using the information to bolster their allegations that Aref lied on his visa application about whether he had any ties to political groups. The immigration violation -- for allegedly lying on his residency application -- was added to the counterterrorism charges for federal authorities to be able to introduce Aref's overseas' ties into the case.
"Aref kept his IMK affiliation hidden and secret, specifically omitting any reference to the IMK in his 1999 refugee application," according to a memorandum filed by the Justice Department. "Aref has had contacts with terrorists and discussions about terrorist acts."
In addition to the alleged connection to Osama bin Laden's terror network, documents released Tuesday indicate that Aref's name, Albany address and telephone number were found in several suspected terrorist strongholds during the war in Iraq.
One of the facilities was raided in March 2003 and had been occupied by Krekar's group, Ansar al-Islam. U.S. forces discovered evidence that terror groups had tried to produce deadly toxins there, according to a government report.
More information was also released by the government Tuesday about a suspected terrorist camp in that was bombed by coalition forces in June 2003. The unclassified records indicate the camp had been occupied by heavily-armed Ansar al-Islam members carrying various military manuals.
A notebook found in the camp contained Aref's name and Albany address, along with Krekar's contact information in Europe, according to the report.
Kindlon again downplayed the significance.
"Just because you find somebody's name someplace, it doesn't mean anything at all," Kindlon said. "It's where he's from. This is a guy who used to speak to thousands of people at the same time. ... He was a (religious) prodigy. The fact that his name exists in different places throughout the country of his birth means nothing."
It's routine for government prosecutors to release criminal history reports of people they intend to call as witnesses at trial.
Other records unsealed by the government included criminal history reports for two men, one on a terrorist watch list, who had attended the Masjid As Salam mosque on Central Avenue where Aref is the spiritual leader.
One of the men, a 26-year-old ex-convict named John Earl Johnson, was arrested by Albany police in December 2001 as he exited the mosque carrying a rifle. A year later, Johnson was arrested again while driving on the New York State Thruway in Herkimer in a van that authorities say was loaded with weapons and computer discs containing terrorism-related manuals.
The manuals included information on how to make fertilizer bombs, nitroglycerine, cyanide, chorine gas and letter bombs.
Johnson, who has served at least two prison terms, was also arrested in Afghanistan in March 2000 carrying similar computer discs, according to the FBI report and law enforcement sources.
The other individual whose criminal history was released by the FBI Tuesday is Ali Mounnes Yaghi, a former pizza shop worker who helped establish the Central Avenue mosque and took part in hiring Aref there. Yaghi is now on a terrorism watch list, according to the records.
Yaghi, who was deported to his native Jordan in July 2002, was jailed as a federal detainee for almost a year after the Sept. 11 attacks as the FBI investigated whether he or any of his acquaintances had connections to terrorist cells or attacks on the World Trade Center.
FBI agents said Yaghi failed a polygraph examination during an interrogation in which he was shown photographs of the 19 hijackers and asked whether he knew any of them. But Yaghi was never connected to any terrorist plot before being deported.
However, according to a source close to Aref's case, Yaghi contacted the FBI after Aref's arrest and pledged to cooperate in the current investigation.
The new information provides more details about why the FBI launched a sting three years ago targeting Aref.
Aref and Mohammed Hossain, an Albany pizza shop owner and co-founder of the mosque, were ensnared in an FBI sting and accused of taking part in a plot to make money from the sale of missile launchers to terrorists. The plot was not real and was created by the FBI, which used an informant to allegedly lure the men into the deal.
Officials have not accused Hossain of being connected to any terrorist groups. He is free on bond, as both men await trial.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 02:06 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
MICHAEL YON: For the most part, itÂ’s doing an incredibly poor job. I see some exceptions; Tony Castaneda at the AP does a good job. But for the most part, they doÂ…Rich Opal (?), New York Times, does a good job. But for the most part, they just focus onÂ…I mean, the mainstream media just focuses on the flames and the bullets. They focus on the terrorism. They donÂ’t tell us that the Kurdish areas are a complete success. TheyÂ’re becoming economically viable, theyÂ’re making a lot of progress, theyÂ’re sending their children, including their girls, to school. They love us there in the Kurdish areas, and they donÂ’t tell us that Mosul is a success now. I mean, Mosul was the only thing on the news last year when I was there. IÂ’m sure you remember that. Hugh Hewitt nails the media
Naseem Khan blended right into the Pakistani community when he moved to this quiet farming area south of Sacramento. An immigrant who spoke Pashto and Urdu, he had lived there briefly once before, made friends easily and attended the local mosque.
Today, Khan's anonymity is long gone. The convenience store clerk-turned-FBI informant is the star prosecution witness in the trial of Umer and Hamid Hayat, a father and son accused, respectively, of supporting terrorism and lying about it to the government.
Hamid Hayat, 23, faces charges of providing material support to terrorists for allegedly attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, as well as for lying to investigators during an interrogation. In a joint trial, Umer Hayat, 48, an ice cream vendor, is accused of making false statements to the FBI to protect his son. Hamid Hayat faces as much as 39 years in prison; his father, 16.
The case is built on Khan's infiltration of Lodi's small Pakistani community from 2002 to 2005. Earlier this month, prosecutors put Khan, 32, on the stand, where he told jurors that Hamid Hayat had talked about attending a training camp. Jurors also saw videotapes of both defendants first denying and then admitting to investigators that Hamid Hayat had attended the camp.
But last week, Khan shocked observers of the trial by asserting that al-Qaeda's second-in-command had passed through Lodi in 1998 or 1999, raising doubts about his credibility that the defense has begun to exploit.
The Lodi case is the latest in a string of prosecutions brought since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks under a law that criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists.
The government's success with the previously obscure statute has been mixed. It has won convictions in high-profile cases in Northern Virginia, in Lackawanna, N.Y., and in the New York City trial of radical lawyer Lynne Stewart. It has lost prosecutions in Detroit, Idaho and Tampa.
The Lodi case provides a rare, detailed look at how one FBI informant functioned and raises questions about the effectiveness of the government's strategy of infiltrating the community with an outsider.
Defense lawyers say their clients' arrests were made in desperation because there wasn't any real terrorist activity to find in Lodi. They contend that Hamid Hayat was given to grandiose exaggerations. At trial, they played hours of the videotaped FBI interrogation, which appears to show the two men, whose English was limited, agreeing with FBI agents instead of offering information.
"They were after big fish," Umer Hayat's attorney, Johnny L. Griffin III, said of investigators. "They couldn't get the big fish, and they had to get someone."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Ferris declined to comment.
The FBI paid Khan more than $200,000 to move to Lodi, a city of 56,000, according to court testimony. He took an apartment near the Lodi Muslim Mosque and befriended Hamid Hayat, a lean young man with a black goatee, imperfect English skills and few friends. Hayat had a sixth-grade education and followed Pakistani politics, including the movements of radicals, court testimony has shown.
Khan visited the Hayat home at least a dozen times and had lengthy phone conversations with Hamid Hayat, which he secretly recorded. Transcripts of those calls reveal that Khan talked with Hayat about girls, cricket and, over time, politics and terrorism. Khan feigned a radical streak and an interest in jihad.
In 2003, Hamid Hayat went to Pakistan but kept in touch with Khan. In transcripts of their phone calls, he told Khan that he planned to attend a militant training camp but sheepishly admitted he had not yet done so. Khan encouraged him, saying, "Be a man" and "You're wasting time."
"I was just making conversation with him," Khan told Hamid Hayat's lawyer at the trial this month. Under further questioning, Khan acknowledged that Hayat never told him he had attended the camp -- only that he would go in the future.
Under FBI interrogation, Hayat first denied, then acknowledged, that he had spent months at a training camp near Rawalpindi, Pakistan, that he said was run by al-Qaeda.
In June 2005, Hayat returned to the United States and was brought in for questioning. His father accompanied him, and both were arrested. They have been in jail ever since.
While Hamid Hayat was in Pakistan, Khan befriended two imams of the Lodi mosque, according to court testimony. They soon became suspicious and warned others to avoid him.
Several days after the Hayats were arrested, the two imams and one of their sons were detained on immigration violations. They were deported but not criminally charged.
One of the imams had been in conflict with another over the construction of a Muslim religious school. Some in Lodi suspect that political opponents reported the imams to the FBI.
Across the street from the Lodi mosque on a recent afternoon, children played basketball while men in traditional Pakistani dress watched over them or milled around the entrance to the mosque, a low-slung yellow building in a ramshackle neighborhood of single-family houses.
Taj Khan, a local activist and a 25-year resident of Lodi, said the investigation and prosecutions have wreaked havoc on the community. "People are scared. People are having nightmares, I'm being told," said Khan, who is not related to the FBI informant.
Taj Khan was part of a cross-cultural effort that sought to build bridges between Christians, Jews and Muslims in a town in which the Pakistani community dates to the 1930s. "This event has put a big lid on all that," he said. "This thing has set us back quite a few years."
Naseem Khan's credibility suffered a blow last week when he maintained he had seen al-Qaeda's second-ranking leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, at the mosque in 1998 or 1999 -- a statement that Brian Jenkins, an authority on terrorism at Rand Corp., calls "far-fetched."
FBI documents released last week show that Khan first made the assertion when agents approached him in 2001. At that time, Khan also told the FBI that he had seen Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed al-Nasser, a suspect in a 1996 Saudi Arabia bombing, in Lodi, and Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, in Stockton, Calif., in 1999.
Terrorism experts believe that none of those suspects was in the United States at that time, though al-Zawahiri is known to have passed through the country on a fundraising trip in 1993.
The misstep for the prosecution shows one of the possible pitfalls of using confidential informants in terrorism cases, said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
"The FBI has been correctly critiqued for not having agents from these communities," he said. "Since they don't have them, they're going to informants . . . and with informants you often have credibility problems."
Chesney cautioned that "having an unexpected but clearly wrong thing being said doesn't help, but it's not dispositive, either." The videotaped confessions are still strong evidence, he said.
"I'm not a betting man, but if I was, I certainly wouldn't bet on the jury discounting confessions unless they've got some fairly specific facts that show their wills were overcome," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 01:46 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Several days after the Hayats were arrested, the two imams and one of their sons were detained on immigration violations. They were deported but not criminally charged.
NB: The "immigration violations" were failure to list their connections to terrorist organizations.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 7:52 Comments ||
Top||
LAHORE, PAKISTAN - Like many students at Punjab University, Mohammed Abid Faran worries about living costs almost as much as his studies. To save rupees, he counts on an Islamist student organization, Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), which keeps prices at the university hostel artificially low. "Here a cup of tea costs three rupees," Mr. Faran, an engineering student, says. "Outside it costs six."
Three-rupee tea or your soul, Mo. Choose carefully.
But Faran worries that IJT dictates not only the price of tea but the proper comportment of Muslim students in this cosmopolitan city as well. "We are studying, and they are saying we should protest, without regard if we are busy and want to go or not," he says, referring to a recent demonstration on campus over the controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. "Why should they put pressure on us?"
Such conflicted feelings underscore a heated debate on Pakistani campuses over the influence of groups like IJT. Islamist student unions are battling for the hearts and minds of young Muslims - receiving a boost from a growing student conservatism as well as IJT's ability to fill in gaps left by the poor funding of education here. Some 23,000 students attend Punjab University, a place that the government hopes will foster the values of "enlightened moderation." The leafy grounds echo campuses around the world: young men and women stroll together down shaded lanes; a young woman poses giddily for a picture. But some faculty members say that their tolerant and liberal viewpoints are facing an increasingly tough challenge. And students say they've seen IJT activists beat others whose public behavior they deem unacceptable. In one example highlighted by the local press, IJT activists allegedly beat a newly married couple whom they mistakenly thought were flirting in public.
IJT activists deny such charges. "This is false propaganda. There is not one incident in which IJT workers beat students," says Nasurallah Khan Goraya, president of IJT, which is linked to the Jamaat Islami, a popular Islamist party with seats in the National Assembly.
Let's be honest here, shall we? IJT is the muttawa and dawa wing of JI, whose members are perfectly happy to pick up a crowbar and bash some heads.
Members of IJT, who number some 3,000 nationally, say they promote Islamic values not only by policing student behavior but by helping needy students. Pakistan spends less than $600 per student per year on higher education, proportionally less than comparable South Asian countries, according to comparative studies. Its spending on overall public education, the lowest in the region, declined to 1.8 percent of GDP in 2002-03 from 2.6 percent of GDP in 1990. The US has proposed $87 million in aid for higher education in Pakistan between 2002 and 2007.
Just between you and me, I don't want one US penny being spent on education in WakiPakiLand.
IJT leaders say they do not receive any money directly from Jamaat Islami. The bulk of their funding, they say, comes from private donations from former members both in Pakistan and abroad and supports campaignssuch as aiding schools in earthquake-affected areas and holding book fairs. "We have only an ideological link with Jamaat Islami," Mr. Goraya says. "We do not depend on them."
Sure. Yah. Yew betcha.
Mohammad Farooque Ahmed, a law student at Punjab Law College, says he was drawn to IJT's methods of instilling discipline and knowledge, and that peace and democracy are cornerstone values. "We motivate our workers to pay attention to their studies," he says, displaying a book where IJT students record daily activities, noting how often they've prayed and read the Koran. It is presented to a supervisor at week's end.
Are those gold stars or bloodstains in the margins?
As Muslims, IJT members say they believe that Pakistan should be governed by Islamic sharia law, but say they do not support the use of force. "We want to make a democratic system," says Shabir Ahmed, an IJT leader. "If people don't like Islam, we will not compel them."
"After the bruises heal, the kufrs join quite willingly."
Critics, however, say that IJT's strong-arm tactics at Punjab expose their ideological agenda. Four years ago, IJT spearheaded a movement for a walled-off cafeteria for women, points out professor Mujahid Ali Mansoori. "They would not allow a single boy and girl to sit alone," he says, adding, "When I was a student 30 years ago, it was a lot more liberal." Professor Mansoori and other faculty say the incident is but one example of IJT's growing power, despite the fact that IJT is technically banned from campuses, the result of a 1992 Supreme Court ruling aimed at ending decades of political violence at universities. And, they say, its influence reaches into the ranks of senior administration. Officials say they maintain the ban on IJT, but that the group benefits from influence gained in the 1970s and '80s. Still, they say, that influence is petering out. Muhammed Naeem Khan, the university registrar, says he is doing what he can to support that trend. "Whenever I have to exert force, I do," he says, adding, "I don't want to be fanatical in my approach. I don't chase every poster."
Dr. Khan says that the school recently expelled several IJT activists for engaging in political activities, including setting up booths to attract students. But IJT posters are virtually the only wall adornments in one dorm - and virtually everywhere else on campus.
"Don't be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join the JI party!"
Afzaal Ahmed, though not a member, says students are compelled by religion to use force if they see improper behavior in public. "If you see some evil taking place, you must use power to stop it," he says, noting that he's seen IJT students attack others. Mr. Ahmed says, though, that IJT should not function as an unauthorized religious police force. IJT's overall impact has been "pernicious," says Shaista Sirajuddin, chairwoman of the English department. "It's really destroyed the academic environment. It's erosive," she says. She cites incidents where IJT and supporters have tried - unsuccessfully - to remove books from the syllabus. "A small number of us are fighting a rear-guard battle against the closing of one's mind." But she says that students still graduate with a sense of tolerance, and that she and others place their hope in students like Sarah Ahmed. "People at this age are mature enough to know what's right and what is wrong," Ms. Ahmed says. "You can't impose your subjective viewpoint on them."
HANGU: Shops and business centres remained closed here and tensions ran high some 40 days after the bombing of an Ashura procession that killed 45 people. Shias and Sunnis have not reached a peace agreement and a 12-member government committee was talking with both sects towards this end, official sources told Daily Times on Wednesday. They said there was little hope that normalcy would return to the city, devastated by post-bombing violence. Inspector General Police (NWFP) Riffat Pasha visited the area to appraise the security situation. The law and order situation was very tense, he added.
Pasha said the provincial government had approved the establishment of another police station and deployed 100 more policemen to stop sabotage and terrorism in the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
The political administration of South Waziristan has denied a news item published in the Guardian and subsequently in Daily Times that claimed that local Talibans had taken control of the agency. In a press release that was issued on Wednesday, the South Waziristan administration said the "mischievous report" of the Guardian about the Taliban collecting taxes, setting up checkpoints and establishing Islamic courts in Wana, was totally baseless and misleading. "In order to bring permanent peace in the area, a peace committee comprising of ulema, tribal elders, intellectuals and representatives of the business community has been formed to assist the administration in maintaining law and order," the statement said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
Jehangir Karamat, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, is being replaced by retired general of the Pakistan Army Mahmood Durrani. The formal announcement from the Foreign Office is expected to be made when the agreement — the request to the host government to accept the nominated person as ambassador and plenipotentiary — which has already been sent to the US government is approved and received back in Islamabad.
It is not clear why Ambassador Karamat, who took up his post on a two-year contract, which is normal, around a year and a half ago is returning home. Maj Gen Durrani, an armoured corps officer like Gen Karamat, was Gen Zia-ul-Haq's military secretary for several years. He will become the third armoured corps officer to serve as Pakistan's ambassador to Washington.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Theory: armoured corps generals are not in high demand these days - the Pakistanis have concluded that they're not likely to be playing Patton-and-Rommel on the Indian border anytime soon, so that the excess would-be-George-C-Scotts are being shuffled over to the diplomatic corps.
Or, y'know, not.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/23/2006 12:45 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Keep your friends close and your generals with sketchy loyalties and a bunch of well-armed ululating followers on the other side of three oceans.
Either Asif Zardari or Gomez Addams, I'm not sure which...
The district coordination officers of Nawabshah, Sanghar and Hyderabad have confiscated properties owned by Asif Ali Zardari as ordered last month by an accountability court, said the National Accountability Bureau on Wednesday. DCOs submitted details of the confiscated properties to the court as such, 98 acres of agricultural land in Sanghar, nine acres in Hyderabad, 39 acres agricultural land in Deh Deliwadi, Hyderabad, two acres agricultural land in Nawabshah and a plot in Cooperative Society, Nawabshah, said a NAB press release.
NAB has also moved an application at the Accountability Court for attachment of overseas properties of Zardari, it said, adding that the court would take up the application on April 4.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has made 22 recommendations to the government on how to end terrorism in the country, along with the recommendation that incidents of terrorism should not dubbed as jihad.
Hot damn! My surprise meter still works!
These proposals were compiled by the CII in its recent report, based on the findings and recommendations of a dialogue titled ‘Islam and Terrorism’ which was attended by a number of scholars and experts. The CII recommended that all camps training militants or terrorists should be shut down immediately.
I'd say the very first step in stopping terrorism would be to shut down their spawning grounds...
It says that an overall review of intelligence organisations including the Federal Investigation Agency, the Intelligence Bureau, Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence should be conducted and these organisations should be strengthened to eliminate the political-backing of terrorists.
Maybe intelligence agencies should stick with collecting, analyzing, and reporting intelligence. Special operations should be in a separate organization — the same applies to the U.S., by the way. Special operations organizations should be forbidden from conducting domestic operations and domestic intelligence collection should be controlled by police agencies and not the military.
It recommended that all Muslim countries adopt a joint strategy to combat terrorism and a special committee of experts on terrorism be formed at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference level.
Good move. Pick the most ineffective organization you can think of.
The CII proposed that an agreement should be made between clerics belonging to different sects and foreign involvement in this regard should be stopped.
I'd guess they're referring to the Soddies, which surprises me, as well...
It said that protest gatherings and rallies should be restricted to specific areas and no one should be allowed to preach outside mosques and immambargah. It recommended that religious and racial discrimination be eliminated and the violation of human rights be stopped.
This sounds so... un-Pakistani. The Land of the Pure would never stand for it.
The participants were of the view that if the political system was strengthened, development works were carried out without discrimination and people had job opportunities, terrorism and militancy would decline. The report also recommended that all borders of the country be sealed and the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas be brought fully under state control.
If they're part of the nation, the state should control them. If the state doesn't control them, they're independent.
It recommended that a council of intellectuals, researchers, bureaucrats, military officials and criminologists be formed at the SAARC level which would investigate causes of terrorism.
Actually, these recommendations pretty well address them. The fundos would never stand for half of it, much less all of it.
The dialogue also recommended that the Interior Ministry issue licences to private detectives on individual and organisation basis. It also recommended that anti terrorist courts be strengthened.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I'm not sure whether I'm happy to see that there are still sane voices active in Pakistan or saddened by the fact that the Council of Islamic Ideology appears to be the lone voice in the wilderness that seems to have gotten a clue and figured out the processes of cause and effect.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 0:16 Comments ||
Top||
#2
IM semi uninformed opinion: the web site looks/reads like window dressing
#3
I think somebody realizes that current behavior will result in the end of several nations' governments, with lots of former government loyalists on the gibbit. It's just another form of CYA.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/23/2006 18:22 Comments ||
Top||
#4
immambargah
that's the sound I make in the morning after gargling...coincidence? I think not
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/23/2006 20:23 Comments ||
Top||
The government has kept open the door to negotiations for a political solution to the troubles in Balochistan and Waziristan, but it will not allow “miscreants” to blackmail the state, President Gen Pervez Musharraf said in a meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Wednesday.
Looking for a little face to save...
The government will not allow the “miscreants” in Balochistan and the tribal areas to challenge the writ of the government and attack security forces, the president said in the meeting at Army House. However, he added that talks were still possible, “but we will not let them blackmail us”. He praised the government effort to develop the tribal belt, saying all available resources should be used for this purpose.
Gonna try and bribe them, huh?
Gen Musharraf condemned KabulÂ’s accusations that Pakistan is sheltering Taliban militants who are responsible for violence in Afghanistan. Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan to stop the infiltration of terrorists, so the Afghan accusations were particularly hurtful.
The troops are there. They're just trying real hard not to cheese anybody off...
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The poor man looks positively dyspeptic. Though who can blame him, given that it's Pakistan he rules, along with his little uniformed friends?
EFL Three major tribes live in North Waziristan, which has become the Taliban's prime stronghold outside of Afghanistan: the Wazirs, the Mehsuds and the Dawar. British soldiers referred to the Wazirs as wolves, and the Mehsuds as panthers of the mountains.
The Dawar have traditionally been peace-loving, preferring shopkeeping to guns and towns over mountains. The Mehsud and Wazir tribes, though, have been arch-rivals for centuries. Traditionally, the Mehsuds have been part of the Pakistani establishment, and as recently as the past few years they supported the military's actions against Wazir tribes, who are mostly Taliban.
In today's North Waziristan, though, Maulana Sadiq Noor and Maulana Abdul Khaliq are the unbending leaders of the Taliban-led resistance. They are both Dawar and, even more startling, the Wazirs and the Mehsuds are under their command. The man in charge of launching mujahideen raids into Afghanistan is Maulana Sangeen, an Afghan from neighboring Khost province.
In South Waziristan, Haji Omar, a Wazir, is the leader of the resistance against Pakistani forces, while Afghan operations run from the area are taken care of by Abdullah Mehsud, of the Mehsud tribe. "Nobody has seen such an arrangement in centuries, where the Mehsuds and Wazirs are fighting side-by-side, and more, under the command of the Dawars," said a local bureaucrat in Waziristan who spoke to Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity.
The revolution that is sweeping across Waziristan is not confined to the region. It is on the march, with the eventual targets being Kabul and Islamabad. The overall command center is in South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri calls the shots, while Tahir Yaldevish, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and a key figure in the Afghan resistance, moves around Paktika province in Afghanistan.
Well-placed sources in the Taliban movement who spoke to Asia Times Online claim that the Taliban communicated "final messages" to Afghan and Pakistani officials, warning of direct attacks across both countries against top army and civilian officials. As a result, according to the sources, Pakistan stopped military operations in North and South Waziristan that were aimed at rooting out Taliban and foreign forces.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban strategy is to terrorize Afghan officials and prevent them from cooperating with foreign forces. And once the allied forces are alienated, attacks on them will be intensified. At the same time, the administrations in the capitals of the two countries are becoming increasingly isolated. The US-backed ruling royalists in Kabul are now threatened by Islamists who completely dominate parliament after recent general elections. There is no doubt that radical Islamists, whether those of the Hizb-i-Islami, the Ittehad-i-Islami led by Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the alliance led by Yunus Qanooni or dozens of independent former Taliban, are now at the helm of political affairs in Kabul. And the US-backed ruling and nominally secular officers of the Pakistani army are more on their own than ever before. A silent alliance of religious elements and religious parties is keeping a sharp eye on developments in the mountains, waiting for its chance to join in the revolution as it rolls off the mountaintops.
#2
i didnt think Qanooni was an islamist. I think the analysis of Afghan politics sounds like the usual stretch from Asia Times. I wonder if their take on Waziristan is to be trusted?
#3
I think it depends on your definition of Islamist, LH, which is one of my problems with the term. If by that you mean someone who accepts some degree of political Islam, I suspect most Afghan politicians would qualify as such. I have problems of lumping Qanooni in with Sayyaf, who certainly is one nasty SOB.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 14:04 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Maybe not a nuke strike, anymouse, but it would be "educational" to have a Dresden-style bombing of Wana or Miranshah, or both - plus. Unload a couple of thousand tons of iron bombs on their heads and see how much they like their Taliban government, and are willing to face the US government in a REAL war. Our biggest problem in these areas is that we've been too nice. These people link "nice" with "weak". We need to demonstrate, at least once, just how anal we can be. Nothing earns respect quicker than a 50-ship formation of B-52s (if we have that many left)dropping BIG bombs on your head.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/23/2006 18:40 Comments ||
Top||
Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's last foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was a paid spy for French intelligence, which later turned him over to the CIA to supply information about Iraq and its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs more than six months before the war began in March 2003, according to former senior intelligence officials.
Although some CIA officials met informally with Sabri, who traveled extensively outside Iraq, the French and the CIA used a third-country intermediary when attempting to get information from him about Hussein's inner circle and weapons programs, according to the retired officials who refused to be identified because the information is classified.
"It was never clear what he wanted," one former official familiar with the situation said of Sabri, "but we never paid him." Sabri's role in providing information to the United States was reported by NBC News on Tuesday.
Over the summer of 2002, Sabri, as foreign minister, negotiated the terms U.N. inspectors' return to Iraq, and in November 2002 he announced Hussein's acceptance of the proposal.
Publicly Sabri was insisting that Iraq had no prohibited weapons of mass destruction. Privately, the sources said, he provided information that the Iraqi dictator had ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not active, and that no biological weapons were being produced or stockpiled, although research was underway.
When it came to chemical weapons, Sabri told his handler that some existed but they were not under military control, a former intelligence official familiar with the situation said. Another former official added: "He said he had been told Hussein had them dispersed among some of the loyal tribes."
At the time, the Bush administration was preparing for the coalition's invasion of Iraq and publicly insisting that Hussein had reconstituted nuclear programs and was concealing from United Nations inspectors both chemical and biological weapons in violation of Security Council resolutions. The White House, which was seeking a congressional resolution that would permit the use of force against Iraq, hoped Sabri would defect, the two former officials said.
"They wanted a big public defection, which would have been good for the policy," one official said. But Sabri comes from a prominent Iraqi family and defection was not an option, one of the former officials said.
The White House was far more interested in trying to get Sabri to defect than in the information he was providing on Iraq's weapons programs, in part because the intelligence community did not trust him, another former intelligence official said.
Sabri took office in fall 2001 after a major housecleaning of Hussein's foreign affairs team. A diplomat with an Iraqi Christian background, Sabri once taught English literature at Baghdad University and was director general of the information ministry during the Persian Gulf War. His brother was one of the Iraqi officials that Hussein had killed because of alleged disloyalty.
Sabri was described as "smart and smooth" by a U.N. official who dealt with him, and as "a type that appeals to Westerners." According to a former intelligence officer, Sabri went out of his way to spend time with Americans and others when he was a diplomatic official in Vienna.
In a speech in February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet referred to Sabri, although not by name, when he said the CIA had obtained information from "a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle." Tenet said that source described Hussein as covertly seeking to get a nuclear weapon and having stockpiled chemical weapons while his scientists were only "dabbling" with biological weapons development with little success.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 00:40 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Tenet said that source described Hussein as covertly seeking to get a nuclear weapon and having stockpiled chemical weapons while his scientists were only "dabbling" with biological weapons development with little success.
I've got to give a hats off to these propaganda writers. They are preparing us for the fact that they are going to find stockpiles of chemical weapons and other bad news such as Saddam did have an NBC program, that will come from the documents. Apparently the new talking point theme will be ..."sheesh, that's all Saddam was doing...dabbling".
I don't know, are Americans really so stupid as to fall for that? I don't think anyone but the moonbats can't put it together.
Besides, if you ask me, the French and CIA should have recognized that they were being played the fool by Sabri. LIke Saddam is too stupid to realize that somebody like this... A diplomat with an Iraqi Christian background, Sabri once taught English literature at Baghdad University and was director general of the information ministry during the Persian Gulf War. His brother was one of the Iraqi officials that Hussein had killed because of alleged disloyalty.....wouldn't make the perfect stoolie to give misinformation for a price to the French, who would be more than happy to believe him.
This whole plan laid out in this article just stinks of unbelievable.
Yo! IÂ’d like ta give a shout-out ta all my home-buoyz in the I-Unit over at MSNBC for keeping it real. Word Up.
An..Damn buoyyy! Dat Lisa Meyers has sum serious junk in da trunk! Noumsayin?
BAGHDAD - IraqÂ’s new government will be in place by April, interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told a delegation of US senators on Tuesday, amid signs Washington is losing patience with the political stalemate in Baghdad.
Jaafari told the senators “he felt this government could be formed by April and that included the actions by the parliament in confirming the new government,” visiting Senator John Warner told reporters following talks with the prime minister.
Talks between Iraq’s political factions on forming a government of national unity have been going on since general elections were held three months ago, but there has been little sign of progress despite warnings that stalemate might be fueling sectarian violence. “We need to combine our efforts in order not to exceed a fourth month in forming a government,” Jaafari conceded at a news conference Tuesday.
“The American people do expect this government to come about swiftly,” said Warner, a Republican who chairs the Senate’s Armed Services Committee. “There’s been too much dawdling whilst Baghdad is burning,” the ranking Democrat on the committe, Carl Levin, said for his part.
“Our continuing presence here is dependant on their reaching a prompt political settlement” on setting up a government of national unity, said Levin. “It’s not good enough to say we’re here as long as they need us ... The commitment now is too open-ended,” he added.
That's a fair statement if it's meant to nudge the Iraqis.
Levin, and two other senators, Susan Collins and Jack Reed, recently wrote to US President George W. Bush calling on him to make it plain US forces would not stay in the country unconditionally. “The US needs to make it clear to Iraqi leaders that a prompt political settlement is not only essential to them, it is a condition of our continued presence,” the letter said.
They don't realize, of course, that they're carrying Dubya's water for him.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Im not sure the focus on promptness is so good. A couple of months longer, to get a govt not headed by Jaafari, might be worth it, no?
#2
I appreciate President Generals Levin, Collins and Reed for their astounding insight and sagacity, but don't they have important speaking engagements at a local Lion's Club to attend to?
AMMAN - Detained former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz has been fitted with a new set of dentures and is in generally good health, his son said Wednesday, despite reports he could be close to death. “My father phoned us on Monday. He was in high spirits and said he was generally in good health,” Ziad Aziz told AFP. “He told us that the Americans gave him a new set of dentures, having lost his teeth eight months ago,” Ziad said, adding that during that time his father had been living on liquid food.
The mind boggles.
AzizÂ’s lawyer and his own family have repeatedly said over the past weeks that Saddam HusseinÂ’s former mouthpiece as it were, being held in US custody in Iraq, was in poor health.
One attorney has called for him to be transferred to Moscow, saying he needed urgent medical treatment for heart problems. “Tareq Aziz is not in good health. He is suffering from an embolism ... and complains of severe pain in his heart,” Italian lawyer Giovanni di Stefano told the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Tuesday.
Gitmo has docs. So does Diego Garcia. I'm pretty sure the Navy docs can handle whatever he has.
In January AzizÂ’s Iraqi lawyer Badie Arif Ezzat, warned that his clientÂ’s health has seriously deteriorated following cerebral embolism and heart problems, and that he could soon die.
Sooner he dies, sooner he meets Himmler.
But a US official said AzizÂ’s health had not significantly worsened and noted that he had been suffering from existing ailments when taken into custody after his surrendered to US forces following the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
Sorta like how the mob bosses spend all their nights chowing food at the Italian diner, but as soon as they're arraigned on charges they pop up with all sorts of ailments. It gets worse when they're actually convicted.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
...8 months ago he was in a jail cell - where the hell did he lose his teeth?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/23/2006 12:26 Comments ||
Top||
#2
IIRC, an army dentist caught some flak for making Tojo a set of "REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR!" dentures. Wonder what would is inscribed on these plates?
Posted by: bruce ||
03/23/2006 12:34 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Shoulda let the dentist brothers from "Iraq the Model" make T's teeth.
From a source that I've generally found to be better than CBS.
Weekly World News is one of my favorites ...
America's military arsenal includes a deadly new weapon: Submarine-like craft that travel underground instead of underwater! Dubbed Subterranean Underground Vehicles, or SUVs, 14 of the top-secret vessels are already roving far beneath the sands of Iran, poised to launch a surprise attack if it becomes necessary to overthrow the rogue regime.
"They're mega-gasguzzlers until the new Hybrid models come out, but that's no problem since they clandestinely tap into Iran's oil wells," said a reliable Pentagon source. "SUVs are already in place near Iraq's most strategically important cities -- including Tehran, Hamadan, Bakhtaran and Mashad. The White House is hoping diplomacy will persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear program. But if President Bush gives the word, elite troops aboard those craft could emerge and easily overrun Iran's unprepared defensive forces."
Each SUV's nose is equipped with powerful drills capable of boring through solid granite and the craft's six giant, retractable digging claws allow it to tunnel like a mole. Under farmland, the vehicles can travel 20 miles a day. "Under sand, they're faster -- capable of slithering up to 45 m.p.h.," the insider said. The source refused to provide details of the highly classified technology. But he warned: "If Iranian officials don't play ball with Uncle Sam they'll face dire consequences." Did you think this article was about CHevy Suburbans?
#2
This article is not as 'out there' as it might appear. Well, OK, parts of it are. But the idea of a weapon that bores into the ground is sound and certainly technically feasible, at least in sand and loose soils.
Mines (in the original sense of the word) for a very long time were the most effective weapon against defensive structures and arguably still are. An autonomous device that bores into the ground beneath structures before detonating has doubtless been experimented with and even made to work.
#5
But the idea of a weapon that bores into the ground is sound and certainly technically feasible, at least in sand and loose soils.
I seem to recall Britain researching such a vehicle during WWI, with the idea that it could tunnel (or maybe just dig a trench) over to the enemy's trenchline.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 7:33 Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Steve ||
03/23/2006 8:16 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Yep, and it's still there under France.
The clay was plastic enough to ooze in around the borer and trap it, written off as a failure and left as it could not be recovered.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/23/2006 8:26 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Manufactured at a secret Alabama assemply plant believed to be owned by Home Depot, two eight hour production shifts of Evangelical Christians and seasonally employed Amish man the assembly lines. Production is well ahead of schedule. Field testing in both Cuba and Venezuela is on-going.
Although there were odd cases of piracy and other transnational crimes in the Melaka Strait over the years, none of them was linked to any acts of terror, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Director-General Vice-Admiral Datuk Mohammad Nik said Wednesday. There was no proof of any "ill-intended activities at sea" related to any form of terrorism in the strait over the years, he said in a special interview with Bernama.
[Mohammad] was refuting the allegation of the London-based Joint Committee on War (LJCW) which placed the strait in the "war risk and terrorism" zone list in June last year, based on perceived enhanced risk in relation to war terrorism. Some 50,000 merchant ships carrying 30 per cent of the world's trade and 80 per cent of East Asia's oil pass through the strait every year, making it a lure to activities of piracy.
But according to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak, cases of piracy in the 900km strait were reported to average only six to nine cases a year or 0.01 per cent. However, the committee's poor rating of the one of the world's widely-used waterways has caused insurance premium for ships traversing the strait to soar, passing on the increase to shipping freight rates.
Mohammad said that admittedly the government had no control over the level of insurance premium imposed on ships sailing through the straits.
"But at the same time it is probably a business opportunity where insurance companies take advantage of the situation," he said.
Singapore Police Coast Guard Commander Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Police Jerry See said it was interesting to find out how the LJCW calculated the war risk of a waterway.
"They have not only placed Malaysia in the list last year but continue to do so this year, despite the improvement in security of the strait. The tag of a war risk zone for the strait is certainly unwarranted," he told Bernama in an interview today. He was referring to the Melaka Strait being free of crime since last October, with only one piracy case between June and December last year.
The littoral states are beginning to cooperate with one another and allowing user nations to lend support and expertise. Malaysia is forming a Coast Guard. Piracy in the Straits has dropped a bit, or at least there are more arrests. The Joint Committee on War can claim a good part of the credit. Proves that once you have them by the wallet, their hearts and minds will follow...
s Iran Crucible - Part I
22 March 2006,FOCUS News Agency
Beyond Yapping Dogs and Superpowers Made of Straw
By Alex Alexiev* This material will get on Rummy's desk. So why is it in a low currency Bulgarian news source?
President AhmadinejadÂ’s recent calls for the annihilation of Israel have provided much needed clarity to a reality the West, rhetoric apart, has often refused to acknowledge let alone do something about. While his genocidal threats against a fellow-member of the United Nations should serve as a wake up call to people of good will anywhere, other less well-known tirades may tell us more about why the fanatics in Tehran feel they can spew hatred with impunity and why the terrorist regime in Iran has become a clear and present danger that could no longer be ignored by civilized nations. "clear and present danger" is Pentagon code for: Let's roll!
"Europeans are like yapping dogs, kick them once and they run away," Ahmadinejad recently opined, while simultaneously dismissing the United States as a "superpower made of straw." Such rants are seldom paid much attention in the Western media, which tends to treat them as unfortunate noise that is best ignored. The "yapping dogs" remark, for instance, was not made public in Europe until four months after it was actually made.
This is unfortunate, because such ravings can tell us more than the reams of sober Western punditry generated on the subject of late. They should also make us think through the implications of such views both in terms of the threat this regime poses and what policies could best counter it. It may be useful to begin with the simple proposition that, looked at from the vantage point of IranÂ’s Islamist regime, AhmadinejadÂ’s outbursts may in fact be a rational assessment of actual European and U.S. policies as opposed to their rhetoric vis-Ă -vis Tehran.
To start with neither IranÂ’s quest for nuclear weapons, nor AhmadinejadÂ’s threat to wipe out Israel are either new or unprecedented. Iran has been pursuing nuclear capabilities for many years and extremely bellicose tirades against Jews and the West have been a regular staple of the mullahsÂ’ rhetoric since Khomeini. Just a few months after 9/11, for instance, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the number two in the Iranian regime then and now, and a man often approvingly characterized as "pragmatic" in the Western media, urged the Muslim world to annihilate Israel with nuclear weapons, assuring them that they will only suffer "some damages" as a result of a nuclear
exchange.
Despite such vitriol, Europe has, by and large, chosen to ignore the fact that Iran is a designated terrorist state and a key sponsor of terrorism. To this day, the Tehran
controlled Lebanese Hezbollah, for instance, is not to be found on the EU list of terrorist organizations, ostensibly because it also provides "social services." Instead, the Europeans have focused on business better than usual and today
hundreds of EU companies do some $15 billion of export business with Iran that is growing at 25% per annum. Germany alone exported $5 billion worth of goods to Iran in 2005, a 30% increase from 2004. And these EU exports, which represent 44% of IranÂ’s total, are mostly in the strategic oil and gas, petrochemical and telecommunications sectors and cannot be easily replaced by Russian or Chinese goods. Fully 75% of the machinery and technology that keeps IranÂ’s economy - and
oil and gas exports - going is of EU provenance. This has made business with Europe an absolutely indispensable economic prop for the regime. Moreover, much of it is done with the direct support and encouragement of European governments in the form of export credit guarantees and bilateral agreements in direct
contravention of U.S. declared policy on dealing with terrorist states. It would not be an exaggeration to say that, wittingly or not, European governments are helping keep the mullah regime in power. Which brings us to the "superpower made of straw." Unlike the Europeans, the United States has taken the Iranian terrorist regime seriously and President Bush declared the country one of the axis of evil. Even
before that, in 1996, the U.S. Congress unanimously passed tough legislation known as the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) authorizing sanctions against companies and individuals doing business with the Iranian regime, especially in the oil and gas sector. Yet, despite the fact that ILSA was extended for another five years in 2001 and the countless violations of its provisions in the meantime, Washington has never imposed sanctions on any company doing business in Iran, except a few
Chinese arms dealers.
Thus, at least in the regime’s view, U.S. implicit threats to Iran have to date proven to be little more than empty rhetoric. There is no reason to expect that they‘ll be taken
any more seriously in the future than they have been in the past unless Washington finally decides to up the ante. And unless it does, the United States will soon face an
unpredictable terrorist regime armed with nuclear weapons and a Middle East profoundly destabilized and on the verge of nuclear war.
Perhaps, as many hope, with the referral of Iran to the UN Security Council, the Europeans will finally prove Ahmadinejad wrong and show some bite along with the "yapping." Unfortunately, given past experience and the large European economic interests involved, the odds of that happening are not very good. Nor is it likely that Russia and China will suddenly decide to abandon their long-standing efforts to
obstruct American policy and strike their own lucrative deals with Tehran. Indeed, just days after RussiaÂ’s voted to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated publicly MoscowÂ’s strong opposition to "any possible sanctions" against Iran.
WashingtonÂ’s current hopes to prevent Iran from going nuclear with the help of the UN will yet again prove illusory. This does not mean that America must face this daunting task alone, for in facing the warmongers in Tehran we have the most
powerful of potential allies - the Iranian people. The first and most important step though is to realize that the status quo is simply no longer acceptable and it will not really get better until there is a regime change in Tehran. Before getting into a discussion of how regime change could best be accomplished, however, it is important to briefly discuss the evolution of the regime in Iran into a ticking time bomb and an imminent threat to world peace.
From Totalitarian Theocracy to Messianic Islamofascism
From its very beginning, KhomeiniÂ’s revolution was based on the essentially totalitarian concept of vilayat-e faqih (rule of the jurisprudent), which simply meant absolute political power for a "supreme leader" and a small clique of top clerics. Though claiming to derive its legitimacy from Islam and having a version of Islamic fanaticism as its ideological banner, this system had much more in common with the Nazi Fuehrer principle and the Bolshevik "vanguard party" concept than with anything found in the Quran or the Twelver Shia doctrine. Indeed, it followed the organizational and operational modus operandi of its totalitarian confreres to the letter, complete with a "cult of personality" of the leader and brutal suppression of the rule of law, dissent, freedom of speech and basic human rights by means of a typical totalitarian security services network and extrajudicial violence. It also followed closely the totalitarian economic model in its socialist version, with 70% of the economy controlled by the state, central planning, five-year plans etc.
Overtime, the system became progressively ossified and corrupt and failed to perform economically. Timid half-baked reform experiments under President Khatami predictably came to nothing, yet, despite being tightly controlled, threatened the absolute power and economic privilege of the clerics. The ruling oligarchy responded by putting an end to even the pretence of reform and toleration of reformists and opted out for a new wave of wholesale repression, euphemistically dubbed the "Second Islamic Revolution." All the while, the regime
continued to blame the Great Satan and evil Zionists for its own failures with the time-tested "externalization of evil" propaganda tactic of totalitarians.
The result has been the near complete stifling of dissent in Iran. Reformists have been prevented from contesting elections, most reformists publications have been banned and many hundreds of journalists, bloggers and non-conformists have been jailed on trumped up charges and often tortured. Since the arrival of Ahmadinejad on the scene, this process has been accelerated and led to the thorough purge of suspected reformists from all levels of government and their
replacement with hard-line zealots.
The growing tendency of the regime to seek greater ideological conformity and use repression as a first resort in its efforts to deal with the palpable discontent of Iranian society, has dramatically enhanced the political clout of the most
reactionary parts of the regimeÂ’s support structures in the security, intelligence and paramilitary vigilante baseej forces and their hardline Islamist mentors. It is these circles that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from and represents.
While this group of extremists is a zealous defender of the Islamist regime, their views are even more radical than those of most regime clerics in virtually all aspects and they see themselves as the true representatives and guardians of
Ayatollah KhomeiniÂ’s legacy. In this respect, they implicitly and sometimes quite explicitly, criticize the clerical establishment for not being radical enough in pursuing the goals of the Islamic revolution as they see them.
Two areas of particular relevance for our discussion here are their attitudes toward the West and the messianic nature of their beliefs. Guided by the teachings of their ideological godfather - the ultra-hardline Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi and the "Westoxication" conspiracy theories of Ahmad Fardid,
a third-rate Persian follower of Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger, these zealots exhibit a pathological hatred of the West and its civilization and a firm belief in the inevitability of an apocalyptic struggle between Islam and the West that will usher in the final triumph of Islam worldwide.
By itself, this fervent fantasy is hardly new, but its current interpretation by Ahmadinejad and the extremists now in power in Tehran is novel and highly disturbing. For they have combined it with the messianic Shiite belief in the
reappearance of the Hidden Imam and appear to believe that the final violent confrontation with the enemies of Islam is not only close at hand, but that it could be speeded up and that it is the religious obligation of the Iranian people
to do that through the “art of martyrdom.” And martyrdom in
AhmadinejadÂ’s fantasy world is no longer just about individuals but about the whole nation. "A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity," he exalts and warns that those who undermine this "principle Â… undermine the foundation of our eternity." The way to avoid this great misfortune is simple in his view and he urges the Iranians to follow those who are "doing their best to pave the way for the urgent reappearance of the Hidden Imam." How long that will take is also no secret and Ahmadinejad is on record saying that he expects the Imam to appear in two short years. What exactly "paving the way" for the MessiahÂ’s appearance
involves is not clear from the ravings of these lunatics, but for the civilized world to assume that these fantasies are totally unrelated to TehranÂ’s quest for nuclear weapons would be folly. Recently, a religious scholar and disciple of
AhmadinejadÂ’s mentor Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi, better known to Iranians as "Professor Crocodile," publicly justified the use of nuclear weapons against the enemies of Islam in what regime opponents saw as a new effort by the hardliners to "prepare the religious grounds for the use of these weapons."
There are many in the West that are already dismissing these ominous threats as empty bluster and yet again urging dialog and calling for more tolerance of the intolerant. For them, it may be instructive to see how some prominent Iranians
who are far from being friends of the West or enemies of the Islamic republic perceive these trends. Abdul-Karim Soroush, the most prominent Iranian philosopher still living in the country, for instance, sees a "hidden fascism" on the march and believes that the current Tehran rulers are going "even further than the Taliban," while, in the words of former president Khatami, they aspire "to imitate Bin Laden" and "compete with the Taliban in calling for violence and
in carrying out extremist crimes."
* Alex Alexiev is a vice president of the Center for Security Policy on Washington, D.C. and is a manager of the program "Islamic Radicalism and International
Terrorism."
Posted by: Listen to Dogs ||
03/23/2006 08:54 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Abdul-Karim Soroush, the most prominent Iranian philosopher still living in the country, for instance, sees a "hidden fascism" on the march... ." Pardon me, what's hidden about Ahmadinejad's agenda? Truth be told, I find his frankness and honesty refreshing, albeit in a 1930s Germany kinda way.
#2
"Europeans are like yapping dogs, kick them once and they run away," Ahmadinejad recently opined, while simultaneously dismissing the United States as a "superpower made of straw."
Hmph. Got half that paragraph right, Ahmadinejad did...
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi on Wednesday ruled out "unfounded and false" claims of the US that al-Qaeda members were present in Iran.
"Dissemination of such reports aim to cover up failure of the occupying forces in guaranteeing security of Iraq," said Asefi.
He said Iran's stances against al-Qaeda terrorist group is completely clear and Americans know quite well that "we have thus far acted on our international responsibilities regarding campaign against terrorism and uprooting the international intricacy which has its roots in the inequality and injustice caused by global hegemony." "How can the US government, which itself has no commitment to the international regulations, speak of others' international responsibilities?" asked Asefi.
Undoubtedly, he said, under the current circumstances when security conditions in Iraq are worsening day by day and people in the country, as the biggest victim, are sustaining casualties and financial damage more than before, presence of the US occupiers will itself pave the ground for terrorist activities of such groups as al-Qaeda.
He added that Americans, which have no response for their public opinion, are laying blame on others and raising such subjects to cover up their weakness and failure.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/23/2006 00:36 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Heh, Indeed...
Posted by: DanNY ||
03/23/2006 1:22 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Excellent. As long as they're denying it, it remains an issue. They could have said nothing, but now they've acknowledged they heard us. The US has set the agenda.
You seem a little defenseve there, Hamid. Why would that be?
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
03/23/2006 3:10 Comments ||
Top||
#3
That noise is the sound of a few M² rectal orifices puckering. Some Iranians do understand that it can't do a thing if we decided to take them out. Asymetric warfare doesn't do a thing to stop intercontinental bombers and real intercontinental ballistic missiles from raining down on their heads.
The apocalyptic religious fanatics that seem to be in control do not have a good grip on real life it appears. They have 2 countries on their own borders that are examples you how we can put them out of power. They don't fully get it.
Posted by: SPoD ||
03/23/2006 5:08 Comments ||
Top||
"Call me insane but did it sort of look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition?"
Yes, but you're still insane
ThatÂ’s what Hollywood bad boy and actor Charlie Sheen asked his brother after watching the news coverage of 9/11 back in 2001.
In an interview with Alex Jones this week, a liberal radio talk show host for GCN Radio Network, Sheen relived his thoughts and shared his theories on what happened that historic day four-and-a-half years ago. According to Sheen, not only were President Bush and his administration involved in what he calls a "conspiracy theory," but the press was too.
Cuz the NYT and the MSM are in Bush's corner, don't ya know
"It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75% of their targets: that feels like a conspiracy theory," Sheen said.
Read the transcription of Sheen's interview below (at the link). Click here to listen to audio of the interview. From reading the interview, it looks more like Alex is leading Charlie to the Koolaid and pouring it directly into his brain
Posted by: Steve ||
03/23/2006 10:19 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
yawn. Shut up and act. Jeesh, it's getting hard to rent movies anymore I dislike so many of these wacked-out spoiled brats. Hollywierd, like MSM, is going to self-destruct itself proudly.
What I really want to see is more movies like Team America, but more realistic, where instead of bad guys like Nazis, Russians or Arabs, we get to see bloggers get an opportunity to expose and waste Alex Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, etc. And I'll watch Sequels I II III IV and V too. Would never get tired of that theme.
#2
How could you make an interesting movie out of blogging? Think of this as a challenge...
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/23/2006 11:50 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Well, he does run with the baldwin crowd. Loopy all of 'em. If they believed it so much, why would they just sit idle and try a march on the dictatorship that is in Washington? Pure crybaby politics. Nothing more.
#4
That's quite a challenge, RC. The morons have almost ruined any possibility of it without borrowing from (goofy or trite) "thrillers".
I'm thinking and what comes to mind is All The President's Men, The Formula, The Borne Blahs, Paycheck, Enemy of The State, Hackers, The Net, and all of the others of that type where computers, technology, the Internet, getting out the truth against the odds are the operative bits. I don't know... Hollywood has pounded home the Evil Government and Rogue Agent or Agency ideas so often they're trite. And I guess the thriller style would have to be the one if you wanted it to be a success. Set it in 2010 with Hillary as President? LOL. Interesting challenge.
#7
Yes. Whenever I'm trying to form an opinion on current events, Reformed Cokehead SitCom Star's are who I turn to for my inside info...
How about you stick to telling us which porn stars gave the best head, okay, Charlie? Thanks in advance...
#11
How about a movie where a demon crawls her way from the depths of hell and takes human form, marries a politician, becomes a 1st lady and then... [partly a ref to the next to last episode of the tv show "Angel"]
#15
"No way. The legal liability for slander is WAY too high."
Heh! Truth is an absolute defense....
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/23/2006 14:51 Comments ||
Top||
#16
OK who took the tin foil from young Charles hat?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/23/2006 14:57 Comments ||
Top||
#17
Sheen should move to any of the various non-capitalistic utopias (like Yemen or Nigeria) so he can unshackle himself from the cares and worries his paranoid-psychotic microenchephalic brain stem keeps cooking up. Moron!
#18
here's another movie for Charlie Sheen to shoot
So there's this two bit gangster wannabee and the big gansters don't respect him but he marries his boss, then gets a few followers and moves to a different part of town and then his wife dies and he marries a 6 year old and then he marries 4 other women to gain allies in his new part of town and then he robs and steals his way to big money while massacreing neighborhoods and making sex slaves out of the surviving women and then he makes his way back to the old hood and takes over and convinces people he is some kind of holy man
#21
I believe, that there are aspects of the 9/11 plot that have not been revealed to the public. Among these concealed items is the manner in which the WTC towers went down. Unfortunately, the people advancing these arguments are generally not equipped to understand what that means.
When a terrorist attack occurs, the first response of the US government is to manage public perception. If the attack can be denied outright, and explained as a mechanical failure, the attack was a mechanical failure. If it is undeniably terrorism, it's a small group of radical extremeists. If there are multiple attacks at the same time, a stateless terrorist organization is responsible. But terrorism is never, ever, ever state sponsored.
But, quietly, at the highest levels, the US government does not treat terrorist attacks as a law enforcement operation. These things are handled at the diplomatic and military level. So the FBI's primary job in the 9/11 investigation was to find out who among the hijackers went where and said what to whom, and then seal it off. The FBI did not treat the crash zones as crime scenes; there was no real investigation of the 9/11 hijackings any more than there was a real investigation of the anthrax letters.
The 9/11 plot in particular had backing from the governments of Iraq, Iran, possibly Bosnia, and significant insubordinate elements of the Saudi and Pakistani governments. The prime mover was Iraq, while Iran provided technical assistance for the hijackings.
I think some of the mysteries of the WTC collapses might be explained by a look at the first WTC bombing, in 1993, which had Iraqi sponsorship. There, the primary attack was a truck bomb, and multiple truck bombs may have been used on 9/11. That evening, authorities nationwide put out an alert to hospitals and other locations to be aware of ambulances and fire trucks sporting bomb loads. After the spectacular and distracting and not all that destrcutive plane crashes into the towers, truck bombs disguised as emergency vehicles drove in, providing the main impetus for collapse.
That's my idea, anyway. This complexity necessarily implies state sponsorship, due to the numbers involved. Wretchard had a good piece about state sponsorship and private conspiracies many months ago. The upper limit for private conspiracies is about 150 people.
#22
Uh oh. There are some rather large holes in there. I presume you've made yourself aware of the many and varied sources who've studied this, who aren't conspiracy believers, and know about the construction of the towers?
Never ever state sponsored terror? The surviving Taleban will be both surprised and, I presume, rather indignant, then.
I'm sorry, but I've been to the sites where the "alternative theories" are peddled and it does not wash.
The architect who designed the WTC Twin Towers, with their new and innovative exoskeleton structure, was a featured documentary subject - and it was updated to include a postscript in which he explained what happened in terms simple enough for anyone to comprehend. Nothing but planes laden with fuel were necessary. No super complex uber doober conspiracy was required.
I'll have what he's having. Sounds like some pretty good stuff.
The WTC's skyscraper skeletons were made to take a relatively large aviation impact, just not the prolonged thermal stress resulting from a multi-ton deluge of burning aviation fuel.
Considering that the buildings gracefully collapsed instead of catastrophically keeling over speaks volumes about how well designed they were. Guess which scenario the terrorists were rooting for.
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.
KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced a limited cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday that included the appointment of an adviser on foreign affairs, 
The Algerian parliament has approved a law banning the call to embrace other religions than Islam. This law states to jail anyone "trying to call on a Muslim to embrace another religion," in remarks to the Christianizing (evangelize) campaigns taking place in the country.
KUWAIT CITY - The first woman ever to contest elections in the conservative Gulf state of Kuwait has launched her campaign by breaking a 44-year-old taboo in bringing male and female voters together.
DHAKA: Bangladesh's top Sharia-based commercial bank, Islami Bank, has denied it played a role in financing militants after regulators detected that funds had been transferred to suspicious accounts from its branches. The government has ordered a crackdown on sources of funding to thousands of Islamist militants, including members of two outlawed groups whose top leaders have been captured recently, in efforts to wipe out Islamist extremism in the country. 
LONDON: One of Britain's leading Muslims demanded on Wednesday the government crackdown on "widespread" child abuse at Islamic schools in Britain.
Paris, 23 March (AKI) - The French parliament has passed a law that increases from 15 to 18 the age at which females may marry - the same age limit already in place for men. The law, which aims to prevent forced marriages, also extends harsher penalties for marital rape and assault to partners and ex-partners. 
The only person jailed for life by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague has had his sentence cut on appeal to 40 years. Milomir Stakic, the 44-year-old former mayor of Prijedor in northern Bosnia, was held responsible for the notorious detention camps set up there in 1992.
A French prosecutor in the trial of 27 people suspected of planning a terrorist attack on the Eiffel Tower Tuesday challenged an attempt by one defendant to have the case against him thrown out. 
LAHORE, PAKISTAN - Like many students at Punjab University, Mohammed Abid Faran worries about living costs almost as much as his studies. To save rupees, he counts on an Islamist student organization, 
IJT activists deny such charges. "This is false propaganda. There is not one incident in which IJT workers beat students," says Nasurallah Khan Goraya, president of IJT, which is linked to the 
Critics, however, say that IJT's strong-arm tactics at Punjab expose their ideological agenda. Four years ago, IJT spearheaded a movement for a walled-off cafeteria for women, points out professor Mujahid Ali Mansoori. "They would not allow a single boy and girl to sit alone," he says, adding, "When I was a student 30 years ago, it was a lot more liberal." Professor Mansoori and other faculty say the incident is but one example of IJT's growing power, despite the fact that IJT is technically banned from campuses, the result of a 1992 Supreme Court ruling aimed at ending decades of political violence at universities. And, they say, its influence reaches into the ranks of senior administration. Officials say they maintain the ban on IJT, but that the group benefits from influence gained in the 1970s and '80s. Still, they say, that influence is petering out. Muhammed Naeem Khan, the university registrar, says he is doing what he can to support that trend. "Whenever I have to exert force, I do," he says, adding, "I don't want to be fanatical in my approach. I don't chase every poster."
HANGU: Shops and business centres remained closed here and tensions ran high some 40 days after the bombing of an Ashura procession that killed 45 people. Shias and Sunnis have not reached a peace agreement and a 12-member government committee was talking with both sects towards this end, official sources told Daily Times on Wednesday. They said there was little hope that normalcy would return to the city, devastated by post-bombing violence. Inspector General Police (NWFP) Riffat Pasha visited the area to appraise the security situation. The law and order situation was very tense, he added.
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has made 22 recommendations to the government on how to end terrorism in the country, along with the recommendation that incidents of terrorism should not dubbed as jihad.
The government has kept open the door to negotiations for a political solution to the troubles in Balochistan and Waziristan, but it will not allow “miscreants” to blackmail the state, President Gen Pervez Musharraf said in a meeting with Prime Minister 
Three major tribes live in North Waziristan, which has become the Taliban's prime stronghold outside of Afghanistan: the 
BAGHDAD - IraqÂ’s new government will be in place by April, interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told a delegation of US senators on Tuesday, amid signs Washington is losing patience with the political stalemate in Baghdad.
AMMAN - Detained former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz has been fitted with a new set of dentures and is in generally good health, his son said Wednesday, despite reports he could be close to death. “My father phoned us on Monday. He was in high spirits and said he was generally in good health,” Ziad Aziz told AFP. “He told us that the Americans gave him a new set of dentures, having lost his teeth eight months ago,” Ziad said, adding that during that time his father had been living on liquid food.
America's military arsenal includes a deadly new weapon: Submarine-like craft that travel underground instead of underwater! Dubbed Subterranean Underground Vehicles, or SUVs, 14 of the top-secret vessels are already roving far beneath the sands of Iran, poised to launch a surprise attack if it becomes necessary to overthrow the rogue regime.
Although there were odd cases of piracy and other transnational crimes in the Melaka Strait over the years, none of them was linked to any acts of terror, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Director-General Vice-Admiral Datuk Mohammad Nik said Wednesday. There was no proof of any "ill-intended activities at sea" related to any form of terrorism in the strait over the years, he said in a special interview with Bernama.
