AS increasing numbers of people are switching on the television for their religious guidance, the Kingdom s Islamic leaders are warning against the blind following of live fatwas. There are many programs that appear on the satellite channels, hosting famous sheikhs, who are issuing fatwas without getting back to books of Fiqh, says Dr. Abdul Aaziz Al-Mishal.
Like many clerics in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Al-Mishal is concerned that too many people are abandoning traditional methods of learning in favor of the new culture of television teaching, that seems to be sweeping the nation.
However, his biggest concern is that many of these celebrity sheikhs do not appear to be following the traditional Islamic convention of providing evidence for their rulings. These kinds of fatwas need to have verses from Quran or Sunnah supporting them, said Dr. Al-Mishal.
The only authorized authority in Saudi Arabia to issue fatwas is the Council of the Senior Ulema. A fatwa is a legal statement in Islam, issued by a mufti or a religious scholar, on a specific issue and it is vital that this ruling is not based upon the muftis own whims and ideas, he must base it on the Qur an or Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh). The Mufti has a great role in his society because he educates the public about the Islamic rules and their relationship with Allah, said Sheikh Muhammad Al-Salami.
I did not make up that name. Really.
He has similar role to that of the Prophet because he is teaching people about Islam as it comes from Allah. Fatwas are usually asked for by judges or individuals, and are needed in cases where a issue of Fiqh is undecided or uncertain, also lawsuits are sometimes settled on the basis of these fatwas.
Many commentators believe the danger arises from the fact that most of the programs deal with individual callers, discussing their personal problems, where rulings are offered in respect of their specific circumstances. They are then being interpreted by the average lay viewer to be general fatwas. The fatwas in live programs should not tackle the personal problems because it will be generalized it; should discuss Fiqh issues that teach people more about their religion, argues Al-Mishal. This sentiment is supported by regulars who admit they tune in looking for guidance, although they are worried by the speed with which many of these fatwas are issued.
I like to watch the Islamic channels, especially the programs that have live fatwas. Most of the time I feel that they are talking about problems that concern me, but I am never totally satisfied with the answers the sheikhs always give because they are so fast, yet I still follow what they say anyway, said Amal Ali, 45, from Jeddah.
The concern of many is that following these fatwas blindly can lead to the forbidding (making haram) of that which Allah has made permissible (halal). Islam declares that the legislating authority is Allah alone, nobody is allowed to forbid something that Allah has permitted and if he does so then he would be exceeding the limits set by Allah and claiming for himself the power reserved only for Allah, says Sheikh Taha Hassan, also of Jeddah. This in itself is a grave sin as declared in the Quran.
The lawful is what Allah has made lawful in His Book and the unlawful is that which He made unlawful. What He has left out is a mercy from Him, so accept Allah s mercy. Surely Allah would not forget a thing......
.....And the Lord is never forgetful. (19:64)
Certain observers feel this new trend of trigger-happy fatwa-issuing is making life very precarious for the average Muslim. When we read or hear about the religion in the Prophet s day, we feel that they used to live at a time when every thing was acceptable but now you feel uncomfortable to do any thing, fearing that you will commit a sin, said Turki Marghalani.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 11:33 ||
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blind obedience to TV? Next up, religious radio for the deaf.
Posted by: john ||
11/21/2005 14:46 Comments ||
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#2
Follow me! Worship me!
Posted by: Your TV ||
11/21/2005 14:48 Comments ||
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#3
Pat Robertson · Robert Tilton · Jimmy Swaggart · Jim Bakker · Oral Roberts · Jerry Falwell
Never mind, the list is too long
Go Here
http://www.televangelists.net/tseek/Televangelists/Current_Televangelists/
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/21/2005 20:22 Comments ||
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The case of Mohammad Al-Harbi, the high school teacher charged with mocking religion and sentenced to three years in prison and 750 lashes, has not attracted attention only in the local press. Both Saudi columnists and the Saudi street in general strongly attacked what is widely seen as a harsh and unjust sentence. The case has been a prime topic on Saudi Internet forums with Saudis of both sexes from all over the country joining in the discussions. The majority showed deep concern, not simply for Al-Harbi but also for other important factors that have been raised as a result of the caseâs publicity. Many Saudis asked about the efficiency and fairness of the Saudi legal system; others severely criticized the absence of the Ministry of Educationâs participation in a case that not only affects a teacherâs career but also affects the future of Saudi students who are apparently being taught by some teachers who sympathize with terrorists.
A Saudi living in Canada was so moved by the case that he got Al-Harbiâs permission to set up a website dedicated to the case. (The version for English speakers is: www.malharbi.com/en/home.html). The site not only gives people the full story which has been in the local media but it also provides substantial background information about Al-Harbi and his struggle with his fundamentalist colleagues at the school in Al-Qassim region. Those who visit the site have the option of posting their comments in the guest book. There is also an online petition requesting the Saudi authorities to intervene directly in Al-Harbiâs case.
The website includes information on cases similar to Al-Harbiâs â specifically those pertaining to Dr. Hamza Al-Maziani and another Saudi teacher, Mohammad Al-Suhaimi. Dr. Al-Maziani, accused by one of his colleagues of defaming him and of saying that the Islamic textbooks used at King Saud University were radical, was sentenced to four months in prison and 275 lashes. His sentence, however, was subsequently overturned by Crown Prince â now King â Abdullah.
Al-Suhaimi was sentenced to three years in prison and 700 lashes. He was allegedly guilty of encouraging his students to indulge in homosexual activities and to commit adultery. According to Al-Suhaimi he told his students that love was a noble thing. When asked by a student if love was not all about marriage, he replied that in a typical Saudi marriage in which the couple does not know each other well before the ceremony, the emotions tend to be amiability and compassion. Al-Suhaimi is still waiting for his sentence to be carried out or, as he hopes, for it to be overruled by the king.
They're saving themselves for more important things.
Dr. Mofleh Al-Qahtani of the NSHR in Riyadh told Arab News by phone that the society had not done anything and that it was waiting for the courtâs expository statement on Tuesday. Dr. Al-Qahtani added that the Saudi legal system was independent and that not even the king could overturn an issued verdict. (This was certainly not the case with Al-Maziani which Dr. Al-Qahtani seems unaware of.) He also said that before the NSHR would take any action, it would have to be convinced of Al-Harbiâs innocence.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
The Religious Policeman's take is interesting... I empathize with this poor soul. He may, yet, survive this insanity - I've certainly never seen such Saudi sympathy for a witch, before.
The fact that his plight has generated debate and questions and sympathy and outrage and, well, interest in another living being, is precisely why the asshat regimes want the Internet dumbed down to stupid.
#2
My surprise meter is twitching a little bit. The facrt that there is this much debate in and out of KSA is unusual and to me a sign that the holy men have begun to overplay their weak hand.
The army has toughened up its recruitment regime for chaplains because so many will be sent to gruelling combat zones such as Iraq. More padres are on active duty now than at any time since the Second World War, and army chiefs are determined to weed out candidates who could wilt under pressure.
Instead of the traditional interview, recruits now have to prove their mettle on a three-day selection course similar to that undertaken by all would-be officers. The clergy are put through a series of tests, both physical and mental. They have to complete a 500-metre run and, in one exercise, they have to work out how to transport a "radioactive" brick over a wall without it touching the ground. In another they have to say how they would react to a possible situation in which a soldier makes a local girl pregnant.
Once selected, the new padres will face a much more rigorous training programme than in the past. It will include preparing for biological, chemical or nuclear warfare. The move follows efforts to boost the number of padres - the affectionate name given to the chaplains in the 19th century Peninsular wars. At the moment there are 161 in post, over a third of whom are on or committed to operations, often in inhospitable environments such as Afghanistan.
The Army has also just taken on its first full-time Muslim chaplain and part-time Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh chaplains. Two years ago it recruited its first female chaplain, Padre Juliette Hulme.
In the first of the new selection programmes, six out of the eight candidates were passed. The Rev Paul Gallucci, a 27-year-old Methodist minister, was one of the successes. An art college graduate, he said he felt that the role of padre would suit his strengths: "I felt like a square peg in a square hole. It just clicked." He will start training at Sandhurst early next year.
Australian police have their best understanding ever of the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah after studying attack plans made by the militant Islamic organisation, national police chief Mick Keelty said Monday.
Speaking at a counter-terrorism forum, Keelty said Indonesian authorities had given Australian Federal Police access to plans taken from JI, the organisation behind a series of bombings in Bali, Jakarta and elsewhere which have left scores dead.
"We now... have a better understanding of Jemaah Islamiyah than what we ever had," Keelty said.
"We now have... access to some of their plans (and)... the future plans that they had in place."
Keelty said the JI attack plans included sophisticated intelligence and surveillance of targets.
A considerable amount of planning went into operations, he said, adding: "We`ve got to make sure we are equal to those sort of plans by the terrorists.
"We`ve obviously said that there`s nothing that we`ve done in this country to make us immune and I think the important thing for us is that we are prepared and that we maintain our preparation," Keelty said.
Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna earlier told the conference that Australia would probably experience a terror attack within a few years by "home-grown" extremists.
"The most dangerous threat to Australia today comes from home-grown networks -- what we call the resident threat," he said.
"The threat that primarily stems from the radicalised segments of the community in Australia -- this is the primary threat."
Gunaratna said there were between 200 and 300 Muslims in Australia who supported violent extremism as well as a "small but robust" terror network operating within the country.
Australian police this month arrested 18 men in Sydney and Melbourne on terrorism-related charges.
All were Australian-born or naturalised citizens and officials accused them of plotting a "catastrophic" act of terrorism, although no precise targets were specified, AFP reported.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 14:59 ||
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Police find maps of Spanish trains, the London Underground and Montrealâs rail system on the computer of a man questioned over the Madrid bombings.
The Spanish daily El Pais reported Abdelhak Chergui, a 32-year-old Moroccan who studies telecommunications in Spain, was arrested in May along with his brother Abdelkhalak in connection with the investigation of the bombings in March last year that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500 people.
At the time, police said the two were suspected of helping to finance the attacks and providing weapons to people accused of carrying them out.
Del Olmo released them for lack of evidence, however, after ordering them to surrender their passports.
The investigation continued and an examination of Chergui's computer found detailed information on the Madrid, London and Montreal train systems, El Pais said, quoting a police report submitted to the judge in September.
Police have declined to comment on the report.
El Pais did not say if Spanish police suspected Chergui of any role in the London bombings which killed 56 people in July.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 15:20 ||
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These head loppers really don't give a shit about anyone. Hopefully, the appeasers will come to realize that before it is too late.
German interrogators were granted access three years ago to a terrorist in one of Damascus' most dreaded jails under a secret deal with Syria, the news magazine Der Spiegel said Sunday.
They were able to speak in 2002 with Mohammed Haidar Zammar, a Syrian who is believed to have a German passport, after he had been captured by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents in Morocco and removed to Syria, Spiegel said in its issue to appear Monday.
In exchange, intelligence officials in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office acceded to Syrian demands to quash the indictment of two suspected Syrian spies. Berlin later accused Syria of reneging and continuing espionage in Germany in breach of the deal.
German government officials declined comment on the Spiegel report. A spokesman said only that all intelligence activities were communicated to the parliamentary committees that monitor them.
The magazine said senior Syrian officials secretly visited Berlin in July 2002 to arrange the deal.
Zammar was believed to have been al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden's representative in the German port city of Hamburg and a close friend of the three Hamburg Arab students who piloted hijacked jets in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Captured at the end of 2001, Zammar has been held in the brutal Far Filastin Jail, a facility in the basement of the Syrian military intelligence headquarters in Damascus, the magazine said. Amnesty International says torture takes place routinely there.
At the November 2002 meeting, German federal police and domestic and foreign intelligence officers travelled to Damascus and were told by Zammar that his main contribution had been to convince one of the pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi, to join the "jihad" cause.
He had also arranged for Murat Kurnaz, a man from the German port city of Bremen who has been in the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp since 2002, to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taleban.
Spiegel said the interview findings had been kept top secret and had not been shared with prosecutors investigating Islamists in Germany.
Prosecutors had withdrawn the indictments of the two alleged Syrian agents on instructions from the German federal justice ministry, but a second German visit to Damascus never took place because the Syrians had broken the bargain.
It was meanwhile reported that a German city was among the possible venues to be used by U.N. chief investigator Detlev Mehlis to interview six senior Syrian officers as part of the probe into former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination.
Arab newspapers said Cologne was being considered as a neutral location. Mehlis comes from Germany.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 14:47 ||
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Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has called on members of Germany's Turkish minority to integrate themselves better in their adopted country, in an interview with a German newspaper to be published on Monday. "In order to be happy here, they have to integrate themselves completely," Gul told the Berliner Zeitung at the end of a three-day visit to Germany during which he met incoming chancellor Angela Merkel.
He urged Turks living in Germany to learn to speak German and keep up with local news, saying they "should try to understand what is happening here so they can convey it to their children." Gul however also called on Merkel's new government to ensure that the nearly three million Turks living in Germany do not feel sidelined. "People should not have the impression that they are being excluded," he said. Gul's remarks echo a call earlier this month by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Turkish immigrants should work harder to integrate themselves into German society.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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Translation: Straighten up, play along, and send the fucking money home. We don't want you back.
#4
The Turks in Germany are a far cry from the Africans in France. While Turks are ethnically mongrels, they have a split personality about secularism and Islam. This means they comprehend the church and state separation a lot better than do many other Moslems, even if they don't care for it. Some even freely criticize Islam and fully embrace secularism, so they are not united in either obstinance or defending fellow Turks who misbehave.
They also tend to be much better workers than are the Africans, and are a lot more interested in a paycheck than welfare.
If these comments are reported accurately â if they didnât remove the part where he says ânevertheless, they are horrid madmen who willingly slaughter children in the service of a depraved concept of God and human societyâ â then this ought to be a deal-breaker. This ought to be the point where the man is shunned, not feted, and held to account in every subsequent mention of his name and works. As in âVonnegut, whose early works exposed the madness and nihilism of war, would later support the âsweet and honourableâ nature of men who set off nailbombs in public squares in the name of the organization that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11.â But this will be regarded as nothing more than a beloved old uncle letting off a fart at a wedding and grinning widely when people turn around. Which is more likely: a book review that says Vonnegutâs criticisms of the Bush Regime must be considered in light of the authorâs support of suicide bombers, or a review that says Vonnegut has made statements lauding bombers, BUT he brings up troubling issues / confronts the hypocrisy inherent in Washington / speaks truth to power / speaks Hindu to houseplants / etc.
Iâm guessing youâll see the latter more than the former. Not because the book reviewer necessarily agreest. But there is nothing to be gained from pointing out that Vonnegut is an addled old fool whose brain has rusted in the antiestablishment default position for so long he cannot distinguish between suicide bombers and people who stage a sit-in at a Woolworthâs counter. There is nothing to be gained from attacking the messenger when his other message is so delicious. Of course, all it would take is a few book editors in a few magazines to say âto hell with the old coot; I have a cousin serving in Iraq, and Iâll be goddamned if I give this hairy old fool a pass because he wrote a book my brother loved in college. Whatâs the matter with us? Do we excuse everything because it kicks Bush in the nuts? If Madonna puts on a suicide belt in her next video and sashays into St. Peters to protest, oh, I donât know, popery, do we give her a f*$*#ing golf clap for pushing the envelope again?â
Vonnegut is described in the article as a âpeace activist.â
As a wise giant said in âThe Princess Brideâ â âYou keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.â
Posted by: Mike ||
11/21/2005 06:03 ||
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That was the Spaniard that said that Mike. But I see what you mean. Vonnegut has obviously lost his marbles, he's probably been living in Berkely for so long that he doesn't even really know what is going on out in the real world.
#5
awesome quote from the Princess bride, one of my all time favorite lines. I won't be having beers with Vonnegut any time soon, and I thought his writing sucked anyway....
Posted by: Ray Robison ||
11/21/2005 10:54 Comments ||
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#6
darn, that pen of Lileks isn't just a sword, it's a laser beam.
#7
There was no misquote - read the entire story... He has been vomiting other putridity as well... Hope that if the ass-lomo-fokks set off a dirty bomb he is nearby. He'll learn first-hand what they are all about, may he can get that "enormous high" with them.
#8
My son was planning to take some classes from him at the Iowa Writers Workshop. It may be too late as he seem to be entering a senile dementia stage.
#10
I believe Vonnegut wrote one good story: "Report on the Barnhouse Effect." The rest is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
A commenter on this blog - "Noble" - suggested that perhaps (1) Murtha's sudden BIG LOUD TEAR-FILLED call for "immediate withdrawal from Iraq," (an OLD position for him, but one that he had NEVER tried to BROADCAST AS LOUDLY OR AS WIDELY BEFORE), AND (2) the sudden "play" it got from the House Democrats - led by Nancy Pelosi the Minority Leader - was a smokescreen intended to BOTH misdirect attention from impending ethics investigations over them both using influence to steer DOD business to their relatives and business friends.
Specifically it seems that Murtha steered business to HIS BROTHER'S LOBBYING FIRM - KSA - and helped Pelosi get a big project for her district which DIRECTLY BENEFITTED A RELATIVE OF HERS......
#2
Well call me when they are indited OK. Dems get away with this stuff as a matter of routine the MSM will not cover it and in fact will agressively bury it.
IN THE AFTERMATH of September 11, more than several former national security and intelligence officials fashioned new careers as critics of the Bush administration's war on terror. Among the more prominent of these former officials is Daniel Benjamin, who worked for the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. Benjamin's criticism flows from his belief that prior to the war in Iraq, as he wrote in Time magazine earlier this year, "there was no pre-existing relationship between Baghdad and al-Qaeda." Still worse, the invasion of Iraq has made us "less safe" and "above all, the invasion and occupation of Iraq--have galvanized still more Muslims and convinced them of the truth of bin Laden's vision."
He carried this line of attack a step further in Slate two weeks ago, arguing that Vice President Dick Cheney's role in directing national security policy trumped that of the president's. As evidence, he highlighted Cheney's ties to the Counterterrorism Evaluation Group ("CTEG") and the "neoconservative(s)" who put together "bad intel" connecting Iraq and al Qaeda. "Some of CTEG's material was leaked to THE WEEKLY STANDARD," he warns readers, "where it was published" and "achieved some renown as a classic in the genre of cherry-picked intelligence."
But if one is looking for an exemplary cherry-picker, then there is none better than Benjamin himself. Benjamin has gone out of his way to advance the most logically tortuous reasons for dismissing evidence of a relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. In so doing, he has demonstrated the absurd lengths to which some will carry their wrongheaded assumptions.
DURING THE 1990s, many in the U.S. intelligence community came to believe that the Middle East could be carved into neatly-drawn ideological boxes. The "secular" Saddam fit into one box, while the Islamists of al Qaeda fit into another. It was assumed that their ideological differences precluded cooperation and Saddam could never trust a group like al Qaeda. We now know, thanks to the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into prewar intelligence, that this assumption was made without the benefit of any intelligence assets within Saddam's inner circle. There are also ample reasons (including the role played by radical Islamist Hassan al-Turabi as an intermediary) to believe that this premise was not a wise one.
Yet, Benjamin adopted this view as his starting point. Writing in the New York Times in September 2002, Benjamin said that Saddam "has long recognized that Al Qaeda and like-minded Islamists represent a threat to his regime" and he "has shown no interest in working with [al Qaeda] against their common enemy." Benjamin explained that this was "the understanding of American intelligence in the 1990s." Furthermore,
In 1998, the National Security Council assigned staff to determine whether that conclusion was justified. After reviewing all the available intelligence that could have pointed to a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, the group found no evidence of a noteworthy relationship.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. They did find "evidence of a noteworthy relationship" in 1998; it's just that Benjamin has tried to explain it away. Consider, for example, his own defense of the Clinton administration's retaliation against al Qaeda for the August 1998 embassy bombings.
The Clinton administration responded to the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania by simultaneously destroying two sites: al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant named al-Shifa, which was suspected of being part of al Qaeda's chemical weapons procurement efforts. The decision to strike the training camps was uncontroversial. The decision to destroy al-Shifa was quickly labeled suspect by many in the mainstream media and some political partisans, including some Republicans, who speciously reasoned that Clinton was "wagging the dog." (I happen to agree with Benjamin that the charges leveled against President Clinton in this regard were wrong.) Much of the criticism focused on a soil sample the CIA said showed traces of EMPTA, a precursor for VX nerve gas, and the ties between the plant and bin Laden.
Benjamin and his frequent co-author, Steven Simon, argue that the media and the president's opponents got it all wrong. They spend an entire chapter defending this episode in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror. They argue that the "pivotal event" for understanding the threat bin Laden posed, prior to 9/11, was the reaction to the strike on al-Shifa and the failure to give the intelligence surrounding that decision an honest hearing.
They argue the connections between the plant and al Qaeda were solid, as were the connections between the plant and Iraqi chemical weapons experts. They write,
Officials who spoke with reporters also noted that Iraqi weapons scientists had been linked to al-Shifa, and this Iraqi connection was independently underscored by UN weapons inspectors. There are several different methods for making VX, but the only one known to involve EMPTA is Iraq's. Again, this information was never contradicted, but few found it persuasive.
This would appear to be evidence of a "noteworthy relationship," no? Not in Benjamin's view. In a debate last year on PBS's NewsHour, Benjamin explained,
It is true that the method for producing VX gas, the chemical weapon, was an Iraqi method but we have no indication whatsoever that the Iraqis knew that bin Laden had invested in this or that there was any contact between them in this project.
Benjamin believes, therefore, that: While the U.S. intelligence community could piece together the details of al Qaeda's role at al-Shifa, the Iraqis--who were the ones actually supplying the VX nerve gas technology--could not. In addition, this all occurred at a time when Sudan's Islamist leader, Hassan al-Turabi, was openly embracing his "close ally," Saddam Hussein, and Iraq's state-run newspapers were calling Osama bin Laden a "hero."
It's as ridiculous as it sounds.
Benjamin and his fellow-travelers in the U.S. intelligence community argue that Saddam would not have provided WMD technology to al Qaeda or any other terrorist group because the risks to his regime would have been too great. But, do they really believe that an arrangement such as the one Benjamin argues existed at al-Shifa could have happened by accident? Given the nature of Saddam's neo-Stalinist regime that's hard to imagine.
It is even more difficult to imagine when one considers that intelligence indicated that this type of arrangement was occurring at more than one facility in Sudan, which was widely known to have a vast al Qaeda presence. In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD last year John Gannon, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council and deputy director of the CIA, explained, "The consistent stream of intelligence at that time said it wasn't just al Shifa." He elaborated, "There were three different structures in the Sudan. There was the hiring of Iraqis. There was no question that the Iraqis were there. Some of the Clinton people seem to forget that they did make the Iraqi connection."
Benjamin's interpretation is also inconsistent with what his boss, Richard Clarke, and others in the intelligence community once believed. Just a few months after the strike on al Shifa the Clinton administration's original indictment of bin Laden, which alleged that al Qaeda agreed not to work against Saddam's regime and to cooperate on weapons development, was unsealed. The 9/11 Commission Report tells us that the passage concerning Iraq and al Qaeda, "led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger [National Security Advisor] that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was 'probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qida agreement.'" [emphasis added]
Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit at the time of the strike on al-Shifa, also once recognized the intelligence surrounding Sudan for what it is. In 2002, before his own flip-flop on the issue, Scheuer wrote, "We know for certain that bin Laden was seeking CBRN (Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear] weapons . . . and that Iraq and Sudan have been cooperating with bin Laden on CBRN weapon acquisition and development."
Benjamin eagerly uses his time at the National Security Council as a point of contrast for the Bush administration's claims. But the intelligence surrounding al Shifa and other Sudanese facilities is not the only body of evidence from his tenure he has to explain away. Reports of meetings, funding, and training became more and more common throughout 1998. The reports finally boiled over in December, just a few months after the strike on al-Shifa, when Saddam sent one of his top intelligence operatives to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden & Co. That meeting was in response to the Clinton administration's four day bombing campaign against Iraq. Even the worldwide media--left and right of center--reported these disturbing developments and fretted over their implications.
Among those fretting over Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda was, once again, Benjamin's boss. Multiple reports indicated that Saddam had offered bin Laden safehaven and in February 1999, Clarke warned that if he found out about an impending strike, "old wily Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad." The 9/11 Commission Report also tells us that Bruce Riedel of the NSC staff warned "that Saddam Hussein wanted Bin Laden in Baghdad."
Whatever one makes of these events in 1998 and 1999, we are certainly a long way away from Benjamin's contention in 2002 that Saddam "has shown no interest in working with [al Qaeda] against their common enemy."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 15:11 ||
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German interrogators were granted access three years ago to a terrorist in one of Damascus' most dreaded jails under a secret deal with Syria, the news magazine Der Spiegel said Sunday. They were able to speak in 2002 with Mohammed Haidar Zammar, a Syrian who is believed to have a German passport, after he had been captured by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents in Morocco and removed to Syria, Spiegel said in its issue to appear Monday. In exchange, intelligence officials in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office acceded to Syrian demands to quash the indictment of two suspected Syrian spies. Berlin later accused Syria of reneging and continuing espionage in Germany in breach of the deal.
The Syrians were dirty doublecrossers? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.
German government officials declined comment on the Spiegel report. A spokesman said only that all intelligence activities were communicated to the parliamentary committees that monitor them.
"Oh right. That memo was in the 154th box on the third left-most cart, right under the Chinese takeout memos and the department's 1998 Christmas card list."
The magazine said senior Syrian officials secretly visited Berlin in July 2002 to arrange the deal. Zammar was believed to have been al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden's representative in the German port city of Hamburg and a close friend of the three Hamburg Arab students who piloted hijacked jets in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Captured at the end of 2001, Zammar has been held in the brutal Far Filastin Jail, a facility in the basement of the Syrian military intelligence headquarters in Damascus, the magazine said. Amnesty International says torture takes place routinely there. At the November 2002 meeting, German federal police and domestic and foreign intelligence officers travelled to Damascus and were told by Zammar that his main contribution had been to convince one of the pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi, to join the "jihad" cause. He had also arranged for Murat Kurnaz, a man from the German port city of Bremen who has been in the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp since 2002, to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taleban.
Spiegel said the interview findings had been kept top secret and had not been shared with prosecutors investigating Islamists in Germany.
*Sigh.* Winning the turf battle in lieu of winning the war.
Prosecutors had withdrawn the indictments of the two alleged Syrian agents on instructions from the German federal justice ministry, but a second German visit to Damascus never took place because the Syrians had broken the bargain.
The Germans couldn't wade thru all the disembodied lips on the floor.
Iraqi politicians made goodwill gestures at a reconciliation conference in Cairo on Sunday and President Jalal Talabani said he was willing to talk to violent opponents of his government if they wanted to contact him. "If those who call themselves the Iraqi resistance want to contact me, I will welcome them," Talabani told reporters on the second day of the Arab League-sponsored meetings in Cairo.
During the opening session on Saturday, Talabani had excluded jihadists and members of the entourage of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein from talks. "To those who took up arms to end the occupation, we say the solution will not come through weapons but through political dialogue," he said Sunday. Talabani made a distinction between those he described as "terrorists", Saddamists and people who fight to oust occupation forces. It was not clear whether his comments amounted to an invitation to members of the former Baathist regime, but they signaled a more conciliatory tone after the talks' stormy start.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Arab League chief Amr Moussa reported progress after the talks made a shaky start on Saturday with a walk-out threat by the largest Shiite alliance.
Jaafari had his first-ever meeting with Harith al-Dhari of the influential Sunni Associated of Muslim Scholars, helping to break the ice between two factions which have diametrically opposite views of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Dhari's spokesman said he welcomed Talabani's openness to contacts with the armed opposition, calling it "a correct step which reflects the reality on the ground in Iraq." But the government should go further and recognize the resistance, he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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..and President Jalal Talabani said he was willing to talk to violent opponents of his government if they wanted to contact him.
That's all that needs to be heard. A "violent opponent" deserves nothing less than a violent end, period.
#2
He is a total wingnut and has stepped on his pecker like this before. Soon he will be out at some point anyhow. We can only hope the damage he is doing isn't permanate.
Just days before the Palestinian Authority is set to assume control of Gaza's border with Egypt, Israeli border guards on the lookout for smuggled weapons yesterday discovered a different kind of banned goods in a truck attempting to infiltrate the Jewish state: fraudulent kosher chocolate marshmallows.
The truck had tried to enter Israel through the Karni Crossing from Gaza, and was stopped during a routine check of vehicles passing through the busy checkpoint. Upon examination, soldiers found boxes of "Krembos," a popular snack in Israel of round chocolate shells filled with flavored marshmallow cream on a biscuit, displaying forged kosher seals.
Israel's Chief Rabbinate said Israel does not import any of its Krembos, and explained there have been instances in the past of Palestinians caught trying to sell fake kosher products to Jewish vendors...
Mohammed Hikmet and Talal Badran grew up together among the ancient olive groves and hardy fig trees of their village in northern Jordan. They were like brothers, down to their fuzzy beards and stocky builds. In 2003, the best of friends, at age 25, set off side by side to fight American troops in Iraq.
Only one of them returned, however, and now both of their families are wracked by doubts about the war they once believed in so fervently.
Today's insurgency in neighboring Iraq is unfamiliar to Jordanian villagers who said they simply wanted to defend fellow Muslims from foreign invaders. Now they're trying to figure out how blowing up innocent Arabs at a hotel wedding reception - as suspected Iraqi bombers did in Amman, the Jordanian capital, earlier this month - became an accepted means of resistance. The pride they took in sending two of their own to Iraq is mixed with confusion over whether their holy warriors may have become terrorists.
"I don't believe in al-Qaida anymore. Boom. It's finished," said Adnan Badran, 37, the older brother of the Irbid man who fought in Iraq and hasn't returned. He traced the rim of a cup of Turkish coffee with his finger and gazed at the floor.
"I think maybe there is no jihad anymore," he said sadly.
The change of heart by these once-enthusiastic supporters of jihad - holy war - suggests that Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for the hotel bombings, has miscalculated. While Bush administration policies in the Middle East remain deeply unpopular, al Zarqawi's tactics are soiling his image among potential foot soldiers. If Hikmet and Badran are any example, the region may not provide fertile ground for the radical Islam and terrorism that Americans fear most.
Hikmet and Badran came from the outskirts of Irbid, Jordan's second-largest city, where a McDonald's is bustling and thousand of factory workers nearby make clothes for Wal-Mart. Friends of the two included other handsome young men who coveted expensive Nike sneakers, chain-smoked Marlboros and spent hours in Internet cafes chatting with girls.
But Irbid is also one of Jordan's most religiously conservative, anti-American towns. Two members of the local Muslim Brotherhood chapter of conservative Islamists were elected to Parliament. An ornate mosque is named after Saddam Hussein. Nearby is Zarqa, the birthplace of al Zarqawi, one of the world's most notorious terrorist leaders and the leader of the group al-Qaida in Iraq.
In 2003, Talal Badran had just returned to Irbid after six years as an illegal immigrant in Germany, where he sold marijuana and seldom prayed, his brother said. He shocked his friends when he grew a bushy beard, posed in the traditional vest of Chechen rebels and said he was ready to give his life for Islam.
"Talal had committed all these sins and he felt he must do something to repent," said his brother Adnan. "He chose the path."
Hikmet's path was different. He came from a hardscrabble family that worked a modest plot of olive trees just outside Irbid. He visited Baghdad several times before the war and kept in close touch with his Iraqi friends. A cousin's photo of Saddam still hangs in a frame on the family's living-room wall.
As American troops advanced toward Baghdad in 2003, Hikmet and Badran watched the war unfold on Arab satellite television.
"I couldn't accept myself staying here while my friends and their families were there under war," Hikmet said. "Iraq is considered the source of the Arab homeland. If we lost Iraq, it would be a disaster."
After dawn prayers one morning, Adnan Badran heard a knock at the door. His brother urgently asked him for 150 Jordanian dinars, about $200.
"He told me, `I'm going to fight the Americans,'" Adnan Badran said. "I gave him three instructions: Don't give anyone your gun or drop your weapon, don't run away and don't fight for the sake of any government. Fight only for the sake of God."
Badran left his brother's home with the money and joined Hikmet on the road to Syria. Only when the two had left Jordan did Adnan Badran call the rest of the family and tell them that his brother had joined the mujahedeen - the holy warriors - in Iraq.
"After Talal left, I cried over him more than my mother did," Adnan Badran said. "But there is something more important than passion and that is the cause: justice."
In the Iraqi town of Qaim, after crossing the Syrian border, Hikmet and Talal Badran started to organize into cells. After moving from safe house to safe house in Iraq's western desert, the two men were sent to help beleaguered Iraqi troops in Baghdad, still under Saddam's control. Day and night, Hikmet said, they hid in deserted government buildings with borrowed machine guns and aimed for the chests of American soldiers.
Morale sank when Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. On the day of their last battle together, Hikmet and Badran slept side by side in a Baghdad neighborhood where support for Saddam remained strong. Just before dawn, a massive American contingent ambushed their cell. They were stunned to discover that their Iraqi comrades had deserted them.
Hikmet and Badran were exhausted and hungry, their hair and beards grown long and shaggy. With other foreign volunteers, they fired back at the Americans for nearly 13 hours, Hikmet said, knowing they were doomed. When Hikmet's weapon jammed, his best friend urged him to run for the safety of a school. The others would follow, he promised.
"Those last minutes with him were madness," Hikmet said. "He was huge, and he grabbed me under the arms and said, `Run. Just go.' I kept running and running. I never saw him again."
Heartbroken, Hikmet searched in vain for his friend for several days before deciding to accompany a wounded Syrian friend back across the border.
For two years since, Hikmet has pondered his brief role in the resistance. Safe in his family's home, he cheered on mujahedeen attacks until the targets started to include Shiite mosques, Baghdad markets, even schools. He dreams of returning to fight in Iraq, but isn't certain that the same brotherly spirit remains. Proof came in the Amman hotel bombings, which killed 59 people and injured dozens.
"I'm still in shock," Hikmet said. "Resistance shouldn't be on Jordanian land; this is not where the occupation is. Resistance is firing on American bases. Resistance is political organizing and demonstrations. Blowing up Shiites in Iraq? Bombing a hotel in Jordan? This is not resistance."
The same relatives who gave Hikmet a hero's welcome when he returned from Iraq now say they wouldn't support him if he decided to fight again.
"Now, no way," said 45-year-old Hawazen Shabar, Hikmet's aunt. "This is a lost war. He'll just go and kill himself and other innocent people there. It's so difficult to make sense of it now. I'm proud that he would go sacrifice himself as a martyr, but if he goes to blow up Iraqis, how can I support this?"
Adnan Badran spends his days repairing computers at a small shop in downtown Irbid. He's a pious man whose customers call him "sheik," in respect of his status as a martyr's brother. His wife's cousins died in the Amman bombings. He watched with grief as an Iraqi woman confessed on television to helping in the attack.
He read every passage in the Quran about resistance and found nothing that could support the hotel blasts. He believes that his brother is dead; that's easier than imagining him alive in a movement that's cast aside Islam's strict rules of war.
"My brother would never think to do that," Adnan Badran said. "But if I find out that he was bombing civilians in Baghdad or Amman or America, I will no longer accept him as a martyr. I would only consider him a criminal."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 14:51 ||
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Disinformation and subterfuge by HANNAH ALLAM.
If al Qaeda blows up a bus full of Jews, support in all forms will return instantly.
This is myth-making at its best. Just enough truth, Jordanians don't like being the targets, to sell a big lie: they've seen the light. Lol. What a load of tripe.
They love to march around, any excuse will do. "Journalists" are such useful allies and tools.
Anger Over Iraq War Leads Some to Take Private Pleasure in Hotel Blasts
IRBID, Jordan -- Abu Ali, a solidly built man with a beard and permanent grease stains under his nails from his job as a truck mechanic, was pleased when he heard about the hotel bombings in his country. Speaking solemnly, looking around to see who might be listening to him, Abu Ali said he had been waiting for something like this to happen ever since his country allowed U.S. troops to assemble on Jordanian soil during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Nov. 9 suicide blasts in Amman that killed 60 people, most of them Jordanians, were justifiable payback, said Abu Ali, who lives in a small suburb of this ancient city near the Syrian border. He can muster little sympathy for the victims. âHey, they werenât my relatives, so it must have been all right. Inshâalla and all that.â
"I feel frustrated, because I didn't expect this will happen because our country is basically secured," said Amani Omari, 40, a computer typist. The bombers "are not Islamists. They have no relationship with Islam. Islam doesn't encourage bombings or killings." âNo never. Itâs all about baby ducklings and candy and bright shiny things ⊠oooh, look, a puppy!â
Omari said Jordanians have not come out strongly against such terrorism in the past. Even now, she said, "there are specific cases that I sympathize with, but not all of them." Rafea Abdullah Dagehl, 48, a retired businessman, said motives did not matter to him. "They killed children," he said, pausing in a vegetable market. "The guy who did this, he's a criminal even if he's Muslim." Whoa Nellie! Someone better call the Mutawa'een! This guyâs trash talkinâ Islam!
Jordan is a relatively moderate Islamic nation. Its wealthy elite in Amman are eager to embrace Western culture. The king, who was educated in the West, promotes democracy and has championed Muslims to stand together against extremism. After the bombings, Abdullah told Petra, the official news agency, that radical Muslims have "no place among us." Except when they slip in and bomb the crap out of us or try to sink the occasional American warship.
But Jordan is also a country with a widening economic gap. Most Jordanians could not afford to spend the night in -- or even treat themselves to coffee and pastries in the lobby of -- one of the three hotels that was bombed. "We had one of those kinds of hotels in Irbid," Moussa said, as he drove around the city with a visitor. "They closed it. Nobody could afford to stay there." It got to be so crowded, nobody went there anymore.
Moussa acknowledged that some of his anger came from his disdain at watching the rich get richer. And if the violence ravaging Iraq has found its way across the border, Moussa said, he can only blame his government. "They don't care about the people," he said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture at a banner of the king flying near an intersection. Waleed Khatib, director of the Irbid office of the Islamic Action Front, a coalition of political parties in Jordan, said he did not sense any sympathy among Muslims in Jordan for those who target civilians. Sounds good.
"We sympathize with any group if it's legitimate resistance against the enemy, if it's in the name of God," he said. Oops, sounds bad.
Khatib said he supported groups that "fight against the occupation in Iraq. I sympathize with it. Still sounds bad.
But targeting civilians, we are against it." Okay, sounds good. Unless Shiites are the enemy, then it sounds bad.
The complexity of the issue is evident in the tale of Mohammad Hikmet and his friend Talal Badran. The last time Hikmet saw his friend they had stood up with several other foreign fighters "as one man," facing down American troops at the Baghdad airport in April 2003. By his account, which could not be verified independently, Hikmet took off running toward a building, as the men had planned. He did not look back, and he never saw his friend again. Badran's older brother, named Adnan Badran, speaking in Irbid, said he presumed Talal was dead. Adnan said Talal, bedeviled by drugs and alcohol, went to Iraq to make himself right with God, a decision Adnan supported and kept from relatives until Talal left with money borrowed from him.
"He will be a martyr if he fought for the sake of God," Adnan Badran said. "But if I know he is bombing against civilians in Amman or Iraq, I will accept him only as a criminal. He will be outside . . . Islam." Hikmet, who returned to Jordan after spending a few weeks in Iraq, said he was shocked by the bombings in Amman. "I can't believe it," he said in a coffee shop in Irbid. "As long as you are Muslim and young and you know the true face of Islam, why would you bomb people who are innocent? Yeah, that questionâs on a lot of peoples' minds these days.
Even if they are from different religions, different areas, why would we kill them?" From what has been seen, itâs because they are from different religions or different areas. Such a mystery this is.
Asked if he would go back to Iraq to fight if he could, Hikmet nodded his head. "Yes, of course," he said. âBut only to kill those of different religions from different areas.
Abu Ali said he has shared his feelings only with his friend Moussa, a human resources manager who lives with his new bride in Irbid. "He knew he could talk to me," Moussa recounted as the two men stood outside the auto shop where Abu Ali works. "We have the same opinions." Fearful of retaliation from the Jordanian intelligence service, the men agreed to talk to a reporter only if their full names were not used and the village where they grew up was not named. Their view of the bombings reflects lingering anger here over the war in Iraq and belies the images of Jordanians united under their flag after the suicide bombings. Although King Abdullah criticized the U.S. invasion, many Jordanians saw the hosting of U.S. soldiers as tacit approval. An unknown number of Jordanians crossed through Syria and into Iraq to help fight the Americans. Despite the fact that Americans were stopping the slaughter of Muslims.
In the days following the Amman blasts, the Jordanian government has acknowledged that its citizens largely view the insurgency in Iraq as an Iraqi problem created by the U.S. invasion. Saddam had nothing to do with it.
Officials say they hope the bombings served as a wake-up call for many Jordanians. Thatâs an awfully loud wake-up call! Canât they just phone your room sometime before eight oâclock in the morning?
At a recent news conference, Prime Minister Adnan Badran said the government was starting a campaign aimed at schools, mosques and the news media "to prevent our children and youth from being brainwashed" by Islamic extremists, whom he called the "enemy within." "We are all eyes for this homeland," he said. "The time has come to build social education that resists this culture. What we need is social reform." Ummmmm, no. That would be âreligious reform,â not "social reform". But thank you for playing, please try again.
Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher, the government's spokesman, estimated that 60 percent of Jordanians consider the al Qaeda network to be legitimate. Well, that explains a lot now, doesn't it?
"There must be zero tolerance toward such heinous acts," Muasher said. "A clear line must be defined between resistance and the killing of innocent people." Too bad the line was drawn with invisible ink.
But men such as Abu Ali and Moussa say they see no distinction. No kidding?
To each other, they declare support for Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose al Qaeda in Iraq organization asserted responsibility for the attacks in Amman on the Radisson SAS, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn, all Western hotel chains. "Our government shouldn't have anything to do with Iraq," said Abu Ali, 39. "Just leave us alone and it will keep us in peace. "This was a message from Zarqawi and his guys: The Americans should leave Iraq. As long as they stay, it's legitimate to hit them anywhere. No matter who it kills or in what number.
The innocent people who died, they are the casualties of war." It is hard to say how widespread such feelings are. But youâll report them anyway because they sound so good to the appeasers.
When asked about the Amman bombings, nearly a dozen people interviewed on the streets of Irbid condemned the attacks. But most were also quick to criticize the Americans for removing Saddam Hussein from power and for leaving U.S. troops in Iraq. âThey should have removed Saddam and let us return to our usual civil war!
And, they said, they fear more attacks in Jordan as a result of violence in Iraq. Itâs all Iraqâs fault, silly apostaic Shiites! Jihadists have nothing to do with it.
#1
But Jordan is also a country with a widening economic gap. Most Jordanians could not afford to spend the night in -- or even treat themselves to coffee and pastries in the lobby of -- one of the three hotels that was bombed.
Tough shit, I cant afford to go to the Waldorf Astoria, and would probably get arrested for hanging around the lobby filling my pockets with free mints. But I don't want to blow the place up for it. Even though there may be liberals who occasionally stay there.
#3
The Post is wordy and whiny but they eventually get many things right.
Jordan is just about as infected with Islamofascism and anti Americanism as anywhere in the mid east. It has a thin crust of liberalism and professionals and a deep reserve of fanatics.
Interestingly, the anti Americanism and anti semitism is about as deep as it is in the PA territory despite the fact that Jordanian TV and newspapers are far less depraved that PA TV and newspapers.
#4
Abu Ali said he had been waiting for something like this to happen ever since his country allowed U.S. troops to assemble on Jordanian soil during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Nov. 9 suicide blasts in Amman that killed 60 people, most of them Jordanians, were justifiable payback
Whoa. Time out Washington Post. When did we supposedly have that invasion force staging out of there? That's news to me. News to this guy too:
Jordanian king slams 'invasion' of Iraq
April 3 2003, 4:07 AM
Jordan's King Abdullah II today described for the first time the US-British-Australian attacks on neighbouring Iraq as an "invasion" and said his country had persistently refused to open its airspace to the coalition.
Abdullah, in an interview with the official Petra news agency, also expressed his "pain and sadness" over civilian war casualties in Iraq, whom he described as "martyrs".
"Frankly speaking, we were asked to open our airspace to military aircraft but we steadfastly refused," the king told the director of Petra, who was asking him to comment on reports that coalition planes used Jordan to attack Iraq.
"Jordan is not and will never be a launchpad for strikes on brethren in Iraq and if our airspace was being used for that purpose we would not have allowed civil aviation to use it and would have closed it like other countries have," he said.
Jordanian airspace has remained open since the start of the war on Iraq on March 20. The king also strongly denied press reports alleging that US troops could deploy through Jordan to attack Iraq after Turkey denied them passage, saying: "This was never proposed to us and we would never allow it".
And he likewise dismissed as "shameful" reports suggesting that Israeli troops were deployed in Jordan as part of the war effort on Iraq.
So according to the Post, Abu the truck mechanic's right on the money and Abdullah's full of shit? That fact checking stuff must be really hard.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will today say he is quitting the ruling Likud party to form his own faction to contest elections next year, Israeli army radio station said. The move comes as Israel readies for elections that will probably take place in late February or early March. Sharon, 77, may make a formal announcement to President Moshe Katsav later today when he asks to dissolve parliament, army radio reported, citing unidentified aides to the prime minister.
Israel began moving toward early elections after Shimon Peres last week lost his bid to remain leader of the Labor Party, Sharon's coalition partner. Amir Peretz, who now heads Labor, got backing yesterday for Labor's central committee to bolt. Although he has about three months to organize a new party, a poll last week showed Sharon is the front runner or tie for first place. A survey of 501 people published in the Yediot Aharonot daily Nov. 18 showed Sharon's new party winning 28 seats in Israel's 120- member parliament if elections were held today, cutting the Likud to 18 seats from its current 40. Labor would also get 28 seats, up from 21 today, according to the poll, which had a margin of error or 4.5 percent. Sharon's party would lead in votes, gaining 24.8 percent to Labor's 20.3 percent, the survey showed.
``It's a pity that someone who built the Likud is now trying to destroy it,'' Michael Ratzon, a party legislator who has opposed the prime minister, said on army radio. Asked about the contest to find a successor to Sharon, Ratzon said he hoped the party ``will establish a timetable such that there won't be a vacuum for a long period.''
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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A move by Indonesia's mainstream Muslim groups to form a team to counter militant ideas, work with the police and review radical publications is an important step but must be more than just rhetoric, analysts said on Monday.
The special team was set up last week after the discovery of videos showing three suicide bombers using Islam to justify attacks on restaurants in Bali on Oct 1 that killed 20 people.
It is the first time moderate groups have agreed to play a decisive role in tackling terrorism. In the past, they have been reluctant to criticise militants or have said fighting terrorism was the responsibility of the government and the police.
Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group in Indonesia and an expert on the country's radical fringe, praised Vice President Jusuf Kalla for summoning mainstream clerics to view the videos of the young suicide bombers last week.
``That's a real new step and we haven't had this level of government involvement before in any of the cases that have come up from Bali onwards,'' Mr Jones said, referring to the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people.
``It's taken this long for some of the [Muslim] organisations to realise the extent of the problem in Indonesia and to realise it's got a kind of staying power.''
All major bomb attacks in Indonesia in recent years have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy network seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda. It usually recruits young, poor Muslims from teeming Java island as its foot-soldiers.
Mr Jones said it would be interesting to see how the team challenged militant arguments and whether it addressed issues of how and where bombers and others were recruited.
The head of the team, Ma'ruf Amin, told El Shinta radio that clerics wanted to devise a strategy that looked at Islamic boarding schools known as pesantrens in the world's most populous Muslim nation, the youth and also publications.
``We will clarify these ideas with pesantrens, especially those alleged to have indications of influences from radical terror views,'' said Mr Amin.
He also referred to a book written by Imam Samudra, one of three bombers on death row over the 2002 Bali attacks, which he said was ``everywhere'' in Indonesia. Mr Samudra wrote his book in jail, setting out his arguments for the attacks.
The team gathers top preachers from the two mainstream Islamic groups in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, that have a combined 70 million members.
The minister of religious affairs said the team would be involved in tracking information about terrorist suspects and search for books that promote radicalism so they could be banned, the Jakarta Post newspaper reported on Monday.
However, it was unclear if it would review curriculum in Islamic boarding schools. The International Crisis Group has listed several where Jemaah Islamiah members send their children and where some convicted bombers studied.
Andi Widjajanto, a security analyst from the University of Indonesia, said the team could be effective in dealing with formal, registered organisations and schools.
Underground groups were a different matter.
``Its effectiveness against fringe groups that are the main recruitment ground will be difficult,'' Mr Widjajanto said.
Anti-terrorism campaigns in Indonesia have often faced challenges because of a widespread belief that the US wants to attack Islam.
While Islamic groups across the spectrum condemn bombings, memories also remain fresh of the persecution of Muslim leaders and activists by former President Suharto during 32 years of military backed rule that ended in 1998.
Indeed, officials are still reluctant to use the term Jemaah Islamiah, which means Islamic community, believing it could be seen as as putting the general Muslim populace under watch.
And Indonesia has not followed Western countries in banning Jemaah Islamiah. Officials say they cannot ban an organisation that does not have a concrete structure or address.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 14:40 ||
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Tehran is building nuclear-warhead capable missiles with help from North Korean experts in a vast underground complex, Iranian opposition sources said Monday.
The project was initiated at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989. The plan involves dozens of immense tunnels and facilities built under the mountains near Tehran.
"North Korean experts have cooperated with the Tehran regime in the design and building of this complex," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, president of Strategic Policy Consulting, and a former representative of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.
"Many blueprints of the site have been prepared by North Korean experts."
Hemmat Industries Group Factory, the most important branch of Iran's Aerospace Industries Group is currently building Shahab-1, Shahab-2, Shahab-3 and Ghadar missiles, according to Jafarzadeh. Shahab-3 and Ghadar missiles have nuclear warhead capability.
"Shahab-3 missiles are being manufactured in large numbers, and are already part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards arsenal," Jafarzadeh told United Press International.
The Ghadar missile is still in the production stage, and is 70 percent complete.
Shahab-3 has a range of 1,300 to 1,900 km (800-1,100 miles) and Ghadar has a range of 2,500 to 3,000 km (1,150-1,850 miles).
Working in utmost secrecy Hemmat Industries Group have been allocated code numbers. Movahed Industries, codenamed 7,500, builds the body of the missile and does final assembly. Karimi Industries, the most secretive part of the program, codenamed 2500, builds the warhead.
This group is located in the largest tunnel at the Khojir complex deep inside the Khojir and Bar Jamali Mountain. The tunnel is about 1,000 meters (yards) long, 12 meters wide.
Iran has refused to allow U.N. inspectors to visit the military sites where much of the nuclear weapons work is reported to be conducted.
Information obtained by Jafarzadeh from source in Iran indicate that A.Q. Khan traveled to Iran in 1987 where he met with three top commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who were working at the time on nuclear research. The IRGC delegation was headed by Brig. Gen. Mohammad Eslami.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 15:04 ||
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Sung to "Itsy Bitsy Spider"... The itsy-bitsy Kimmy climbed up the rocket launch...
Round came Iran and paid the Kimmy off...
Up went de rocket da Patriot missle hit...
Kimmy got fatwa on him and quickly hid he did...
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran said the satellite would be purely scientific. But a month after its launch _ and only weeks after the president said Israel should be wiped off the map _ the head of Tehran's space program now says the Sina-1 is capable of spying on the Jewish state.
The launch of the Russian-made satellite into orbit aboard a Russian rocket last month marked the beginning of Iran's space program. Officials say a second satellite _ this one Iranian-built _ will be launched in about two months, heightening Israeli concerns.
The Sina-1's stated purpose is to take pictures of Iran and to monitor natural disasters in the earthquake-prone nation. Sina-1, with a three-year lifetime, has a resolution precision of about 50 yards.
But as it orbits the Earth some 14 times a day from an altitude around 600 miles, with controllers able to point its cameras as they wish, Sina-1 gives Iran a limited space reconnaissance capability over the entire Middle East, including Israel.
"Sina-1 is a research satellite. It's not possible to use it for military purposes," said Deputy Telecom Minister Ahmad Talebzadeh, who heads the space program.
But he agreed it could spy on Israel.
"Technically speaking, yes. It can monitor Israel," he told The Associated Press. "But we don't need to do it. You can buy satellite photos of Israeli streets from the market."
IRAN should resume uranium enrichment and end United Nations' snap checks of its nuclear sites if Tehran is referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, the country's parliament decided yesterday. In the vote, broadcast live on state radio, 183 out of 197 MPs backed the move. It must now be approved by Iran's constitutional watchdog, the conservative 12-man Guardian Council. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy and security commission, urged opposition MPs from the reformist camp to display a united front in the national interest. "This is not a factional, political issue - it is a national issue," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
We are Islam and we demand Muzzy Viagara, hear us roar squeak.
#2
The UN is nutless. They don't have the capability to do anything without the U.S. The members are too busy collecting payoffs and enjoying the good life here.
#3
It worked (well, sort of) for Kimmie. He lost his subsidies of oil, etc, but sugar daddie Chicoms made up the difference. In this case, Iran has something that the Chicoms want, namely oil. The UN sanctions are just irritations. Didn't stop Sammy, and they will not stop the MMs.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/21/2005 18:47 Comments ||
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Iran said there was not enough evidence that its nuclear programme was designed to produce anything other than energy for it to be sent to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday any referral to New York, at a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog in Vienna on Thursday, would be a political manoeuvre against the Islamic Republic. "There is no legal or logical reason for Iran's case to be referred. But if something does happen in the next few days based on political motives that is a different matter," he told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/21/2005 8:53 Comments ||
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#3
Simple UN resolution. If Iran believes its nuclear activity is no business of the UN, then the UN should validate that along with the declaration that when the US seeks to resolve the issue, that too is no business of the UN. Take your emergency resolution to preserve your ass and begone. Bye bye.
November 21, 2005: The Taliban has attracted additional money, and suicide bombers, from Arabia. Two years ago, most of this support shifted to Iraq, where al Qaeda believed it had a better chance of winning some kind of victory. But too many Arab terrorist resources in Iraq produced nothing, and Iraqis have become very hostile to al Qaeda as a result of all the Iraqis killed by terrorist attacks. So now, efforts are shifting to Afghanistan. However, this is also a hostile environment for Arab terrorists. This goes back to the late 1990s, and used a brigade of al Qaeda gunmen to keep unruly tribes in line. Most of the al Qaeda enforcers were Arabs, who did not hide their disdain for the "primitive" Afghans. This has not been forgotten. Moreover, Arabs stand out more in Afghanistan, where most Afghans are European or Central Asian in appearance (the majority of Afghans belong to ethnic groups related to the ones that overran Europe thousands of years ago.) Afghans have been quick to turn in suspicious Arabs, or any suspected terrorist activities.
Posted by: ed ||
11/21/2005 17:07 ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
11/21/2005 19:18 Comments ||
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#3
No port in the storm for these pirates. They just miss out on the concept that the situation on the ground has changed.
As the Taliban booted out of Pakistan learned to their dismay, they cannot go out in small bands, or the villagers will either kill them outright or turn them over. And in large numbers, they make a juicy target for the hunters, who will pursue them to the last man.
A Belgian national of Moroccan ancestry was among the 17 suspected terrorists recently arrested in Morocco on suspicions of links to al-Qaeda.
Moroccan authorities in the capital Rabat said on Sunday the arrests dismantled a radical Islamic terrorist network, Flemish newspaper 'De Standaard' reported. The arrests were carried out at the start of November.
Security services have held a main suspect under surveillance since March 2005. The Moroccan man studied theology in Syria and entered Morocco in June 2005. He also travelled frequently to Turkey.
On 29 September, he was joined by another suspect, a Belgian national of Moroccan descent. The Belgian is also alleged to have spent time in Syria and to have close links with Muslims from the Magreb countries.
The Belgian Foreign Affairs Ministry has not confirmed the arrest of the Belgian national.
The suspects are alleged to have travelled to Morocco to recruit volunteers to set up a terrorist network. Besides al-Qaeda, the group is alleged to have links with radical Muslims active on the Syrian-Iraqi border, broadcaster VRT reported.
The suspects are alleged to have recruited two Moroccans who were arrested in 2001 in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They were detained at Guantanamo Bay, before being returned to Morocco last year. Both are currently free.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 15:21 ||
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The world is not ready for the real risk of a bio-terror attack, despite the danger posed by militant groups like al Qaeda, the head of Interpol said on Monday.
Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said al Qaeda had threatened to kill millions with chemical or biological weapons and that this should not be taken lightly. But tests had shown a lack of preparedness to respond to such attacks.
"The threat of bioterrorism is real ... and the damage that terrorists seek to inflict on us defies one's imagination," he told a police workshop to train African officials to deal with biochemical attacks.
"Al Qaeda's global network, its proven capabilities, its deadly history, its desire to do the unthinkable and the evidence collected about its bio-terrorist ambitions, ominously portend a clear and present danger of the highest order."
Noble said Interpol police and health officials had to work more closely to prevent being caught off-guard should his worst fears be realised.
"The potential consequences of such an attack could be so far reaching that a lack of action ... poses an unacceptable risk," he said.
Noble said it was worrying that authorities had fared poorly on tests aimed at gauging their readiness.
"We as a world community did not fare well in any of these exercises or any other exercise conducted to test our preparatory and response abilities to a biological terrorist attack," he said.
Militant groups have attacked cities in several African countries, but so far the world's poorest continent has escaped chemical or biological attacks.
Noble said this was no reason to be complacent.
"Al Qaeda has made its intentions very clear and we should not wait for that attack on any continent ... our view is that no continent is immune," Noble added.
In June this year, a German counterterrorism official said the threat of biochemical attacks by al Qaeda had declined, but the availability of agents and the group's professed interest in using them still made the danger very real.
Georg Witschel, counterterrorism coordinator at Germany's Foreign Ministry, said files and laboratories discovered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks proved al Qaeda had sought to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 14:38 ||
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#1
What al Qaeda WMD threat? How would they ever get WMDs? There was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Saad bin Laden, Saif Adel and others are not operating freely in Iran. There never was an Axis of Evil. All your base are belong to us.
Posted by: Tibor ||
11/21/2005 16:39 Comments ||
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South Africa was not a staging platform for al-Qaeda terror attacks, National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said on Monday.
He was speaking to journalists in Cape Town at the opening of a three-day Interpol African workshop on the prevention of bio-terrorism.
He said South Africa had "received" people associated with al-Qaeda and might very well have a few people who sympathised with the organisation.
However the police ably and capably dealt with them.
"It isn't a big problem. It is a problem that we must be alive to at all times," he said.
"So we are no staging platform or a conduit... for attacks."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
11/21/2005 14:36 ||
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#1
Selebi 'lays down the law'
29/05/2004 14:59 - (SA)
Police chief Jackie Selebi poses with the uncomfortable shoes. (Retha Fourie, Die Burger)
Retha Fourie
Lebowakgomo - Police officers should arrest lawyers who interfere with their duties, police chief Jackie Selebi said at the opening of a new provincial police uniform shop in Lebowakgomo, Limpopo, on Friday. Selebi was referring to the arrest of six Chinese citizens who tried to enter the country illegally at the Johannesburg International Airport. A lawyer apparently came to the aid of the men.
This is from one of the continuing series of Apostate stories at faithfreedom.org. EFL.
My Journey to the only true world, it is hard for me to write about the hatred that I carry for religion in general, Islam and Mohamed in specific.
I am a 22 years old man...I went to school in Saudi and that is when I was introduced by force to a religion that should never exist...we would go to school early around six and stand in formation and do the most bizarre exercises ever known to mankind, instructed to us by one Egyptian loser with a fake degree in physical exercise. Then listen to what they call Nasheed Alsabah. For about half an hours standing there like soldiers all wearing that ugly unrealistic dress (thub), and tolerate the bitterness in every one of those teachers who would look at you and try to find the smallest mistake so they can hunt you like a tiger hunting itâs pray.... had to study anywhere from 17 to 24 subjects a year. Cramping eight classes a day. Five or six of them were religion classes: Tawhid [the oneness of God], Quran, Tajweed [how to recite the Quran], Fuquh [legal theory in Islam], Hadith and Tafser [explaining the Quran]....They controlled every aspect of our lives. Form our hair cut to our pubic hair length, they where monsters who believed in nothing but Allah. I remember once in my religion class they would encourage the attacks on westerners and on Israel . I will never forget the hatred they carried for other religions and Kaffers (none believers). They truly believe if you leave Islam or become Kafer you should be beheaded....I am disgusted by every second I spent as a Muslim. I am ashamed of my self for believing in Islam even for one second. I have lost a lot to this Islam. I have lost most of my life to something that someone made up.
Luckily now I live in my beloved country the United States of America , and yes this is my country till the day I die. I will fight its enemies wherever they are. I will sacrifice my life for the Red White and Blue. For those who lost their lives before me to make sure I get my freedom and to seek the truth in this great land.
I moved to the US when I was in high school. It was then that I started to call myself an Atheist. I am a proud Atheist now...My brother is becoming an atheist my mother is on her final struggle with Islam, I post everywhere I can to show the world the ugly face of Islam. I have changed of many friends of mine from Islam to Atheism...
#4
MHW, thank you for this insite into what many in the west don't understand. I believe the odd thing here, having had several Saudi friends in college in the U.S. is that if it were not for this extreme Islam, there would be very good relations between SA and USA. I hope that with the death of the SA king, the new king (understanding that he has been king in practice for some time) will have the ability to reject this terrible misuse of religion. I personally don't go to church. I am a Christian, but there are too many things about church that rub me the wrong way. I do believe that religion can be the catalyst for wonderful things when not misapplied. For instance, much of the relief for Katrina victims came from churchs. I think there will come a time in the distant future when we can count on Islam to help people, not bend them to the will of the extremists.
Posted by: Ray Robison ||
11/21/2005 10:41 Comments ||
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#5
Sadly, Islam will still be influencing him, even while being a declared atheist: he still buys into Islam's claim of being the bestest, latest, and greatest of religions. Thus, if Islam is rejected, he's still a "good muslim" in that he believes that other religions are not worth looking at (i.e. if the Bestest is not worth believing, then the less-than-bestest are certainly not either.)
Still, I agree with #2 (UG): Atheism is indeed preferable to Islam, mainly because atheists do not believe they have divine permission to kill others, which makes them a bit more deterable.
#6
Amazing.
One day maybe he will see that being an atheist is STILL being involved with islam because islam is the religion of NOTHING (the life is this man is NOTHING, kill him - the life of this woman is nothing, stone her - bomb the subways, destroy the Buddhas of Bamyan- nothing is nothing, there is only the lust for power of their crazy elite). But he's already gone a long way.
His post does not at all indicate that he is still under the influence of Islam. He even quotes one of the important tenants of atheism (deciding for yourself what is right and what is wrong)
this guy made a huge leap cultural leap, one that we should be proud of... but the first thing that comes to YOUR mind is to find false reasons to put the guy down just because he didn't pick your religion. pathetic. sad. disturbing.
#11
DCreeper, I know by personal experience that it is tough to shake the teachings of the religion one has learned in one's youth. One's current behavior is still influenced by it, especially if it is not replaced by something positive. A denial of God's existance is not a positive, and a blanket declaration that all religions are the same shows ignorance, both in this man and in you. Islam is still influencing, because he thinks that the only viable and real version of God is Allah: even *I* deny the existance of Allah, in the sense that I deny that God is like Allah.
This kid is 22, young, not experienced in the ways of the world, been under restraints, and wants to be free of them. Great cultural leap? Hardly, given that he moved to the United States during his high school years: hundreds of thousands of college freshmen do that every year, and that's not a secret. What IS a secret is the tens of thousands who, after getting beaten up by life, come back to God decades later, albeit to a different denomination, and regret every moment wasted.
And brave? Abandonding Islam while in the United States? *yawn* The average Copt on the Egyptian street shows more bravery.
What I *DO* applaud is his realization that his fate and the fate of the United States are tied together, and that he's willing to fight to defend the United States. It shows a bit of causal reasoning that is seriously lacking in many native born americans: I hope he becomes a citizen, and if he joins our armed forces to defend our country, I'll support him enthusiastically, regardless of his religion or lack of it. (Heck, come to think of it, I HAVE sent care packages to an Atheist Marine stationed in Iraq and prayed for his safety. Or do you begrudge the fact that I care enough about him to want him to have the best that I have?)
#12
Some fools can't understand those who don't buy into 'their" religion or admit an existance in G_D when they lose their prior religious belief system. That is tragic for those foolish persons. It's very good for those who have been misled.
I am glad this fellow citizen has seen the tragic reality of his islamic upbringing. I am happy he has made this decision. I hope he finds a moral and philosophical system that replaces the empty and distructive one he had and gave up. I wish him well.
You can't fight faith with faith. It's atheism, agnosticism, and secularism that Islamofascists are terrified of, not Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism.
If you had wanted people to change easily between deities, then we should have stuck with polytheism which admitted the existence of many deities -- then people could decide for themselves which was the "best" one.
But the walls of monotheistic religions are high indeed, and you can't hope for a fellow that finally escapes from one set of them to be eager to submerge himself to yet another. His unwillingness to be imprisoned by a brand new set of superstitions is a positive indeed.
and a blanket declaration that all religions are the same shows ignorance, both in this man and in you.
Some religions are more malignant forms of Cancer than others, I'll agree with you on that. But they're all based on divine sets of bizarre commandments that can eventually only be defended on the basis of "That's what GOD ordered!"
Communism may have promised a paradise on earth and butchered people based on that, but when people saw it wasn't coming any time soon, they overthrew their governments. *Secular* beliefs like Marxism-Leninism are vulnerable by the evidence of one's eyes.
Religions on the other hand promise paradises after death: as such they are untestable and non-disprovable. So how can you convince suicide bombers that they won't be finding heaven with *this* set of commandments, but rather with *that* set of commandments? Better to display their folly at seeking any heaven after death at all, rather than living their lives as best as they can now.
#14
Aris may be correct in what the Islam uber-alles types think. I'm pretty sure they aren't scared of Bhuddism but I'm not sure about the other two monotheistic faiths.
However, what is reasonably certain is that the new belief systems of former Moslems is all over the place. See this site:
#15
I'm not real fond of atheism as a philosophy. It's a positive statement that God doesn't exist, as definite as the Nicean Creed. Agnosticism simply leaves the question open.
I find agnosticism comfortable because I admit to myself that I'm simply not smart enough to divine the workings of God, whom I feel probably exists. There is logically a primal cause for existence. There is not logically a requirement to bonk your forehead on the ground five times a day, probably less so than there is a logical requirement to genuflect (a gesture of respect) or to wear side curls (a gesture of group membership).
The "divine set of bizarre commandments" can be and have been as well the result of men trying, however imperfectly, to approximate the mind of God. I don't think they've succeeded, just as you don't, Aris, but I don't think the effort's been wasted, either. Some of the rules of behavior they've come up with have been essentials of building society, starting with the ten commandments, which are lacking in Islam. Those societies which have lacked similar rules have been casually brutal places to live for the most part.
I can't accept a concept of a God whose ego is so fragile that he needs adored five times a day. I have no idea what the afterlife will be like, though with each passing year I get a little closer to finding out. I doubt that it includes plunking a harp for eternity while massaging the divine ego with ceaseless praise, and I certainly hope that accounts of hellfire are exaggerated.
I don't know. But I don't begrudge (most of) those who think they know their beliefs.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 16:32 Comments ||
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#16
You People don't understand. It's not the praying, who cares? It's the damn petty bitching, I write all of that down.
Zimbabweâs intelligence service is spying on aid organisations and âcomparing notesâ with South Africa in terms of a year-old pact.
Zimbabweâs Director of Intelligence, Aggrey Maringa, said in an interview this week that some non-government organisations were under the microscope of his agency. Maringa told the Sunday Times that Zimbabwe shared information with South Africa on NGOs simultaneously active in both countries. The deal was revealed in the wake of attacks on foreign-funded non-government organisations by President Thabo Mbeki last month and Zimbabweâs Minister of National Security, Didymus Mutasa, this week. Mbeki told African editors and an African Peer Review conference he was worried about the influence of some NGOs because their agendas were set by donors and not by the needs of Africa. Mutasa said after Thursdayâs inaugural meeting of a joint commission on defence and security that foreign NGOs and journalists were the greatest threats to Zimbabweâs stability. âWe would like Europe please to keep your NGOs to yourselves,â he said.
Mutasa and South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils signed two new accords at the meeting attended by ministers, military chiefs and officials from the two countries. They agreed to improve co-operation in defence, border control, environmental management, security and intelligence. Zimbabwe will send air force instructors to train South African fighter pilots and buy the airframes of South Africaâs ageing Alouette helicopters. A senior air force official said the Alouettes would be sold without weapons, but might be flight-capable.
Kasrils told the Sunday Times that an intelligence-sharing deal in place since July last year was reaffirmed. âItâs about international terrorism ... syndicated crime, drug smuggling, human smuggling, money laundering,â he said. Kasrils said the parameters of the co-operation were clearly defined in an exchange of notes, but Maringa said: âWe have not given each other any prescription as to boundaries.â
#2
The entire African continent is driving itself back to its uncivilized state in the eighteenth century. There is little reason and fewer means to stop it. First Darwin Award to a continent. Sad.
Egyptian police have arrested 200 Muslim Brotherhood activists hours before legislative elections on Sunday which the Islamist group is contesting, a leading Brotherhood member said. Essam Al Erian said the activists detained overnight included representatives and supporters of Muslim Brotherhood candidates contesting 60 seats in the second stage of the elections. The Brotherhood is officially banned so its members compete as independent candidates to sidestep the ban. A police source who wished to remain anonymous confirmed the arrests, but would not give a reason for them.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/21/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
With the spread of democracy, it's not guaranteed that the be-turbanded sharia nuts won't win, probably in several countries. But the longer the secular dictators remain in power the more popular the MB and others become. They will have to have their turn governing. But like the Iranian mullahs and the Taliban, they will wind up hated. The trick then is to make sure that elections will continue in the future. That's the winning strategy of democracy. Better to let them get voted in than to wait until they sweep in through revolution.
Posted by: John in Tokyo ||
11/21/2005 9:37 Comments ||
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#2
It's not the voting in that counts, it's the leaving later.
Hitler was voted in.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/21/2005 12:21 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
AS increasing numbers of people are switching on the television for their religious guidance, the Kingdom s Islamic leaders are warning against the blind following of live fatwas. There are many programs that appear on the satellite channels, hosting famous sheikhs, who are issuing fatwas without getting back to books of Fiqh, says Dr. Abdul Aaziz Al-Mishal.
The case of 
Instead of the traditional interview, recruits now have to prove their mettle on a three-day selection course similar to that undertaken by all would-be officers. The clergy are put through a series of tests, both physical and mental. They have to complete a 500-metre run and, in one exercise, they have to work out how to transport a "radioactive" brick over a wall without it touching the ground. In another they have to say how they would react to a possible situation in which a soldier makes a local girl pregnant.
Turkish Foreign Minister 
German interrogators were granted access three years ago to a terrorist in one of Damascus' most dreaded jails under a secret deal with Syria, the news magazine Der Spiegel said Sunday. They were able to speak in 2002 with Mohammed Haidar Zammar, a Syrian who is believed to have a German passport, after he had been captured by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents in Morocco and removed to Syria, Spiegel said in its issue to appear Monday. In exchange, intelligence officials in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office acceded to Syrian demands to quash the indictment of two suspected Syrian spies. Berlin later accused Syria of reneging and continuing espionage in Germany in breach of the deal. 
Iraqi politicians made goodwill gestures at a reconciliation conference in Cairo on Sunday and President 
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will today say he is quitting the ruling 
IRAN should resume uranium enrichment and end United Nations' snap checks of its nuclear sites if Tehran is referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, the country's parliament decided yesterday. In the vote, broadcast live on state radio, 183 out of 197 MPs backed the move. It must now be approved by Iran's constitutional watchdog, the conservative 12-man Guardian Council. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy and security commission, urged opposition MPs from the reformist camp to display a united front in the national interest. "This is not a factional, political issue - it is a national issue," he said.
Iran said there was not enough evidence that its nuclear programme was designed to produce anything other than energy for it to be sent to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Foreign Ministry Spokesman 
Zimbabweâs intelligence service is spying on aid organisations and âcomparing notesâ with South Africa in terms of a year-old pact. 
Egyptian police have arrested 200 
