I don't know if any of you heard, but the Olympic torch relay has been suspended, right as it came into the city I happen to domicile. The official word is 3 days mourning declared, but the grapevine was murmuring about b o o m s and security, and then a few hours later, the official word came out and mourning was declared. Why declare this on a Sunday evening, the timing is very odd. Check out see this story from the South China Morning Post (reg. req'd, or go to bugmenot.com). Wenzhou is about 3 hours south of here and the torch just came from there on Saturday. Very murky this business. I've been advised to stay off of buses for the next few days. Could become very interesting indeed.
Flags are to be kept at half-mast and all public amusements will be suspended for three days from Monday as China begins an official mourning period for victims of the May 12 earthquake.
The State Council, the Cabinet, on Sunday ordered a nationwide display of respect for the dead. The Olympic torch relay will also be suspended from Monday to Wednesday, the Olympic organizing committee said. See? They made the call on Sunday, and the torch relay suspension is announced right up front instead of mixed with everything else (or simply assumed by context).
An Afghan journalism student sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Islam told an appeals court on Sunday he confessed to writing materials that questioned the religion's treatment of women because he was tortured. He denied all charges against him.
During a packed hour-long hearing, a judge read a transcript of the proceedings against 24-year-old Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh on January 22 at a lower court in northern Balkh province. It was the first time that full details have been revealed of the closed-door trial, which reflected the influence of conservative religious attitudes in post-Taliban Afghanistan's burgeoning justice system. The verdict sparked an international outcry.
Kambakhsh was studying journalism at Balkh University in Mazar-i-Sharif and writing for local newspapers when he was arrested on October 27. The transcript said he disrupted his university classes by asking questions about women's rights under Islam. It also said he distributed an article on the subject and wrote an additional three paragraphs for the piece.
The only people with him in the courtroom during the January hearing in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif were three judges, a court scribe and the prosecutor. Kambakhsh said he had no defence lawyer, and only three minutes to defend himself. He was transferred to Pul-e Charkhi prison on March 27, and his case was moved to Kabul, where rights groups believed he would have a fair trial.
On Sunday, Kambakhsh spoke in the appeals court in Kabul, again without a defence lawyer. "I'm Muslim, and I would never let myself write such an article. All these accusations are nonsense," he said, standing before the judge and addressing the court through a microphone in an emotional 15-minute statement. "These accusations come from two professors and other students because of private hostilities against me. I was tortured by the intelligence service in Balkh province, and they made me confess that I wrote three paragraphs in this article."
Official results Sunday show Muslim hard-liners made strong gains in Kuwait's parliamentary elections but female candidates failed once again to win any seats.
Religious conservatives, both Sunnis and Shiites, gained two seats to hold 24 - nearly half of the 50-member parliament, according to results read on state-owned Kuwait Television.
Westernized liberals kept their four seats, and came close to sending the first woman to the parliament of the small oil-rich U.S. ally.
Aseel al-Awadi, a 39-year-old philosophy teacher, came eleventh in her district - the first 10 were declared winners.
Elections were held after relations between the cabinet and parliament broke down and Kuwait's ruler dissolved the legislature in March.
The outcome of Saturday's polls, however, doesn't bode well for ending those tensions as Kuwaitis voted mostly along tribal and sectarian lines, bringing back incumbents who promised them salary increases and vowed to use public money to forgive consumer debt - moves bitterly opposed by the government.
SANAA, May 14 Just a week after the U.S. State Department published its annual assessment of terrorist activity in Yemen, the Sanaa Court of Appeals has lessened the prison sentence for a man convicted of shooting at the U.S. Embassy.
Saleh Al-Ammari, the young man who admitted attacking the U.S. Embassy with a semi-automatic rifle in December 2006, originally was sentenced to five years in prison. On Monday, Judge Mohammed Al-Hakimi lessened his sentence to three years without specifying a reason for the leniency. Al-Ammari had confessed to the shooting, which caused no injuries or fatalities, back in 2007.
Prosecutors told the Associated Press that Al-Ammari carried out the shooting after listening to tapes calling for jihad or holy war against the United States because of its war in Iraq and its support of Israel.
This news comes on the heels of the recently published yearly roundup of terrorism in Yemen. The U.S. State Department called Yemens efforts to reduce terrorism mixed and highlighted the rumored glitch between the two countries: Yemens treatment of suspected terrorists and former Guantánamo Bay prison detainees.
The Yemeni program uses rehabilitation techniques, including counseling sessions with imams to psychologically and religiously reform prisoners who waged violent jihad. In the report, the United States criticized Yemen for using a surrender program with lenient requirements for unapprehended terrorists, as well as its relatively lax incarceration of them once they turn themselves over.
The report also questioned the short assessment and rehabilitation periods for returning Guantánamo detainees, which likely is the point of contention between the two countries regarding repatriating more Yemeni inmates held at the U.S. military detainment in Cuba.
While other countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia have repatriated the majority of their Guantánamo prisoners, Yemen and the U.S. have yet to finalize agreements for the remaining Yemeni prisoners, with both sides occasionally blaming the other. Yemenis now make up the largest single nationality of prisoners at the facility, with an estimated 100 Yemeni men still being held there.
Another area of concern in the report was the uncertain recapture of Jamal Al-Badawi, one of the U.S.S. Cole bombers who has escaped from prison twice.
Although the report only concerns 2007, its now known that other Cole plotters, such as Fahd Al-Quso, have been released. Al-Badawi is thought to be in custody again following a period of suspected release authorized by the Yemeni government.
International media sources report that a former Guantánamo inmate from Kuwait was part of an April 29 suicide bombing in Iraq. Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi was repatriated to Kuwait in 2005, where he faced trial, but was acquitted of all charges.
According to accounts from Agence France Presse, Al-Ajmi later traveled to Syria and then ended up in Iraq, where he and two others exploded suicide bombs that killed several people in the city of Mosul.
The U.S. military estimates that foreigners carry out 90 percent of suicide bombings in Iraq, so U.S. authorities are hesitant to return Yemeni Guantánamo prisoners for fear that theyll do exactly what Al-Ajmi did return to fight in Iraq.
There are no other reports of former Guantánamo detainees returning to Iraq to carry out suicide missions, although many foreign fighters come to Iraq to wage violent jihad against the U.S. presence there.
The terrorism report also mentioned the July 2007 blasts at Marib, which were heard about around the world. Seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis were killed while visiting the temple of Bilqis, an architectural site popular with visitors.
The report only evaluated terror-related events in 2007, but since January 2008, there have been more killings (two Belgian tourists and two Yemenis at Marib), mortar attacks on the U.S. and Italian Embassies and strikes against other foreign firms such as the Canadian Nexen oil company headquarters and a residential compound housing foreigners in Sanaa.
Lessening Al-Ammaris prison sentence, combined with the release of several men who participated in the U.S.S. Cole bombing, is likely to add further strain to relations between the U.S. and Yemen.
Results from Kuwait's parliamentary elections show Muslim hardliners have made strong gains, but women failed to win any seats. Sunday's results from Saturday's elections show religious conservatives will hold about half of parliament's 50 seats.
The elections were scheduled after Kuwait's ruler Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed Al-Sabah dissolved the parliament in March to resolve a growing conflict between the legislative body and the Cabinet. Voters had hoped the new parliament could end the political wrangling, but the re-election of some controversial members of the previous parliament could undermine that wish.
Twenty-seven women were among the 275 candidates running for parliament. None of them won enough votes to take office, missing an opportunity to become Kuwait's first female elected officials since women gained the right to vote and participate in politics three years ago.
Many candidates had pledged to end the conflict between Kuwait's executive and legislative branches, and revive the economy to wean the country off its dependence on oil.
Six Australian-based Muslim clerics who are leaders of the Islamic community in the country are on the payroll of the Saudi Government, receiving allowances of up to $2000 a month. The Australian can reveal for the first time the identity of the clerics - some paid through the Saudi embassy in Canberra, others directly from Riyadh's Dawah (preaching) Office - who receive between 3500 and 7000 Saudi riyal ($1975) a month. The payments to the six - who include former Howard government adviser Amin Hady and Melbourne Somali imam Isse Musse - are part of Saudi Arabia's multi-billion-dollar campaign to transform its hardline image in the West. However, Sheik Hady told The Australian there were as many as 14 others in the country being paid by the Saudis.
The other four clerics on the list provided early last year by the embassy to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are understood to be Yousef Hussein, from al-Taqwa Mosque in Melbourne's southwest; Indian imam Mohammad Anas, from Auburn's Omar Mosque in Sydney's west; Mohammad Mahet Dahir, from the Albanian Australian Islamic Society; and West Australian Somali community leader Mohammad Abdullah Ahmed. Security contacts say ASIO held no concerns about the clerics.
Saudi Arabia has pumped more than $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to fund mosques, Islamic groups and clerics to propagate Wahhabism, the puritanical brand of Islam espoused by al-Qa'ida. The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have also funded Islamic initiatives in Australia.
Sheik Hady defended the allowance he has received since his arrival in Australia more than 25 years ago, saying it came with no strings attached. "So far, they never tell any of the preachers what to say and what to do," said the Indonesian imam at Zetland Mosque, in Sydney's inner south. "We are fully independent of what we do ... they never instruct that this is what we should teach and this is what we should not. I don't think there is any notion with Wahhabism being imposed by anyone." He refused to be drawn on how much money he received from the Saudis, but said there were as many as 20 clerics on Riyadh's books. "There are many - there are 15 to 20 people," he said. While Sheik Hady refused to name others on the Saudi payroll, it is understood that Canberra cleric Mohammad Swaiti - revealed in April last year praising jihadists in a sermon - was being paid by Riyadh.
Sheik Hussein said he dealt directly with Riyadh's Dawah Office, which employed him on its programs to teach Islam before he migrated to Australia 23 years ago. The Jordanian-born imam, a graduate of Saudi Arabia's Islamic University of Madinah, said he gave his allowance from Riyadh to the community. "There's an opinion about taking money for teaching Koran and is it halal (permissible) or haram (forbidden)," he said in an interview conducted in Arabic and English. Asked if he received any orders about what to preach, he said: "No, we're Muslim, we don't say what we want, we say what the Koran and the prophet Mohammed want us to understand and to say, and that is what we teach the people. We don't teach people our opinion."
Sheik Dahir migrated to Australia a decade ago after graduating from King Saud University in Riyadh, and admitted having received an allowance from the embassy, but said he was no longer on the payroll. Sheik Anas said he received an "irregular" monthly clerical allowance of between $1500 and $1600 for "for the betterment of Muslims on the grounds of religious education".
A Danish press freedom group said Sunday it has invited a Dutch lawmaker to talk about an anti-Quran film he made that sparked angry street protests in Muslim countries earlier this year. Geert Wilders will appear in Copenhagen on June 1 to talk about the movie and share his thoughts on free speech, said The Free Press Society of 2004.
Lars Hedegaard, president of the society, said the invitation to Wilders should not be viewed as a provocation against the Muslim world, but rather as a way to address the debate on the right to speak freely. "He has been badmouthed and persecuted by almost everyone in Europe," Hedegaard said of the right-wing lawmaker. "He has not committed a crime as far as I know. He has simply voiced his opinion. The more threats we receive, the greater our duty to continue to speak freely," Hedegaard said.
#2
TOPIX > MONTEREY HERALD - MCMAFIA: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GLOBAL CRIMINAL UNDERWORLD. Govt. pro-Mafia-$$$ "Kleptocrats" + GlobCrime, Inc. a OWG Limited Liability Company.
D *** NG IT, "Iff You got the $$$, We won't have the Memory"???
Lest we fergit, WOT > MACKINDER'S WAR [World Island] bwtn NEW WORLD [Americas] + OLD WORLD {Eurasia] > WAR FOR OWG REGIONAL-GLOBAL FREE TRADE ZONES. Right now, NORTH-SOUTH AMERICA IS WINNING??
* SAME > PAKISTANI PROFESSOR: WAR ON TERROR IS BEING FOUGHT NOT AGZ ISLAM BUT FOR US GLOBAL DOMINANCE.
The abducted ambassadors release is not the result of a deal but of action by law-enforcement agencies, Interior Affairs Adviser Rehman Malik said on Saturday. No deal, no deal, no deal, he repeated to convince reporters at the ambassadors house. No exchange of terrorist, no exchange of terrorist, Malik said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2008 00:00 ||
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SULAIMANI, IRAQ In a compound guarded by gun-swinging, camo-clad Kurdish police, a small group of Iraqi students is trying to recreate the American college experience.
Im sitting in on classes at the American University of Iraq, which just this academic year opened its doors in a relatively calm corner of southeastern Iraqi Kurdistan, in the city of Sulaimani. For the first wave of undergrads, today is test day. The most advanced group at the university faces its first exam in introductory political science.
I glance at the test.
Question #3: Do you agree or disagree that Iraq in 2003 was a good candidate for successful democratic transition? Why or why not?
You get the sense the stakes here are higher than who makes honor roll.
The university, which students and staff know as AUI-Sulaimani or AUI-S, is the brainchild of Iraqs deputy prime minister, Barham Salih. Funding flows primarily from the Kurdish regional government. The purpose of the place, the teachers say, isnt to teach any specific ideology, but to expose Iraqis to Western teachers and a Western classroom environment focused on critical thinking and academic inquiry. The word relativism pops up a lot. Often the teachers pose questions without clear answers.
This differs sharply with the existing academic model in Iraq, which focuses on rote memorization, particularly in English classes. They only teach you some rules, grammar rules, and you use it in the exam just to pass, not to learn English, says Bayad Jamal, one of the students taking the political science exam. By contrast, Jamal says, the teachers at AUI-S make you think.
The emergence of AUI-S and other like-minded schools in the Middle East presents a compelling policy opportunity the United States has yet to fully seize upon as it works to improve its image in the region. Thats a missed opportunity. A variety of factors, from the comparative weakness of local academic institutions, to a swelling Middle Eastern youth population, to the increasing difficulty of obtaining visas to study in the United States or Europe, make the moment particularly ripe for Washington to embrace pedagogical diplomacy.
A shift toward institutions styled after the U.S. liberal arts model is already afoot across the Middle East. The longtime standard-bearers, the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo, have recently been joined by newer institutions in Jordan, Morocco, and two in the United Arab Emirates, in Sharjah and Dubai. A third UAE school is on the way: a joint venture in which New York University will essentially duplicate itself in the Abu Dhabi desert, with Emirates funding. Saudi Arabia recently took on a massive project to build a university fashioned after MIT, a little outside Jeddah. The schools planners say Saudi religious police will be banned from the premises and that men and women will be permitted to study side by side. (Achieving this apparently required seeking direct funding from the national oil company, Aramco, and convincing King Abdullah himself to overrule the Saudi education ministry.)
The United States should embrace these projectsand, in some instances, help support them financiallynot out of charity so much as self-interest. To its credit, Congress apportioned a loan of a little more than $10 million to AUI-S, but it is notoriously hard to convince policymakers to invest more sizeable sums in soft-power initiatives like overseas education. Yet the arguments in favor of such funding are compelling, even in purely economic terms.
A more liberal educational model might not sway hard-line radicals, but it presents a way to connect with the broader Middle Eastern population, many parts of which resent Washington and express mixed feelings about militant Islam. Unlike the radicals, this group holds a stake in their regions economic future. And whatever else they think about the United States, for the most part they still equate American universities with opportunity.
If, by emulating a liberal arts model, Middle Eastern institutions can produce capable graduates ready for integration into the international workforce, they will help alleviate poverty, isolation, and other factors that lead young people into militancy. This in turn will facilitate increased oil production, particularly in Iraq, and will lower geopolitical risk assessments across the region, lifting a major anchor on Middle Eastern equity markets. The economic benefits of such a blossoming would reach well beyond the region itself, and certainly would be felt in the United States.
The private sector can also capitalize on the popularity of U.S.-styled academic institutions. Energy companies in the United States bemoan a dearth of qualified petrochemical engineers. By recognizing the mutual gains to be had from building academic institutions, particularly in Arabic-speaking countries, they can help solve this problem. One of the primary long-term goals of the Saudi and Iraq universities is to help fill the engineering gap. Saudi Aramco has taken notice. Will Exxon?
Finally, on the most basic level, the presence of western faculty in the Middle East provides an aspect of human interaction that should not be discounted. On my flight out of Sulaimani, I sat next to a British engineering contractor who told me about the bubble formation in which he and his security detail drive around Iraq. They never stop for checkpoints, he says, because they dont know whom to trust. If an Iraqi officer tries to stop the convoy with force, they will open fire and drive straight through. Being hesitant to stop at a strange checkpoint is perfectly understandable. But so, too, is the kind of bitter sentiment that such a bubble mentality can spawn.
Education alone cant pop that bubble; AUI-S is still tiny, and prohibitively expense for most students. prohibitively expensive or a prohibitive expense, n'est pas?
Nor will educational diplomacy succeed, period, unless it comes alongside material improvements in infrastructure and security. Yet for all the caveats, its still well worth noticing the efforts currently underway in these classrooms in northern Iraq.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/18/2008 05:22 ||
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#1
The only way to get what we've got is the same way we did: work for it and think creatively for it. Good luck, students of AUI-S!
#2
As they recreate American universities will they make them into the political correctness indoctrination centers we have here now? Will they fill them with drug-addled hippie students and Code Pinkos? Or will they establish 'Animal House' fraternities and haze pledges by pouring boiling water and crab boil on them?
#5
to expose Iraqis to Western teachers and a Western classroom environment focused on critical thinking and academic inquiry
Ah, the classics!
After the Socialist Marxists barbarians overran Western Civilization and destroyed the cultured of the West, its good to know that some places are experiencing a Renaissance.
#6
While having *a* school that does this is fine, there is a big difference in the theory of a liberal education, and its practice.
To explain, there are no universities that only deal in rote memorization, though it sounds dramatic to say so.
Education is often modeled as a pyramid, with memorization being just the lowest level. However, just because it is basic, does not mean it is not important. It is the foundation for more advanced forms of education, and if it is weak, they will be as well.
But from there, students must learn to deal in abstract thought, such as associating mathematics with reality; association and organization of information; discrimination; interpolation and extrapolation; analysis of existing information and synthesis of new information.
This is the upside of the pyramid. It is pretty universally done in serious universities around the world.
What in the West is thought of as "liberal education" *used* to be "cross training"; but today has evolved into almost "anti-education".
In many ways, it is the downside of the pyramid, the de-evolution of the intellect. Pseudo intellectualism and non-education.
For example, they tout "relativism", which is a fine concept in physics, but downright evil in social sciences. Often it asks students to abandon ethics, morality and culture as handicaps to their intellectual development.
Students are encouraged to be less objective and more subjective, often ego-centric in their behavior and outlook.
From the modern liberal education comes anti-intellectual ideas like "post-modernism", which is to a great extent gobbledygook; to abhor not social but intellectual discrimination ("There are no wrong answers, just different answers"); anti-nationalism, that socialism is superior to naturally occurring political mechanisms.
The worst problem is when this is taught first, and thought of as more important than a real education. You end up with students who think they are gods walking on Earth, yet complement this amazing arrogance with ignorance and even disdain for learning.
They lack both the information and the ability to understand that information. They equate emotional shallowness with intellect, dialectic and anger with accomplishment, and imagine themselves as inherently elite.
The liberal education that produces liberals, not in the traditional sense, but as we in America know them today.
#8
You end up with students who think they are gods walking on Earth, yet complement this amazing arrogance with ignorance and even disdain for learning.
Fits the definition of Mao's Red Guard and Cultural Revolution nicely. If the Marxist shoe fits....
Head of Egyptian Intelligence General Omar Suleiman has warned Hamas that the failure to include kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit in a prisoner exchange with Israel will lead to a wide-spread IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, according to a report in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar.
"Israel will use a heavy hand against Hamas in the Gaza Strip if an agreement is not reached that secures the release of the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit" Suleiman told the second-in-command of the militant group's political bureau Moussa Abu Marzook, according to Al-Akhbar.
Senior Palestinian officials reportedly told Al-Akhbar that even though Hamas is ready to include Shalit in a future deal, they are not willing to accept the list of prisoners Israel has offered to release in exchange for the soldier, held by the militant group since he was kidnapped and wounded by Gaza militants in a cross border raid in June 2006.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
I don't assume all this was in the works before the police started investigating Omelette?
#2
This is a curious report on the status of negotiations. I wonder if the real fear is that if the IDF resolves the southern flank issues peacefully (at least as far as prisoner releases) it simply frees them up to focus on the northern flank?
As indecipherable as Lebanese politics are, add in Egyptian negotiations on behalf of the IDF, and Hamas trying to coordinate with Hezbollah, and it makes Louisiana look transparent - oh, forgot that we're fixing Louisiana. Competition makes for innovation I suppose.
Lebanon's U.S.-backed ruling coalition challenged their Hezbollah-led rivals yesterday, demanding that top-level talks in Qatar on ending Lebanon's 18-month political crisis - which turned violent a week ago - also tackle the issue of Hezbollah's weapons.
However, the Hezbollah side insisted the group's arsenal not be touched, according to Lebanese media reports on the first day of the negotiations in the Qatari capital.
The Doha-hosted meeting between the Lebanese factions was arranged under an Arab League-mediated deal to end Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Following Arab mediation, the feuding sides flew to Qatar on Friday, after agreeing that the talks would lead to the election of compromise candidate Army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman as Lebanese president.
Lebanon's official National News Agency said the talks became tense when parliament majority leader Saad Hariri, a Sunni, and hardline pro-government Christian politician Samir Geagea brought up the issue of Hezbollah's weapons.
The private LBC Television said the feuding sides engaged in heated discussions over the subject, which took up most of the morning session.
This indicated that Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's side was looking for guarantees in Qatar that Hezbollah won't again take to the streets as it did when it overrun Muslim Sunni west Beirut neighborhoods last week. Geagea had warned Hezbollah that Doha talks would fail if the Shiite Islamist group sticks to keeping its weapons. We can no longer accept Hezbollah as it is, he told the Qatari Al-Jazeera TV.
The eruption last week was triggered by government measures to rein in Hezbollah, whose fighters then responded by taking up arms. The clashes left 67 people dead and over 200 wounded.
The standoff has paralyzed Lebanon politically, and left it without a president since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud's term ended last November. It started in Nov. 2006, when six Hezbollah ministers and their allies resigned from the Cabinet because it would not give them veto power on government decisions.
Lawmaker Mohammed Raad, who heads Hezbollah's delegation in Qatar, defended the group's keeping its arsenal, saying the weapons were meant to fight against Israel and must not be touched, according to LBC.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2008 00:00 ||
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[6 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
The Hezbies won't give up a single weapon as long as there is no pressure to make them do it.
#2
And there will be no pressure unless their opponents have the strength and will to exert it. They might be able to generate the strength, but only if they unify. The possibility of unification is way beyond our ability to predict - we might not even recognize it if it happened, Lebanese politics being what they are.
(AKI) - Crucial talks to resolve Lebanon's political crisis were to take place in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Friday night without Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the radical Shia opposition group, Hezbollah.
The talks were to be held on Friday night to seek a resolution to the violent conflict that has divided the country for the past week.
Nasrallah was reportedly staying away from the talks because of security concerns.
The pro-western government and Lebanon's opposition have agreed to discuss the proposed election of army chief Michel Suleiman as president of the republic in a bid to unite the country.
The rival political factions were planning to discuss drafting a new electoral law, banning the use of weapons for political aims, and withdrawing armed militias from the streets.
Delegates from the government and the opposition led by Hezbollah flew from Lebanon in separate aeroplanes.
Arab League chief Amr Moussa will attend the talks to be hosted by Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani.
Arab mediators, led by al-Thani, concluded a deal on Thursday to end the fierce fighting, which exacerbated sectarian tensions between Shia loyal to Hezbollah and Druze and Sunni followers of the ruling coalition.
The deal brokered after two days of talks in the Lebanese capital, includes the lifting of a Hezbollah-led blockade on Beirut's sea and airports, the end of armed militiamen in the streets and a pledge not to use weapons to settle domestic political differences.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/18/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
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.
Results from Kuwait's parliamentary elections show Muslim hardliners have made strong gains, but women failed to win any seats. Sunday's results from Saturday's elections show religious conservatives will hold about half of parliament's 50 seats.
Six Australian-based Muslim clerics who are leaders of the Islamic community in the country are on the payroll of the Saudi Government, receiving allowances of up to $2000 a month. The Australian can reveal for the first time the identity of the clerics - some paid through the Saudi embassy in Canberra, others directly from Riyadh's Dawah (preaching) Office - who receive between 3500 and 7000 Saudi riyal ($1975) a month. The payments to the six - who include former Howard government adviser Amin Hady and Melbourne Somali imam Isse Musse - are part of Saudi Arabia's multi-billion-dollar campaign to transform its hardline image in the West. However, Sheik Hady told The Australian there were as many as 14 others in the country being paid by the Saudis. 
A Danish press freedom group said Sunday it has invited a Dutch lawmaker to talk about an anti-Quran film he made that sparked angry street protests in Muslim countries earlier this year. Geert Wilders will appear in Copenhagen on June 1 to talk about the movie and share his thoughts on free speech, said The Free Press Society of 2004.
The emergence of AUI-S and other like-minded schools in the Middle East presents a compelling policy opportunity the United States has yet to fully seize upon as it works to improve its image in the region. Thats a missed opportunity. A variety of factors, from the comparative weakness of local academic institutions, to a swelling Middle Eastern youth population, to the increasing difficulty of obtaining visas to study in the United States or Europe, make the moment particularly ripe for Washington to embrace pedagogical diplomacy.
The private sector can also capitalize on the popularity of U.S.-styled academic institutions. Energy companies in the United States bemoan a dearth of qualified petrochemical engineers. By recognizing the mutual gains to be had from building academic institutions, particularly in Arabic-speaking countries, they can help solve this problem. One of the primary long-term goals of the Saudi and Iraq universities is to help fill the engineering gap. Saudi Aramco has taken notice. Will Exxon?
