The ban on the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in former First World nation South Africa was worrying and conflicted with press freedom, the Media Institute of Southern Africa said on Sunday. Misa's Raymond Louw said the Johannesburg High Court's ruling on Friday stated that the right to dignity outweighed the right to freedom of expression.
That means that no mockery of anyone is allowed. Notice how easy it is to go from being governed to being ruled...
Judge Mohammed Jajbhay concluded that the cartoons were offensive and an affront to the dignity of the Muslim people.
We can guess where Mohammed Jajbhay goes to church, too. Nothing like getting an unbiased ruling from a neutral party...
"Misa regards the ban as an unacceptable intrusion on media freedom and freedom of expression by the courts and believes it is unconstitutional," Louw said.
Not that constitutions count for much in Third World countries...
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance said it was dismayed by the decision. "Media freedom is explicitly constitutionalised in South Africa as part of the right to free speech and expression.
It was up until now, anyway. Now it's not. Get used to it. And don't forget to vote ANC.
"This means that the media decides without prior restraint by other organs of state what it will publish, and how," said spokesperson Dene Smuts.
If I ever become a counter-terrorist, I'm going to begin my career by firebombing the offices of the nearest Jamaat-e-Ulema.
Publication in Europe of the set of Danish cartoons has given rise to protests, flag-burning and commercial boycotts across the Middle East.
And South Africa doesn't want any of that...
The DA welcomed the resolve shown by the SA National Editors' Forum and the newspaper groups affected by the ruling to resist prior restraint when the matter returns to court at the end of the month. "The interdict must be lifted - thereafter matters of substance such as the relative importance of the rights to free speech and dignity can be considered," said Smuts.
You achieve dignity by being strong and steadfast, not by foaming at the mouth in response to every little nit-noi happenstance...
The Union of Muslim Students Associations said the publication of the cartoons would be offensive. "Freedom of speech is an inalienable right of all South Africans, enshrined in our Bill of Rights after centuries of struggle to free our land of the oppression of one by another", the students said. "Another freedom enshrined in our constitution, after this same struggle, is that of religion, belief and opinion. Further, the Bill of Rights enshrines that everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected. Tainting and mocking the character of the Prophet Muhammad and any other prophet of Islam or revered Islamic figure, such as Jesus, Moses, Abraham, and/or Mary, is tantamount to degrading the dignity of those who follow Islam. All freedoms have limitations...
"And our religion limits all your freedoms."
"We call for a national dialogue through institutions such as the parliament of the Republic of South Africa, and the media, to promote an understanding of this issue, especially focusing on the reasons why it provokes such a passionate response from the Muslim community."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:22 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
So now it is clear that to defend your rights to free speech in SA, you *must* publish these cartoons. The streets must be so flooded with them that no government effort at censorship will work.
#2
I'm on a ML that provides great insight into today's South Africa... sad, sad, sad, truly a country gone down the gutter; yesterday it was a 13 years old black girl gangraped by 18 teens on her way home back from the school, and it was her second gangrape in a week... today it is a white woman explaining why she and her family leave SA, as she was beaten to a pulp and gangraped in 2005 by four men aged 10 to 24 who also tried to suffocate her (that same year, there was two carjackings, attempted or successful, one break-in in the room of one of her daughters, the attempted kidnapping of her 4 years daughter by a group of black kids who wanted "to make her their girlfriend", several armed robberies of relatives,...).
All this in a rotten, racially-driven political climate marred by marxism and corruption; the owner of the ML is south-african himself, and he really fears a possible genocide of whites in the near future, as some threaten to do as soon as Mandela is dead (RKBA and right to defend oneself are already taken away from white citizens).
And there is also the links to organized crime, the hardcore islamists, the antiwestern posturing,...
Did all theses people who protested against apartheid and felt good about it (remember, "Lethal weapon II"?) expect such a turn of event???
#4
I will wager that they do not even think about it. It is in the past, like Cambodia, Rhodesia, and the Viet Nam boat people. "Secret prisons" is the cause to be concerned about now.
#5
"Did all theses people who protested against apartheid and felt good about it (remember, "Lethal weapon II"?) expect such a turn of event???"
Did the people who expected post Apartheid SA to become a totalitarian state like so many in Africa, really expect that in a situation like this thered be protests by a group like MISA, or a party like DA running for office?
Cmon. We dont have to like this. But saying its the same as the end of all free speech, and that it proves that trying to end apartheid was wrong, is as silly as the Bush=hitler loonies. Ya know, the folks who think that a technical violation of freedom from unwarranted search is the beginning of dictatorship.
#7
I'm *not* an apartheid supporter, I'm just terribly sorry on how it all turned out to be.
Just like Algeria was given to the national-arabism, for the worst of both its french and indigenous people, SA's keys were given to a bunch of race-baiting commies, basically.
#8
"...the Bill of Rights enshrines that everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected."
If dignity is indeed an inherent right bestowed upon all humans it therefore must be a uniquely human condition. However, whats at issue here is humans displaying a lack of reverence for a particular religion or God. (In a word blasphemy) In this case humans are defending the integrity of a deity not human rights. Furthermore it seems to me, no matter what the creator of the materials intent was, it is the beholders conceptualization that generates the offensive connotation not the other way around. But for the sake of discussion say the material is in fact an affront to ones dignity, deferential regard for another religion must be reciprocal. And the adherents to Shariah are anything but respectful of the other world religions. Ill give you your inherent dignity but you have to earn my respect.
#11
Cmon. We dont have to like this. But saying its the same as the end of all free speech, and that it proves that trying to end apartheid was wrong, is as silly as the Bush=hitler loonies.
Nobody said ending apartheid was bad. What is despicable is all those Concerned who campaigned to end it now blithely ignore the after effects. Same as in Cambodia. Same as in Viet Nam. Same as in Rhodesia.
Where are the protests? Where is the outrage, the angry celebrities, the boycotts, the Cause Celebre?
Or are the Concerned now content that the "little brown people" got to make their choice, and so the Concerned can go on to a new cause?
#12
LH - that was a pathetic attempt - you know better
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 19:45 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Agree with it or not, apartheid (seperation and documentation) kept SA from being totally overrun with imigrants from the north and from crumbling from within. Yes there were unpleasant aspects and excesses, but none like we've seen throughout the balance of Africa. Lets not remember that the SADF kicked Castro out of Angola at a time which was very conventient for us. Our thanks to SA was a boycott and support for the ANC - a black vs Cuban communist structure.
#14
It was more than 'unpleasant aspects and excesses'. It was evil. There's no defense of apartheid.
There's also no defense of what's going on today in SA, Zim-bob-we, Congo, Darfur, south Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Chad, Nigeria, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea ...
... oh hell, it gets tiresome just to list all the countries where mankind is being absolutely shitty and evil.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/06/2006 22:09 Comments ||
Top||
#15
So turning the tables is the key? Trying to find employment in SA today is like attempting to enroll an Irishman into Howard University. The most sought after document in SA is an INS Green Card. What you are seeing in ZIM, SA, and many of the cesspools you listed is reverse aparthied with tribal, communist focus. Nothing to celebrate I'm afraid. At least with the Afrikaner there was rule of law.
...and promptly hauls in Steve Hadley for 'discussions'...
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, on Sunday said he was "taken aback" by President George W. Bush's remark that the United States was "addicted" to Mideast oil, and that the topic continues to be discussed between Saudi and U.S. government officials. Saudi Arabia exports only 15 percent of total U.S. oil imports, al-Faisal noted in a CNN "Late Edition" interview, adding, "I would hardly call that a lot".
Bush made the remark during his State of the Union speech last week, and al-Faisal said he had "a very good meeting" the next day with U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley at the White House. "We are talking through that issue --- both governments," al-Faisal said, noting that a joint communique was issued by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia last year, following a meeting in Texas between King Abdullah and Bush in which the leaders agreed on an energy policy that called for increased Saudi oil output for the United States. "This is something that is of serious concern to us because oil is our major income earner," al-Faisal said.
#1
SA needs to learn to deal with it. Their already killed their golden goose. We've moved on to the 21st Century. Time for them to put their futures in sand.
#2
I wonder how serious Bush's energy comments were. As the days go by I think it was a threat to the Saudi's. Sort of a stop funding Maddrassas and get the oil flowing or we really will get serious.
#3
Judging from the size of the squeal from Riyadh, I'd venture that you are correct, rjschwarz. Prince Turki sure didn't waste any time hustling his well-manicured self over to the White House to lodge a Complaint. Apparently somebody was watching the SotU, I guess.
#4
Squeal? It's nothing! Wait until Iran and Gaza get their due, which I fully expect in the next couple of months. Then the Saudi royals are going to look at the map and the devastation and get serious about terrorism. The three best things that could happen in the near future are (1) for Israel to show the world that it does indeed have nukes by vaporizing some Iranian nuke facilities and (2) for the U.S. to show the world that it is willing to destroy the likes of the Iranian military by air without bothering with a messy follow-up ground operation and (3) for Israel to pulverize Hamas.
British authorities had at least two of the terrorists who bombed London last July 7 under surveillance in 2004. In an official document examined by NEWSWEEK, a British judge reports that U.K. investigators had pictures and voice recordings of Mohammed Siddique Khanbelieved to have been the plot leaderand another suicide bomber, Shahzad Tanweer, meeting several times in February and March 2004 with suspects in an earlier, separate terror plot that U.K. authorities investigated under the code name Operation Crevice. The evidence includes recordings of Khan in a car driven by one Crevice suspect, and evidence showing Khan and Tanweer getting out of a Crevice suspect's car. British media have made only limited references to the evidence because a trial of Crevice suspects is pending, and pretrial publicity is restricted under U.K. law.
After July 7, investigators claimed the four suspected suicide bombers were previously unknown to British intel. But as the investigation evolved, authorities quietly made it known that antiterror investigators, presumably working for the secret counterintelligence agency M.I.5, had run across Khan and Tanweer; British authorities decided at the time that they weren't dangerous enough for continuing surveillance. U.S. law-enforcement officials, who asked not to be named because the investigation continues, told NEWSWEEK the name of a third bomber, Germaine Lindsay, also came up tangentially in Crevice. British authorities initially denied they had heard of him before July 7 but now concede they may have. A U.K. official said Tony Blair's government wouldn't comment for legal reasons.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 03:11 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
A serious problem of Manpower methinks. Looks like in preventing one attack, another got through. Keep up the hard work and stay out of the pub!
WT - I think the Police will choose the time and place for having a word with this guy - and will hopefully show him the due respect he deserves(!).
The police did well not to intervene last Friday - UK muslim extremists have shown themselves to be a bunch of murderous thugs - and, as expected, the moderate muslims' silence is deafening. Indeed, when they have spoken their views have been most ambiguous.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/06/2006 4:11 Comments ||
Top||
#3
When it is left to law enforcement it doesn't get done. Dealing with terrorism is not a "law enforcement task. You will get will get more incidents like Madrid, London and New York of it.
#4
When you're on the defense, the enemy chooses the time, place and location of the attack. If you limit your defense to your wire [borders], it gives the enemy the opportunity to maneuver and dictate the battle. You have to take the battle to the enemy. Make him fight on his turf, force him to fight your battle, not his. Your local and even national police can not do that job.
#5
Quite agree - time for assassination squads like we used against the IRA (and Mossad against the Paleos).
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/06/2006 5:52 Comments ||
Top||
#6
as expected, the moderate muslims' silence is deafening
Hard to hear what isn't there.
(And before someone jumps on me, let me point out the latest data in the moderates-are-mythical argument. The largest mosque in the Chicago area has been taken over by Islamists; one member has been resisting them, fighting them in court and trying to expose their activities in funding terrorism. By his own admission he's the only person putting up a fight. Yeah, he's a moderate -- but he's the only one.
The Moderate Muslim Myth posits that the majority of Muslims are moderates opposed to the jihadists; it has become harder and harder to square that theory with reality. I don't consider someone a "moderate" in any meaningful sense if they accomodate the radicals. It's like finding a Chicago-area megachurch has been taken over by Christian-identity nuts with no resistance from the congregation; would you give them the benefit of the doubt?)
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/06/2006 7:53 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Make him fight on his turf, force him to fight your battle, not his. Your local and even national police can not do that job.
Howard, that's my concern as well. In avoiding the shortterm risk (by not arresting those dressed as suicide bombers - indeed, letting them post next to police vehicles - but arresting those with the Mohammed cartoons) your authorities have greatly encouraged real violence down the road.
#8
Howard, that's my concern as well. In avoiding the shortterm risk (by not arresting those dressed as suicide bombers - indeed, letting them post next to police vehicles - but arresting those with the Mohammed cartoons) your authorities have greatly encouraged real violence down the road.
You get what you subsidize. In this case, the police are penalizing speech and subsidizing threats.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/06/2006 8:23 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I think the writer meant to say 'Into the Crevasse of 7/7' but with CNN chasing the Middle East market, editorial standards seem to be a unnecessary expense.
#10
I just think these assclowns wanted to provoke the police into taking action. There would have been far more gloating on Islamicist websites had they received the beating they so deserve - and the pictures would be round the 'Umma' in a flash. What we have to do now is show that the due process of the law is occurring - which I'm not sure it will. These protests also serve as good monitoring opportunities as no raving jihadi could resist staying away from a potential scrap in central London - but again as the article suggests intelligence gathering is flawed. Maybe next time we just shoot 'em..
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/06/2006 8:59 Comments ||
Top||
#11
... as expected, the moderate muslims' silence is deafening. Indeed, when they have spoken their views have been most ambiguous.
And I say this will be the death of them. Silence is consent and consenting to Islamist terrorism is enough to get you killed. My belief in the "Moderate Muslim" is nearly extinguished. No amount of persuasion from my side is going to change that. Only Muslims acting en masse to bring about positive change will alter things and I most definitely do not see it happening.
Quite agree - time for assassination squads like we used against the IRA (and Mossad against the Paleos).
Glad to see more people on board with the hunter - killer wetwork teams, Howard UK. Beyond immolating several Middle East countries as an example to the rest, snuffing all of the top tier imams and mullahs is the only solution. Spreading this pathological Islamist meme needs to become a fatally dangerous activity.
#2
We are trying to put the kibosh on the worlds leading sponsor of terrorism dumbass, if russia would like to help out then quit selling them missiles and get on board with this UNSC thingy. You dont think Iran would give money to radicals in chechiland do you? Oh, say they wouldn't!
#3
And Russians would reply, CU3625, "The world's leading sponsor of terrorism is your [US] friend and ally, Saudi Arabia." And I would have to agree with them.
PUBLICATION of blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Victorian newspapers could damage community relations, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said today. Ms Nixon acknowledged it was the right of different media outlets to decide if they would publish the cartoons. But she added it was "a sad thing to see communities harmed in the way that they have been". The responsibility for the harm does not lie in the publishing of cartoons but the reaction of religious zealots. Do your job and protect us from them.
"It's unnecessary damage being done to our relationships with a whole range of people in the community and I think that would be sad."
Welcome to multi-culti policing YOUR JOB as Police Chief Commissioner is to protect MY RIGHT TO FREEDOM LIST OF AUSTRALIA'S SHAME:
In Melbourne, Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden has said his newspaper would not publish the cartoons.
In Melbourne, The Age is also refusing to publish the cartoons.
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
#3
I love the way everyone claimed Bush was trying to supress freedom of speach while they burned him in effigy and called him a Nazi on the major cable networks.
Now rioters truly are advocating censoring speach (and even want the death of those whose cartoons offend them) and a lot of folks around the world are apologizing and saying 'be nice'.
Really shows you how Bush doesn't scare the lefties all that much and Islam does.
#4
They arent even funny, at all.
I like the one I saw the other day of Moham screwing the camel, now that was funny. This is good therapy for the dune loons, the more they see that we don't really care if they like it or not the better it will be for them in the end.
Germany is back. After eight years in which Berlin's foreign policy consisted largely of niggling the United States, cozying up to Russia and off-shoring its European policy to Paris, newly-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled a 180-degree about-turn. In a hard-hitting and unusually blunt speech Saturday to the Munich Conference on Security Policy, the center-right leader sketched out an ambitious foreign and defense policy for Germany over the next four years. "A united Germany is ready to shoulder more responsibility above and beyond the alliance area to secure stability in the world," Merkel told relieved delegates, who have become accustomed to German statesmen querying U.S. policies or engaging in torturous debates about sending soldiers abroad.
To give former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder credit, his red-green government paved the way for Berlin's more muscular foreign and security policy of late. German troops are already present in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, the southern Caucasus and Palestine -- a situation unthinkable a decade ago when the Bundeswehr was constitutionally barred from intervening overseas. They are also helping train Iraqi officers and provide the highest share of troops in NATO's new rapid reaction force. But Merkel, an East German who grew up under communist rule, wants Berlin to play an even more proactive role on the world stage. Like her predecessor, Gerhard Schroder, the Christian Democrat chancellor believes NATO should become the prime political body where transatlantic issues are discussed. Instead of letting controversial topics like Iran, energy security and the Mideast peace process fester, the Brussels-based alliance should tackle them head-on, she said. "A body that doesn't discuss political issues is not going to be able to reach a shared understanding of what its threats are," she told over 300 delegates to the annual security summit, who included U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
Merkel also believes alliance leaders should agree a new strategic concept at a summit in 2008 to replace the one drawn up in Washington almost a decade ago. Unlike Schroder however, the new center-right chancellor is instinctively enthusiastic about the 26-member military alliance and optimistic about its potential to guarantee security and spread stability. "Do we want to give NATO the primacy to conduct necessary political consultations or do give it a more secondary role?" she asked. "I believe it has to be the primary forum and other routes have to be taken when a decision cannot be taken within NATO."
Schroder, a political opportunist who won a second election by campaigning against the war in Iraq, was always careful not to offend Moscow or speak out against corrupt and oppressive regimes in other parts of the world. Merkel has no such qualms. She lashed out at Russia for using energy supplies as a political tool in former Soviet republics like Georgia and Ukraine and even queries whether Europe is living up to its human rights rhetoric with China. But the recently elected chancellor, who enjoys 80 percent approval ratings, reserved her harshest words for the radical Islamist regime in Iran. Adopting a muscular tone rarely used by German leaders, Merkel likened recent remarks of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the map, to the rise of the Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Stating that Germany had learned from its history, she said Berlin would not tolerate a nuclear Iran.
Merkel's black and white view of politics is more reminiscent of her self-confessed hero Ronald Reagan than any of her recent predecessors. She warned the extremist group Hamas, which won last week's Palestinian Authority elections, to renounce violence and recognize Israel or face ostracism and even waded into the debate about Danish newspaper cartoons of Mohammed, saying Berlin stood by Copenhagen.
Merkel's speech was warmly received by Munich regulars, who in recent years have seen Rumsfeld clash openly with former foreign minister Joschka Fischler and a stand-in for Schroder question the relevance of NATO. Former U.S. defense secretary William Cohen told Merkel: "The tone, tenor and substance of what you said is quite different from what we have heard before...and we in the United States are very grateful."
Urging Berlin to show the same activism of new NATO members like Romania, U.S. Senator John McCain told new defense minister Franz Josef Jung: "Germany has been a bit quiet on the world stage in recent years, and yet it could assume a true leadership role within NATO -- one commensurate with its role as a leader of Europe."
So far, most of Merkel's lofty paeans to freedom and democracy remain at the rhetorical level and her ambitions will inevitably be tempered by career diplomats and a Social Democrat foreign minister who was Schroder's chief-of-staff for eight years. But American officials are at least relieved that she views foreign policy through the same prism. "Chancellor Merkel is raising issues of freedom, democracy and development as part of German and European foreign policy," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. "For those of us who work closely with Germany, this is a change from the previous focus on stability."
Not everything Merkel says and does is music to Washington's ears -- she used a recent White House meeting with President George W. Bush to condemn U.S. policy towards terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay and has ruled out sending German troops to Iraq -- but at least the chancellor is willing to engage in a robust debate with the United States rather than snipe from the sidelines or attempt to brush differences under the carpet. "We need to hold a dialogue on rights versus security" she said. "If we don't hold this dialogue then slowly but surely we will move apart."
#3
India all the way. They have shown a willing to confront terrorism head on. The extra-judicial justice also enables them to deal with Islamists at their level.
#4
Germans will be invading France for the third time in 100 years. looks like the next time it will be a good thing.
Posted by: ed ||
02/06/2006 12:07 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The relationship between the U.S. and the Germs is probably about the same at the diplomatic and Nato/UN level. Schroder was a wedge driven between the two countries that have, essentially, the same interests and objectives. A wedge that was placed by the communist(ish) left in Germany. While we don't always want to take long showers together, Germany and the U.S. usually work together enough to get it done. Schroder and Chirac let their personal investment portfolios get in the way of their professional judgement on Iraq maybe.
#6
Maybe the sons & daughters of Hermann aka Arminius will rise again. Arminius gave Caesar Augustus nightmares, was the reason the Roman Empire stopped expanding much beyond the Rhine & was why German is not a romance language.
#7
MLF Lullaby
Sleep, baby, sleep, in peace may you slumber,
No danger lurks, your sleep to encumber.
We've got the missiles, peace to determine,
And one of the fingers on the button will be German.
Why shouldn't they have nuclear warheads?
England says no, but they all are soreheads.
I say a bygone should be a bygone,
Let's make peace the way we did in Stanleyville and Saigon.
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.
So, sleep well, my darling, the sandman can linger.
We know our buddies won't give us the finger.
Heil - hail - the Wehrmacht, I mean the Bundeswehr,
Hail to our loyal ally!
M L F
Will scare Brezhnev.*
I hope he is half as scared as I!
French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to introduce controversial immigration legislation Thursday based on the idea of "chosen immigration." The draft bill is expected to include offering three-year working papers for highly qualified immigrants, active recruitment overseas of professionals working in targeted economic sectors, and preferential treatment for foreign students coming from poorer backgrounds. "We no longer want an inflicted immigration, we want a chosen immigration," Sarkozy told the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche in an interview on the subject. "That is the fundamental principle of the new policy I envision."
The legislation reportedly will make it harder to obtain legal residency based on marrying a French resident, and end opportunities for illegal immigrants to become legalized after living in France for 10 years.
And the reaction of the usual suspects?
The legislation is controversial even within the center-right government, and immigrants' rights groups have lambasted some of its provisions. In remarks reported in France's Le Figaro newspaper, Pierre Henry, head of the immigrant rights group France Terre d'Asile, called the draft bill's restrictions on immigration through marriage "a real attack against the right to live as a family."
#1
The invasion of Europe will continue. Because the Europeans don't even talk about it for what it really IS. It's not IMMIGRATION, it's part of the global war of islam against Freedom.
A cartoon in Italy's leading daily, Corriere della Sera, yesterday summed up the mood of nervousness in Europe's press. It depicted an artist drawing caricatures of Mohammed, looking terrified as his cartoon explodes into an atomic mushroom cloud, with the features of an angry bearded cleric.
The French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, carried a signed editorial, asking blasphemers in the Western world to stop provoking those with religious faith. But it also accused despots and human-rights abusers from across the Muslim world of manipulating the cartoon row to attack Western democracies.
Spain's El Mundo accused Syria and Iran of manipulating the crisis - Syria to distract attention from its lingering influence in Lebanon and Iran to drum up Islamic support for its nuclear programme. The Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, linked the row to the imminent, and highly controversial deployment of Dutch forces to a new Nato peacekeeping mission in southern Afghanistan.
In the United States, the conservative Wall Street Journal claimed the Middle East was successfully using the row over the cartoons to export its repressive system to Europe. While the paper was among many in the US which accepted that the cartoons were offensive, it said that death threats, embassy burnings and the withdrawal of ambassadors were an over-reaction. Other American newspapers have questioned the wisdom of publishing the cartoons.
The liberal Washington Post wrote yesterday that, while Muslims were well within their rights to protest against the publication of the cartoons, the protesters showed a "basic misunderstanding" when they demanded apologies from the leaders of Denmark or other European countries. "In many Muslim-majority countries (Egypt and Syria for example), officials do control the press and so are accountable for the ugly anti-Semitism that often appears in their newspapers."
The same was not true in the West, the Post said. Writing in Ramallah's al-Ayyam newspaper, the Palestinian novelist Adel al-Usta suggested the way to respond to the cartoons was "to ignore the whole issue, and republish the European books which talk in a bright way about the Prophet Mohammed".
In Oman's Alwatan newspaper, Zuhair Abed argued that the current climate drew parallels with the days preceding the Crusades: "All that is needed now is the spark, in a European magazine or a newspaper, then the war starts, between the Arabs who revere their honourable prophet and the West."
In South Africa, editors denounced a "blow" to press freedom yesterday after the High Court issued an injunction banning them from publishing the cartoons.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:26 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
Whether a butterfly's wing beat can cause a tornado is still a central debate of chaos theory. But it is now proven that drawings first published more than four months ago in Denmark have seeded outrage among Muslims from Gaza to Jakarta and embittered believers making their lives in Europe. An editor's decision--call it feisty or cavalier--to ask Danish cartoonists to depict the Prophet Muhammad has provoked a volcanic reaction, from a Muslim boycott of Danish goods to the torching of two European embassies in Damascus to death threats and lawsuits against newspapers, and even to a new slogan in the streets of U.S.-bashing Iran: "Death to Denmark."
Death to Denmark? The whole affair seems to offer proof not only of chaos theory but also of Emily Post's dictum that you ought not to talk about religion--or to be prepared for anything if you do. To Muslims, the drawings were blasphemy, a violation of a cultural protocol not to portray the Prophet. The range of reactions to the cartoon's publication among Muslims and non-Muslims alike served as a reminder of the gaping divide that still exists between the West and much of the Islamic world. In a show of solidarity for their journalistic brethren in Denmark, television stations and newspapers in other European countries have shown some or all of the drawings, the most controversial of which portrays Muhammad's headdress transformed into a bomb with a burning fuse. Their intention was to strike a blow for free speech, but by publishing the cartoons, Europe's media outlets were perceived by some Muslims to be willfully ignoring religious sensitivities, which fueled the anger even more. Yet the demands by Muslim leaders that European governments punish journalists who have run the cartoons--Middle Eastern Interior Ministers gathering in Tunis last week expressed no preference for how, although a prayer leader in Gaza urged beheading--strike Europeans and Americans as unreasonable infringements on the ideals of free speech and limited government. The Bush Administration has attempted to uphold press freedom while acknowledging Muslim rage, calling the cartoons "offensive" but defending the media's right to publish them.
Is there a middle ground? It's worth noting that the vast majority of Western news outlets (including TIME) have chosen not to republish the cartoons, out of deference to Islamic sensitivities. On other occasions the U.S. media have exercised self-censorship in matters of religion; in 1992, for instance, after Sinead O'Connor outraged Catholics by ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, NBC reran the show without O'Connor's performance. To Muslims, disrespect for the Prophet is a rallying point beyond worldly politics. And so as anger plays out in Muslim hearts, the challenge for the West in the days ahead is to figure out how to contain it.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:21 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
What this analysis fails to take into consideration is if the Muslims were truly upset there would have been rioting in Denmark months ago combined with the number of Danish flags that were burned during the spontanious riots in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza. The number of signs in English. Took lots of planning to get everyone prepared for the riots and maximize their effect.
Time Magazine should be looking for the why rather than caving into to percieved Muslim sensibilities.
mostly about french politics, but this lede is the key point IMO:
French voters are lurching towards the political extremes ahead of next years presidential elections out of frustration with the government and the system it embodies, according to François Bayrou, head of the centrist UDF party. Mr Bayrou, the UDFs presidential candidate, warned the 2007 elections risked repeating the humiliation of 2002, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen shocked the world by coming second in the opening round of the presidential ballot.
#1
Chiracs polls are in the freaking sewer way past the toilet think around 14%.
As well they should be this is the same guy that sat back talking about more welfare better gov houses while Muslim youth burnt Parris the capitol for weeks on end. And still to this day control no go zones were the French police couldnt go.
Recently he has been trying to talk tuff with his BS we will nuke any terrorist crap, dont be fooled he has looked around seen his boy Schroeder pick up his pink slip and the Canadian pres pickup his while Bush, Howard and Blair have all been reelected in strong positions. Thats says something for who was right ant who was wrong.
In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.
Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack? University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein says the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.
A Justice Department official, who asked not to be ID'd because of the sensitive subject, said Bradbury's remarks were made during an "academic discussion" of theoretical contingencies. In real life, the official said, the highest priority of those hunting a terrorist on U.S. soil would be to capture that person alive and interrogate him. At a public intel-committee hearing, Feinstein was told by intel czar John Negroponte and FBI chief Robert Mueller that they were unaware of any case in which a U.S. agency was authorized to kill a Qaeda-linked person on U.S. soil. Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told NEWSWEEK: "Mr. Bradbury's meeting was an informal, off-the-record briefing about the legal analysis behind the president's terrorist-surveillance program. He was not presenting the legal views of the Justice Department on hypothetical scenarios outside of the terrorist-surveillance program."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:47 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Once again lets remember -
One Hundred Seventh Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE FIRST SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Wednesday,
the third day of January, two thousand and one
Joint Resolution
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force'.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
As Capitol Hill prepares to battle the White House over George W. Bush's expanding war powers, moderate Senators on both sides of the aisle are quietly considering a range of options that would attempt at the very least to delineate the President's authority, if not roll it back. Bush's claims of wartime license are so great--the White House and Justice Department have argued that the Commander in Chief's pursuit of national security cannot be constrained by any laws passed by Congress, even when he is acting against U.S. citizens--that some Senators are considering a constitutional amendment to limit his powers.
In the public-opinion battle over domestic eavesdropping, Bush won the first round by arguing that he needed the unchecked power to learn "if there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaeda." With poll numbers split on the issue, spooked Senators hunkered down. But in recent days, Senate Democrats and the Judiciary Committee's Republican chairman, Arlen Specter, have fired off nine letters to the Justice Department and the White House demanding information on the domestic-spying program. At Senate hearings last week, the former head of the National Security Agency refused even in closed session to say how many phones had been tapped in the U.S. This reticence comes after conflicting public estimates from President Bush ("a few" U.S. phones) and his Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff ("thousands").
A source familiar with the nascent constitutional amendment says one version would make clear that any actions by the President as Commander in Chief that affect domestic policies or U.S. citizens are subject to the exclusive control of Congress. "Congress can't completely cede wartime power to the President," the source says. Talk of an amendment could end up as merely a lever in hearings. Then again, the first 10 amendments--better known as the Bill of Rights--were demanded by the states in part to curb the Constitution's broad presidential powers.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:25 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
How about a Constiutional amendment to move the confirmation of SCOTUS justices out of the circus known as the Senate and give the power directly to the people. Not like we should have a democracy where all parts of the government are subject to the direct consent of the governed. Its been less than one hundred years since we did that directly to Senators, making them subject to the consent of the governed. I say its time to update the process.
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
#3
I have never been a snarlin Arlen fan and I think this recent spat about spying on bad guys tells us just how dangerous this man is. While most of the left (except for the die hard kool aid drinkers) are backpedaling on the original claim that this program was somehow illegal and unnecessary, here is Specter still carrying that flag. At worst he should remain neutral and at best he should at least acknowledge that if these were not legal the congress should make them legal because they are necessary.
#4
Massimo Calabresi in Time magazine. Give me a break. This is the fall back position for those on the left who have realized there won't be an impeachment but still think something must be done. Yawn.
#5
BS alert: I note that no Senators are named in connection with this constitutional amendment. This is a trial balloon by a Lib staffer to see how much support, i.e. righteous outrage, they can gin up from the krazykoskidz
Posted by: Scott R ||
02/06/2006 10:50 Comments ||
Top||
#6
They'd best be careful what they ask for. Not many folks I know are ready to have the executive branch run by a committee of three, let alone 535. One more 9/11 and they could easily come out of this with even more war power for the president, not less.
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 11:19 Comments ||
Top||
#9
o.k. rantburg moderators. maybe this expresses my viewpoint on the topic better.
"Bush v. Reality - The Cult of Imperial Presidency"
by: Tom Englehardt
"2006 is sure to be the year of living dangerously -- for the Bush administration and for the rest of us. In the wake of revelations of warrantless spying by the National Security Agency, we have already embarked on what looks distinctly like a constitutional crisis (which may not come to a full boil until 2007).
In the meantime, the President, Vice President, Secretaries of Defense and State, various lesser officials, crony appointees, acolytes, legal advisors, leftover neocons, spy-masters, strategists, spin doctors, ideologues, lobbyists, Republican Party officials, and congressional backers are intent on packing the Supreme Court with supporters of an "obscure philosophy" of unfettered Presidential power called "the unitary executive theory" and then foisting a virtual cult of the imperial presidency on the country."
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 13:20 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Lol, wotta maroon. Quoting some partisan hack brimming full of conspiratorial DU wanking is supposed to impress us?
Lol. What matters, No Sense, is that there is no "there" there. Read the 5 court decisions and despair, little one.
Meanwhile, back in reality, we can have a good laugh at the notion that this story is remotely rational, reflects anything but Dhimmidonk Dreaming Aloud, that the amendment process wouldn't squelch this Kos Kiddie Kool Aid Klutzfest - rendering it stillborn, and that the Chomskyites are mainstream. Check the election figures for verification of this view.
Feel the vibrations. Follow the energy. Be like water. Take a leak.
why do you always talk in the plural as if you speak for everyone in here?
I'm not trying to impress anyone, just posting a point of view on the subject I agree with.
If what you say is true, I suggest you call Sen.
Arlen Specter, (who is a republican and leads the Senate investigation) and tell him to call the whole thing off..I'm sure he will follow your advice.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 13:46 Comments ||
Top||
Typical Dhimmidonk wedge move there LA/Cass/No Sense (et al) trolltwit. NS just thumped ya for it, little one. Been here a long time - and you're a n00b troll.
#18
CS, for me the salient feature of the story you posted is that it does not cite names. I agree that this is quite probably a policy / PR balloon floated by a staffer to see if it can attract sponsorhip.
Now, that's not a bad thing per se, nor are the questions about balance of power illegitimate. However, there is an (understandably, to my mind) automatic reaction to this sort of move because the left has been so very unhelpful in offering any positive policies or mechanisms for dealing with what I consider a serious, long-term threat to our country and our civilization.
#20
"While most of the left (except for the die hard kool aid drinkers) are backpedaling on the original claim that this program was somehow illegal and unnecessary, here is Specter still carrying that flag. At worst he should remain neutral and at best he should at least acknowledge that if these were not legal the congress should make them legal because they are necessary. "
Pardon me, but IIUC the Admin is NOT pushing to have the congress make them legal. Cause that would raise the question of why they didnt do so earlier. They SAY that the congressional leaders they spoke to said that it couldnt be done under strict secrecy. I think that the first thing Spector needs to investigate is which congressmen told them that, and what those congressmen have to say. It may be that the result of such an investigation would put the whole thing to bed. Or not. But I think it has to be investigated.
Why dont all of you e-mail, phone, or whatever form of communication you prefer: Senator Arlen
Specter (REPUBLICAN) and tell HIM to CALL OFF THE HEARINGS..LMAO
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 15:07 Comments ||
Top||
#23
uh huh - LMAO = I just got spanked and can't say so
Congress has only a few approval points in the polls to drop. Arlen can take them there
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 15:24 Comments ||
Top||
#24
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 15:28 Comments ||
Top||
#27
If members of Congress really are upset about Presidential power they should have used their own Congressional power when it came to a vote for these things instead of posturing and caving to political pressure. Perhaps they could have drafted (or demanded) a declaration of War way back when that all sorts of laws and articles could have been attached to so as to have a definate sunset date.
We don't need a Congress that can be intimidated by Peer pressure.
#28
So all of you on the right agree with the Bush/Cheney doctrine of "the unitary executive theory"?
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 15:42 Comments ||
Top||
#29
So all of you on the right agree with the Bush/Cheney doctrine of "the unitary executive theory"?
*sigh*
Read the Constitution. Executive authority rests in the office of the president. Not Congress, not the courts -- the president. That's what "unitary executive" refers to; the idea that attempts to take executive power away from the executive branch are unconstitutional.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/06/2006 15:46 Comments ||
Top||
#30
"Why dont all of you e-mail, phone, or whatever form of communication you prefer: Senator Arlen
Specter (REPUBLICAN) and tell HIM to CALL OFF THE HEARINGS..LMAO" No way this is just another opportunity for the Donks to make complete fools of themselves. Leahy and Kennedy (D)runk-MASS look as if they want to protect terrorists FROM our intelligence networks. Nobody except the Koolaid drinkers believe that this program was used for political purposes.
#31
Nobody except the Koolaid drinkers believe that this program was used for political purposes.
And, bluntly, when Clinton was doing it, they were fine with it. When Clinton did much worse -- actually gathering data on political opponents, using the IRS to punish critics, etc -- the Koolaid drinkers were silent or approving.
This is all about the (R) behind Bush's name.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/06/2006 15:54 Comments ||
Top||
#32
Mr. Crawford:
From what I am reading (and the article above is
a good example), there is a great debate going on between the U.S. Congress and the White House on this issue. Clearly there is bipartisan concern
within Congress that President Bush is overstepping his authority and if this pattern continues it very well could cause a constitutional crisis. It will be interesting to see where this all leads.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 16:00 Comments ||
Top||
#33
aside from the blatherings from CS/Left Angle/Cassaini or whoever it is today the idea of Congress investigating Presidential powers is part of why our constitution works so well. Let them take this to the Supreme court and we will see where the balance of power lies. No worries, I trust the court to see through the politics and define what it takes to defend our nation in time of war.
What makes me sick is these assholes that try to frighten us into believing big brother is monitoring us and going to haul us away for cheating on out diet and eating an extra cookie! Face it folks, big brother is here. You can't drive the streets of LA or Atlanta without being under constant watch. The govt openly admits they are monitoring call from AQ to the US, remember them, Sept 11th, big planes, tall buildings?? They are not monitoring people to see who cheats on taxes, THEY ARE LISTENING TO PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES THAT ARE TALKING TO AL QAEDA!!! This is all Regan's fault for closing the nut houses in California. It's only 16:13 and I need a drink, the stupidity is getting to me. Hats off to the moderators, I would have done more than just nuking the comments to the sink trap.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/06/2006 16:13 Comments ||
Top||
#34
From banal to specious, but always disingenuous. Pfeh.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/06/2006 16:34 Comments ||
Top||
#40
.com: Its all those damn democrats right?
read this genuius..lmao
Domestic spying tests GOP lawmakers' loyalties
By Maura Reynolds
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON Since George W. Bush became president, Republicans in Congress have nearly always marched in lock step with him. In large measure, their clout as lawmakers was enhanced by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the president.
But that equation may be changing, and a crucial test comes this week when a Senate hearing into Bush's domestic-spying program opens.
The tenor of the hearing rests on a central question: Do the Republicans who control Capitol Hill have greater loyalty to Congress as an institution or to the president who heads their political party?
The National Security Agency (NSA) controversy may be the first of the Bush presidency to place Republicans' roles as lawmakers and politicians so directly in conflict. Some GOP lawmakers have been less vocal than usual in defending the president, a sign that many have not made up their minds which role to put first.
"I think everyone wants to keep an open mind," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a member of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees. "These are difficult issues to resolve."
Domestic surveillance
President Bush has offered two main rationales for the NSA's domestic surveillance program:
His authority as commander-in-chief gives him the inherent right to order such eavesdropping.
When Congress voted to authorize the use of force against al-Qaida, that vote implicitly gave him the right to conduct warrantless domestic spying, overriding any previous legislation.
Critics accuse the president of bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, and ordering eavesdropping on U.S. soil without the warrants or judicial review the law requires.
The accusation goes to the heart of the concept of the separation of powers. When, if ever, does the president have the right to ignore or skirt an act of Congress?
As lawmakers, Republicans' instinct would be to protect the prerogatives of the legislative branch, insisting that the president "faithfully execute the laws" of the country, as required by the Constitution. But as members of the GOP, their instinct would be to stand by their president.
So far, both themes can be heard in Republicans' public comments.
"There's lots of case law that indicates that the president can do what he says he's doing, but none of it is Supreme Court law," Hatch said. "There are lots of very great concerns, too, about civil liberties and warrantless surveillance."
The president has offered two main rationales for the surveillance program: First, that his authority as commander-in-chief gives him the inherent right to order such eavesdropping. Second, that when Congress voted to authorize the use of force against al-Qaida, that vote implicitly gave the president the right to conduct warrantless domestic spying, overriding any previous legislation.
The administration sometimes adds a third argument: that even if the 1978 FISA law is relevant, it is outdated and unable to address the demands of the Internet age.
A handful of Republicans have been among those expressing doubt about the validity of those arguments.
"I don't believe from what I've heard ... that he has the authority now to do what he's doing," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said last week. "Now, maybe he can convince me otherwise, but ... he just can't unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law."
Many lawmakers say that if FISA was outdated, the administration's obvious response would be to ask for changes, which the president chose not to do.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Judiciary committee chairman, suggested that the administration might have acted with the best of intentions but that, rightly or wrongly, the president chose to bypass Congress.
"We're not going to give him a blank check, and just because we're of the same party doesn't mean we're not going to look at this very closely," Specter said.
The controversy strikes a nerve with senators from the GOP's libertarian wing, who banded together late last year to help stall reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
"You have a substantial group of genuine conservatives who are very uneasy about 'Big Brother' and who have a long-standing, outspoken drive on privacy issues," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress and head of the American Enterprise Institute think tank. "It doesn't matter who the president is, they don't like the idea of the government looking over people's shoulders.
"I think if you took a secret ballot in the Senate and House, you'd get a majority of Republicans joining on to those [libertarian] concerns," Ornstein said. "But the majority of Republicans in both houses see themselves more as field soldiers in the president's army than as independent actors in an independent branch of government. ... [That group is] very reluctant to challenge their president and to do so in a way that gives Democrats a political issue."
Republicans taking the administration's side of the dispute have begun to speak out more forcefully, arguing that the president did no wrong.
"The fact is, the president not only has the authority, but he has the duty under our Constitution to protect this nation from attack. And he is using all of the authorities that he needs," Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said at a recent news conference with five other GOP senators.
Congress also is gearing up to grapple with whether the administration appropriately fulfilled its obligation to keep Congress informed of intelligence operations.
That question falls more in the jurisdiction of Senate and House intelligence committees, whose chairmen have not yet scheduled public hearings on the controversy. Members of the Senate Committee on Intelligence are set to meet in closed session on Thursday to discuss it.
The president has asserted that "appropriate members" of Congress have been kept informed about the NSA domestic eavesdropping. The administration gave periodic briefings to eight members: the Republican and Democratic leaders of each chamber, plus the chairman and ranking Democrat member of the intelligence committees in both chambers.
Those members were forbidden to discuss the matter with any other members of Congress, or consult with staff members or lawyers, even those with security clearances.
As a result, some lawmakers say the administration's efforts to notify Congress were inadequate.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 16:35 Comments ||
Top||
#41
Just post the link, dumbass. El Lay Times, lol. Yup. Paragon of "common sense" and the "left angle".
Have you hit the tip-jar HARD, yet? You sure waste enough bandwidth.
Perhaps the Mods should do it for you if you're not up to it -- or can't reach it.
its from todays hearing...note Gonzalez deafining silence in response to Sen. Feinsteis question. also sote that SenatorGraham is a Republican.
"Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), charging that Gonzales had advanced "a radical legal theory here today," asked whether Bush has ever invoked the authority he claims for any program other than the NSA surveillance program.
Gonzales refused to answer.
Sen. Graham told the attorney general, "This statutory force resolution argument that you're making is very dangerous in terms of its application for the future." He added, "When I voted for it, I never envisioned that I was giving to this president or any other president the ability to go around FISA carte blanche."
Graham said that "it would be harder for the next president to get a force resolution if we take this too far. And the exceptions may be a mile long."
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 16:55 Comments ||
Top||
#45
CS: congress will always mewl and cry when they feel they missed face time on the TV or if tehy feel they're losing ground in teh balance. To cherrypick a few narcissists and idiots and quote from loser leftists is fine, you still haven't changed a single mind here, just wasted Fred's bandwidth with your cutnpaste politics. Let Congress propose this amendment, the backlash among the aware will smack them back to their place. We need 535 armchair CinC's like a hole in the head. Speaking of which, why don't you pick a name and stay with it? Schizophrenia reigns wild at DKos and you're a carrier, apparently
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 17:29 Comments ||
Top||
#46
" Arlan..suggested that the administration might have acted with the best of intentions but that, rightly or wrongly, the president chose to bypass Congress. I think the Specter is zeroing in on Scottish Law! He's got the 'rightly' part so far....and which one of the brilliant Senators can see 35 States ratifying their Bill of AL Qaeda Rights? Ammendments are tougher than ear marks.
The Bush administration will tell the Senate today that the National Security Agency's programme for terrorist surveillance has been badly distorted by media reports, and that the scheme is a strictly limited one aimed at al-Qaeda members and affiliated groups.
In the first Senate hearing on the controversial programme, which was set up secretly in 2002 and revealed publicly in December, Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general, will say that the press accounts "are in almost every case, in one way or another, misinformed, confused or wrong," according to Time magazine, which has obtained documents outlining the planned testimony.
"Contrary to the speculation reflected in some media reporting, the terrorist surveillance programme is not a dragnet that sucks in all conversation and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest," Mr Gonzales will say in response to questions raised by Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. "No communications are intercepted unless first it is determined that one end of the call is outside of the country, and professional intelligence experts have probable cause [that is, 'reasonable grounds to believe'] that a part to the communication is a member or agent of al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organisation."
But that appears to conflict with a detailed report in yesterday's Washington Post, based on anonymous interviews with US intelligence officials. The report said that only some 5,000 Americans had had their conversations recorded or e-mails read since the programme was launched following the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, in order to identify those targets, hundreds of thousands of calls and e-mails are first scanned and subject to computer filtering in order to identify the smaller number deemed suspicious.
The administration programme has been highly controversial because President George W. Bush has ordered that surveillance of Americans take place without a court warrant, bypassing a 1978 law that explicitly required one from a special court before intelligence could be gathered on US citizens on US soil. Many Democrats in Congress and some Republicans have said the programme violates the law, but the administration has claimed the president retains inherent power to order warrantless wiretapping.
In a television interview yesterday Mr Specter questioned the administration's claim that the authorisation of military force by Congress after the 9/11 attacks gave the president the right to conduct the domestic surveillance. This argument was "strained and unrealistic", he said, adding that the programme appeared to be a "flat violation" of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He had urged the administration to take the programme to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which considers surveillance and physical search orders from the Department of Justice and US intelligence agencies. This body, he said, would be well qualified to assess the legality of the programme and its judgment would set the minds of many Americans at rest.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:03 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"No communications are intercepted unless first it is determined that one end of the call is outside of the country, and professional intelligence experts have probable cause [that is, 'reasonable grounds to believe'] that a part to the communication is a member or agent of al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organisation."
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe 'probable cause' and 'reasonable grounds' are not the same thing. The 'probable cause' used in law enforcement requires a higher threshold of proof, making it unlikely the judge would grant a FISA warrant for the NSA program. I can't figure out what the problem is if you don't associate with terrorists, unless we have some very nervous traitorous Senators worried about what he Bush Administration may have inadvertently uncovered....
#2
The Hypocrisy and Stupidity Quotients exceed 1.0.
A reckoning is coming, for this and the many other examples of overt sedition and abuse of privilege by the MSM. You do not get a pass and you are not above the law, Pinchy. Puhleeze make it so ASAP, Bush / Gonzalez, before they give away everything, every advantage, we have. And make it hurt. Bad.
#3
Let them "win" on this issue, and the F'ing Dems, triangulating Pubs, and the evil-whose-name-must-not-be-spoken (MSM) will out every National Security Program that protects this nation until they finally "get their man".
Send a few scum bags to jail for treasonous disclosure of these programs, and the braying hounds will finally get the message.
As the Senate prepares to hold hearings on Monday on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, old Washington hands see a striking similarity to a drama that unfolded three decades ago in the capital.
In 1975, a Senate committee led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho revealed that the N.S.A. had intercepted the phone calls and telegrams of Americans. Then, as now, intelligence officials insisted that only international communications of people linked to dangerous activities were the targets, and that the spying was authorized under the president's constitutional powers. Then, as now, some Republicans complained that the government's most sensitive secrets were being splashed on the front pages of newspapers, while Democrats emphasized the danger to civil liberties.
Both in 1975 and today, officials defending the N.S.A. operation said it had prevented terrorist attacks. And Dick Cheney, who as vice president has overseen secret briefings for selected members of Congress on the N.S.A. program, was in the White House then, too, serving as a deputy to President Gerald R. Ford before succeeding Donald H. Rumsfeld as chief of staff.
The recent debate about the security agency "does bring back a lot of memories," said Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president, who served on the Church Committee as a Democratic senator from Minnesota. "For those of us who went through it all back then, there's disappointment and even anger that we're back where we started from."
Later, after becoming vice president under Jimmy Carter, Mr. Mondale helped usher a into law a major committee recommendation that no eavesdropping on American soil take place without a warrant. That became the basis of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the law that critics say is being violated by President Bush's decision to authorize eavesdropping without court warrants on people in the United States linked to Al Qaeda.
Bush administration officials deny that they have violated the 1978 statute, noting that apart from the special eavesdropping program, they are going to the FISA court for warrants more often than any previous administration.
But the officials say that going to the foreign intelligence court is impractical in some urgent situations when intercepting phone calls or e-mail messages might prevent a terrorist attack. They say the eavesdropping program was authorized by presidential order and vetted by lawyers both at the agency and at the Justice Department.
Asked at a Jan. 26 news conference about a comparison with President Richard M. Nixon's actions in the 1970's, President Bush said that past presidents had relied on "the same authority I've had" in order to "use technology to protect the American people."
He added: "There will be a legal debate about whether or not I have the authority to do this. I'm absolutely convinced I do."
Since The New York Times first disclosed the eavesdropping program in December, some who witnessed the earlier era have followed the news with an eerie feeling that events are being replayed.
"You feel like you're in an echo chamber, because the comments on both sides are so similar to 1975," said Loch K. Johnson, a historian of intelligence who served then as an aide to Mr. Church. "There are a lot of lessons from those times that are relevant today."
To read through the documents of the earlier era is to spot many themes from the current controversy: the cooperation of major telecommunications companies with the N.S.A.; the challenges of fast-changing communications technologies (then the expansion of satellite communications, now the Internet explosion); the legal rationale as laid out in detail by the attorney general (then Edward H. Levi, now Alberto R. Gonzales, who is to testify Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee). Government documents from the 1970's eavesdropping controversy were posted over the weekend on the Web site of the National Security Archive, a research center at George Washington University.
The N.S.A. revelations of 30 years ago were unearthed simultaneously by the Church Committee, two House committees and the press, focusing on two programs code-named Minaret and Shamrock.
Minaret was a watch list kept between 1967 and 1973 of Americans whose international communications phone calls and telegrams in and out of the country were collected by the security agency
The names were mostly submitted to the N.S.A. by other agencies because of targets' suspected involvement in four kinds of activities: terrorism; drug trafficking; threats to the president; and civil disturbances with "possible foreign support or influence," as Lt. Gen. Lew Allen Jr., then the N.S.A. director, told the Church Committee. That program ended up targeting some Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists.
Shamrock began in 1947, growing out of a World War II program for government censorship of international telegrams. Until the program was shut down in 1975, the three major international carriers, RCA Global, ITT World Communications and Western Union International, delivered copies of messages sent each day to the N.S.A.
Senator Church emphasized to General Allen that he did not question the value of using electronic spying to catch terrorists, drug dealers or potential assassins, only "the lack of adequate legal basis for some of this activity."
Mr. Levi, the attorney general, acknowledged that the law on such spying was "ill-defined" but said courts had upheld the president's power to order surveillance for foreign intelligence without warrants.
Two Republican senators, Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona and John G. Tower of Texas, fought unsuccessfully against open hearings on sensitive N.S.A. matters, particularly the three companies' cooperation. "I must state my firm opposition to this unilateral release of classified information," Mr. Tower said at one point.
Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., who served as the committee's chief counsel, recalled in an interview, "The question of how to handle N.S.A. was more divisive than anything else we did," including extensive hearings on C.I.A. and F.B.I. abuses.
But in the end, the committee reached a broad consensus on most of its findings, including on the critical recommendation of banning eavesdropping in the United States without warrants, Mr. Schwarz said.
After the trauma of public hearings and front-page headlines, intelligence officials, too, were ready for new, clear rules. Adm. Bobby R. Inman, who testified before the Church Committee as director of naval intelligence and became N.S.A. director in 1977, said he worked actively for passage the next year of the FISA law, which required approval of a special court for eavesdropping on American soil.
"I became convinced that for almost anything the country needed to do, you could get legislation to put it on a solid foundation," Admiral Inman said. "There was the comfort of going out and saying in speeches, 'We don't target U.S. citizens, and what we do is authorized by a court.' "
But not all agreed, then or now, that the president's powers over foreign intelligence should be overseen by judges. While Vice President Cheney has not explicitly criticized the FISA statute, he has often said that laws passed in reaction to Vietnam and Watergate unjustifiably weakened the presidency.
"Over the years there had been an erosion of presidential power and authority," Mr. Cheney told reporters on Dec. 20 when asked about the eavesdropping program. "The president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy. That's my personal view."
Former Senator Gary W. Hart, a Colorado Democrat who served on the Church Committee, believes views such as Mr. Cheney's have set the clock back 30 years.
"What we're experiencing now, in my judgment, is a repeat of the Nixon years," Mr. Hart said. "Then it was justified by civil unrest and the Vietnam war. Now it's terrorism and the Iraq war."
But on Friday, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the current chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, strongly defended the eavesdropping program and dismissed any comparison to the Nixon era.
Writing to Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, who had compared the current controversy to "the abuse of power during the dark days of President Nixon," Mr. Roberts declared, "Any suggestion that a program designed to track the movement, locations, plans or intentions of our enemy particularly those that have infiltrated our borders is equivalent to abusive domestic surveillance of the past is ludicrous."
He added: "When President Richard Nixon used warrantless wiretaps, they were not directed at enemies that had attacked the United States and killed thousands of Americans."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:01 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
So does this mean he's moved up or down on the left's scale of evil? I have a bad feeling they consider Nixon worse than Hitler.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/06/2006 8:22 Comments ||
Top||
#10
You're a hypocrit Common Sense. You had 9 years to critcize warrantless tapping. Instead nothing but the roaring silence of hypocrisy from your ilk.
February 9, 1995 EXECUTIVE ORDER 12949
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution... it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) of the Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year
Sec. 3. Pursuant to section 303(a)(7) of the Act, the following
officials, each of whom is employed in the area of national security or
defense, is designated to make the certifications required by section
303(a)(7) of the Act in support of applications to conduct physical
searches:
(a) Secretary of State;
(b) Secretary of Defense;
(c) Director of Central Intelligence;
(d) Director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation;
(e) Deputy Secretary of State;
(f) Deputy Secretary of Defense; and
(g) Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON THE WHITE HOUSE, February 9, 1995.
Posted by: ed ||
02/06/2006 12:00 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Make that 10 years.
Posted by: ed ||
02/06/2006 12:00 Comments ||
Top||
#12
And Congress can pass all the laws it wishes, blustering all the way - as the assclowns tend to do, even over vetos, and they will mean diddley-squat.
#13
First, there was "Bush = Hitler."
Then came "Bush = Nixon."
What's next? "Bush = Barney the Dinosaur?"
Posted by: Mike ||
02/06/2006 12:51 Comments ||
Top||
#14
ed.
The criticism of Bush on the NSA program is
bi-partisan. members of both parties have called for these Congressional hearings.
I havent personally passed judgement one way or the other. I think it's a interesting Constitutional issue that will probably end up being decided upon in the judiciary.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/06/2006 13:08 Comments ||
Top||
#15
As long as it does not get to Bush = Gore!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/06/2006 13:11 Comments ||
Top||
#16
To: Senior staff, MoveOn.org
From: Marketing
Re: Additional slogans for focus group testing
Please evaluate the following and provide your comments.
#18
CS: "I havent personally passed judgement one way or the other"
I smell bullshit..or troll...smell a lot alike
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 19:08 Comments ||
Top||
#19
Face it, CS - your party (which was MY party for 30 years) is stuck with Billy Boy Clinton's legacy. Unless/until you come to grips with it, you will indeed find that your snipes at Bush for security issues hit places you didn't want to hit.
We haven't even gotten into his attempts to put bugging back doors into most computer chips and all RSA encryption keys.
The National Security Agency has secured the cooperation of large telecommunications companies, including AT&T, MCI and Sprint, in its efforts to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls by suspected terrorists, according to seven telecommunications executives. The executives asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the program. AT&T, MCI and Sprint had no official comment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings today on the government's program of monitoring international calls and e-mails of a domestic target without first obtaining court orders. At issue: whether the surveillance is legal, as President Bush insists, or an illegal intrusion into the lives of Americans, as lawsuits by civil libertarians contend.
In domestic investigations, phone companies routinely require court orders before cooperating.
A majority of international calls are handled by long-distance carriers AT&T, MCI and Sprint. All three own "gateway" switches capable of routing calls to points around the globe. AT&T was recently acquired by SBC Communications, which has since adopted the AT&T name as its corporate moniker. MCI, formerly known as WorldCom, was recently acquired by Verizon. Sprint recently merged with Nextel.
The New York Times, which disclosed the clandestine operation in December, previously reported that telecommunications companies have been cooperating with the government, but it did not name the companies involved.
Decisions about monitoring calls are made in four steps, according to two U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the program who insisted on anonymity because it remains classified:
Information from U.S. or allied intelligence or law enforcement points to a terrorism-related target either based in the United States or communicating with someone in the United States.
Using a 48-point checklist to identify possible links to al-Qaeda, one of three NSA officials authorized to approve a warrantless intercept decides whether the surveillance is justified. Gen. Michael Hayden, the nation's No. 2 intelligence officer, said the checklist focuses on ensuring that there is a "reasonable basis" for believing there is a terrorist link involved.
Technicians work with phone company officials to intercept communications pegged to a particular person or phone number. Telecommunications executives say MCI, AT&T and Sprint grant the access to their systems without warrants or court orders. Instead, they are cooperating on the basis of oral requests from senior government officials.
If the surveillance yields information about a terror plot, the NSA notifies the FBI or other appropriate agencies but does not always disclose the source of its information. Call-routing information provided by the phone companies can help intelligence officialseavesdrop on a conversation. It also helps them physically locate the parties, which is important if cellphones are being used. If the U.S. end of a communication has nothing to do with terrorism, the identity of the party is suppressed and the content of the communication destroyed, Hayden has said.
The government has refused to publicly discuss the precise number of individuals targeted.
The Times and The Washington Post have said thousands have had communications intercepted. The two intelligence officials said that number has been whittled down to about 600 people in the United States who have been targeted for repeated surveillance since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday said the Bush administration does not have congressional authority to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on overseas phone calls.
"I believe that contention is very strained and unrealistic," said Sen. Arlen Specter, who today begins oversight hearings into the legality of the program officials say is designed to spy on terrorists.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will be the star witness, and in testimony obtained by The Washington Times, will tell the panel use of the searches was limited and lawful.
"This administration has chosen to act now to prevent the next attack with every lawful tool at its disposal, rather than wait until it is too late," Mr. Gonzales said. "It is hard to imagine a president who would not elect to use these tools in defense of the American people -- in fact, it would be irresponsible to do otherwise.
"The terrorist surveillance program is both necessary and lawful. Accordingly, as the president has explained, he intends to continue to exercise this authority as long as al Qaeda poses such a grave threat to the national security. If we conduct this reasonable surveillance while taking special care to preserve civil liberties, as we have, we can all continue to enjoy our rights and freedoms for generations to come," Mr. Gonzales said.
His statement cites references to the program's use and the defense of it by the Clinton administration under the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
"The Fourth Amendment would almost certainly permit an appropriately tailored roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack from ordinary general crime control," Mr. Gonzales says. "This conclusion is by no means novel.
"During the Clinton administration, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before Congress in 1994 that the president has inherent authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence searches of the private homes of U.S. citizens in the United States without a warrant, and that such warrantless searches are permissible under the Fourth Amendment.
"The key question under the Fourth Amendment is not whether there was a warrant, but whether the search was reasonable. Determining the reasonableness of a search for Fourth Amendment purposes requires balancing privacy interests with the government's interests and ensuring that we maintain appropriate safeguards," Mr. Gonzales said.
"Although the terrorist surveillance program may implicate substantial privacy interests, the government's interest in protecting our nation is compelling," he said.
However, Mr. Specter says the congressional authorization for the use of force "doesn't say anything about electronic surveillance."
"The issue was never raised with the Congress," Mr. Specter told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"And there is a specific statute on the books, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which says flatly that you can't undertake that kind of surveillance without a court order," Mr. Specter said.
Mr. Gonzales told Mr. Specter in a letter that if the administration asked for the authority from Congress, it would be denied.
"It's very hard, in that kind of a context, to claim that Congress intended to give the authority if the administration thought the Congress would turn it down," Mr. Specter said.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 also allows eavesdropping without a court warrant so long as it is reported to the FISA Court within 72 hours. When President Carter signed it into law, it was "a presidential concession as to who had the authority," Mr. Specter said. "Congress exercised it by passing the law and the president submitted to it."
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, says there was some discussion with congressional leaders who were briefed on the program's activities about amending FISA through law.
"And there was agreement among congressional leaders that that would be very difficult to do without revealing too much about the program," Gen. Hayden said.
The administration uses the FISA process "a great deal in this current war against terrorism." However, Gen. Hayden said, "the FISA process doesn't give us the speed and agility to do what this program is designed to do."
"This is detect and prevent attacks. This is not about long-term surveillance to gather reams of intelligence against a stable and a fixed target," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 01:54 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Specter makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. One moment he'll carry the White House's water without a problem -- see the Alito nomination -- and the next moment he'll be deliberately obtuse -- see the NSA surveillance program. You just want to smack him upside the head and say "Do you actually think these positions through or do you just make it up as you go along?" Sigh. I should have voted against the putz in the primary when I had a chance.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
02/06/2006 7:09 Comments ||
Top||
#6
EXERCISE OF CERTAIN AUTHORITY RESPECTING ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE EO 12139 23 May 1979
By the authority vested in me as President by Sections 102 and 104 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802 and 1804), in order to provide as set forth in that Act (this chapter) for the authorization of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, it is hereby ordered as follows:
1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section. ...
Jimmy Carter.
-------------
Is it too late to impeach him?
Posted by: ed ||
02/06/2006 21:22 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Jimmuh,
wish we could make him live in a swamp with feral wabbits.
#8
I'm tired of the masses of words. I don't care about the issue anymore. But Mr. Carter's carefully thought out opposition proves to me that it's the right thing to do.
#1
Thanks,Wheanter Theck6380, I paid my $5 to download this on Friday. Nevertheless, the really interesting part of this is to see the changes from the 18 Jan draft. A lot of airplanes that were to go away aren't.
The Arwali graveyard is located on the road to Parachinar, the headquarters of Kurram tribal agency. The cemetery has five graves protected by a concrete boundary and steel grill. Every Thursday people visit the graves and tie threads and pieces of cloth of different colours to the grills and taste salt put in clay bowls, which have been placed on these graves. People believe this ritual will cure them of their disease.
These are the graves of Al Qaeda fighters killed in fighting with Pakistani paramilitary forces. These Al Qaeda men came to Pakistan to escape US bombing in Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001. They were arrested by Pakistani security forces in Parachinar. The paramilitary forces were transporting 156 captives, mainly Arabs, to Kohat Jail. En route, the Al Qaeda men overpowered the paramilitary guards and opened fire on them at Arwali, 46 kilometres east of Parachinar. Around 10 Al Qaeda men and as many security guards were killed in the encounter. Five of the Al Qaeda members were buried in Arwali, two in Narali and three in Bagzai.
We give shelter to anyone who asks for it. Sometimes these people are murderers but we give them temporary respite. We just want to save lives, Qurban Ali, a member of the peace committee, told Daily Times. However, he said, the committee wanted peace in the agency and did not want to disturb it by giving shelter to foreigners.
Initially, only a few people visited the graves to offer a prayer. Gradually, Afghan refugees, particularly women, also stared visiting these graves praying for cures for their ailments by tying threads and pieces of cloth and tasting salt left in the clay bowls on these graves, Noor Jamal, a resident of Arwali, said. He said that after the Afghan refugees went back to Afghanistan the number of visitors to the graves decreased but a few locals continued the practice.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 01:48 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
We give shelter to ...murderers... to save lives, Qurban Ali, a member of the peace committee, told Daily Times, thereby setting a new standard for doublespeak and moral equivalence.
#2
You mean they expect Old Testament coverage while providing no promise or future for where they stay? GOD will bear down upon them. They know NOTHING of OT.
#4
Saints you say? My understanding is Sainthood comes AFTER death, so I'm more than willing to let you give it to OBL and others as long as you make sure they meet the qualifications.
Posted by: Charles ||
02/06/2006 7:48 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Hey! Look! More moderate Muslims!
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/06/2006 8:16 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Put a few drops of poison in the salt, not enough to kill but enough to make the tasters sick.
When they realise that their "Health" ritual is making them sick, the graves will no longer be "Holy Shrines"
End of problem.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/06/2006 9:32 Comments ||
Top||
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - Several thousand people held rallies Sunday in Islamabad and the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir to demand an end to Indian rule in the other part of the divided Kashmiri region. About 3,000 supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistans largest Islamic group, rallied in Islamabad, Pakistans capital, chanting Allahu akbar, or God is great.
About 400 other Jamaat-e-Islami supporters demonstrated on a main street in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
The rallies marked Kashmir Solidarity Day, when Pakistanis show support for Kashmirs independence from India.
Three thousand? Even A.N.S.W.E.R. does better than that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
Amnesty International has renewed its call for the United States to close its Guantanamo Bay detention facility and try or release the prisoners held there. "The US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is condemning thousands across the world to a life of suffering, torment and stigmatisation," the London-based rights group said on Monday in a statement accompanying a new report. "Five hundred men from around 35 nationalities are detained in Guantanamo. Dozens are currently on hunger strike and there have been numerous suicide attempts. None of them have had the lawfulness of their detention reviewed in a court of law."
Tell you what: If the 72nd Heavy Lawyers' Division takes Teheran in the next way, we'll let them decide what to do with the prisoners they take.
Amnesty Americas Programme Director Susan Lee said: "Despite widespread international condemnation, the US authorities continue in their attempts to strip all detainees of their right to challenge their detention in US courts."
They're not arrested. They're detained. Interned for the duration of the war. We don't have any particular obligation other than feeding and sheltering them. They have no legal rights. They irregular combatants, who don't fall under the Geneva Conventions.
The rights group demanded that the US administration publish a list of all "war on terror" detainees being held at Guantanamo and elsewhere, and try or release the prisoners. Citing complaints from inmates of mistreatment and abuse, Amnesty also appealed to Washington to "close Guantanamo and open up all US detention facilities to independent scrutiny", and to investigate allegations of torture.
I think they should close Guantanamo, move all the inmates therein to Bikini Atoll or someplace very similar, and not say another word on the subject.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Still waiting for AI's comdemnation of the Gulags of North Korea....
Where its typical that entire familes be emprisoned for the conduct of a single member. And newborn babies are murdered by Kimmie-boy-the-baby-killer's government in front of their mother's eyes...
#4
I agree they need to be closed, When and only when we are finished with this war. No where does AI talk of the horrors these detainees have brought to America.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/06/2006 8:14 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I totally agree with Amnesty International. The detention facility should be closed. All inmates should come before a military tribunal for final disposition, and subsequently, summary execution.
BALAD, Iraq -- Staff Sgt. Chad Twigg is on a one-year tour of duty in the middle of the Sunni Triangle. But on a recent winter morning, he wasn't digging a foxhole or tracking an enemy sniper or trying to grab some sleep between firefights.
Instead, the Army mechanic was checking out iPod accessories in one of the two post exchanges here at the biggest American base in Iraq. He worries about the lure of the PX, with its walls of shiny electronic devices and racks of new CDs. "I try to stay away from it to save money," Twigg said. But on average, 15 soldiers a day succumb and buy a television, said John Burk, the PX manager.
Balad Air Base is a unique creation, a small American town smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq. While soldiers drive as fast as they can beyond its perimeter to avoid roadside bombs and ambushes, on base they must drive their Humvees at a stately 10 mph, the strictly enforced speed limit.
The 20,000 troops based at Balad, home to the major Air Force operation in Iraq and also the biggest Army logistical support center in the country, live in air-conditioned containers. Plans are being made to wire the metal boxes to bring the troops Internet, cable television and overseas telephone access.
Balad is scheduled to be one of the last four U.S. bases in Iraq and probably will be the very last, officials say. "Balad will be here, I believe, to the very end," said Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the Slovenian-born F-15 pilot who commands the Air Force side of the operation.
Like most towns, Balad has distinct neighborhoods. The southwest part, home to thousands of civilian contractors, is "KBR-land," a reference to the construction company. "CJSOTF," for Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, is home to a special operations unit and is hidden by especially high walls. Visitors aren't welcome there, and the Army public affairs chief on the base said he'd never been inside.
Next door to CJSOTF is the junkyard, one of the places where war comes closest -- it contains dozens of Army Humvees wrecked by bombs or rollovers. The other place where the war intrudes is the busy base hospital, where doctors perform 400 surgeries a month on the wounded.
The base boasts its own airline, "Catfish Air," that shuttles soldiers among the U.S. bases in Iraq. It also has its own customs post, run by a relaxed but savvy group of Navy reservists.
Searching for drugs, pornography and souvenir weapons, they have learned the favorite places that departing Army troops use to hide contraband -- Bibles, picture frames, soap dishes and the sleeves in body armor vests that hold the bulletproof plates. Army engineers undergo especially close inspections because "they think they know where to hide everything," sometimes building false bottoms in toolboxes and containers, said Petty Officer 1st Class Steven Honer.
Offenders simply suffer confiscation, but the base does have a genuine criminal element: Recently an Army enlisted man returning from medical leave went AWOL, living with a cousin in the Air Force part of the base for two weeks before being apprehended and placed in the base's small brig.
Of the 20,000 troops at Balad, only several hundred have jobs that take them off base. Most Americans posted here never interact with an Iraqi, and some never see one, said Army Lt. Col. Larry Dotson, who is effectively the city manager. The closest some troops here come to experiencing the Iraq seen on the evening news is the miniature golf course, which mimics a battlefield with its baby sandbags, little Jersey barriers, strands of concertina wire and, down at the end of the course, what appears to be a tiny detainee cage.
The town's most distinctive feature is the long runway that bisects it. Air Force officials say it is now one of the world's busiest. "We are behind only Heathrow right now," said Gorenc, the Air Force commander.
As a Black Hawk helicopter was landing recently, an unmanned Predator drone was taking off, two Hellfire missiles slung under its wings. Next to land was an Army RC-12 Guardrail, a sensor-laden aircraft bristling with antennae. It was followed in quick succession by an F-16 fighter, a C-130 propeller-driven cargo plane and a C-17 cargo jet that taxied near a sagging Russian IL-76 freighter plane with a bulging glass nose like a World War II bomber's.
More than 250 aircraft are based here -- 188 helicopters and 70 fixed-wing aircraft, including relatively obscure ones such as the Guardrail and the Army National Guard's C-23 Sherpa, which resembles a small flying boxcar. One of the challenges for air controllers is juggling the wide range of airspeeds of incoming aircraft, with five to 15 stacked up in the skies at a time. Having a Predator, with its lawnmower-like engine, flying near an F-16 jet is "like putting a VW bus on a NASCAR racetrack," said Capt. Brian Chandler, the chief of airfield operations.
Pilots find flying into the base a sporting challenge. "It's like putting Chicago-O'Hare right in the middle of Iraq," said Air Force Lt. Col. Tate Johnson, a C-130 pilot who flies here frequently. "It's a very complex air picture."
Another C-130 pilot, Lt. Col. Jim Barlow, said Balad reminded him more of Atlanta's airport. "But," he added, "in Atlanta, there's no one shooting at you."
That overstates the danger a bit. While the base still gets hit occasionally by mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, it hasn't had a soldier killed in action for two years.
These days the most dangerous spot on the base might be one of its four mess halls. As at other U.S. installations, the food at Balad is both good and abundant, a major change from the early days of the U.S. presence here.
Dinner on the night of Friday, Jan. 27 offered entrees of baked salmon, roast turkey, grilled pork chops, fried crab bites, breaded scallops and fried rice. The smiling servers standing behind those dishes were from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
Soldiers who were still hungry could hit the two salad bars, the sandwich line or a short-order stand for a cheeseburger, hot dog or grilled cheese sandwich. There were also two soup offerings and a dessert stand near the exit with chocolate mint and vanilla ice cream, banana pudding, pumpkin pie, cherry pie and yellow cake. For those bored with the mess halls, there are a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye's, an ersatz Starbucks called "Green Beans" that serves up triple lattes, and a 24-hour Burger King.
It is little wonder that military nutritionists worry. Three years ago, the average U.S. soldier lost about 10 pounds while stationed in Iraq for a year. "Now they gain that much," reported Maj. Polly Graham, an Army dietitian here.
Back at the Balad West PX, Burk, the manager, is pleased that he has managed to tamp down panic buying by visiting troops -- the 82nd Airborne Division always wanting Copenhagen snuff, for instance, or the Air Force hoarding Marlboro Lights. The biggest change in buying preferences in the last two years, he said, is that T-shirts advertising service in Iraq no longer sell quickly. "A lot of people don't want shirts with OIF on it," Burk said, citing the initials for Operation Iraqi Freedom. "They want clothes they can wear when they get home, and OIF has kind of lost its pizazz."
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Army RC-12 Guardrail...
They still flying these old buckets? Wow. Wonder if any of the old EH-60B Quickfixes are still hanging around that place (had many a good ride on those back in the day).
#2
Wonder if any of the old EH-60B Quickfixes are still hanging around that place
Yes--as of august 05.
Posted by: N guard ||
02/06/2006 1:51 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Hold it.
Searching for drugs, pornography and souvenir weapons, they have learned the favorite places that departing Army troops use to hide contraband -- Bibles, picture frames, soap dishes and the sleeves in body armor vests that hold the bulletproof plates. Army engineers undergo especially close inspections because "they think they know where to hide everything," sometimes building false bottoms in toolboxes and containers, said Petty Officer 1st Class Steven Honer.
...Bibles are CONTRABAND on a US military base?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/06/2006 6:22 Comments ||
Top||
#4
No, Bibles are not contraband you misread the article.
Bibles are used to hide cobtraband, I assume by hiding something inside, no mention is made of just what they are hiding or calling "Contraband."
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/06/2006 8:29 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The contraband mentioned includes "drugs, pornography, and souvenir weapons". Naughty servicepersons hide it in Bibles, picture frames, soap dishes, and body armor plate sleeves.
Naughty naughty service people.
Otherwise, it's just like Thornton Wilder's "Our Town".
RAMADI - Militant groups on Sunday called for attacks on Danish troops in Iraq and people from all countries where blasphemous cartoons have been published. In an Internet statement, the Islamic Army of Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for killing foreign hostages, urged militants to kidnap Danes and cut them into as many pieces as the number of newspapers that printed the cartoons.
The Islamic Army in Iraq also declares that all countries whose newspapers printed the insulting and disgraceful pictures are legitimate targets and our response will be ... tremendous.
In the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, a group calling itself the military wing of the Army of the Right handed out leaflets during a demonstration, saying it would attack Danish and non-Muslim targets in Iraq. We call on all fighters in the resistance to reactivate their military activities and the first target of the upcoming attacks should be Danish troops, said the leaflets, handed out among about 1,000 protesters. Denmark has more than 500 troops in Iraq.
All people from religions other than Islam must stop their religious rituals in churches and other places of worship because of their assault on Islam and Muslims, it added. We demand that all clerics in Arab countries issue fatwas (religious edicts) against foreigners and to shut all embassies.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
TOKYO - Japan will pull its troops out of Iraq within the next few months, a top government minister was quoted as saying Sunday, in the first such indication of a timeframe for withdrawal. The Ground Self-Defense Force will be withdrawn within months, Kyodo News quoted Assistant Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kyoji Yanagisawa as saying in a speech in Tokyo on Saturday. The exit from Iraq is this years biggest theme, he added, without offering a more specific timetable.
But Kyodo quoted other unnamed government sources as saying Japans 600-odd troops would start pulling from the relatively stable southern Iraqi city of Samawa by the end of May.
The Japanese troops are tasked with helping reconstruction efforts while British and Australian forces maintain security in the area. The Japanese troops are accompanied by some 200 vehicles and more than 1,000 weapons, meaning they would require more than two months to withdraw, Kyodo said.
Not a problem, the south-central region has been secure for a while now.
The report said Tokyo would decide when to pull the troops out depending on the movements of British and Australian forces in the region and the general security situation. The plan was reported to have been agreed at a January meeting between Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan and approved by Washington in principle, if the political and security situation in Iraq does not worsen.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
domo arigato gozaimashita. Thanks for the assistance in the effort to bring forth another democracy in the world.
BAGHDAD - Iraqs transport ministry said on Sunday it had frozen contracts with Denmark and Norway in protest against blasphemous cartoons published in the countries newspapers. This decision was taken to protest the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and we will not accept any reconstruction money from Denmark or Norway, said a spokesman on behalf of Transport Minister Salam Al Malaki.
The spokesman said he did not know the value of contracts between Iraq and Denmark and Norway. Denmark has more than 500 troops in Iraq.
I suppose they have to do this to keep peace. At least they didn't burn an embassy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
This is why we should have taken just the oil fields rather than the whole country. Democracy in Iraq or anywhere else is meaningless if the electorate are muslims. They will always try to ram sharia down our throats, whether they have elections or not.
Posted by: Alex ||
02/06/2006 1:32 Comments ||
Top||
Saddam Hussein's lawyers have alleged that an Iraqi court denied them access to their client and claimed the decision was part of an illegal plan to convict the former leader at any cost. It is the first time such a request has been rejected since the former leader was allowed access to lawyers over a year ago, said chief defence lawyer Khalil Dulaimi. "We were notified by the Americans today that neither I nor the rest of the defence counsel can meet the President or our other clients," Dulaimi said on Sunday in Amman, adding that the request had been made two days ago. "They are moving to a speedy conviction ... they have already passed a sentence even before the trial has ended," Dulaimi said. There was no immediate comment from the court.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Hamas's Politburo Chief Khalid Mishal stressed necessity of Arab and Islamic support of the Palestinian people and its newly elected authority. "We have great confidence in the Arabs and Muslims as well as liberal people of the world to stand by us against all foreign pressure", Mishal said in remarks to reporters after talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al Shara here today. He said he would start a tour to Arab and Muslim countries on Monday in pursuit of support to the Palestinian people and its national authority.
Do we interpret this to mean Meshaal is not finding arms and wallets automatically opening for the Noble Palestinian Brethren?
Whole lotta widows and orphans are gonna be without guns an' ammo starve.
Mishal said Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement) was keen on forging a national coalition government to bear the responsibility during this critical stage, noting that consultations to form the new government are underway at present. Israel "the usurper" should recognise the rights of the Palestinian people, he said in response to a question over western calls on Hamas to recognise the jewish state.
At least $700 million of funds from the Palestinian Authority's coffers have been squandered or stolen by officials over the past few years, an internal investigation has revealed. The news comes as Israeli officials agreed on Sunday to make an overdue payment of about $45 million owed to the Palestinians, but say future transfers will be halted once Hamas forms the next Palestinian government.
Commenting on the PA squandering issue, Ahmed al-Moghani, Palestinian attorney-general, said: "There are 50 cases of financial and administrative corruption. The amount of money that was squandered and stolen is more than $700 million." Moghani said 25 officials had been arrested so far and 10 had fled abroad. He said the Palestinian Authority was seeking their extradition. Among the cases under investigation involved a fictitious pipe factory funded by $4 million of Palestinian Authority cash and $2 million of Italian aid money, he said. "The factory existed only on paper and the investigation is under way to find out where the money went," Moghani said.
Have they checked Suha's piggy bank?
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Force the Palestinian Authority to trace and identify the channels through which the money was moved. Make all further arrival of funds contingent upon transparency, not to mention Hamas' renouncing their intention of destroying Israel.
Two Jordanian tabloid editors have been arrested after their newspapers were the only Arab-based publications to print controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, a source said. The caricatures, which included depictions of the Muslim prophet as a knife-wielding bedouin and another as wearing a time bomb-shaped turban, have sparked widespread protests in the Muslim world.
Hashem al-Khalidi, editor-in-chief of a weekly tabloid called Al-Mehwar which printed the cartoons in its 26 January edition, was arrested shortly before midnight on Saturday (2200 GMT), the source close to Khalidi told AFP. Jihad Momani, the former editor-in-chief who was sacked on Friday from the helm of the weekly gossip newspaper Shihane, was earlier arrested on the order of prosecutors for having printed three of the cartoons, a judicial source told AFP.
Shihane published the drawings on Thursday, and the paper's publisher subsequently pulled all editions from the newsstands. The cartoons had appeared along an editorial by Momani appealing to Muslims to "be reasonable."
So much for that idea.
You'd think they would have known better.
Momani later expressed his "deep regret and guilt for the serious mistake committed involuntarily by Shihane," according to a letter published by the official Petra news agency. As Momani's arrest was announced, authorities also pledged to "open an investigation" into Al-Mehwar, the judicial source said. "The fact alone that this weekly (Al-Mehwar) reproduced these cartoons renders its editor-in-chief Hashem al-Khalidi responsible before the law," the source said, adding that "al-Khalidi's arrest is only a matter of time."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If al-Khalidi and Momani are both still alive in 20 years, we will know their arrests were actually protective custody...
Most American troops are regular users of the Internet, and know how useful a broadband connection can be. But when in combat, or some out-of-the-way place, they will take whatever they can get. And the whatever is usually a Motorola 9505 satellite phone. This is the latest model of the first Iridium satellite phone.
The good news is that you can hook your 9505 to your laptop, and get access to the Internet. The bad news is, you only got a 220 characters a second connection (that's 2400 baud, most dial up connections these days are about 4,000, and broadband delivers over a hundred times that.) Despite the slow data rate, the troops make good use of their 9505s.
Especially for counter-terrorism missions, which can put the troops at the corner of no & where in places like Afghanistan and northeast Africa, the 9505 is the best way to stay in touch with the rest of the world. The U.S. Army Special Forces particularly like them, and the U.S. Marines have used the 9505 as the core element in an improvised battlefield Internet.
The 9505 weighs 13.2 ounces, is 6.2 inches long, 2.5 inches wide and 2.3 inches deep. In effect, a large cell phone. Each battery charge gives you 3.6 hours of talk time, and 38 hours on standby. Recharging often takes place via a vehicle power supply (hummer, or aircraft, depending on where the 9505 is.)
The 9505 has revolutionized how battles, especially in the war on terror, are fought. Commanders, as well as troops, now have a lightweight, worldwide communications system. It is also a secure system, as there is an encryption option (approved by the NSA) for the 9505. SOCOM (U.S. Special Operations Command), often has teams of commandoes spread over huge areas.
With the 9505, a commander back in the U.S. can coordinate those ops, and his far-flung teams can call for help at any time, from any place. With the 9505, they can talk to bomber or transport pilots overhead, or to an aircraft carrier a thousand miles a way. What the military is lusting after is a new system of satellites that will provide higher transmission speed.
As it stands now, troops can only send or receive low resolution photos. Email is not a problem, as long as the messages are not huge (which the troops in the field prefer.) The problem is that new satellites, that can provide up to a hundred times more data speed, will also cost nearly $20 billion. The Department of Defense is tempted, but Congress is less enthusiastic.
The Iridium system, largely funded by Motorola, went live in late 1998, and filed for bankruptcy the following Summer. It overestimated the market for expensive satellute phone service. Before the 79 Iridium satellites could be pulled out of orbit (and burned up in the process), the U.S. Department of Defense arranged for an investor group to purchase Iridium (for pennies on the dollar), and revive it.
As part of the deal, the Department of Defense got a very attractive deal. stepped in with an offer. The Department of Defense got cheap rates for up to 20,000 Iridium based devices (mostly phones, but also pagers and such.) That was enough for someone to come in and take over the satellite system (which cost more than $3 million to operate) and make a go of it.
The new owners didnt have the $5.5 billion in debt to worry about, and were able to lower prices enough that they were able to sign up 140,000 other customers (civilian and military, as of the end of 2005). Civilian users pay $1.50 a minute to call anyone on the planet. To call an Iridium user, however, it costs about $7 a minute.
The Department of Defense wants a satellite communications capability that can support a true "battlefield Internet." That will require at least 50,000 satellite phones, and much faster connection speed.. The sweet deal with Iridium wont last long, as the Iridium satellite will have to be replaced by 2014, and that will cost billions, and raise the rates for Department of Defense satellite phones. Meanwhile, those Iridium birds have been turned into a vital "military installation," and targets. I'm sure the thought has crossed their mind that you don't have to upgrade the entire Iridium system, just several critical satellites to act as relays.
#6
My ASR-33 had a paper tape punch / reader a tty at 300 for slow or try 75 baud asynch...Oh, no! Not another "back in my day" Thread!
Anyone here have Manual Morse war stories? Signal flags? Helio-graph? Smoke signals?(looks pointedly at Old Spook.)
Seriously, though, I was wondering what DOD was going to do when the Iridium system finaly died. The capability is too useful to loose.
Posted by: N guard ||
02/06/2006 12:57 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Well I was gonna pull out my punched cards and then tty stories, but it's already been done.
The best I can do is having to walk 2 miles to and from school in the winter blizzards, uphill both ways .....
#9
Lol - I remember when we got our first IBM 029 and fed boxes of cards punched on the 026 into it to get the print, lol.
COBOL, aka Grace's revenge, lol. Did a year of it at an Ins Co (IBM 360) in, um, '76, just to put on the resume, heh. Then back to Engr world - I fig'd there were only so many interesting ways to split a buck, heh. Built a wall around my desk outta card decks. I left strategic firing holes, of course, lol.
Re: the topic. $20Bn does NOT sound unreasonable, given the payback, IMHO. Congress wastes that much every hour in their ongoing porcine earmarks. I liked the Prez's call for the Line-Item Veto. It's absurd that there are earmarks, period, and equally absurd to have this idiotic tradition of deciding on a bill with 10 totally unrelated riders "as is" or not at all, i.e. veto it.
#11
The best I can do is having to walk 2 miles to and from school in the winter blizzards, uphill both ways
we couldn't afford shoes, so to get traction we'd wrap our bare feet in barb-wire
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 13:25 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Heh, nope. I started in Jan '75 on HP minis. '76 was my IBM year. Then it was CDC gear at a timesharing outfit called United Computing Svcs - specialized in Awl Bidness clients. Old Seymour was a purdy good engineer (started out in AC), heh. Then they got the 4th Cray built - woohoo! A timeshared Cray, lol, with 500KB of memory, lmao. Can you say "restart files", lol? Then PC's showed up in '81 and I went solo for 18 of the next 25 yrs. Beaucoup FORTRAN.
#14
Iridium as with many Motorola products was way ahead of its time. To say that Motorola overestimated the market for public SatCom does not even get close to the truth. Motorola is a techie company and this was a techie problem that had to be solved. I am so glad to see the DOD make use of it for what it was intended. To many of us, we knew Iridium would never make it for Public Service; however, for the very small market segment that requires over the horizon communications from anywhere on the face of the Earth, ('cept inbuilding of course) Iridium is priceless.
#18
I wrote my first program for a DG Nova in 1971. No disk or other internal storage, so you saved your programs to punched paper tape. I then progressed to punched cards. I became very adept at punching cards with a device the size and weight of a house brick. It had I recall twelve keys on the front and you had to press 2 or 3 keys simultaneously to get what ever ASCII character you required punched on the card.
#20
Good to see that Iridium was salvaged. I was outraged that they ever thought of deorbiting the satellites.
As to computers, in high school we had a Wang 8 bit with paper tape booting and I/O. We also had access to the Forest Service's Univac running Fortran IV on punched cards. Then we got our mitts on a linkup with a CDC 6400 and finally a CDC 6600 with 6400s for input and output.
I had personal friends who went on to work with Seymour Cray. One participated in the NASA Ames Cray II install. He barely managed to save the CPU from a complete meltdown. The offending PCBs had large holes in them and almost started cooking off the inert fluorinated cooling fluid they were submerged in. Can you say, devolved fluorine gas?
I also managed to get a tour of Cray Research in Colorado Springs (the old INMOS building where I once installed a plasma etcher) and saw what they had built of the Cray III. All those gold terminations made the place look like Fort Knox. Some real purdy hardware.
#21
My favourite story about those days concerns a device dreamt up and actually built that used large punched cards as random access memory. The device certainly existed, although this story may be apocryphal.
At the time I worked for ICL who had the largest computer room in Europe in Bracknell west of London. It had a huge computer room that looked very impressive and was a popular place for salesmen to take customers. There was a salesman in our office better known for ability to think on his feet than his knowledge of computers.
This salesman took a prospect on a tour of Bracknell. Even though the computer room itself was impressive there is really not a whole lot to see. Computer equipment just sits there, although flashing lights on the front were still in vogue in those days.
So, the punched card random access device that had a robotic arm to grab the required card and place it in the reader was a popular thing to show prospects cos you could actually see something happening (and I suspect it was kept for this reason, since it obviuosly had no commercial potential).
As might be expected the device was pretty unreliable and frequently malfuntioned. This salesman was showing the device in action when it started grabbing punched cards and flinging them on the floor.
The salesman explained to his prospect that "This device is so advanced, it can tell when it picks up a card if there is a problem with it and automatically rejects cards that are faulty." He then ushers his prospect out of the room as the device continues to fling around punched cards.
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers have rejected government proposed peace talks in Geneva after reports of abductions of pro-Tiger aid workers. The government said on Friday talks were due to start in Switzerland on 15 February and were necessary to stop recent violence from escalating and reviving a two-decade-old war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demand that any talks should focus on implementation of a ceasefire agreed in 2002, and, in particular, a clause that stipulates that the state must disarm paramilitaries the rebels say are attacking them. They also warn that talks are doomed if the government tries to amend the terms. An anonymous rebel source said: "15 February is completely out. The Tigers are keen to go to Geneva for talks; but the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) abductions have affected the atmosphere."
"The Tamil people are in a panic and are very upset, so the Tigers cannot meet the government's 15 February talks deadline, and are instead aiming for talks at the end of February," he added, referring to the reported abduction of 10 TRO aid workers that some officials fear is a Tiger propaganda stunt.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Policy experts warn that the United States may not be able to rely on perennial ally the United Kingdom for support over Iran's nuclear program. "We can't look to Britain for (help) on Iran because they've paid the price on Iraq," said Jeffrey McCausland, director of leadership in conflict initiative at Dickinson College. "In Iraq, the coalition of the willing has become the Brits and the Yanks. How Iraq turns out will have a dramatic effect on the relationship (between the United States and the United Kingdom)," he said.
Gee, ya think?
The European Union should shoulder more global leadership responsibility, said Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University, England, and former European Commissioner for External Relations. "That's what Europe should be seeking to do with the United States ... seeking to be a partner in economic, political, and security terms."
Instead, the EU is a "dead end," said John Hulsman, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. "The United States and the United Kingdom are the only two that can do things around the world," he said. "The United Kingdom is the default (ally) in a crisis. On Sept. 11, nobody said, 'get Brussels on the phone,'" he said. If U.S.-U.K. relations worsen, the United Kingdom might not rush to the head of the line to back U.S. action. The United Kingdom could become "not the first of three allies but the third of three," to support U.S. objectives, he said.
"The [U.S.-U.K.] 'special relationship' is in trouble," said Andrew Apostolou, assistant director of programs at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Michael Calingaert, executive vice president of Brookings' Council for United States and Italy, agreed. "U.S. policy and attitudes have damaged our relationship with the United Kingdom and the rest of the world."
No agenda here, just pure objective scholarly commentary
IIRC, Bush offered Tony Blair a pass on Iraq, but Tony opted not to take it because (going into Iraq) was the 'right thing to do.'
In a 2005 Pew poll, only 55 percent of Britons had a favorable opinion of the United States, down from 75 percent in 2002, pre-Iraq. Patten said there has always been a "seam of anti-Americanism in European attitudes." The relationship between the United States and Europe is so important to both sides, he said, he doesn't believe that recent trends indicate a major shift. "Over the years there were rows about Vietnam, Central America ... but overall (U.S.-Europe relations have been) a huge success," he said. "I hope we may find some way in which we can work together on the real threat of Iran becoming a nuclear power."
#1
Socialism has exhausted Europe, and only a drastic shift to the right will result in Europe regaining the cajones it needs for the future.
It is a two-pronged approach: drastically slash taxes, social programs and government controls; then massively re-create large and effective militaries.
Slashing taxes would initially plunge them into deep deficits, but would be met with slashing social programs. By eliminating much government control over business, entrepreneurs could soon revitalize their economies--based on a production boom in support of the military build-up.
The contrast would be so great that socialism would be utterly destroyed for at least 30 years. 30 very critical years.
#2
what attitude UK takes toward specific US actions in Iran will depend on the nature of those action, the Iranian actions that precede them, and the degree to which the US is serious about multilateral diplomacy. These last two so far are going well as far as keeping the west united on this issue.
#5
Worry not UK. The US won't go it alone or with the UK into Iran. The Iranians have had 15 years to build and hide enrichment facilities under the cities, deserts and mountains. No government is willing to go in and tear up the country in hopes of finding destroying the nuclear and missile facilities. So Europe (including the UK) better get used to the idea of living under islamic nukes.
Posted by: ed ||
02/06/2006 9:52 Comments ||
Top||
#6
You'll have a Tory gummint by then, so no problem. I still expect Israel to do the job for all of us, mind.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/06/2006 9:52 Comments ||
Top||
#7
May not happen. And it's not exactly fair to expect that tiny country to "do the job for us all" and suffer the consequences alone.
#9
The Israeli's don't have the capability and don't need the attacks from all sides that will follow any strike. They will hunker down and build up their warheads and delivery systems. The Sampson option it will be. In addition, the Iranian nuclear capability will trigger a Middle East, followed by a worldwide nuclear breakout.
Also note where the Saban Center for Middle East Policy gets it's funding
From the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers?
Posted by: ed ||
02/06/2006 10:03 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Turkey and Israel have joint military maneuvers and agreements IIRC
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 12:19 Comments ||
Top||
#14
That's a lot different from an article V commitment, expecially given how the Turkish electorate is becoming more fundamentalist all the time. Agreed there have been state to state contacts in the past, but this would be different.
#15
The European Union should shoulder more global leadership responsibility ...
They have, they just happen to be working for the other side. Europe's ability to countenance Ahmadinejad's genocidal proclamations is ample proof that anti-Semitism is not at all dead.
Yet another long-running organization with plans for world domination. Be interesting to see how they fit together the Supreme Council of Global Jihad that al-Hawali seems to be running for Binny. Given our luck, we're probably still only like half-way up the ladder till we finally reach the Eddorians.
When mild-mannered former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami lashed out in a post-election sermon at the "powerful organization" behind the "shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness" currently running the country, it became clear that Iran's political establishment is worried by the ideology propelling the government of new hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Khatami's attack coincides with mounting evidence that a radically anti-Bahai [1] and anti-Sunni semi-clandestine society, called the Hojjatieh, is reemerging in the corridors of power in Tehran. The group flourished during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and installed an Islamic government in his place, and was banned in 1983 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution.
Khomeini objected to the Hojjatieh's rejection of his doctrine of velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) and its conviction that chaos must be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi, the 12th Shi'ite imam. Only then, they argue, can a genuine Islamic republic be established.
"Those who regarded the revolution, during Imam Khomeini's time, as a deviation, are now [wielding] the tools of terror and oppression," Khatami was reported as saying at a speech in the conservative northeastern town of Mashhad, the same location chosen by Ahmadinejad to convene the first meeting of his cabinet.
"The shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness now have a powerful organization behind them," he said, in what was interpreted as an indirect reference to the Hojjatieh society.
Khatami's sharp comments followed an outburst by Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini. Tavassoli claimed that the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards had been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad.
Amid talk that the recent election was a silent coup carried out by elements of the hardline Revolutionary Guard after eight years of reformist rule, Western embassies have been scrambling to understand what the Hojjatieh stands for and to what extent the influence of its teachings will be felt in the new government's domestic and foreign policies.
Asia Times Online spoke last week with European and North American diplomats in Tehran who are trying to identify which of the new government's ministers have sympathies with the Hojjatieh or a part in the organization.
After its banning in the 1980s, the Hojjatieh's members faded into the ranks of the bazaar-based Islamic Coalition Society (Mo'talife). Reports in the past few years that the society is reviving have stressed that the neo-Hojjatieh are not so much anti-Bahai as "fanning the flames of discord between Shi'ites and Sunnis", according to the August 28, 2002 edition of the Hamshahri daily.
Ahmadinejad himself is said to have sympathies with the Hojjatieh, if he was not a member outright at some point in his career. The Islamic society he belonged to at Alm-u Sanat University where he attended was an extreme traditional and fundamentalist group that contained a large number of students from the provinces and maintained grass-roots links with the Hojjatieh. The society's anti-leftism also chimes with reports that Ahmadinejad was pushing for a takeover of the Soviet Embassy alongside or instead of the US compound in Tehran during the 1979 revolution.
Of the 21 new ministers in Ahmadinejad's cabinet, three are said to have Hojjatieh backgrounds, including Intelligence chief Hojatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehyi, a graduate of the Hojjatieh-founded Haqqani theological school with a long background in the intelligence services. Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a hardline Shi'ite cleric who is said to have issued a fatwa urging all 2 million members of the bassij Islamic militia [2] to vote for Ahmadinejad in the recent presidential elections, is also associated with that university.
The hardline minister of the interior, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, is another Haqqani alumnus with suspected Hojjatieh sympathies. His appointment was greeted with outrage by some Iranian politicians. Tehran member of parliament Emad Afruq was reported by Islamic Republic News Agency on August 24 to have challenged Pourmohammadi's appointment on the basis of his questionable human rights record while at the Ministry of Intelligence: "You must recognize that when someone comes from such a ministry, with this past and the absence of supervisory mechanisms, our reaction is that we shudder with fear in the public arena. And have we not shuddered? Have we not felt insecure in the past?"
A few days after the new cabinet was revealed, a dinner party in North Tehran's exclusive Elahiyeh neighborhood was buzzing with talk of Hojjatieh involvement in the new government. One Iranian working as a political analyst for a Western embassy fingered the controversial Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi as the main reason behind the transformation of an initially anarchist movement that rejected any form of government, especially an Islamic one, into a key actor influencing the policies of the Ahmadinejad administration.
The powerful cleric is said to be Ahmadinejad's marja-e taqlid (object of emulation) and the ultimate proponent of an elite theory of government best summed up in his once saying: "It doesn't matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."
"There is no doubt that Mesbah and the new crew, whether formally Hojjatieh or not, are more attached to core Shi'ite identity and values," said Vali Nast, a professor of Middle East politics at the Department of National Security Affairs. "But an equally important faction, especially in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Council, is simply anti-Ba'athist. These are people who fought in the Iran-Iraq war and that may also be important in deciding attitudes towards Saudi Arabia and Iraq."
At a time of rising Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in the region, and as Iraq increasingly turns into a proxy battleground for its neighbors, it is not surprising that a Shi'ite supremacist government in Tehran, whether related to the Hojjatieh or not, should reemerge.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are battling it out in Iraq as both seek to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis, the majority of whom are Shi'ites. While Iran is believed to have a better intelligence presence in the country and a more organized military capability, Saudis account for a large percentage of the suicide bombers active there.
In an August Newsweek article, former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer quoted a high-level Syrian official telling him that of 1,200 suspected suicide bombers arrested by the Syrians since Iraq was invaded in 2003, 85% have been Saudis. Baer went on to quote Iran's Grand Ayatollah Saanei reacting to the news by describing Wahhabi suicide bombers as "wolves without pity" and saying that "sooner rather than later, Iran will have to put them down".
Saudi Arabia is also reported to be active in Iran, especially in the ethnically Arab, oil-rich south of the country, where it is whispered that Riyadh is offering financial incentives for locals to convert from Shi'ite to Sunni Islam. News of this strategy has reached Qom, the clerical heartland of Iran.
In an April 2004 article, Persian-language Baztab news website that is written by well-connected insiders and read by Iran's political elite, published a piece alleging that the Hojjatieh had adopted a strategy of trying to sharpen domestic tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites through launching a propaganda campaign against the minority religious group inside Iran (Sunnis). The report alleged that some Hojjatieh-aligned publishers have been issuing books in Arabic that are critical of Sunnis. The books have been distributed in Qom, but are fictitiously marked "Published in Beirut" to give them further credibility and mask the fact they are Shi'ite propaganda.
This is a potentially dangerous move with grave foreign policy implications for Iran. Iran's Sunni minorities live in some of the least-developed provinces and are under-represented in parliament, the army and the civil service. Iran's Kurds, who are Sunni, have been rioting in the north, while the ethnic Arab south is another location that has suffered riots and a bombing campaign in the past six months.
But whether the Hojjatieh is being resurrected by its former adherents or is being used as a battering ram by those Iranian politicians opposed to the current government, its reappearance coincides with a Shi'ite resurgence across the region and a new era of conservative factional infighting in Tehran.
"This particular form of mud-slinging that had disappeared a quarter of a century ago - when the secular left accused the religious establishment of having clandestine Hojjatieh affiliations - is gaining currency again in the new battle of Titans: the traditional right-wing versus the revolutionary right-wing clerical establishment - over ideological hegemony in Iran," concluded Mahmoud Sadri, a US-based Iranian academic.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 03:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
So is this 'Hojjatieh' the force behind the Cartoon War? No way that is spontaneous (where'd they get all the Danish flags to burn, among other things). Center-of-mass is Syria-Lebanon-Gaza, but don't see how it benefits Assad to soil his own nest. Plenty of Hezzboloids there too though, and the actions do fit nicely with the strategy of creating chaos to hasten the Mahdi.
Iran will teach any attackers a "lesson that will last throughout history", a senior commander said on Sunday, reinforcing Tehran's defiant stance after being reported to the U.N. Security Council.
"We are not seeking a military confrontation, but if that happens we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history," Abdolrahim Moussavi, head of the joint chiefs of staff, was quoted as saying by the ISNA students news agency.
"This nation has proved its will many times to its enemies. Why do they want to test this great nation once again?" he said, addressing a meeting of troops.Ah
yes, I remember their great showing in 1988. "Operation Praying Mantis is one of five American naval engagements cited by United States Naval Academy Prof. Craig L. Symonds in his book Decision at Sea (2005) as being decisive in establishing U.S. naval superiority." Yup, another lesson might well be learned that goes down in history ....
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I guess they just need to hear themselves talk.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel likened Iran's nuclear program on Saturday to the threat posed by Germany's Nazi regime in its early days, saying the world must act now to prevent it building the atom bomb.
Addressing the annual Munich security conference, she said there had been complacency in other countries as Adolf Hitler rose to power.
"Looking back to German history in the early 1930s when National Socialism (Nazism) was on the rise, there were many outside Germany who said 'It's only rhetoric -- don't get excited'," she told the assembled world policy makers.
"There were times when people could have reacted differently and, in my view, Germany is obliged to do something at the early stages ... We want to, we must prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program."
As she was speaking, the board of governors of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, voted in Vienna to report Iran to the UN Security Council over concerns that it is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran says its nuclear program is purely aimed at civilian energy production.
But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not allayed concerns in the West and elsewhere with recent comments denying that the Nazi Holocaust happened and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map".
Post-war Germany, conscious of the Nazis' crimes, has made support for Israel's existence a pillar of its foreign policy.
Speaking to an audience that included U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Merkel had particularly blunt words for Ahmadinejad:
"Iran has blatantly crossed the red line," she said.
"I say it as German chancellor. A president who questions Israel's right to exist, a president who denies the Holocaust cannot expect to receive any tolerance from Germany."
Merkel said Iran was a threat to Europe as well as Israel. But she also said diplomacy rather than military action was the way to deal with the threat.
"Diplomatic avenues need to be exhausted. We need to hold our nerve, go step by step," she said.
Immediately after the vote in Vienna, a senior Iranian official announced Iran would immediately curb UN inspections of its nuclear plants and pursue full-scale uranium enrichment -- a step that could give it the ability to build the bomb.
U.S. and EU leaders, aware that Russia, China and developing states on the IAEA board want to avoid a showdown with Iran, the world's No. 4 oil exporter, have said that reporting Tehran to the Council will not end diplomacy or trigger early sanctions.
Rumsfeld, speaking after Merkel, also voiced his support for a diplomatic solution, but said Iran's nuclear program posed a grave threat.
"The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," he said. "The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:51 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
Born to a blacksmith, educated as a revolutionary, trained as a killer and derided by rivals as a mystical fanatic, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is easily cast as the personification of everything there is to fear about a nuclear Iran. But he may be worse than thatnot because of how he looks to the outside world, but because of what he represents inside his country. Ahmadinejad plays to a nostalgia for war among parts of Iran's leadership, and even some of its young people: a longing for confrontation, a belief that a quarter century ago, when revolutionary Iran was ready to challenge the world, send countless youths to martyrdom in the fight against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, endure missile attacks on its cities, suffer poison-gas attacks against its troopsin those days the regime of the ayatollahs was purer, more noble, more popular and ultimately more secure.
Since he took office in August, Ahmadinejad has shown himself an expert at provoking outrage, calling for the destruction of Israel, denying the Holocaust, berating "false superpowers." Although he continues to swear that Iran's nuclear research is peaceful, much of the world's lack of faith in Iran's promises was clear last week when even Russia and China agreed to send its case before the Security Council. Iran's response: threats to cease voluntary cooperation with nuclear investigators from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.
How dangerous is the crisis that Ahmadinejad has helped to spawn? Unimpeded by inspections and vowing to launch commercial uranium enrichment, Iran could move ahead quickly with a program to build a bombif that is indeed what it wants to do. Iran can produce enriched uranium "by the ton," its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, told NEWSWEEK shortly after Saturday's vote, even as he insisted Iran will not produce a bomb.
U.S. intelligence sources estimate that a workable Iranian weapon is four to 10 years away. Israeli intelligence suggests a year may be a closer bet, and the Israelis see Iranian nukes as an existential threat to be stopped at all costs. Not since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was alive in the 1980s has Iran provoked so many regional and global tensionsand that's just what Ahmadinejad, his religious superiors and his key supporters in the Street seem to want. "This is the war generation," says Massoud Denhmaki, a documentary filmmaker and former member of the religious militia Ansar-e Hizbullah. "During the war [against Saddam Hussein's Iraq from 1980-1988], we learned how to walk on mines so others could walk on our backs. This is the same approach this generation has toward politics. We accomplished a lot with very little during the war. We'll manage the country the same way."
Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy calls these veterans "a very dangerous group." Sophisticated Iranians have treated them as "hicks," he says. But the survivors of the savage battles of 20 years ago "feel that they have a moral right to govern that country because they are the ones that saved it." After years of corruption and failed reforms, they mix a yearning for change with nostalgia for prouder times.
Even many young people are caught up in this wave. On the campus of Tehran's elite Imam Sadegh University, students who weren't born in 1979 talk about "the purity of the revolution and the war." "An Islamic renaissance is starting from here," says Reza Tawana, a third-year law student who fingers his worry beads and avoids looking women in the eye. "We are witnessing the start of a fundamentalist uprising in the region from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to Hamas, Hizbullah in Lebanon and of course Mr. Ahmadinejad in our own country."
For the Bush administration, which is trying publicly to drive a wedge between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people, such attitudes present a dangerous challenge. This isn't just about nukes. Iran under pressure can use its extensive contacts in Iraq among dissidents and insurgentsand within the Shiite-dominated governmentto further undermine the American position there. In today's tight market for oil, any threat to Iran's exports of crude will likely send prices toward $100 a barrel. Last week, even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice waged a diplomatic battle to get the regime dragged before the Security Council, President George W. Bush tried reaching out to the Iranian masses "held hostage" by a small clerical elite. "We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom," said Bush. "And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran."
Yet Ahmadinejad and his supporters, even if they are a minority, are committed activists in what has proved a largely passive society. When conservative mullahs under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned most reformist candidates in 2005, the silenced majority stayed home. Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militias that served as suicidal cannon fodder 20 years ago dominated the balloting and put Ahmadinejad in office. Worse still for U.S. policy, Ahmadinejad has since managed to turn the country's nuclear-research program into a nationalist issue with support far beyond his core backers.
Who is this man who could inspire such hatred, fear and adulation? Going into last year's elections, he looked like he'd be just another also-ran, and drew little attention outside the country. As soon as Ahmadinejad won, however, allegations surfaced in the United States that he'd been one of the hostage takers who seized the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979. That charge turned out to be false. But another investigation is underway in Austria and France to determine if Ahmadinejad was part of a hit team that murdered an Iranian Kurdish leader in Vienna in 1989. U.S. intelligence analysts doubt it, but say the evidence thus far is inconclusive.
What is firmly known about Ahmadinejad is frightening enough, at least to the West. He is less a leader than a symbol, combining ferocious pride, militant piety, an expansive view of Iran and a narrow vision of the world that are all products of the Islamic revolution.
Ahmadinejad's family came out of the hot, dusty town of Garmsar on the edge of Iran's greatest desert. Soon after he was born in 1956, they moved to a working-class district of Tehran. There, growing up, Ahmadinejad had a reputation as the smartest kid in his class, and was increasingly devout. He played a lot of soccer, according to his longtime friend Nasser Hadian-Jazy; he didn't chase girls. (He's now married with three children.) In the late 1970s, Ahmadinejad fell in with the student protest movements against the shah. Islamic radicals and leftists were vying for power at the universities and in the streets. Ahmadinejad and some of his friends published a magazine called Jiq va Dad (Scream and Shout), to sell in front of Tehran University. Often, they argued with Marxists. "Sometimes things would get physical, would come down to fists and kicks," remembers Mohammad Ali Seyednejad, an employee at the Ministry of Education who knew Ahmadinejad in the old days.
After the shah fled Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in 1979, young activists held a meeting to plot the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, which they called the "den of spies." Seyednejad says he and Ahmadinejad were there when plans were being made, but the man who is now the president of Iran actually spoke against the scheme. Three former student activists involved with the embassy siegestill seen in Iran as a great victory for the revolutionalso say Ahmadinejad played no role in the hostage taking. (U.S. intelligence officials agree.) In fact, what is striking when you look back at Ahmadinejad's reputation in those years is how unimpressive he seemed. He was a follower, not a leader, "very polite and ordinary," says Seyednejad.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 to try to bring down the mullahs' regime, Ahmadinejad headed to the largely Kurdish areas of western Iran, not far from the Iraq border. He and the other representatives of the revolution who went there were completely raw. "The country was in the hands of students," recalls Hamid Reza Jaleipour, now a professor of sociology at Tehran University, who was appointed governor of Kurdistan province at the age of 20. "I didn't even have a beard," he says. Jaleipour helped to get Ahmadinejad a position as deputy governor.
Saddam's troops were a constant threat. So was an uprising by the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran. The city of Mahabad was especially risky, Jaleipour remembers. "I used to sleep with a grenade under my pillow in case [the Kurds] attacked," he says. But, as Jaleipour recalls, Ahmadinejad rarely traveled there.
According to his official biography, Ahmadinejad joined the Special Forces of the Revolutionary Guards in 1986. He reportedly took part in cross-border commando raids near the city of Kirkuk in mostly Kurdish northern Iraq. But the official history of Ahmadinejad's activities later in the decade is largely blank, particularly after the war came to an end in 1988.
At the time, a special unit of the Revolutionary Guards was carrying out a covert campaign in Europe to eliminate opponents of the regime. Whether Ahmadinejad was part of that group is not known. But Austrian authorities have reopened an investigation into the July 1989 murder in Vienna of Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and two of his associates. The investigations have focused on allegations from an unnamed Iranian source that Ahmadinejad served as a lookout for two assassins who carried out the attack.
Ahmadinejad has dismissed the reports as baseless. A senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was discussing intelligence, tells NEWSWEEK that American agencies looked at the allegations last summer, when the charges were first raised by Austrian parliamentarian Peter Pilz. They concluded that Ahmadinejad was not involved. But the U.S. agencies cannot be 100 percent sure of this, says the same source: back in 1989, U.S. intelligence did not see Ahmadinejad as a man of much importance, so there is little information about his whereabouts or activities.
Whatever role Ahmadinejad played in the Islamic revolution's struggle for survival, he can, and often does, recite the names of dozens of friends killed in battle. Throughout his career he has laced his speeches with references to dead fighters, exploiting Shiite traditions of martyrdom. But by the mid-1990s, after serving four years as governor of Ardabil province in northwest Iran, his image as a grizzled veteran was out of sync with the times. Iranians wanted more freedoms, better jobs, a more open civic society. In 1997, in a surprise landslide, they elected reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami to the presidency.
Ahmadinejad soon lost his government post. He returned to university life, but didn't fit in there, either, cutting an odd figure on campus with the black-and-white checked kaffiyeh of the Palestinians draped around his shoulders. And increasingly, Ahmadinejad identified himself with religious mysticism. His was the zeal that had overthrown the shah, his the religion that had sent hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths clinging to keys that would unlock the gates of Paradise. The reformers around Khatami might preach the need for greater freedoms and "a civic society." Ahmadinejad held to the faith-based roots of the revolution.
He cultivated an image of piety, humility and obedience to the Supreme Leader. By 2003, Khamenei and his loyalists had largely succeeded in their efforts to undermine and discredit the reformists, and Ahmadinejad was brought back to public life as the mayor of Tehran. Low-level government employees still talk about the way he would put on a street sweeper's uniform to show solidarity with municipal workers, or get out of his car to unclog a drainage ditch.
When Ahmadinejad won the presidency last year in a runoff against former president Ali Akbar Rafsanjaniwidely known as The Sharkmany voters believed they were casting their ballots for a righteous fighter against corruption. But just how righteous has taken some by surprise. Last November, a video began circulating on the Internet and CD-ROMs that showed Ahmadinejad rapturously talking with an ayatollah about his September speech at the United Nations. It was as if he were surrounded by an aura, the president said. "I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27, 28 minutes all the leaders did not blink ... They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic republic."
Even some religious leaders were taken aback. "For a president, for a leader, even for a mayor, this kind of talk is ridiculous," says Ayatollah Hussein Moussavi Tabrizi, a senior cleric in the holy city of Qom. "These kinds of things lead us far away from reality." Tabrizi says he thinks Ahmadinejad has learned a lesson and will be more discreet about his mystical experiences in the future. But Ahmadinejad's spirituality is not simply a matter of expediency. The religious ideology of the Islamic republic is tied to the belief that the Supreme Leaderfirst Ayatollah Khomeini, and since 1989 Ayatollah Ali Khameneiis a temporary guide for the masses until the return of the Imam Mahdi, who vanished more than a thousand years ago. Ahmadinejad has linked himself to a movement that believes the way must be prepared for the return of the Mahdi.
Historically, the position of president in the Islamic republic has never been a strong one. The Supreme Leader takes the big decisions, especially on war and peace. "I don't think Mr. Ahmadinejad would even drink a glass of water without the Supreme Leader's permission," suggests a Khamenei adviser who declined to be quoted by name. So it's unlikely that Ahmadinejad will ever have his finger on the nuclear trigger. Yet his power as a populist shouldn't be underestimated. Ahmadinejad's government is distributing rations of oil, rice and sugar to the poor, and has blocked efforts to raise the highly subsidized price of gasoline. He recently boosted the salaries of public employees and increased the stipends that up to a million families receive from the Imam Khomeini's Charity Foundation. "God bless Mr. Ahmadinejad," says Youssef Tarighat, who depends on that monthly check. "He is the only one who has really helped us."
Such Iranians are quick to rally round the country's right to develop a nuclear program for peaceful uses, and they rally round Ahmadinejad when he proclaims it. They don't buy the notion that they can't be trusted with nuclear technology while other countries like the United States, Israel and neighboring Pakistan supposedly can be trusted with atomic bombs.
So for now, even with its diplomatic victory in Vienna, the Bush administration is inclined to move slowly. Under a compromise worked out with China and Russia, the Security Council will take no action until after IAEA Secretary-General Mohamed ElBaradei delivers his assessment of Iran's cooperation, or lack of it, on March 6. There is no talk at this point of imposing sanctions, though U.S. officials spoke last week of imposing "a series of graduated steps" designed to increase if Iran remains defiant after the March deadline. Speculation about direct attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities is squashed every time it comes up (except in Israel; sidebar). "There isn't a military option," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared late last month. "There certainly isn't one on the table, let's be clear about that. And no one is talking about it. I have never had a discussion with any senior American, from the very top downwards, except to say the military option is not on the table."
In the end, the Bush strategy of trying to reach out to the Iranian people may be its besteven its only realoption in dealing with Iran. To do that, though, Washington will have to understand that Iranians are not just hostages of a clerical elite, they are the products of a particular history of war and sacrifice, pride and pain, that they cannot, and will not, forget.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:37 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Born to a blacksmith, educated as a revolutionary, trained as a killer and derided by rivals as a mystical fanatic, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is easily cast as the personification of everything there is to fear about a nuclear Iran. But he may be worse than thatnot because of how he looks to the outside world, but because of what he represents inside his country.
Born to a lunatic, educated in an asylum, trained as a petty thug and derided by rivals as a mystical delusionary, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is easily cast as the personification of everything there is typical of a madman with nuclear weapons. But he may be worse than thatnot because of how he looks to the outside world, but because of what he represents inside his own miniscule mind.
As scary as the idea may sound, the Israelis may not be bluffing. Their defense experts display no doubt whatsoever that Israel's Air Force can cripple Iran's nuclear program if necessary. The trick, they say, is to go after the system's weak spots. "You need to identify the bottlenecks," says a senior Israeli military source, asking not to be named for security reasons. "There are not very many. If you take them out, then you really undermine the project." Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli armed forces chief of strategic planning, says the destruction of two or three key facilities would probably suffice. He singles out the Natanz uranium-enrichment complex and the conversion plant at Esfahan as critical.
It wouldn't be as easy as it sounds. Tehran, taking obvious lessons from Israel's successful 1981 bombing of Saddam Hussein's reactor at Osirak, has done its best to shield potential targets like Natanz. "They are dispersed, underground, hardened," says the senior Israeli military source. U.S. analysts say each facility would require multiple hits before serious damage was done. Still, the Israeliswho have an undeclared nuclear arsenal of their own, and refuse international inspections or oversightinsist they have all the firepower they need: more than 100 U.S.-made BLU-109 "bunker buster" earth-penetrating bombs. "I think they could do the job," says the senior Israeli source.
Logistics is a bigger hurdle. Each separate target would require a small fleet of aircraft. Israel's F-15s and F-16s would need advance escorts of "electronic countermeasures" aircraft to jam Iran's air-defense radars, and every one of those planes would need an entourage of fighter aircraft. At short range, Tehran's newly upgraded MiG-29 interceptors are a match for just about anything in the air. "To get there and bomb the facilities, that's the easy part," says Brom. "The difficult part is how to get back. We're not making kamikaze runs."
To hit Osirak in 1981, Israel's bombers flew in low over Saudi Arabia. In a study published late last year by the U.S. Army War College, Brom suggests that a strike against Iran's facilities could arrive by way of the Indian Oceanroughly twice the operational radius of Israel's newest strike aircraft under optimal flying conditions. But Israel's fleet of specialized planes for in-flight refuelingfive aging KC-130H tankersdoesn't have the capacity to get all those aircraft there and back again. The only way to manage it would be with a covert stopover midwayit's anybody's guess where.
The Israelis admit they can only disable the Iranian program, not destroy it. "The real question is what you achieve if the best you can do is to delay the project for a few years," says a senior U.S. administration official, speaking anonymously because it's a sensitive topic. The cost to the region's stability could be devastating. Meanwhile, Israel continues to upgrade its own arsenal, acquiring two new German subs that could launch nuclear-armed cruise missiles for a "second-strike" deterrent. Perhaps the threats are only a way of pushing the West to get tough with Tehran before the arms race gets even more heated. But if so, it's one hell of an act.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:34 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Still, the Israeliswho have an undeclared nuclear arsenal of their own, and refuse international inspections or oversight."
A day after the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog voted to report Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions related to its nuclear program, Tehran said diplomacy may still resolve its apparent impasse with the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We have not reached a dead end, and there have been more difficult situations," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamed Reza-Asefi said Sunday. "We will cooperate with the international agency. We have cooperated in the past with regards to the non-proliferation treaty. We still say that the doors of dialogue are open. We have said it before, and say it again. We will use all ways and possibilities, and this also goes for the international agency."
The apparent willingness to negotiate came a day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the Islamic state to end its voluntary cooperation with U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, meaning Iran will end snap inspections of its nuclear facilities and begin enriching uranium, according to state-run Iranian media.
They're either backing down or there's a disagreement within the assylum over who's in charge. My guess is the latter.
Or it's a rope-a-dope maneuver while they race to complete one of their capabilities. Hard to tell. But for sure the MMs who've amassed huge fortunes running Iran are not happy with the True Believer seeming to encourage the return of the mahdi.
Watch the hands, not the eyes ...
Posted by: Fred ||
02/06/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Watch the seals, too, Fred! No seals, no deals!
Recent tapes from al-Qaida leaders may be part of an effort to show followers of the terrorist organization that they are still around, a U.S. intelligence official said Sunday.
"We've watched them with great interest, tried to analyze them," said Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. "I think, in one sense, there's almost a proof of life aspect to them."
In a video released Jan. 30 after an airstrike killed four al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan, No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri threatened a new attack against the United States. Earlier in January, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden issued a similar threat in an audio statement, his first in more than a year, and offered a truce to the U.S.
"This is a tough and very cunning enemy, but we have had successes," Hayden said. "In some ways, the al-Qaida central leadership may be on their back foot, and the rest of their organization may see that, may see reflections of that, and these tapes may be an attempt on their part to kind of re-establish authenticity with their followers."
Hayden said officials believe bin Laden and al-Zawahri are in a tribal area on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Capturing them remains "a tough problem," he said.
"They're relying on just the realities in that part of the world of vast distances, small populations _ distant from government centers in both countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/06/2006 02:10 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
More troops have died in off-duty motorcycle accidents after they returned from duty in Afghanistan than have been killed fighting there since Sept. 11, 2001, safety records show.
Military commanders in North Carolina say the deaths are largely the result of boredom, bonus pay, and adrenalin to burn off after troops return from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nearly 350 troops have died on bikes since the 2001 terrorist attacks. That's compared to 259 killed while serving in Afghanistan.
Nearly 1,000 more troops have been injured on bikes.
Marine Lance Cpl. Mark Strickland, 24, was one of five Marines from Camp Lejeune who were involved in serious motorcycle crashes in October. Four of them had been home just a few weeks from combat in Iraq's deadly Anbar Province. Three of the Marines were killed and another lost a leg.
"When the doctor told me that he was dead, I told him that wasn't acceptable, it just wasn't acceptable," said Andrea Strickland, 22, the widow of Mark Strickland. "I said, 'He just got back from a war zone, and you're going to tell me that he died doing something he loved?' "
The problem could get worse as some 20,000 Marines and sailors begin returning to bases in North Carolina over the coming weeks.
"Our goal is not to see the same thing happen," said Lt. Gen. James F. Amos, commander of the Camp Lejeune-based II Marine Expeditionary Force.
Amos described the crashes in October as "a cold shot to the heart" and ordered a crackdown. The following month normal base operations were halted to focus on safety, particularly for motorcyclists.
Camp Lejeune also added safety programs and re-emphasized existing ones. These include a mentor program Amos created that's being considered as a model for the entire Marine Corps.
The Army hasn't been immune to off-duty motorcycle deaths, with more than 40 in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The Army chief of staff issued a memo in December that urge experienced riders to cut the accident rate by mentoring beginners.
The military has enough of a challenge maintaining a force that repeated deployments have left severely stretched, according to two reports released last month - one commissioned by the Pentagon, the other by Congressional Democrats.
In response to the motorcycle injuries, Maj. Gen. Robert C. Dickerson Jr., who oversees most of the Marine Corps' East Coast facilities, has visited area motorcycle dealers and asked them to pass out Corps-funded $100 vouchers to Marine customers for the safety classes.
"I've owned three motorcycles, and they're a lot of fun, but you've got to be careful," Dickerson said. He says the Marines need risk-takers but it's crucial to draw a line between courage and recklessness.
Troops say the bikes fill the adrenalin void they left behind in the war zone.
"Riders who have been in accidents have told us that it's the legal crack cocaine," said J.T. Coleman, a civilian spokesman for the Army's Combat Readiness Center in Fort Rucker, Ala., which tracks accidents among soldiers. "They say it gives them the same adrenaline rush they get driving their tank through Baghdad or whatever."
#3
Geat! Now we're going to outlaw Harley's and Honda's like in the late 70's. Helmets, gloves, jacket, and reflector things are required as well as motorcycle safety classes. So how many troops die each year comparing combat vets to non-combat vets and also the years before 911. They are comparing apples to sea food. Spitt, kuss, here we go again, wrap us in bubble wrap cause we are to valuable to be in society.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/06/2006 15:16 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Two words: Track Days.
If they want an adrenaline fix, let 'em have one. Just make sure it's in a controlled environment like a race course instead of on the street where the presence of idiot motorists is difficult to control.
#12
Penguin, You were blessed by SPC Stewart and his decision. My condolences for this loved ones. He clearly made good decisions to donate, as we all should.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
02/06/2006 18:50 Comments ||
Top||
#13
my luck I'll end up with Keith Richards' liver....damn
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/06/2006 19:04 Comments ||
Top||
#14
Frank, Hey kieth's liver, now thats one tough liver, probably made of tungsten carbide!
*
Penguin, How many days after 22 June, 2004 did you recieve his liver? if you don't mind nme asking.
This is the bottom line and one great way to respect the sacrifices our troops make overseas. I've been a donor ever since I had the opportunity. The low donation rates in our modern society are nearly criminal.
my luck I'll end up with Keith Richards' liver....damn
On the bright side, it has a street value of $30,000.
#17
Can't think of anyone welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven faster than a warrior who served several others even after death! God bless you, SPC Stuart.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/06/2006 20:22 Comments ||
Top||
#18
Penguin, I was going to write snark about Keith Richards, but then I went back and read your comment.
No words, just gratitude to SPC Stewart and all those who sacrifice for us.
Posted by: Tibor ||
02/06/2006 20:42 Comments ||
Top||
#20
The comment about adrenalin void after combat is a big part of this problem.
After WWII, troops took weeks or months to get home by ship. It was (I'm told) an important adjustment time. These troops go from places like Fallujah and Anbar province to home in a couple of days.
#21
The "I am bullet proof - nothing can kill me syndrone" aggrevated by a fat checkbook and an appitite for a Harley. I've been assigned to too many survivor assistance details to think differently.
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.
The ban on the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 
British authorities had at least two of the terrorists who bombed London last July 7 under surveillance in 2004. In an official document examined by NEWSWEEK, a British judge reports that U.K. investigators had pictures and voice recordings of Mohammed Siddique Khanbelieved to have been the plot leaderand another suicide bomber, Shahzad Tanweer, meeting several times in February and March 2004 with suspects in an earlier, separate terror plot that U.K. authorities investigated under the code name Operation Crevice. The evidence includes recordings of Khan in a car driven by one Crevice suspect, and evidence showing Khan and Tanweer getting out of a Crevice suspect's car. British media have made only limited references to the evidence because a trial of Crevice suspects is pending, and pretrial publicity is restricted under U.K. law.
PUBLICATION of blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Victorian newspapers could damage community relations, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said today. Ms Nixon acknowledged it was the right of different media outlets to decide if they would publish the cartoons. But she added it was "a sad thing to see communities harmed in the way that they have been". 
Germany is back. After eight years in which Berlin's foreign policy consisted largely of niggling the United States, cozying up to Russia and off-shoring its European policy to Paris, newly-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled a 180-degree about-turn. In a hard-hitting and unusually blunt speech Saturday to the Munich Conference on Security Policy, the center-right leader sketched out an ambitious foreign and defense policy for Germany over the next four years. "A united Germany is ready to shoulder more responsibility above and beyond the alliance area to secure stability in the world," Merkel told relieved delegates, who have become accustomed to German statesmen querying U.S. policies or engaging in torturous debates about sending soldiers abroad.
French Interior Minister 
The Bush administration will tell the Senate today that the National Security Agency's programme for terrorist surveillance has been badly distorted by media reports, and that the scheme is a strictly limited one aimed at al-Qaeda members and affiliated groups.
As the Senate prepares to hold hearings on Monday on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, old Washington hands see a striking similarity to a drama that unfolded three decades ago in the capital.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday said the Bush administration does not have congressional authority to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on overseas phone calls.
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - Several thousand people held rallies Sunday in Islamabad and the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir to demand an end to Indian rule in the other part of the divided Kashmiri region. About 3,000 supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistans largest Islamic group, rallied in Islamabad, Pakistans capital, chanting Allahu akbar, or God is great.
BAGHDAD - Iraqs transport ministry said on Sunday it had frozen contracts with Denmark and Norway in protest against blasphemous cartoons published in the countries newspapers. This decision was taken to protest the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and we will not accept any reconstruction money from Denmark or Norway, said a spokesman on behalf of Transport Minister Salam Al Malaki.
Saddam Hussein's lawyers have alleged that an Iraqi court denied them access to their client and claimed the decision was part of an illegal plan to convict the former leader at any cost. It is the first time such a request has been rejected since the former leader was allowed access to lawyers over a year ago, said chief defence lawyer 
At least $700 million of funds from the Palestinian Authority's coffers have been squandered or stolen by officials over the past few years, an internal investigation has revealed. The news comes as Israeli officials agreed on Sunday to make an overdue payment of about $45 million owed to the Palestinians, but say future transfers will be halted once Hamas forms the next Palestinian government. 
Two Jordanian tabloid editors have been arrested after their newspapers were the only Arab-based publications to print controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, a source said. The caricatures, which included depictions of the Muslim prophet as a knife-wielding bedouin and another as wearing a time bomb-shaped turban, have sparked widespread protests in the Muslim world.
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers have rejected government proposed peace talks in Geneva after reports of abductions of pro-Tiger aid workers. The government said on Friday talks were due to start in Switzerland on 15 February and were necessary to stop recent violence from escalating and reviving a two-decade-old war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demand that any talks should focus on implementation of a ceasefire agreed in 2002, and, in particular, a clause that stipulates that the state must disarm paramilitaries the rebels say are attacking them. They also warn that talks are doomed if the government tries to amend the terms. An anonymous rebel source said: "15 February is completely out. The Tigers are keen to go to Geneva for talks; but the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) abductions have affected the atmosphere."
A day after the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog voted to report Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions related to its nuclear program, Tehran said diplomacy may still resolve its apparent impasse with the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We have not reached a dead end, and there have been more difficult situations," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman 
