Efforts are under way to stage a counterprotest to Cindy Sheehans planned March 11 demonstration outside Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and Ramstein Air Base.
Sheehan, who is the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and who protested the war last summer outside President Bushs Texas ranch, is scheduled to participate in a daylong war protest.
Stefan Prystawik, a German writer in Bonn, is working to stage a counterprotest. On his Web site, at www.stefan-prystawik.de, Prystawik characterizes Sheehan as the great-great grandmother of all Bush haters.
Sheehans planned protest is highly inappropriate, and her complaints are very much an internal U.S. matter, Prystawik said.
First of all, its completely inappropriate to instrumentalize the troops here particularly, and above all, those who have suffered severe injuries and are at the hospital, he said. They are coming here with an attitude to deliberately demoralize troops who just got back or are going to go back [to Iraq].
Also Friday, organizers of Sheehans protest said that they had obtained permission from German officials in Landstuhl and Ramstein to have their demonstration March 11.
On that morning, a press conference will take place in a Protestant parish hall in Landstuhl. After the press conference, Sheehan is scheduled to share her views, said Detlev Besier, a Protestant pastor in Landstuhl and an event organizer.
It is still possible that the group may try to take gifts and baked goods to troops in Landstuhl, the U.S. military hospital where wounded troops are treated before being flown from Ramstein to the United States.
After a break for lunch, protesters will walk from Landstuhl to a parking lot outside Ramsteins west gate where a Camp Casey will be set up to pay tribute to those who have died in the Iraq war.
Sheehans son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004.
Besier said his group does not like the high emotions stirred by news of Sheehans visit.
We want to bring the emotion down, he said.
We dont want to have emotional conflict. Its not our aim to come too close to somebody. We want to have discussion, and we know Cindy Sheehan wants to open the minds of mothers who have sons, children around the world. "It's not like we care. It's just politics."
#1
I know that highway quite well. There's a fence on the left (as you head toward the gate) that is the fence around Ramstein AB. There's ANOTHER fence on the right that's around an ammunition storage area. Both are guarded by the Bundeswehr, the German Army. Anybody messing with either fence will find themselves ventilated by a 7.62 HV round VERY quickly.
The road's beautiful! Tall trees rise on both sides, and it's straight for almost 90% of the way. I'm sure there will be armored cars at both sides of the rail line into the airbase, and another one or two at the one side road. I'm sure Cindy will be quite surprised at how COLD it can get in March in that part of Germany. I've got a friend at Ramstein - I'll ask her if there's any snow on the ground.
Cindy Sheehan is an arrogant moron. I hope she finds out just how unpopular she is, not only to the American GIs, but to the people of Rheinland-Pfalz.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/26/2006 22:15
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Fearing arrest, Brig.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi decided Sunday to cancel plans to travel and study in England over the summer after the IDF Judge Advocate General recommended he refrain from entering the United Kingdom where he could be charged with committing war crimes. Kochavi, the Gaza Division Commander, was enrolled for studies at the Royal College of Defense Studies. thanks EU/Jack Straw/ Italian and Spanish Uber-Judges
Kochavi has held several senior field positions including head of the Paratrooper's Brigade and was supposed to be the only IDF officer to attend the prestigious academy this summer. think they'd arrest Barghouti? Me neither, which makes them cowards and pussies and moral equivalents to the Arab anti-semites
But following a recommendation by Judge Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Avi Mandelblit, Kochavi canceled his trip and decided not to risk the chance of being arrested upon his arrival and tried for war crimes. Mandelblit based his recommendation on the near-arrest half-a-year-ago of former OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. (res.) Doron Almog who landed in London but refrained from disembarking after he was warned that detectives were waiting to take him into custody on suspicion of war crimes.
The warrant, which had been issued per the request of a pro-Palestinian Muslim group, accused Almog of illegally ordering the demolition of 59 Palestinian homes in Rafiah in 2002.
Senior officers expressed concern with Kochavi's decision to cancel his trip to London warning that unless the issue was resolved on a diplomatic level Mendilblit might decide to recommend that senior officers who served during the Intifada refrain from traveling to England, Spain and other countries in Western Europe.
"This problem needs to be solved on a diplomatic level and with those European countries passing new legislation which doesn't allow them to arrest and try foreign military officers," one senior security official said. "Until then, IDF officers might just not be allowed to travel to specific countries."
Try Israelis or totally isolate them, either suits the anti-Israel crowd just fine.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006
17:37 ||
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#1
FrankG the UK is full of anti-semites. To be of the left is by default to accept anti-semitism as a positive meme. It's the same story all over Europe too. Why do you think they have to have laws on the books over there that we can live with out in realtionship to the "Holocaust" and National Socailism?
Posted by: SPoD ||
02/26/2006 20:07
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I briefly heard one report on Fox about this -- it then disappeared. Finally found this article.. there is some shakin' up goin' on at the State Department.. trying to convince these folks, they work for the United States of America
Tuesday, February 21, 2006; A04
A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect.
Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some political appointees as disloyal to the administration's policies.
"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."
About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason.
The dispute has thrown a spotlight on the tensions that often exist between longtime career employees and the political appointees who come and go with successive administrations. It is also being closely watched within the State Department as another sign that, under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's leadership, the department will no longer be at war with the rest of the administration.
Rice and her top aides have sought to heal the damaging rifts that existed with the Pentagon and other agencies. Some State Department officials privately acknowledge that they used to be thrilled by the department's reputation as a renegade in President Bush's first term, but they say the message has become clear in the past year that such attitudes are no longer acceptable.
Few people would speak about the controversy for the record, either because they fear retaliation or because they must continue to work with State Department officials in their new jobs.
"The suspicion is we would undermine the policy," said one of the officials who have felt sidelined. "That is what all of us find most offensive. We are here to serve any administration."
Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, who oversaw the reorganization, and Henrietta H. Fore, the undersecretary for management, said in interviews that political motives were not a factor, adding that any change is going to cause distress. Fore said she has listened to employee concerns, reviewed the implementation and determined that "all steps were taken according to the law."
"None of these allegations stand up," Joseph said. "You have got a small group of individuals who are resisting the changes. I am not surprised by that. Change is difficult, but change is absolutely necessary."
The employees who say that they have been targeted once had a back channel to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who they said would on occasion ask them to bypass their superior, John R. Bolton, now the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, with backing from allies in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, frequently battled the rest of the State Department on policy issues.
But Joseph, who worked for Rice at the White House, is an ideological soul mate of Bolton's and retained much of Bolton's staff -- and now officials say the policy disputes that characterized Powell's State Department have largely faded under Rice's tenure. The back channel that these employees used to alert senior management to their problems with Bolton no longer exists, the career officials said.
By many accounts, the decision to merge two key bureaus focusing on nonproliferation and arms control was necessary. The merger was originally approved by Powell, in his waning days as secretary, after the department's inspector general recommended combining the bureaus on the grounds of efficiency and workload. The IG said the nonproliferation bureau -- which seeks to deter the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- was overworked, and the arms-control bureau -- which negotiates and implements arms-control agreements -- was underworked. The IG also recommended that a third bureau, verification and compliance, be downsized.
But once a panel of Joseph's top aides began implementing the plan, some of the IG's recommendations were set aside -- the verification bureau was expanded, not downsized, while officials in the arms-control bureau appeared to attain more authority. Both bureaus had appeared more in sync with the administration's views, officials said.
The merger was accomplished with unusual speed this fall because, officials said, they did not want it to become mired in excessive bureaucracy. "We wanted to pull the Band-Aid quickly as opposed to slowly, hair by hair," one official said.
But other officials said the process was opaque, and even supporters say it could have been better managed because it hurt morale throughout the bureaus and energized intense opposition. "We shouldn't have given the other side ammunition," an advocate of the changes said.
Mark Fitzpatrick, who was deputy assistant secretary for nonproliferation before leaving the department in October after 26 years, said, "I've heard about low morale and a number of people seeking to leave because they don't find the atmosphere as rewarding as it had been when it was not so politicized."
One particular office in the nonproliferation bureau, dealing mainly with the International Atomic Energy Agency, was especially targeted, numerous officials on both sides of the dispute said. Several top officials in the office were close to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and had privately objected to the administration's public campaign to deny him a third term. A former office director who had been on loan to the IAEA asked for his job back -- but was given a non-managerial position in another bureau; the acting office director also did not get the job.
Instead, a relatively junior Foreign Service officer, who is outranked by several officials in the bureau but who is considered skeptical of the IAEA, was named acting head of the office. Last year, two months before ElBaradei and the IAEA were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the official sent an e-mail to his colleagues ridiculing the idea. The subject line read: "A Nobel for the IAEA? Please."
Three officials familiar with the reorganization said the actions were necessary because this office -- and others -- had been openly opposed to administration policies and thus was perceived as incompetent. "You can't expect everyone to agree with you. But you do expect results," one official said. "The office became a black hole and was very ineffective."
Supporters of these officials acknowledge that they were sometimes appalled by administration positions, with several saying they had at times been embarrassed for the United States. But they also noted that the IG report had praised the office as being effective, well-run and having high morale -- in contrast to the assessment of its counterpart in the arms-control bureau.
#1
"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."... Few people would speak about the controversy for the record... because they must continue to work with State Department officials in their new jobs.
Rank insubordination on the part of state department officers? Never! ;p I think these guys are senior state dept officials. I would have no problem reminding them that they work in the executive branch, and the chief executive is POTUS. Some of those smug a*holes over in Foggy Bottom have been setting their own agenda for too long... No harm in reminding them who they work for. I doubt this affects mid or low level folks - it's the high level career folks who think they should be making policy.
#3
I have a spare pair of hobnail boots, but they're prolly too big for Condi. She should just go ahead and schedule private appointments with all the Dept Heads, Desk Chiefs, and mebbe everyone else who's been there for more than, say, 10 years - and apply SPo'D's banned guaranteed sink-trap solution.
#7
The mere fact that we have people drawing government pay who think the IAEA is doing a good job astounds me. Believing in el Baradai is the definition of incompetence. He and Khan are the fathers of the 'islamic bomb'.
#9
Out of all the administration "Vulcans", she is the one most befitting that label. I would not be surprised if she had personally ferreted out the disloyal heads at State.
There is a good possibility that she has a photographic memory, and did things like give them individual briefings using chosen keywords, then looked for those keywords in leaked news items later.
There is also no mention that Clinton purged every republican-leaning bureaucrat he could, from the WH travel office and all over town. Many of the scoundrels he replaced them with tried to sabotage their office when Clinton was leaving his, knowing they would undoubtedly be replace by Bush.
The war here has gone through three distinct phases, each with its own feel and style of operation.
The first period, from May 2003 to July 2004, was characterized by drift and wishful thinking, military insiders say, with top U.S. officials at first refusing to recognize they were facing an insurgency and then committing a series of policy and tactical blunders that appear to have enflamed opposition to the U.S. occupation.
The second phase began in the summer of 2004, when Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. replaced Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as the top U.S. commander in Iraq and developed -- for the first time -- a U.S. campaign plan. That plan, which looked forward from August 2004 to December 2005, gave U.S. operations a new coherence, directing a series of actions intended to clear the way for Iraqi voters to establish a new government.
Now, after parliamentary elections held in December, the U.S. effort has entered a third stage. The current emphasis is on reducing the U.S. role in the war, putting Iraq army and police forces in the forefront as much as possible -- but not so fast that it breaks them, as it did in April 2004, when a battalion ordered to Fallujah mutinied. Eventually, Casey said, the hope is that U.S. forces will be able to focus on foreign fighters, while Iraqi security forces take on the native insurgency. But that hasn't happened yet. The hardest fighting, especially in rural areas, still is being done by U.S. troops.
Several aspects make this third phase different from the war of a year or two ago:
· The U.S. effort now is characterized by a more careful, purposeful style that extends even to how Humvees are driven in the streets. For years, "the standard was to haul ass," noted Lt. Col. Gian P. Gentile, commander of the 8th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, which is based near a bomb-infested highway south of Baghdad. Now his convoy drivers are ordered to move at 15 mph. "I'm a firm believer in slow, deliberate movement," he said. "You can observe better, if there's IEDs [improvised explosive devices] on the road." It also is less disruptive to Iraqis and sends a message of calm control, he noted.
· U.S. commanders spend their time differently. Where they once devoted much of their efforts to Iraqi politics and infrastructure, they now focus more on training and supporting the Iraqi police and army. "I spent the last month talking to ISF [Iraqi security force] commanders," noted Gentile, who holds a doctorate in American history from Stanford. "Two years ago I would have spent all my time talking to sheiks."
· Real progress is being made in training Iraqi forces, especially its army, according to every U.S. officer asked about the issue. One of the surprises, they say, has been that an Iraqi soldier, even one who is overweight and undertrained, is more effective standing on an Iraqi street corner than the most disciplined U.S. Army Ranger. "They get intelligence we would never get," noted Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East. "They sense the environment in a way that we never could."
#1
Other phases of the war not mentioned include enticing foreign fighters to enter Iraq so that they can be concentrated and killed fighting our soldiers in Iraq, rather than free to travel to America from their home countries and attack our civilians.
Another phase is the SOCOM shadow war, happening concurrently with the overt war. Its personnel do not have a concept of operations limited to Iraq, but are focused on the entire region and beyond. Their actions are complementary to the conventional force, and just as deadly.
A third phase is using the war to radically restructure all parts of our military, upgrading and replacing vast amounts of technology, and doing so at an exaggerated pace.
#3
Real progress is being made in training Iraqi forces, especially its army, according to every U.S. officer asked about the issue. One of the surprises, they say, has been that an Iraqi soldier, even one who is overweight and undertrained, is more effective standing on an Iraqi street corner than the most disciplined U.S. Army Ranger. "They get intelligence we would never get," noted Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East. "They sense the environment in a way that we never could."
That quote reminds me of the time that I was "advising" a National Guard unit in a an exercise in a remote part of Panama (when Noreiga was still our pal). A Special Forces unit had been there for 30 days prior, winning hearts and minds. The Guard unit was pretty weak. On the hardcore-social club axis, they were solidly on the "social club" side of things. But I tell you, even though they could hardly speak a few words of Spanish, within a few days they were the locals best buds. And when the SF reconned us, the locals ratted them out to us, even though nobody in the unit had seen the recon. When the SF attacked us, the Guardsmen had figured out the direction of attack from the locals' reports and were waiting for them. I learned a couple of things that week.
Hat tip to Rand Simberg. YJCMTSU.
RSVP ...Well, at least it's according to Emily Post.
Storm the White House
Multi-Day Event, Beginning March 15, ... Aw nuts, I gotta wash my hair that day, sorry.
... come when you can and stay as long as you can - we are taking over the White House until they leave. Way kewl, I've heard the food in that place is outta this world.
What if they can't stay long enough?
Torture, Occupation, Genocide - Must End Now.
TAKE THE WHITE HOUSE BY STORM - Stop Genocide, Torture and Occupation You mean by Syria, the Sudan, Red China, Al-Q?...No?..then who...ohhhhh...
For Nat Turner, ... Mass murderer
For Martin ... Nobel prize winner and a revered American civil rights leader.
and Coretta, ... Also a revered American civil rights leader in her own right.
For all the Torture and Assassination in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and many others - NOW we're talkin'! About time you guys started protesting the Taliban, Al Qin Iraq, the gangs in Haiti - whaddya mean, "Not them"???
Since when do they matter?
We will not allow the Slave Holders that Still Prevail in this Country to Rule us any longer. There haven't been any for about 140 years, IIRC
Imprisonment and torture based on race, religion, resources or region is no different than the slavery we sought to abolish years ago. Waiting for concrete examples....
The Administration is Criminal and if they will not step down, we must storm in. Chill, willya? January 20th, 2009 they are history. Sheesh, talk about impatient...
They're afraid of eight years of McCain and/or Guiliani and/or Rice ...
We are calling on all Member Nations of the U.N., All Representatives and Justices in the World Court and International Criminal Courts, all soldiers and CIA agents and government officials who have been blackmailed by the dictators to incarcerate Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Gonna be an AWFULLY small crowd.
The Political Cooperative ... "Political Cooperative"...boy, THAT'S worked so well in the past, hasn't it?
Wonder if they have a 'Commissar' ...
... will put a new government in place that is comprised of people from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and all the organizations that have finally made us aware of the truth of the savage practices and illegal policies of our government in assassinating our own officials as well as people throughout the world who oppose their criminal activity. Man, just when you think they can't get ANY loopier...
We need all of you to save U.S. citizens and Global Victims from their ongoing criminal activity. We are calling on the military, police, citizens and religious organizations to stand with us and help us to bring democracy ... "To be run by the RIGHT people, of course.."
... back to the United States and by doing so, free the world from the wrath, occupation, theft, torture, blackmail and assassination by the Criminals in the United States Government. ...But what about the Taliban, and Iran and -OWWWW!!! Quit hitting me!!!!
What they have done all over the world is much worse than what Saddam Hussein has done, ... "Those hundred thousand dead in the mass graves? Pfeh! We put leashes on Iraqi criminals - oh the HUMANITY!!"
Give them points though for admitting that Saddam did something wrong ...
... so why are they not in jail too? They have admitted to international and national crimes, so why have they not been taken to Court too?
Location: White House, Washington DC 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC 20500
Sponsored By:
We are requesting participation from all members of the United Nations, PFAW, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Code Pink, police, soldiers, ACLU, CIA, NSA and International Courts of Justice/World Court. http://www.PoliticalCooperative.Org The usual cast of idiots suspects, I see.
I suspect there are a few soldiers and police who would be glad to 'join' these idiots, but the idiots might not like the results ...
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/26/2006
15:08 ||
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#1
Ah geeze ....... these people...
Posted by: RJB in JC MO ||
02/26/2006 18:13
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#2
Mark Martin, Nascar hero , wouldn't haven't anything to do with these assholes. Don't let the drool tell you anything different
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 18:15
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#3
OK, I admit I haven't been paying close attention, but don't we have one of those whatchamacallit election thingies every 3 or 4 years. You know, where everyone - non-felon registered voters, anyway - votes for like, who gets to be President and stuff until the next time, when we do it all over again.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 18:19
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#5
Um...given they're advocating overthrow of the legit US government, I'd say that makes them in Rebellion and they should be arrested and tried for it. Hit efvery one of them with the FULL force of the law, max sentences, no bail, no parole.
#6
To them 'Democracy' is where only the right sort of people's vote's are counted (even if they are dead, imaginary, criminial, or non-citizens) - See the 'People's Republic of Washington State'.
#9
This stuff can get you tossed in jail. It's crosses over the "free speech" line buy a lot and into conspiracy to comit an felony.
Yup YJCMTSU.
Posted by: SPoD ||
02/26/2006 20:03
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#10
I bet you these children didn't get their allowance when they were yuths.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 20:06
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#11
HAHAHA.. THE PROBLEM IS A MAJORITY OF AMERICANS RE-ELECTED BUSH IN '04..... SO THEIR IDEA OF JUSTICE IS TRYING TO OVERTHROW A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT????
#13
And though it would be a complete waste of our time, who wants to call "Darrow Boggiano" and laugh at him?? Or better yet, lets call the FBI and let them in on their planned protest, these people should be put in jail.
#17
Just googled that telephone number with and without the dots. Is anyone surprised? It belongs to someone in that bastion of conservatism--San Francisco.
#18
Um...given they're advocating overthrow of the legit US government, I'd say that makes them in Rebellion and they should be arrested and tried for it. Hit efvery one of them with the FULL force of the law, max sentences, no bail, no parole.
No, it's time to go beyond the stupidity of "law enforcement" and REALLY stomp these A$$CLOWNS into the turf. They should be met with force - overwhelming force, with no quarter given. Shoot them, blow them to kingdom come, napalm the remnants, and crush what's left with the treads of tanks. At the same time, arrest every leading member of the Democratic Party (and a bunch of Repuglycons, too), confiscate their computers, tap their email and telephone, and sequester their aides. IF ANY OF THEM are involved in this, hang them by the neck on the Mall for 60 days, so no one will believe that anything like this will ever be tolerated again. As for me, I'll be on the lookout in my own home town for sympathizers. Photos WILL be taken and emailed to the FBI and the White House.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/26/2006 21:40
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#19
I'd suggest the very same should apply to MS-13 and all other bangers. All of them. If a cleanup is in the works, might as well make a clean slate the goal.
#20
1 person voted for Nader in DuPage - (and the guy admited it to me. Nobody votes Commie here or even SanFran politics so guess I won't have anybody fun to report.)
#21
Google the SF telephone number and then use Yahoo to search for the number's holder. It comes up to City Sites. Very interesting 1960's type stuff.
From a 2003 speech... "We will win the war on terrorism, and the United States and India will win it together - because we represent good, and terrorists are evil incarnate. God will make it so."
By Ambassador ROBERT D BLACKWILL
Ten days ago, I gave my final policy speech as US ambassador to India. Today, I shall share with you personal thoughts about how this country has shaped me during these past two years.
Unlike Siddhartha, my meditations while preparing this address have not produced total Enlightenment. Unfortunately, Brahma and Saraswati, because of my own limitations, will not adequately inspire my remarks on this occasion with regard to my spiritual and intellectual advancement. I clearly need to spend more time at Brahmas temple in Pushkar. And, despite my continuing contemplations, I am not always able to follow Krishnas wise words, Be thou of even mind. He might have added, including at your Round Tables at Roosevelt House.
Notwithstanding my many inadequacies and the persistence of Maya, the ever-present veil of illusion, please permit me to proceed since India is the great storyteller, and because I am soon leaving this amazing country.
#4
Not your typical ambassador.
The lack of influence of the islamophiles in the State Department probably helps...
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 15:45
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#5
his speech alone makes me want to visit India
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 15:56
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#6
Ah, that got me all choked up - I spent five years as a kid there ('60-65). I remember going to the Ellora caves and being absolutely enthralled. And driving to Mysore on washed out dirt/mud roads right after the monsoon. And lots of other very unpleasant stuff that doesn't get montioned in the tourist brochures. Someday I will go back ...
The Indian security establishment is having a harrowing time providing support to the American personnel responsible for United States President George W Bush's security in India. The Americans make their own arrangements wherever their president travels. They have a simple dictum: Trust no one. They transfer tons of equipment, almost-science-fiction technology and highly trained manpower to protect the most powerful man in the world.
President Bush arrives on March 1. And yet, as of now, plans of his visit are almost a secret. Massive security arrangements are being made, keeping in view the threat from Osama bin Laden's terror network. Even though you would naturally expect the security concerns, the sheer scale, sophistication and budget of it boggles the mind.
Besides Air Force One -- in which the President travels -- more than a dozen aircraft will arrive in New Delhi from the US and different parts of world. More than 700 personnel -- including American security forces -- are being flown in. Some with Bush, and some even from other countries. Three presidential helicopters - which are equipped with cutting edge landing systems that help them operate in near zero visibility - have been flown in by cargo carriers in a disassembled state. They are being put together piece by piece. Indian security officials were stunned to see the packaging and the sophisticated transportation of the helicopters.
The kind of communication equipment being brought to fit into Bush's vehicle would not look out of place in a Star Wars film. A special window is being set up at Delhi airport to clear American equipment for the Bush visit. Special permissions are being given for the huge quantities of arms and ammunition being flown in by the American 'advance teams.' Bush has about eight official engagements scheduled in India. And eight special teams have been constituted to protect Bush - one for each programme.
A closely guarded strategy is being worked out for the landing of the President's aircraft. A full security drill is likely to take place at the Palam Air Force Base after February 27. On Monday, February 20, at about 10 am, two senior US embassy security officials visited the Central Hall of the Parliament carrying a sketch of the security arrangements made for Bill Clinton when he addressed a joint session six years ago. Since the Communist parties have opposed Bush's proposed address to a joint session of Parliament, the Americans didn't spend much time inside Parliament. So far, there is no confirmation of the American president's speech to Parliament. Sources said Petroleum Minister Murli Deora has been asked to cajole Communist leaders opposed to the Bush speech.
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006
11:32 ||
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A FRIEND OF MINE took his young daughter to visit the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, explaining to her that the place is important because years ago it sold books no other store would even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive. So, although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.
However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.
"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists." Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
02/26/2006
11:27 ||
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#1
For the left, freedom of speech has a different meaning. It doesn't mean you are free to say what you believe. It means you are expected to say what others' believe: the officially approved, PC views of other leftists.
#3
Orianna is like 76, and has inoperable cancer, and could still kick that clerk's ass: figuratively, morally, and intellectually
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 14:13
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Some lefties are losing it so much that they can pick up almost any news story and find "fascists" or "fascism" in it. It is their most common invective and they use it to describe anything they don't like. They punctuate their sentences with it to such a point they sound like imbeciles.
#6
Some people learn; others just keep getting dumber.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/26/2006 16:52
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#7
mhw - true! Wisdom comes with experience
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 16:58
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#8
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years - attributed to Mark Twain.
The raucous reception by some members of Germany's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community to "Valley of the Wolves," a movie depicting crazed U.S. troops in Iraq massacring a wedding party and a Jewish doctor removing organs from prisoners, has German politicians worried so worried, Bavaria's interior minister sent intelligence service agents to theaters showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals. The $10 million dollar film, by Turkish director Serdan Akar, has already been wildly successful in Turkey, where its debut was attended by the wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "It is an extraordinary film that will go down in history," Turkish Parliament speaker Bulent Arinc, president of the Turkish National Assembly told the Anatolia press agency. Triumph of the Will went down in history, too.
But that's not the way German officials see it. Edmund Stoiber, Bavaria's conservative prime minister, asked theater owners to not show "this racist and anti-Western hate film." Bernd Neumann, Germany's expressed concern that the film "raises serious questions about the values of our society and our ability to instill them". This week, Cinemaxx, Germany's largest theater chain, announced the movie would be pulled from its offerings. "These kinds of hate messages aren't what we need in a society filled with immigrants and mixed ethnic and religious groups," said Michael Kohlstruck, a political scientist at Berlin's Technical University. "All it takes is a few people mobilized by the film to become a danger by carrying out attacks."
The movie, which began showings in Germany three weeks ago, has played to sold out audiences since. Over 130,000 people, mostly young Muslims, saw the film in its first five days. The London Telegraph reports Berlin audiences, made up mostly of Turkish young men, clapping furiously when the building housing the U.S. military commander in northern Iraq is blown up and a standing ovation accompanied by shouts of "Allah is great!" when the movie's American antagonist, played by Billy Zane, is stabbed in the chest. "The Americans always behave like this," one 18-year-old viewer said. "They slaughtered the Red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam. I was not shocked by the film, I see this on the news every day." Someone who reads the Euro press, I see.
While the film could be dismissed as an action film in which Muslims turn the tables on Rambo, the anti-Semitic element has drawn some of the most serious criticism. The villain of the movie is an American Jewish doctor, played by Gary Busey, who selects Iraqi prisoners, in a manner reminiscent of Nazi concentration camp doctor Joseph Mengele, and removes their organs to sell to rich buyers in the U.S. and Israel. "Wolves" director Akar employed Soner Yalcin, a journalist who has popularized the Islamist notion that many of Turkey's leaders are descended from Jews, as an adviser on the film.
While some German politicians and Jewish leaders have called for a ban on the film, that seems unlikely since it is no more violent than other action films. Ahlin Sahdin, the film's distributor in Germany, sees the conflict in broader terms: "When a cartoonist insults two billion Muslims it is considered freedom of opinion, but when an action film takes on the Americans it is considered demagoguery. Something is wrong." Right. Are we supposed to start seething and perhaps burning down embassies now?
The film begins by recounting an actual event that occurred in northern Iraq in July 2003, according to the Forward, when U.S. troops arrested and held 11 Turkish soldiers who were later released. The fictional Turkish hero seeks revenge for the humiliation of his fellow Turks and sets the scene for American troops to massacre innocent guests at a wedding party, firebomb a mosque during evening prayers and conduct summary executions.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 13:32
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#2
Hollywood needs another Award show. No, really. They could call the awards The Benedict (as in B. Arnold). Gary Busey would have an inside track for this year's Benedict.
#5
"The Americans always behave like this," one 18-year-old viewer said. "They slaughtered the Red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam. I was not shocked by the film, I see this on the news every day."
As opposed to the oh-so-civilized and benign Turks? Just ask the Armenians.
#7
As opposed to the oh-so-civilized and benign Turks? Just ask the Armenians.
But that's different. They were dhimmi who violated the pact.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/26/2006 21:09
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#8
I think it's safe to say Billy Zane and Gary Busey have no career left in Hollywood.
Both will have major motion pictures next year. Their failures will be blamed on the pig-ignorance and lack of sophistication of the American movie-goer.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/26/2006 21:11
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#9
It'd be nice to see a hollywood director from the 1940's come back to do a film about 9-11 and the war against jihad. where is our modern day frank capra, john houston, or alfred hitchcock? we could use a good shot in the arm, don't you thnk?
Posted by: Mark Z ||
02/26/2006 21:28
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In addition to a modest number of seagoing warships, including submarines, frigates, and large patrol vessels, as well a some amphibious ships and mine warfare vessels, the Iranian Navy, and the maritime wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, owns a substantial number small vessels. Not just the "official" small craft, but lots and lots of small boats that regularly carry guys with guns. No official numbers are given, but it appears that the Iranians have several thousand such small craft. These range in size from 23 foot long, motorized "Boston whalers," up to 65 feet long, 28-ton MIG-G-1900 patrol boats, with a few old American "Swift" boats thrown in.
These vessels are armed in various ways. The tiniest craft usually carry small arms, and personnel aboard have been observed wielding hand-held anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. The larger ones usually have heavy machine guns and light cannon. Many of these boats are fast, some able to make as much as 60 kilometers an hour. These craft are ideally suited to "guerrilla warfare at sea" in the constrained waters of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, particularly since major navies lack much capability to oppose "swarm" attacks by large numbers of fast surface craft.
Posted by: ed ||
02/26/2006
10:26 ||
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#1
There's just no way we can defeat the fearsome Farsi Flotilla, unless we send in ummm..... a dreaded Oliver Hazard Perry Class frigate. Any still in Commission?
#4
A destroyer escort won't be able to take out 200 high speed boats without having their Aegis radars shredded by RPGs, HMGs and cannon. Then they become vulnerable to antiship missiles. The helicopters will run out of ammo before they could destroy but a small fraction. Hope the ship's decks are lined are lined with HMGs like the WWII destroyers against Kamikazies.
Posted by: ed ||
02/26/2006 12:05
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#5
OHP doesn't have a phased array radar.... doesn't have much at all. 3 inch gun, CIWS and a pair of helicopters a few 20 mm tacked on usually. I doubt they could explain using a Harpoon against a $20,000 target. Still, I figure 3 cannon could likely kill 60 boats before running out of ammunition, the 20mm another 5, don't know about the helicopters. Might be able to run over a few too.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
02/26/2006 19:19
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#7
A destroyer escort won't be able to take out 200 high speed boats without having their Aegis radars shredded by RPGs, HMGs and cannon. Then they become vulnerable to antiship missiles.
1. We're talking warships, not VLCCs.
2. That implies the Iranian boats will get close enough to do damage. The objective is to deal with them from a distance.
The helicopters will run out of ammo before they could destroy but a small fraction.
Don't discount the helicopter's effectiveness, especially at night and with radar support.
Hope the ship's decks are lined are lined with HMGs like the WWII destroyers against Kamikazies.
.50 cals and Mk23 grenade launchers were standard armament on the ships I was on in the Gulf. Also the Mark 6 Mod 1 Bushmaster II. Although using ship's power, mounting is relatively simple.
#10
Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.
Posted by: Quintus Arrius ||
02/26/2006 23:02
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#11
Folks, the A-10 is carrier-capable. It's not designed for it, it's pilots aren't trained to operate from a carrier, but it CAN do it - and has. I'd like to see any of these "small craft" stand up to one pass by an A-10.
In addition, the Marines aboard LHAs have Cobra helicopters and AV-8B Harriers. These can also operate off of regular carriers, and in a pinch, even off the helipads of Arleigh Burke DDGs.
Then there's always the old fall-back: catch them in port with a ton of iron bombs. I don't think Iran's "guerilla fleet" is a serious, long-term threat. It's a one-time shot, followed by a long list of "next of kin" messages to Iranian mommas.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/26/2006 23:37
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The Talibans former spokesman, Rahmatullah Hashemi, is now an undergraduate at Yale University here.
It was largely for his children's sake that he was pursuing an education on the other side of the earth for their future and, in some inchoate hope-filled way, for his country's future too. What he often said was that he wanted to be a bridge between the Islamic world and the West. None of the summer students in New Haven knew much about his personal circumstances; of his history they knew nothing at all. He had discussed it with the Yale admissions office, and with an administrator in the provost's office who during a dinner with him seemed concerned that he might be a spy.
He did not like to dwell on the past, much less advertise it. To avoid alarming eavesdroppers, he referred to his former compatriots as "the Tangoes." But sometimes the past had a way of finding him. At the start of the fall semester, he made his way to the Henry R. Luce Hall at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. He had a 1 o'clock class PLSC 145, Terrorism: Past, Present and Future, with Prof. Douglas Woodwell. It was a popular new offering; hardly a seat was open. As he stood in the back hunting for a place to sit, he realized that he had been in Luce Hall before. Four years earlier. March 2001. The university saved a seat for him that afternoon, down on the stage. He was the featured speaker, a "roving ambassador" from the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan. He was 22 years old. The newspapers said 24, but he had been misrepresenting his age for a long time.
Twenty-two years old and a member of the Taliban at that moment, in fact, the very face and voice of the regime in America. Per decree, his beard was full, his head swaddled in a turban. He was dressed in an Afghan tunic and loose-fitting pants. Neither he nor anyone else in Luce Hall that day could have foreseen the catastrophe approaching or what peculiar fate was in store for him.
not so sure about the former - the Taliban were cruisin for a bruisin before 9/11
He could remember looking out at the faces of the Yale students in the audience. They were his age, his generation after a fashion they were taliban, too, talib being the Arabic word for seeker or student but they sat on the far side of an abyss, and not in his wildest dreams could he have imagined himself as one of them....
A few weeks after our visit, aching for his family, Rahmatullah hit a low point. The semester was ending. Everyone was heading home to see his family but him. He could not leave the country on his visa with any assurance of its being renewed in time for class. The future, his vague hopes of returning to Afghanistan to work in education, seemed remote. He said to Ahmed one day, "What is the meaning of life?" and answered for himself: "Family." And then out poured reasons that he should abandon his education and go home. He was neglecting his duties as a father and husband. His children were pining for him; his wife was upset. He missed his parents. And all the young minds around him were so fresh, it was daunting sometimes, people who looked as if they were hardly paying attention in class blazed through their exams. What was he really learning? When you studied political science, you were always focused on how messed up the world was. He wished he could study the stars, but as Hoover had sensibly said, "The world doesn't need an Afghan astrophysicist." He had been raised in a faith, buoyed at every turn by the certainty of a higher order, a purposeful universe, and now here in this shrine of critical thinking he was learning to doubt, not to believe.
#4
If he was an Afghanistan educated astro-physicist, we probably wouldn't have the Taliban. They still need translaters, and it sounds like the idealogy has lost its luster, so I'd say we may have another asset in the WoT.
#3
Slow Joe Biden didn't mention this in his Fox News blather appearance
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 11:41
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#4
None of the demogogues will acknowledge this, just as they have ignored other inconvenient facts in the steady trickle of info which moves the DPW buyout of the Brit firm to non-issue status. They'll just move on to the next BDS [impeachment] meme.
Instead of wasting time re-explaining the facts on these memes for the 10th100th 1000th time, I'm looking forward to when they are reduced to claiming [screeching] Bush has a secret NeoCon Halliburton Martian Love Child. Then we can enjoy the show, too. Just imagine the Giant Phallic Puppets and the "Bush Fucked! Shoulda Sucked!" T-shirts.
#1
Oh. I thought this was going to be about something else Ray Nagin said.
Posted by: Matt ||
02/26/2006 10:54
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#2
I call bs. Of course I am biased being allergic like millions of others to cows milk. Just another marketing scheme disguised as scientific research.
The Marine Corps formally entered the world of military special operations Friday by establishing a separate command devoted to small-unit tactics and stealthy reconnaissance.
It's work they've done as far back as World War II, but never before as part of the U.S. Special Operations Command. The change means battalions of Marines will be focused on special ops work just as Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets and Rangers are.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made the change official after arriving at Camp Lejeune aboard an Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. He said special ops Marines will help "seek new and innovative ways to take the fight to the enemy."
Demand for highly trained special operations forces has increased as the U.S. war against terrorists continues.
"We face a ruthless enemy that lurks in shadows," Rumsfeld said. "It has become vital the Department of Defense and armed forces arrange ourselves in new and unconventional ways to succeed in meeting the peril of our age."
The Marines plan to establish their first special operations company in May and have the command fully staffed with about 2,500 troops by 2010. The command will recruit corporals, sergeants and officers with reconnaissance experience and language training.
As part of the change, the Marine anti-terrorism brigade headquartered at Lejeune will go out of business and shift some of its troops to the special operations command. The command will have combat battalions on both U.S. coasts, along with support units and schools to teach special operations skills to U.S. and foreign troops.
Units to train foreign military officers will deploy within months, Marine Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee said. A special operations company will deploy with an expeditionary unit aboard ships by the end of the year, other military officials said.
The Tampa, Fla.-based U.S. Special Operations Command will control the Marines' special forces.
Special operations will give the Marines "a role they otherwise would not be able to get, to do counterterrorism," said military analyst John Pike of Washington-based Globalsecurity.org.
"The struggle against evil doers is a growth industry and the Marines want a piece of that," Pike said. "The special operations community is getting a lot larger and they need more people."
Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:
''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''
Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.
What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.
The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.
#1
Steyn clarifies so that even the left can understand - if they chose to listen. Think they'll be celebrating that Gays, Lesbians, and Transsexuals parade when Sharia come to town? If so, it'll be a march to a large and foul-smelling bonfire
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 16:10
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#2
You know Frank, you make sharia law sound, well.. Not so bad.
#3
believe in Jesus? You're next on the list....They're just minor-league Nazis wearing thobes. F*&k em and fight back. Demand they show NASCAR in the ME! Teach knife-fighting skills in preschool to all females!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 16:32
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#4
Guns, Frank. NRA safety class and then right into handguns. And rifles.
#5
ya don't hear mahmoud ordering his chattel into the kitchen to cut the lamb up with guns....let them start with what they (at least) got...then guns
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 16:54
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#8
Sometimes I wonder if the left has decided that its only hope for the one-world Socialist happy land is for the Islamists to crush Western Civilization. I figure the left has finally realized (at least the ones who can actually make it from one idea to the next), there is no way they can triumph over democratic capitalism - too many people succeeding, lots of happiness, peace and justice and too many folks who know the truth about socialism. So they have to have some one do the dirty work of overthrowing the system for them(especially as they mostly gator-mouthed hummingbird-tailed wusses).
Maybe they figure - give the west a few decades of Sharia along with some nice historical book burning to ensure no one can remember all those unfortunate facts about Communism in all its nasty forms, and they might actually be able to sell the world wide Socialist revolution to the dhimmidudes. And, of course, get them to do all the hard fighting but hey to make an omelet...
In early 1999, George W. Bush met with eight foreign policy advisors, collectively known as the Vulcans, in his ranch at Crawford, Texas. He was preparing for his White House bid. They were there to tell him about the world.
Well into the briefing, Bush interrupted: Wait a minute. Why arent we talking about India? The Vulcans who included Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz looked at each other. India didnt matter, they explained.
Bushs response: Youre wrong. He gave three reasons.
One, India was a democracy of one billion people and that was just incredible. It is a mantra he still chants with near reverence at the mention of India. Two, Indians were geniuses with software. No Vulcan knew what he was talking about. Three, You all are going on about the need to balance China. You cant do that without India.
Bush later took aside two Vulcans, the present National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Bushs first ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill. If I am elected, I want a paper on how to transform the US-India relationship on my table before inauguration.
In December 2000 Bush became US president-elect. He called in Hadley and Blackwill and demanded, Wheres my paper on India? They had forgotten. They spent Christmas in the White House reading up on this faraway country that the most powerful man in the world was so fixated on.
Bushs first term was tumultuous for much of the world but advantageous to India. Funnily, these apposite experiences were for the same reason: Dubya was, as Rice once put it, convinced that he hadnt come here to leave the world the same way he found it.
Echoing the Vulcans, Bush saw the world unprepared for new threats like rogue states and rogue nukes. So he worked to change the international order. Europe feared the loss of privilege. But an aspiring India saw an opportunity to move up the ladder. The sole superpower was rewriting the global rules; India worked hard to influence the writing in its favour.
It helped that large chunks of Bushs worldview fitted neatly with Indian objectives: missile defence, use of force against terrorism and, finally, reworking the nuclear regime. In each case, India manoeuvred to be inside the tent rather than out.
Nukes were the Big Shift . Ashley Tellis, an author of the US policy, explained that Bush chose to turn Washingtons long-standing approach to New Delhi on its head. His administration embarked on a course of action that would permit India more not less access to controlled technologies. Bill Clinton had offered the same but only if India gave up its nukes.
The new approach was labelled Next Steps in Strategic Partnership. Hadley later admitted the state department couldnt have come up with a duller name. It was a symptom of what bedeviled the India policy of Bushs first term.
NSSP was designed to liberate US technology policy in every sphere that did not require actual US legislation. But there was stiff resistance from mid-level bureaucrats in almost every US agency involved. As one US official said, Every time the various departments would meet, the question everyone would ask is Why should we do this for India? Bush may have had a vision. But for most US officials, India was an ex-Soviet ally, prone to whining and moralising.
The personification of all this was US Secretary of State Colin Powell. A hero in Europe, he was a villain in India. Powell rarely questioned the conclusions of his subordinates about South Asia. When he was told to trust Pakistan, not India, on the Taliban, he believed it. When he was told India was a proliferation threat, he believed it. He was an example of how the obstacle to Indo-US relations is not anti-Indianism, but bureaucrats without imagination, says an Indian official.
Reelection in 2004 allowed Bush to put a more personal stamp on his foreign policy. Rice took over from Powell. Her number three, Nicholas Burns, was put in charge of the India file. The second Bush administration basically asked New Delhi: What should we do to make you believe in us? India asked for a nuclear deal. New Delhi was torn: Should it ask for just a supply of nuclear fuel or should it go the whole hog and ask for de facto nuclear power status? It was the Americans who said, Ask for more, our president really wants to do something for you.
From this was born the July 18th statement and the present negotiations on separating Indias civilian and nuclear programme, a necessary first step to entering the nuclear club.
What Bush sees in India baffles his countrymen. Almost the entire US mainstream has editorialised against his India policy. Even those who implement his policy seem puzzled.
Ambassador David Mulford, during a speech last year underlining how Bush was personally driving the India policy, paused, and in obvious puzzlement added, And hes never even been to this country. Indian Embassy officials in Washington fret the scales will fall from Bushs eyes when he actually arrives here. After all, his only real experience of Indians is the 8,000-strong and wholly unrepresentative community that runs the hi-tech corridor outside Austin, Texas.
Here are two guesses as to why an ex-alcoholic Texan oilman should be toiling so hard for India.
First, Bushs opinions are driven by instinct rather than intellect. Once his opinion forms, it is impervious to even political calculation. Bush once said he loathed Kim Jong-Il. Ditto for Saddam Hussein. When political advisor Karl Rove urged him against invading Iraq until his second term, Bush responded, I am prepared to be a one-term president.
Bush seems to have a gut feeling about India -- a good one. Bushs desire for India to succeed is close to religious; geopolitical explanations are post facto and come from others. During the 2003 campaign Rove urged Bush to bash outsourcing. Bush knew outsourcing meant India and refused.
Second, for Bush Indias democracy means it can never be hostile to the US; it is a natural partner. To believe otherwise is to deny his instinct about his own country. These days Bush lectures Arab leaders to look at India as a model. When he introduced Manmohan Singh to Laura, he couldnt help but gush, Not one Indian Muslim has joined al Qaeda. What better evidence for Dubya that the axiom of the Bush Doctrine democracy cures militancy is true?
Future historians will probably argue Washington was ready for a new policy on India. Indias sun was so clearly rising. Too many Americans had soured on Europe. Chinas mix of dictatorship and capitalism was worrisome. Wonks like Walter Russell Mead have already cubbyholed Bush as a president of the Wilsonian school idealistic world-changers that dont shirk from the use of arms. But right here and now it is about one man, a plan and a faith in two democracies. They always assume that Bush is a dumb guy, but one with incredible luck, a tremendous ability to make the right guesses, and "instinct" that each and every time turns out to be right. They never heard that Bush has a deep animosity to any form of "self-promotion", and if someone ever tried it with him, that was the end of their job interview.
#1
The release of this story, just ahead of the planned Bush visit to Pakistan, is no coincidence. The story may not even be true, but that is not the point. The point is to make sure both India and Pakistan know India has a friend in the White House - a BIG friend.
#3
They never heard that Bush has a deep animosity to any form of "self-promotion", and if someone ever tried it with him, that was the end of their job interview. Neither did I, anonymoose.
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
02/26/2006 18:17
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#4
Edward Yee: That's the one thing you could have done at a Bush interview that was a killer. It came out right when he was elected and he had to interview all sorts of people.
Bam! Dossier closed, have a nice day. You could talk up other people all day, but if you puffed yourself, the door is over there and there will be no phone call. It was no great secret, as the few who screwed up later learned to their horror.
Other than that, Bush preferred the friendly and folksy approach, punctuated with killer questions, for which the interviewee had unlimited time, and had better use a significant amount of it.
The best part was that if Bush accepts you and knows what you offer, you are in his tight circle of intense mutual loyalty.
He also has a down about leaks, which was evidenced by classes being given by the administration to incoming personnel about how not to get trapped or blackmailed into leaking, what to do if you accidently leak, and what will happen to you if you leak.
#6
Vinkat - got nothing against India. The government and businesses of India are looking after their own people. That's the way it should be. Too bad the US govt. (and business community) doesn't feel the same way.
#7
"The government and businesses of India are looking after their own people. That's the way it should be. Too bad the US govt. (and business community) doesn't feel the same way."
You will get no argument from me on this point!
My position is, jobs have been sold overseas for long before Bush.
I think in the interests of disclosure, I'm an American, born and raised. Don't much like outsourcing, as I have benn impacted by it.
But it cannot be blamed on Bush.
Importing Muslims! Bad idea. My wife, (Hindu from pre-partition Pakistan) can tell you, Muslims are BAD NEWS, all the way around.
I agree. There are those that will say that allowing an Islamic country to manage our ports is no big deal, because the security is controled by us.
To them I say, you are idiots. I will not itemize all the reasons why it is bad, saner minds than me have already done so.
We are under a full scale invasion, economicaly and psychologically. Our enemies have discovered what paralizes our political aparatus, and our instinctual resolve.
In essence we have been infected with a pathogen that uses our own system against us. How the .com's of the world can juxtapose "hunter/killer teams" with lets let them manage our ports amazes me.
Zenster has been a voice calling for HARD action, I have called for genocide against our enemies. Numerous voices have enumerated the same but with different language. I don't quibble.
Islam MUST be DESTROYED. This is for all the marbles, we are already WAY behind the 8Ball.
In reality, I will be dead as most of you will be if Islam is allowed to play out its game. I'ts what we leave for our children and grand-children...and maybe our great-grand-children that I worry about.
As horrible as it may sound, the cost of exterminating Islam and its adherents today, is a small price to pay for what the cost of not doing it might bring tomorrow.
If no one else is prepared to harden their resolve and sacrifice their soul, I, and others are. ISLAM
must be stopped.
If it it means killing 1.7 billion people to save the other 5 or so billion, so BE IT!
This could all be obviated by seizing their only source of income. We must inject ourselves as stewards of their future, Without Petro-Dollars they are nothing, we must moderate, or destroy.
I am willing, are you? If so, then write you reps, they don't respond vote them out. Also, buy weapons and ammunition, prepare for the conflict ahead.
Premption: (.com, Frank Git, et al now is the time to stop waffling on both sides of the fence.). NO MORE MUSLIMS in THE USA!
#8
Fuck off. You're a thoughtless fuckwit - "saner minds" - LOL - that's no stretch. Truth is, you haven't read or comprehended the facts on the ports issue. It sounds as though you expect everyone who fears or hates or sees Islam for what it is to just fall in line cuz you're a tough-guy anti-jihadist or some such blather.
I'll wager you don't have the first clue what to do, when or where, much less how. I'll wager the toughest thing you've ever personally faced is someone dissing your threads.
You have opinions. Fine. When the facts are revealed, and it has been glacial on the ports thingy, then you should be man enough to change your opinion to keep synched with them. That you've failed, as Zenster has failed, you invite ridicule. That was, and still is, my point. Many people, far "saner" than you have illuminated the rest of us with facts that make it singularly foolish to continue in your position.
Now you've escalated. If you have been around awhile, you'll know that lecturing me about the dangers of Islam is, at the very least, tantamount to preaching to the choir. You can't teach me dick about Islam in practice. So unless you're a world-renowned fucking expert on their texts, then you're sorta shit out of luck. Save the bandwidth.
Your posts don't impress - we've heard this shit so many times before it's boring. In fact, I'll bet serious money you've been here under other nyms, spouting the same half-baked views. Your inability to adapt makes all of your commentary suspect - or aren't you smart enough to grasp that?
Are you our moron from San Jose? Or a different moron?
Tough guy. Right. I've killed more people than you've had fist-fights with, sonny. Get a grip, and get constructive or get fucked. I won't be around much longer, but I'll be happy to make fun of you every time I see you post more butter-bar wannabee nonsense.
#9
Vinkat Bala Subrumanian: I do see a future alliance between India and the US, but I'm afraid that I also foresee a horrific, apocalyptic, knock-down-drag-out fight between India and China.
With both nations keeping their professional militaries in the rear as second eschelons, and throwing astouding numbers of lightly armed infantry at each other, as in World War I, and to much the same effect, but on a far more grotesque scale.
More than anything else, this would be a demographic war, the cause of which is based on more young men than there are women, or jobs. Men sent to die because they are excess. It would be a war of senseless slaughter, for slaughters' sake.
I do not know how such an eventual war could be averted. The demographic pressure continues to build.
#10
One item that most forget about Bush... he worked in his Dad's White House... he's had experience with Dad as CIA director, then VP and as US President. There was lots he saw about foreign policy from his view in his Dad's White House, that began to formulate some thoughts.
Folks forget, he does have an MBA. That's business and management. These are the folks that are paid to have "the vision," not the day to day operations.
(NYT: Now with even more obnoxious registration. Article shown in full.)
The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada's most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise. Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years in discomfort before receiving treatment.
But no one is about to arrest Dr. Brian Day, who is president and medical director of the center, or any of the 120 doctors who work there. Public hospitals are sending him growing numbers of patients they are too busy to treat, and his center is advertising that patients do not have to wait to replace their aching knees.
The country's publicly financed health insurance system frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.
Dr. Day, for instance, is planning to open more private hospitals, first in Toronto and Ottawa, then in Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Ontario provincial officials are already threatening stiff fines. Dr. Day says he is eager to see them in court. "We've taken the position that the law is illegal," Dr. Day, 59, says. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."
Dr. Day may be a rebel (he keeps a photograph of himself with Fidel Castro behind his desk), but he appears to be on top of a new wave in Canada's health care future. He is poised to become the president of the Canadian Medical Association next year, and his profitable Vancouver hospital is serving as a model for medical entrepreneurs in several provinces.
Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.
But a Supreme Court ruling last June it found that a Quebec provincial ban on private health insurance was unconstitutional when patients were suffering and even dying on waiting lists appears to have become a turning point for the entire country. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services," the court ruled.
In response, the Quebec premier, Jean Charest, proposed this month to allow private hospitals to subcontract hip, knee and cataract surgery to private clinics when patients are unable to be treated quickly enough under the public system. The premiers of British Columbia and Alberta have suggested they will go much further to encourage private health services and insurance in legislation they plan to propose in the next few months.
Private doctors across the country are not waiting for changes in the law, figuring provincial governments will not try to stop them only to face more test cases in the Supreme Court. One Vancouver-based company launched a large for-profit family medical clinic specializing in screening and preventive medicine here last November. It is planning to set up three similar clinics in Toronto, Ottawa and London, Ontario next summer and nine more in several other cities by the end of 2007. Private diagnostic clinics offering MRI tests are opening around the country.
Canadian leaders continue to reject the largely market-driven American system, with its powerful private insurance companies and 40 million people left in the Medicaid insurance program uninsured, as they look to European mixed public-private health insurance and delivery systems. "Why are we so afraid to look at mixed health care delivery models when other states in Europe and around the world have used them to produce better results for patients at a lower cost to taxpayers?" the premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, asked in a speech two weeks ago.
While proponents of private clinics say they will shorten waiting lists and quicken service at public institutions, critics warn that they will drain the public system of doctors and nurses. Canada has a national doctor shortage already, with 1.4 million people in the province of Ontario alone without the services of a family doctor. "If anesthetists go to work in a private clinic," Manitoba's health minister, Tim Sale, argued recently, "the work that they were doing in the public sector is spread among fewer and fewer people."
Actually, they might stay in Canada instead of emigrating to the States or to Australia.
But most Canadians agree that current wait times are not acceptable. The median wait time between a referral by a family doctor and an appointment with a specialist has increased to 8.3 weeks last year from 3.7 weeks in 1993, according to a recent study by The Fraser Institute, a conservative research group. Meanwhile the median wait between appointment with a specialist and treatment has increased to 9.4 weeks from 5.6 weeks over the same period. Average wait times between referral by a family doctor and treatment range from 5.5 weeks for oncology to 40 weeks for orthopedic surgery, according to the study.
Last December, provincial health ministers unveiled new targets for cutting wait times, including four weeks for radiation therapy for cancer patients beginning when doctors consider them ready for treatment and 26 weeks for hip replacements.
But few experts think that will stop the trend toward privatization. Dr. Day's hospital here opened in 1996 with 30 doctors and three operating rooms, treating mostly police officers, members of the military and worker's compensation clients, who are still allowed to seek treatment outside the public insurance system. It took several years to turn a profit. Today the center is twice its original size and has yearly revenue of more than $8 million, mostly from perfectly legal procedures.
Over the last 18 months, the hospital has been under contract by overburdened local hospitals to perform knee, spine and gynecological operations on more than 1,000 patients. Since the Supreme Court ruling in June, it began treating patients unwilling to wait on waiting lists and willing to pay their own money.
Now Dr. Day says he is considering building a full-service private hospital somewhere in Canada with a private medical school attached to it. "In a free and democratic society where you can spend money on gambling and alcohol and tobacco," Dr. Day said, "the state has no business preventing you and me from spending our own money on health care."
A few years back I was a visiting professor in Winnipeg. As part of my day I met with the only sleep specialist in Manitoba. Average waiting time for a return appointment after the first consultation? Eighteen months. Talk about a frustrated doc who knew he wasn't delivering the kind of care that needed to be done.
The U.S. military has assembled quick-reaction forces to help quell the violence in Iraq, but for now commanders have decided to stand back and let the fledgling Iraqi security forces handle the mission.
In an attempt to end violence sparked by a bombing this week of a revered Shi'ite mosque in Samarra, the Iraqi government imposed an all-day curfew. The ISF are enforcing the curfew through patrols, roadblocks and loudspeaker announcements throughout Baghdad's mixed Sunni and Shi'ite neighborhoods amid one of the worst campaigns of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
"We have a partnership with two Iraqi army brigades ... and what we have done is we've prepositioned our forces out in that area of responsibility," said Army Col. Jeffrey Snow, whose 10th Mountain Division brigade is responsible for northwest Baghdad. "I want to make clear to everyone that there is no question that Iraqi security forces are clearly in the lead here."
American brigades have embedded advisers among more than 50 Iraqi brigades. Equipped with radios, the advisers can call in U.S. reinforcements if the Iraqis become overwhelmed by demonstrators or attackers. The U.S. Army is launching spy drones to monitor Iraqi troops.
"The Iraqi security forces stepped up and immediately took steps to enhance a security posture within our area," Col. Snow told reporters at the Pentagon via a teleconference. "Our forces are postured as a quick-reaction force."
Asked if an all-out civil war may erupt after the mosque bombing, Col. Snow said, "The terrorists would like to see this break out in civil war, but I don't think the people are going to allow that to happen."
A senior defense official told The Washington Times that Col. Snow's brigade was following procedures put in place for virtually all American ground forces during the current sectarian violence.
"The Iraqi security forces are out front," the official said. "They are visible. So far anyway, the various sectarian factions are trying to make responsible comments about this. It's really the Iraqi police side who are taking the lead on this."
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld talked about the situation Thursday with Army Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, while Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the deputy chief of staff for multinational forces in Iraq, held a press conference in Baghdad.
"We're not directing activity," Gen. Lynch said. "The Iraqi government is and the Iraqi Security Force is."
He said there were 555 recorded insurgent attacks last week across Iraq, with 23 percent of those attacks causing casualties.
"We're dealing with a cowardly insurgency," Gen. Lynch said. "What they've done now is they've shifted their sight group, their target, to the Iraqi civilians and the Iraqi Security Force and away from the coalition."
Meanwhile, the Pentagon released a progress report on the 232,000-strong Iraqi security forces, comprised of light-infantry army, air force, commando units, border patrol and police.
There are now 53 battalions of about 800 Iraqi soldiers capable of taking the lead in an operation, with U.S. help. The number stood at 36 three months ago. There are no battalions that can operate totally on their own.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:29 ||
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Meanwhile back in LLL dilution based reality CNN is trumpeting the fact that the Iraqi Armys one class 1 brigade has been demoted. Of course the class 2-3s have all increased in number but that fact dont meet their agenda.
The fact that most of the worlds Armies dont meet class 1 status proven by the fact in Dafur how the UN problem is getting the support forces to keep a AU force in the field. But hey that dont fit the agenda that we are losing we suck its our fault the IA are useless cowards while the Iraqi terrorist somehow are fearless perfect soldiers.
And the MSM wonders why Rumsfield and all who pay attention is pissed that our enemies are dominating US in the media front (with a little help from our own Seditionist of course).
#2
actually the article itself is pretty even handed - of course it is the WaTimes
--- if the Iraqis end up quelling the Askariyah disturbances and gain credible physical evidence (or credible confessions) that al-Q was behind it (or al Q and Iran); this may ultimately be seen as the flex point of OIF
When President Bush lands in Islamabad later this week, it may be the closest he ever comes to being in the same neighborhood as Osama bin Laden. His nemesis is probably only a few hours drive away in Pakistan's Pashtun belt, now considered to be al Qaeda Central and one of the world's most dangerous regions.
During the past 12 months or so, CIA and Pentagon officials have quietly modified the line they employed for three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- that bin Laden was hiding out "in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border." Now the same officials say with some confidence that he is "not based in Afghanistan." Whatever ambiguity there was in the past is gone: Bin Laden is in Pakistan.
What's left is the question: What are the United States and its ally, Pakistan, doing about it?
The FBI informant who befriended a Lodi man charged with attending an Al Qaeda training camp said Thursday that the defendant took an interest in terrorist groups and spoke admiringly about jihad.
A federal prosecutor asked the informant, Naseem Khan, how defendant Hamid Hayat saw himself in relation to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other such groups. "He never, ever considered himself American," said Khan, who was on the witness stand during the fourth day of testimony in Hayat's terrorism trial in U.S. District Court.
We don't either.
During long conversations at Hayat's home, Khan said, Hayat praised Al Qaeda, expressed support for religious governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan and talked about issues surrounding jihad.
Hayat, 23, is charged with three counts of making false statements to the FBI about attending an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 2003 and with providing material support to terrorists. He faces up to 39 years in prison if convicted. His father, 48-year-old Umer Hayat, faces two counts of making false statements to the FBI about whether his son attended the camp. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Laura Ferris questioned Khan on Thursday about conversations he had with Hamid Hayat, many of which were secretly recorded and are contained in hundreds of hours of audiotape. Hayat, a U.S. citizen who has been in custody since June, listened without expressing any emotion as the man he'd considered a close friend described conversations they had had over cups of tea.
The focus of one conversation was a scrapbook Hayat had filled with newspaper articles he had collected during previous trips to Pakistan. The articles described political figures and developments in that country and Afghanistan. One photograph appeared to show a mounted machine gun that was described as a weapon of the Taliban. At one point, according to Khan, Hayat praised Al Qaeda as "a tough group," adding, "They're even smarter than the FBI, friend."
Transcripts of the conversations show Hayat eager to tell his new friend about what he learned in Pakistan and the people he met there. Khan encouraged the discussions, at one point telling Hayat, "You see, I know you're better than me when it comes to Islam. You know a lot more . That's why I respect you, and that's why I like you, because I learned a lot of good things from you."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:20 ||
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US President George W. Bush said Friday he would push Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during an upcoming visit to Islamabad to close terrorist training camps.
On my trip to Pakistan, I will, of course, talk about the terrorist activities, the need to dismantle terrorist training camps and to protect innocent life, Bush told Doordarshan state-run television of India.
The US president had been asked about the terrorist training camps and training infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
One of the real dangers of the terrorist movement is that theyll kill innocent people to achieve an objective. And India and president Musharraf, as well as our country, cares deeply about innocent life, Bush added.
The South Asian nuclear rivals both claim the scenic Himalayan region in its entirety but administer it in part. They have fought two of their three wars over the territory.
India accuses Pakistan of helping the insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan denies the charge but admits extending moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris waging what it terms a freedom struggle.
Bush leaves late February 28 for India, and from there will travel to Pakistan. It will be his first visit to either country.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:19 ||
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#1
Drive the terrorists back into Pakistan. Let them reek their havoc on Musharraf. Then let India clean up and take over what's left of Pakistan.
A former Lackawanna resident has been placed on the FBI's list of 26 "most wanted" terrorist suspects. Jaber A. Elbaneh, 39, is accused of training with the "Lackawanna Six" in 2001. He was among a group of 23 suspected terrorists who tunneled out of a prison in Yemen Feb. 3. He still has relatives in the city of Lackawanna, near Buffalo.
"He's an individual who has not only associated with al-Qaida, but has taken part in a prison breakout with al-Qaida," Buffalo FBI spokesman Paul Moskal said. The most wanted list is headed by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. State Department issued a reward of up to $5 million for Elbaneh's capture in September 2003. Federal agents believe Elbaneh had been in the custody of Yemen officials for more than two years. Elbaneh left the United States in the spring of 2001 as part of a larger group recruited from Lackawanna to bin Laden's al-Farooq training camp in Afghanistan.
Six of his traveling companions _ dubbed the "Lackawanna Six" _ returned to the United States and were arrested in September 2002. All are serving sentences ranging from seven to 10 years after pleading guilty in 2003 to providing support to a terrorist organization. Elbaneh never returned to the United States, authorities said, traveling instead to his native Yemen to live. His wife and children followed in 2001.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:18 ||
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MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures and the lack of resources to fight Islamic terrorism.
To illustrate their concern, agents have leaked more topsecret documents to The Sunday Times because they want a public inquiry into the missed intelligence leading up to the July attacks in London.
They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21.
The documents include an admission by John Scarlett, head of SIS, the secret intelligence service (also known as MI6), that one of the July 21 suspects was tracked on a trip to Pakistan just months before the attempted bombings.
Until now it was not known that any of the July 21 suspects, who are awaiting trial, were familiar to the intelligence services. It has been disclosed that MI5 had placed two of the July 7 bombers under surveillance before their attack, but judged them not to be a threat.
The new documents show that MI5, which is responsible for national security, allowed the July 21 suspect to travel to Pakistan after he was detained and interviewed at a British airport. Once in Pakistan he was monitored by SIS, which gathers intelligence overseas.
MI5 then conducted what the leaked memo says was a low-level short-term investigation into the suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
It stopped monitoring him because it said the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance.
Scarlett revealed details of the operation to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) last November. The committee, comprising MPs and peers picked by Tony Blair, is conducting a secret inquiry into the lessons learnt from the July attacks. It is due to be completed in April.
The Scarlett memo marked top secret was leaked by the dissident officers who want a public inquiry similar to that undertaken in America after the 9/11 attacks.
They believe it would highlight the need for MI5 and SIS to be given more resources to deal with Al-Qaeda. They are critical of Blair, who has ruled out an inquiry saying it would distract the security services from fighting terrorism.
The leaked memo refers to Scarlett as C the traditional codename for the head of SIS. It states: On the events of July itself, and the question of whether intelligence was missed, C noted that SIS had previously been involved in an earlier investigation of one of the July 21 (suspects) in Pakistan.
This had been at the Security Service (MI5)s behest and should be discussed with MI5.
Another document, MI5s November 2005 memo The July Bombings and the Agencies Response, has also been shown to The Sunday Times.
It names the suspect who was the subject of the 2004 investigation and shifts responsibility for the decision to stop monitoring him to the Pakistani intelligence authorities.
(The suspect) had been the subject of a low-level short-term investigation concerning a visit he made to Pakistan after he was interviewed on departure from the UK, it states.
However, the Pakistani authorities assessed that he was doing nothing of significance in a terrorist context.
The assessment echoes a decision by MI5 to halt surveillance on two of the July 7 bombers 16 months before the attacks. Both were filmed and taped by MI5 agents as they met two men allegedly plotting to carry out a terrorist attack in England.
After making what an official called a quick assessment, MI5 concluded Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were not immediate threats. As the MI5 memo puts it: Intelligence at the time suggested Khans purpose was financial crime rather than terrorist activity.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: These leaks show that the need for an independent inquiry is incontrovertible.
There is a growing consensus in Whitehall that the intelligence services will be seen to have made critical errors in failing to assess adequately the threat from at least three of the July suspects.
Scarlett conceded to the ISC that his agency had reacted too slowly. Summing up the position before July 2005, C noted SIS were conscious of the size of the target, but equally conscious of what we did not know; we were thinly spread in North and East Africa; we were looking at new ways of increasing our reach; and we had sought funding to grow as fast as we thought feasible.
Turning to the lessons learnt, C noted that SIS had understood the nature of the threat and that there was a great deal that we did not know. SIS had developed strategies to meet this threat.
The attacks had shown that our strategies were correct, but needed to be implemented more extensively and more quickly, the memo noted.
Scarlett said that even before the attacks, SIS had planned to expand overseas. C concluded by explaining how post-July SIS were speeding up implementation of the pre-July strategy. He said the agency did not want more money for staff.
The dissident officers believe the buck-passing revealed in the memos demonstrates that there should be closer co-operation between the agencies.
They support calls for a unified department of homeland security, along the lines suggested by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, this month.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:17 ||
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#1
Jockey of Norfolk be not bold,
For Deacon, thy master, is bought and sold.
#3
I didn't do nuthin! And neither did my horse!
Seriously, it looks like some in MI5 are in favor of a house-cleaning. Leaking classified stuff. Sounds like the CIA.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/26/2006 9:14
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Tapping on his laptop computer, wearing a white polo shirt and Rolex, Nasir Abas looks like an ordinary Asian businessman -- until he begins to talk about his days as a terrorist.
The 36-year-old Malaysian admits he was a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and that he trained some of Southeast Asia's worst terrorists, notably the bombers who blew up Western tourist hangouts in Bali in 2002.
Mr. Abas is on the United Nations list of "individuals belonging to or associated with al-Qaeda." He is also on Canada's list of terrorists. So is Jemaah Islamiyah, which Ottawa calls the "most extensive transnational radical Islamist group in Southeast Asia."
But Mr. Abas says he has left Jemaah Islamiyah and is remorseful. To make amends, he is co-operating with police and speaking out against terrorism to students, community groups and anyone else who will listen.
"I feel guilty for what I have done," he says over lunch at an Indian restaurant in Jakarta, where he lives with his wife and four daughters.
"I feel I have sinned."
Mr. Abas and others like him are becoming key weapons in the war on terror in Southeast Asia, where they are helping spread the word that terrorism is wrong and not part of Islam's true teachings.
After making hundreds of arrests, governments in the region have concluded that terrorism cannot be fought properly without confronting the ideology behind it. And to help get out the anti-terrorism message, they are making use of a powerful tool: reformed terrorists.
Leading the pack is Singapore. The city-state has set up a program that is challenging the ideological underpinnings of Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda.
The program originated in late 2001, when Singapore's Internal Security Department thwarted a terrorist plot by local members of Jemaah Islamiyah and Canadian al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Mansour Jabarah.
Following the arrests, the Singapore government wanted to know what was motivating Muslims to turn to terrorism, so it brought in prominent Islamic scholars to try to understand their thinking.
What they found was that the captured terrorists shared an extremely limited interpretation of Islam. "These people, they just adopted one school of thought and that's it," said Muhammad Haniff Bin Hassan, a research analyst at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "Either they did not want to hear from others or they were not given the privilege because they studied under very strict secrecy."
He said the terrorists had not been properly instructed. "Most of them are born-again Muslims and because of their narrow understanding of Islam, they were easily swayed."
Their core beliefs were that to be a good Muslim they had to: hate non-Muslims; strive to create an Islamic state; and engage in armed jihad. Another common belief was that they could not break the bayat, or oath of allegiance, that they had sworn to the cause.
Taken together, these made for a potent ideology. To tackle it Singapore formed a Religious Rehabilitation Group, made up of about 20 Islamic scholars known as ustadzs.
One of the duties of an ustadz it is to ensure that Islam is properly interpreted. The Singaporeans also put together a manual on terrorist ideology and how to confront it.
"In the initial stage of the counselling program, we listen to them, we let them talk," said Mohamed Bin Ali, an ustadz who works on the program and is also a research analyst at NTU. "Then if we feel there are concepts that need to be countered, we step in."
Since the terrorists tend to cite classical Islamic texts such as the Koran to support their radical interpretation of their religion, the ustadzs use those same texts to show the detainees they have actually misread the message of Islam.
"The main aim of the program is to provide an avenue for the detainees to overcome the ideas of Islam that they may have misconstrued, and also to make them aware of what are the consequences if they attack a city like Singapore," said Mr. Ali.
Those involved in the program say that while some of the detainees have not responded to counseling, the counter-ideology effort has generally been successful. Those deemed to no longer pose a threat have been released on a restriction order, which requires them to stay in the country and continue counseling under strict supervision.
On Oct. 24, for example, the government released Andrew Gerard, a Muslim convert who had scouted bombing targets for Jemaah Islamiyah. Officials said that since his arrest in 2002 he had cooperated with investigators, responded positively to rehabilitation and religious counseling and was no longer a threat to Singapore. But if he violates the conditions of his release he could be placed under arrest once again.
As part of the program, counselors work with the families of detainees to ensure the children stay in school and do not follow the same path to radicalization as their fathers. The ustadzs have also held several public meetings with both the Muslim and non-Muslim communities.
Not only have several detainees been deprogrammed, but more importantly Singapore believes the program is helping immunize its broader Muslim community against extremist ideology.
Mr. Hassan is not sure if the work in Singapore can be applied elsewhere. "I would not basically want to say whether the experience could be adopted in Canada or not, but there are lessons to be learned."
The most important lesson may be the importance of involving the Muslim community in the fight against terrorism, and that one way of doing that is to encourage Muslim scholars to take the lead in identifying and correcting dangerously extreme interpretations of Islam.
A recent report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), however, suggests that radical Islamic terrorists have been so heavily indoctrinated they may be beyond reform. It notes that some detainees released from Guantanamo Bay have quickly returned to militancy.
To be rehabilitated, someone must believe that violence is morally wrong and fear punishment if they are caught, but for Islamic extremists, "these social parameters do not apply," says the "Secret" CSIS report, released under the Access to Information Act.
"Individuals who have attended terrorist training camps or who have independently opted for radical Islam must be considered threats to Canadian public safety for the indefinite future."
For Nasir Abas, his arrest in April 2003 marked the end of a lifelong commitment to armed Islamic struggle. Born in Singapore and raised in Malaysia, Mr. Abas was studying at an Islamic school when extremists offered to pay his way to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
He underwent training at a camp south of Sadda, Pakistan, and was sent into battle, at one point suffering a bullet wound to his hand. For the next six years, he worked as a training camp instructor, teaching recruits how to use weapons ranging from small arms to artillery.
In 1993, he returned to Malaysia to look for a job, but after stints in construction and carpentry, he went to the southern Philippines to set up a training camp for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
He got back to Malaysia in 1996, married and worked as a cab driver in Johor Bahru, on the border with Singapore.
In August 1997, he was appointed a chief of Jemaah Islamiyah and was later named commander of Mantiki 3, one of the group's regional divisions.
When Jemaah Islamiyah ramped up its terrorist bombing campaign in 2000, striking churches, Mr Abas said he became uneasy with the group's change in direction. He said the group had fallen under the spell of Osama bin Laden, who had started calling for attacks against Western civilians, which Mr. Abas said is a deviation from Islam.
The following year, one of the JI members Mr. Abas had trained, Fathur Rahman Al Ghozi, worked with his Canadian al-Qaeda accomplice Mohammed Jabarah to attempt to blow up the American and Israeli embassies in Singapore, a plot that was stopped by authorities.
In October, 2002, another two men trained by Mr. Abas, Imam Samudra and Ali Imron, killed 200 people in Bali, mostly Australian tourists. The police investigation that followed led to the arrests of Jemaah Islamiyah members who identified Mr. Abas as their boss.
By the time he was arrested on April 18, 2003, Mr. Abas said he had already turned against JI because of its targeting of civilians. "What they had done was not in the battlefield, not in the conflict area," he explained.
Almost immediately, he began cooperating with police, providing inside details of Jemaah Islamiyah's structure and ideology. He identified Abu Bakar Bashir as the top leader of JI (Bashir calls Mr. Abas a traitor and denies the existence of JI).
Mr. Abas was freed in November, 2004, but he is still paying off his debt to Indonesia. Whenever JI members are arrested, Mr. Abas is brought in to speak to them. He tries to convince them to co-operate with police.
As a former commander and trainer, he knows many of them personally. He has also written an Indonesian-language book about JI and gives public talks about the group and its misguided ideology.
He said his main challenge is to convince Indonesians that there really is a JI when to this day some still believe that the Bali and other bombings were orchestrated by the West to tarnish Islam and justify the war against terror.
"Firstly, I want to explain that JI is not created. JI exists. Second thing, I have to explain that what they have done, the Bali bombings, that they have deviant ideologies. Third thing, I always explain that Islam does not teach violence."
Inspector-General Ansyaad Mbai, a senior Indonesian counter-terrorism official, said close to 300 arrests have taken place since the bombings in Bali and at the Australian embassy and JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.
But that JI still somehow survives suggests that attacking the ideology is the best long-term solution. "The use of only 'high-power' in terms of law enforcement, arrests and even military retaliation is not a good answer. We need to touch the root causes through the approach of 'soft-power.' "
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:10 ||
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#1
This is a very good thing. How wonderful if it works, and we don't have to resort to extreme measures to fix the problem. More likely, it will work in some places, so we'll be able to concentrate on the rest.
#2
After making hundreds of arrests, governments in the region have concluded that terrorism cannot be fought properly without confronting the ideology behind it.
It's refreshing to note that at least some politicians "get it".
The commander of the Philippine marines was relieved of his duties Sunday in the wake of a coup plot that prompted the government to declare a state of emergency.
Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda asked to be relieved of his duties for citing personal reasons, military spokesman Lt. Col. Tristan Kison said.
Although the marines were widely rumored to have been involved in the coup plot against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Kison said Miranda was not implicated. He also dismissed reports of unauthorized troop movement and disgruntled troops pushing through with plans to withdraw support from Arroyo, as they had reportedly intended to do Friday.
"Let us remain calm, there is no reason to panic," Kison said.
Navy chief Vice Adm. Mateo Mayuga accepted Miranda's request to be relieved of his position, Kison said. He was replaced by his deputy, Brig. Gen. Nelson Aliaga, who took over in a brief ceremony in a military camp.
The 8,000-strong marines are regarded as an elite, well-armed unit at the front line of the government's fight against Muslim and communist guerrillas and al-Qaida-linked militants in the country's volatile south.
Arroyo set off an uproar with her emergency decree Friday as Filipinos celebrated the 20th anniversary of dictator Ferdinand Marcos' ouster in a "people power" revolt, and even some supporters questioned the move.
Local and international journalists expressed alarm Sunday over a police raid of a small daily newspaper critical Arroyo.
Police seized editorial materials from the offices of The Daily Tribune early Saturday and threatened to take over the paper. Police were posted at the Tribune door.
National police chief Arturo Lomibao said he would recommend that police be allowed to supervise the Tribune and threatened to take steps against the paper if it contributes "to the atmosphere of uncertainty, the atmosphere of instability."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:08 ||
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Fear of informants turning in neighbors to police or militia groups has deeply undermined community trust in many parts of Baghdad.
Ahmed Ali, a 34-year-old barber in the ethnically mixed and violent Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, walked away from his business last month because he worried that his chitchat with customers would lead neighbors to suspect that he was informing on them to police -- or militias, or whoever -- and that he would be marked for a retaliatory killing.
That's been happening a lot in Dora.
A word to the police can result in uniformed security officers or even private soldiers in fake uniforms dragging residents from their homes in the middle of the night -- without legitimate cause, the victims complain. Angry and confused, their families suspect that neighborhood informants are feeding lies to the security forces to settle personal scores. The raids also have sown doubts that government security forces can protect the people.
Much of the suspicion is breaking down along ethnic lines, with Sunni and Shiite Muslims blaming each other. The progressive erosion of trust is one reason for the violent response to Wednesday's mosque bombing in Samarra, after which private militias roamed the streets. It underscores the failure so far to build public institutions that earn confidence and that could stand in the way of open civil war.
``The Shiites are afraid of threats and assassinations, while Sunnis are afraid of raids. The kidnappings or assassinations take place during the daylight hours and the raids happen at night,'' Ali said. ``Dora has become hell for both Shiite and Sunni residents.''
Some shop owners say they try not to ask customers questions that they once considered innocuous. Behind closed doors, residents suspect their own relatives of bringing raids to their home.
Working-class neighborhoods that are still ethnically mixed -- many others have segregated -- are the most vulnerable, said Ihsan Mohammed al-Hassan, a sociologist at Baghdad University.
``These people are taken away, and no one knows why,'' Hassan said. ``When other people see that one person's life has been destroyed by a report, the whole community is in fear. They can't trust the police, and they can't trust their neighbor.''
Najeeb Abdel Wahab said that when police commandos came to his home in August they dragged away the four Sunnis there, including him. Two Shiite technicians who were working on his generator were left behind, he said.
Wahab thinks they came to his home because Shiite informants in his western Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad accuse Sunni residents of working with the insurgency. He said he was held for 18 days. After he was released, he fled his home and has not returned.
``If I go home, they will arrest and torture me again,'' said Wahab, who filed a complaint with the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Islamic Party. ``The person who told the commandos that we are Sunni is a neighbor who is a part of the Shiite militia. I will not do anything to him. I will leave that to God.''
Sometimes families find the bodies of loved ones in the middle of the street with notes taped on their foreheads, saying, for example, ``This is for being an informant.'' One police officer in Al-Fallujah, Saad al-Dulaimi, said he had found at least 50 bodies with similar labels in the past two years and that all of them had been tortured.
Al-Qaida has shown online videos of captured people accused of being informants working on American bases. In Al-Qaida ``trials,'' the accused offer confessions of how they work and how much they are paid. They are invariably found guilty and beheaded.
Miriam Ali, who is unrelated to Ahmed Ali, said her father had been home only a few days after a long absence when a group of American soldiers charged into the family's house in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora.
With them was a man who wore a dark ski mask. He said nothing. His eyes searched the room, looked past her uncle and stopped at her father. The man pointed at the elderly man, and with that, the soldiers dragged her father away, she said.
After a fruitless yearlong search at jails, American bases and police stations, she is resigned that she won't find her father. But as she walks through the neighborhood, she keeps looking for the informant.
Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a press officer for U.S. military detentions, said the military had no record of arresting anyone with Ali's father's name. The facts in the case remain unclear, and some Iraqis say they are relieved when they see American forces because they know the soldiers are legitimate.
U.S. military and Iraqi government officials say they use informants but that they double-check the information that is provided. They say they have a responsibility to follow tips in order to find kidnap victims or possible car bombers. And they say they pay informants.
``If we get information, we have to search,'' said Abd al-Karim al-Anzy, the state minister of national security affairs. Their actions are justified ``because we are defending our country.''
Miriam Ali thinks that the disguised man -- whom she can describe only as thin -- didn't talk because he's from her neighborhood and didn't want the family to recognize his voice.
Who else, she reasons, would have known that her father had returned home days earlier after being away for months in the southern city of An-Nasiriyah. He had hidden there because he had feared being charged with being a member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party after his work in the military during Saddam's time.
``Since that incident, we lost confidence in everyone. We suspect everybody, especially any thin persons among our relatives or neighbors,'' Ali said in a telephone interview.
The Iraqi Islamic Party told supporters last month that they should defend their homes against suspicious raids.
Omar al-Jubouri, the head of the party's human rights section, said police forces had taken at least 300 mostly Sunni residents in raids in just two neighborhoods since the Dec. 15 elections for a new government, according to information reported to his party. He plans to complain to the government.
Residents of many Baghdad neighborhoods have prepared their homes for possible raids. They have buried valuables in their back yards and put loaded guns near their beds, and parents sleep with their children between them. Some families keep someone awake at night to greet any raiders and try to defuse the situation.
Wahab said he had come to expect such raids. In December, commandos returned to his house and took his older brother, he said.
In the Hay al-Salam neighborhood in central Baghdad -- an older mixed area that the government built 50 years ago -- in which raids and retaliatory killings are among the highest in the capital, neighborhood leaders complained that when they confront the government the day after a raid, officials deny everything, even though residents describe men who use police vehicles and wear bulletproof vests.
Often the raiders' identities are unclear, because they usually don't identify themselves and police uniforms can be bought easily on the black market.
That uncertainty has stoked a climate of fear and distrust.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:07 ||
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And when Marie-Beatrice thought about the young Jewish man tortured to death by her neighbors during 24 days of squalid captivity in the basement a few floors below her apartment, she could not stop crying.
"I try not to blame myself, but I can't avoid it," said the weary 46-year-old, wrapped in a purple bathrobe after work Friday. "It happened next door, and I can't believe it happened. I would want to tell Ilan that if we'd heard his suffering, we would have reported it. I tell myself that Ilan surely must have thought there was noise, people lived upstairs. And he hoped someone would hear. I imagine him in the boiler room, and I want to ask him to forgive me."
Marie-Beatrice sat alone with her guilt in the aging, 11-story apartment block on Prokofiev Street in this working-class immigrant enclave on the southern edge of Paris. On a table was a summons from the police, who are canvassing neighbors to have them testify about anything they witnessed during Halimi's recent ordeal.
#3
a baseball bat execution in the streets would tend to send a message.
Posted by: Al Capone ||
02/26/2006 11:36
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#4
"I want to address myself to his mother and ask her forgiveness," she said. "I didn't do anything, see anything, hear anything."
A little TOO guilt-wracked for my taste. Sounds like she's trying to convince herself more than anyone else. I bet she knows she heard plenty, but did nothing.... hypocrit.
#5
France, you're almost gone. You've been feeding on the toxic poison of socialism for far too long. Re-arm yourselves. Make these asshats disappear, one by one.
More than 500 protesters angered by the destruction of a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Iraq gathered outside the British Embassy in Tehran on Sunday, burning flags and calling for the mission to be closed.
Iran accused Western forces in Iraq of orchestrating Wednesday's bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra, one of the most venerated buildings in Shi'ite Islam, in order to spark civil war between Shi'ites and Sunnis. The crowd in Tehran chanted that the British Embassy should be shut down and burned Danish and U.S. flags. "We are all here to defend Saddam Islam to the last drop of our blood," said protester Hassan Moradkhani, dressed in a Palestinian headscarf.
The United States has no embassy in Iran so protesters enraged by events in Iraq usually focus their wrath on close U.S. ally Britain. "Publishing cartoons and bombing shrines is all part of a U.S. and Zionist conspiracy to divide Muslims but the Islamic community is aware of what they are up to," said Maryam Hajizadeh, 26.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:03 ||
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HILLA - A bomb destroyed a minibus as it was leaving a large bus station in Hilla 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing five people and wounding three, police said. The blast was caused either by a roadside bomb or an attached device, they said.
BAGHDAD - Two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad on Sunday, bringing the number of U.S. personnel killed since the invasion in March 2003 to at least 2,290. One soldier was killed immediately by the bomb, the U.S. military said, while the second died from wounds after being evacuated to a military hospital.
MADAEN - One police officer was killed and two wounded when their patrol was hit by two roadside bombs near Madaen, the interior ministry said.
BASRA - Explosives packed into the wash area of a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in the southern city of Basra 550 km (340 miles) blew up on Sunday, causing minor injuries, police and witnesses said. Police said they suspected three men wounded in the attack were planting the bomb when it exploded prematurely.
RAMADI - A former Baathist officer in the previous Iraqi regime was killed in Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.
FALLUJA - Three bodies with their hands bound and gunshot wounds to the head were found near Fallujah, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. The killings took place some three days ago, according to a medical source.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS
BAGHDAD- Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, flanked by Sunni and Kurdish politicians, made a midnight televised appeal for Iraqis not to turn on each other after Wednesday's suspected al Qaeda bomb at a Shi'ite shrine. The appeal came after a round of phone calls from U.S. President George W. Bush, though Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi said he was not yet ready to end a boycott of the U.S.-sponsored tal ks.
BASRA - Firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr held a rally in Basra calling on Sunnis and Shi'ites to hold joint prayers on Friday. The anti-American cleric was speaking several km (miles) away from the blast at the mosque in Basra.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:02 ||
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A bomb killed five people at a bus station south of Baghdad on Sunday, breaking a relative calm after Iraqi and U.S. leaders appealed for an end to days of sectarian bloodshed that have pitched Iraq toward civil war.
A bomb in the washroom of a Shiite mosque in the second city of Basra caused minor injuries, police said; it went off shortly after a rally in another part of the city by visiting young Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a fiery militia leader.
The Hilla bomb destroyed a minibus as it drove out of a bus garage. Hilla is a mainly Shiite town surrounded by Sunni villages, and the attack came two days short of the anniversary of the bloodiest single al Qaeda bombing, which killed 125 people there a year ago.
Hours earlier, following a round of calls to Iraqi leaders by U.S. President George W. Bush President George W. Bush, Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a midnight televised appeal, flanked by Sunni and Kurdish politicians, to Iraqis not to turn on each other after Wednesdays suspected al Qaeda bomb at a Shiite shrine.
A three-hour meeting produced a commitment from the main factions to form a unity coalition, although Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi said he was not yet ready to end a boycott of the U.S.-sponsored coalition talks.
Four days of tit-for-tat reprisals have left more than 200 dead and mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad that went into its third day on Sunday; the defense minister warned of the risk of a civil war that "will never end."
With a traffic ban in force, Baghdad was largely quiet. But a policeman was killed and two were wounded when their patrol was hit by two roadside bombs near Madaen, another flashpoint for Sunni-Shiite violence just southeast of the city.
In Hilla, police said it was not clear if the bomb was inside the minibus or exploded in the road as it passed, just as it was leaving the bus station.
Jaafari, under U.S. pressure to forge a national unity government after an election in December, the first that the once-dominant Sunni minority had taken part in, said he was hopeful that Iraqis would step back from sectarian strife.
"The Iraqi people have one enemy; it is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shiites," he said.
In Basra, Sadr appeared at a rally to call for Muslim unity against U.S. occupation and summoned his many followers to hold joint prayers next Friday at Sunni mosques, especially those damaged in the past days violence.
Shortly afterwards, journalists heard a loud blast nearby that turned out to have been in a Shiite mosque.
Though Sadrs black-clad Mehdi Army militia have been accused by officials of taking part in attacks on Sunni mosques, Sadr himself, his influence rising within the ruling but factionalised Shiite Islamist bloc, denies ordering violence.
However, Shiites show of force after the bloodless destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra has exceeded any sparked by even al Qaeda attacks on the scale of last years Hilla bombing, and may strengthen the rival militia leaders hands in negotiations with Sunnis and with fellow Shiites.
The White House said Bush, in his calls to Baghdad, had encouraged the leaders to "continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord."
Jaafari said that "all, or most" of the leaders who met on Saturday had "expressed the importance of accelerating the political process without any delay."
Sunni leader Hashemi called the meeting "a first step in the right direction," but said his Accordance Front would not rejoin formal coalition talks immediately.
"We agreed ... we need to form a government as quickly as possible," Hashemi said, but he added that the Front wanted progress on its complaints about violence before taking part in the talks.
U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been criticised by Shiite leaders this week for pushing to have Sunnis brought into government, said a unity government would help avert the risk of civil war -- a risk he said had lessened on Saturday.
"There is still a danger," he told reporters. "But the risk of going to war because of the ... bombing has diminished."
In a lengthy interview on Iraqi state television, he told Iraqis that Washington was ready to help in any way: "The United States has a lot invested in Iraq. Iraqs failures are ours."
Senior Iraqi government figures fear some Shiites may stop heeding calls from their religious leaders for restraint.
Iraqi and U.S. officials blamed the bloodless but symbolic attack on Samarras Golden Mosque on al Qaeda, saying it wants to wreck the project for democracy in Iraq; al Qaeda accused Shiites of carrying it out as an excuse for attacks on Sunnis.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:01 ||
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#1
Someone didn't get the message. I blame Zarq
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 20:10
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Rioting prisoners at the high-security Pul-i-Charkhi Jail near Kabul Sunday expressed their willingness for talks with a deputy of President Hamid Karzai.
A high-ranking Justice Ministry official, who put the death toll at eight, informed Pajhwok Afghan News the jail inmates were ready for negotiations with the government on their demands. "We tried to meet a number of prisoners but they refused to talk to us. The detainees want to negotiate directly with the president's deputy," revealed the source, who requested not to be named.
During the unrest that erupted last night, prisoners including al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters reportedly snatched weapons from security personnel. After a bloody clash with jail guards, the furious detainees went on the rampage, smashing doors and beddings and setting alight mattresses and blankets, sources said, adding normality was yet to be restored.
Sounds like Attica with turbans.
Hundreds of Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and police, meanwhile, rushed to the jail in tanks and armoured vehicles in order to control the situation. Although the troops had their fingers on triggers, occasional gunshots were fired inside the jail.
Earlier in the day, a senior police officer said terror convicts in the jail received arms before attacking the guards on duty. Nevertheless, he would not explain where the weapons came from and how they were taken inside the notorious prison built in 1970.
"I know nothing! Tell them, Hogan!"
An Interior Ministry source confided to this news agency five policemen were killed and seven wounded in the unrest. With officials giving conflicting views, the real cause of the riot is yet to be ascertained.
The trouble started after prisoners refused to wear jail uniform, with different colours for political prisoners and ordinary detainees - already irked by the construction of iron structures in front of their cells.
Didn't like the iron bars and the pink fluffy slippers, eh?
But the Interior Ministry official, who came up with a different version, claimed the ugly situation arose when male prisoners stormed a block of women detainees.
Although police have ringed the jail to prevent escape attempts and no one is let in, sporadic bursts of fire could be heard outside. Chief of Prisons Gen. Abdul Salam Bakhshi, voicing concern at the disturbance, said security forces had not yet got into the 11th Block.
Representatives of human rights watchdogs, UN, ICRC, Ministries of Justice, Interior and Foreign Affairs have reached the scene. They were trying to calm down the highly-charged situation and pondered negotiations with the prisoners.
"You furriner guys ponder this. In the meantime, Mahmoud, get the machine guns ready."
Apparently, the inmates - al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects among them - clashed with guards in an abortive bid to break out of the notorious jail. Seven mid-ranking Taliban prisoners escaped last month from the sprawling facility that holds around 1300 prisoners.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
06:00 ||
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#1
I think surrounded may have a different connotation in Kabul than it does in Riyadh.
#2
Karzai oughtta put on a giant sparkly turban, a swirly cape, and curly toed slippers. Then he should arrange to arrive at the prison in the middle of an icy cold Afghan winter(TM) night, with stage lights, smoke machine, and a really discordant fanfare. Then he should tell all the inmates they have angered Allan, they should shuit their yaps, and when they get out they should go back to their families and herd goats for the rest of their lives.
#3
pick the weakest part of the prison and use cannon and tank to destroy it and all inside. Then issue an ultimatum - talk when you all surrender or we progress with the "suppression". Don't f*&k around with these mooks
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 11:21
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#4
Don't negotiate - kill them. The first sign of "negotiation", and you're going to have this sh$$ everywhere. Crush them totally, and send a clear message that you won't tolerate this kind of behavior. IF guns WERE smuggled in, find the perps and hang them - in front of the prison. Oh, and tell the idiots from the "press" that if they don't like how Afghanistan handles rebellion, they can leave the country - preferably before nightfall.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/26/2006 14:12
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#5
they can leave the country - preferably before nightfall.
and on foot - LOL OP - you rock
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 14:57
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Taliban and al Qaeda militants took control of a wing of the Afghan capitals main high security prison and at least 30 prisoners were wounded in attempts to quell the riot, officials said on Sunday. The unrest erupted on Saturday night after prisoners led by Taliban and al Qaeda militants took two female guards captive during a row over attempts to implement a new rule requiring inmates to wear pink fluffy bunny-rabbit slippers prison uniforms, government officials said.
"As far as we know, some 1,500 prisoners are involved in this incident," a security official told Reuters on condition he was not identified. "It went out of control and a clash broke out between the prisoners, including many Taliban, and the police, in which 30 people have been wounded," he said.
Bursts of gunfire were heard from within the sprawling prison compound on the eastern outskirts of Kabul on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Heavily armed police and troops backed by tanks and armoured personnel carriers took positions outside the perimeter and security forces prevented journalists from approaching.
Deputy Justice Minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, who was tasked with quelling the riot, said four prisoners were wounded while trying to escape from the prison. "I have also heard that 20 more prisoners have been wounded, but the people behind this unrest are not ready to hand them over to us for treatment," he told reporters outside the prison.
He said the situation was under control, but the riot was not over. "Taliban and al Qaeda members from different countries are behind this unrest," he told Reuters. "They still control the wing from where they had started the riot."
Hashimzai said the prison housed more than 2,000 prisoners, about 350 of whom were Taliban or al Qaeda militants.
General Mahboub Amiri, chief of Kabuls RAB Rapid Reaction Police Force, said Taliban members triggered the riot in an escape bid. Hashimzai said the riot erupted after prison authorities began issuing blue uniforms to prisoners on Saturday. The uniforms were intended to prevent a repeat of an escape by seven Taliban suspects from the prison last month who got out by mingling with visitors. Officials said they suspected the escapees were assisted by prison guards.
Pul-i-Charkhi is a large Soviet-style prison complex built in the 1970s. Thousands of Afghans who opposed communist rule were killed and tortured there in the 1980s. Nowadays it is used to house common criminals as well as al Qaeda or Taliban-linked militants.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
05:59 ||
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#1
I sure hope it doesn't take too long to provide medical attention to these poor sufferers.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh confirmed that three Al-Qaeda inmates who were part of a group that managed to escape from a Yemeni jail earlier this month have given themselves up to the government.
Saleh told the London-based Al-Hayat Arabic-language daily that security forces were also in contact with other fugitives among the group of 23 militants that escaped from a Sanaa jail in February.
He did not give any details about the escapees that had surrendered, Reuters quoted the Arabic daily. So far, three have given themselves up and we are in contact with the rest of them and they are for certain still inside the country, president of Yemen told the paper. They want to give themselves up and most of them have finished the majority of their sentence already.
Some Saudi media had linked some of the escaped prisoners to a foiled attack on a major Saudi oil refinery on Friday.
Oh I am so surprised. I don't think they did, but it doesn't surprise me at all that a Saoodi newsrag would blame Yemenis instead of the home-grown talent.
The government has offered a $25,500 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of any of the fugitives.
On the other hand, the Yemeni authorities put last Wednesday on trial 17 men, including five Saudis, charged with planning attacks against US interests in the country on the orders of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The prosecutor said the defendants had planned to carry out criminal attacks to avenge the US Central Intelligence Agencys killing of a top Al-Qaeda operative in 2002.
He said they had travelled to Iraq and then returned to Yemen in 2004 to carry out their mission on the directives of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. The defendants admitted to going to Iraq but denied planning any attacks in Yemen. Our problem with the United States is in Iraq, not Yemen, said the leader of the group, Ali Al-Sayyad Al-Harithi.
He said he had received explosive-making training in Iraq but that he had left after he said that John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in the 2004 US presidential election, had threatened Yemen. I wanted to defend my country, he added.
I call bs. No way John Kerry threatened anyone. Wasn't this guy paying attention?
The defendants were among a group of 19 men arrested by Yemeni security forces last month on suspicion of planning attacks against Western interests. Two of the men were released due to lack of evidence, security sources said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
05:57 ||
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Inmates have taken control of a wing of Afghanistan's main high-security jail, Pul-e-Charkhi in Kabul, officials say. Sources have told the BBC four inmates have been killed, although top Afghan officials have denied any deaths. The violence apparently began as an escape attempt in a section holding both Taleban and al-Qaeda militants as well as ordinary criminals. Hundreds of prisoners are barricaded inside a women's wing of the jail, parts of which are on fire. Some have tried to escape by climbing the walls. A senior official told the BBC that two female prison guards had been taken hostage by prisoners.
Afghan army fast reaction troops have entered the prison - reinforcing Interior Ministry security forces, who were already on the scene - and are trying to bring the situation under control, Gen Zaher Azimi told the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul. There has been ongoing gunfire at the scene. Police have sealed off the affected wing and no-one has escaped, jail officials say. An official told the BBC that Taleban and al-Qaeda elements were responsible for the violence. Last month, seven Taleban suspects escaped from the jail, with prison guards accused by officials of helping the break-out.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
02/26/2006
05:56 ||
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Osama Bin Laden, who had been sitting cross-legged on a carpet, placed his Kalashnikov rifle on the ground and got up. He came towards me with a warm smile that turned into barely repressed laughter as he took in the way I was dressed.
I had been kitted out in baggy trousers, a long shirt and a turban for my clandestine journey to his hideout in southern Afghanistan. The turban in particular made me feel self-conscious, as I had never worn such a thing in my life.
I spent three days with Bin Laden in Tora Bora, the only western-based journalist to spend such a significant amount of time with him, before or since. I talked at length to him, slept next to him in his cave and shared his modest food.
Listening to him during that visit 10 years ago I realised he was no ordinary figure, but it didnt occur to me for one moment that this polite, soft-spoken, smiling and apparently gentle person would become the worlds most dangerous man, terrorising western capitals, inflicting hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage on the United States, threatening its economic stability and embroiling it in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As I had been eating so badly since coming to Afghanistan I was looking forward to our first meal. Id imagined we would feast on roast deer or goat. When I saw what was available at the Eagles Nest, as his base was called, I thought chicken was perhaps a more likely dish.
It was still a great surprise to discover that dinner on the first night consisted of Arab-style potato chips soaking in cottonseed oil; a plate of fried eggs; salty cheese of a variety long extinct even in the villages of upper Egypt; and a bread bun that must have been kneaded with sand, as my teeth screeched and ground whenever I chewed it.
After a few bites I pretended that I did not usually eat dinner for health reasons.
Another meal featured Bin Ladens favourite, bread with yogurt and rice, served with potatoes cooked in tomato sauce. Animal fat floated on the surface, and I could hardly force it down my throat. Afterwards I was sick under a pine tree outside the cave.
I was puzzled by Bin Ladens chosen path. What motivates this man, from a well-known and honourable family in possession of billions, to lead such a comfortless life in these inhospitable and dangerous mountains, awaiting attack, capture or death at any moment, hunted by so many regimes?
We spoke about his wealth, and while he avoided saying exactly how much he was worth he acknowledged he still managed an extensive investment portfolio through a complex network of secret contacts. But this wealth, he said, was for the umma (the global Islamic community).
It is the duty of the umma as a whole to commit its wealth to the struggle, he said. The umma is connected like an electric current. (Surprising imagery for a man who would wish to take us back 1,500 years.) I discovered that, in contrast with the primitive accommodation, the base was well equipped with computers and up-to-the-minute communications equipment. Bin Laden had access to the internet, which was not then ubiquitous as it is now, and said: These days the world is becoming like a small village.
This modernity was quite at odds with the austerity recommended by the more extreme forms of Islamic fundamentalism and in particular that of his hosts, the Taliban. One of his aides laughed and said the base was a republic within a republic.
The next day Bin Laden took me on a guided tour, sporting the Kalashnikov so dear to him. (He told me it had belonged to a Soviet general killed in one of the Afghan jihad battles.) We walked through the trees and he explained that he loved mountains. I would rather die than live in a European state, he declared.
He told me about past Al-Qaeda attacks on the Americans including the 1993 ambush on American troops in Mogadishu, which he said had been wrongly blamed on the Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.
More attacks were in the planning stages, he said, and he emphasised that these operations took a long time to prepare. He hinted at a strike at the Americans on their home territory, but I confess I did not register the enormity of what he implied when he came out with an unforgettable statement: We hope to reach ignition point in the not-too-distant future.
Bin Laden also explained his long-term anti-American strategy. He told me he knew he would never be able to defeat America on its own soil using conventional weapons. He had another plan, one that would take years to reach fruition.
We want to bring the Americans to fight us on Muslim land, he said as we walked through the woods in the high mountains at Tora Bora. If we can fight them on our own territory we will beat them, because the battle will be on our terms in a land they neither know nor understand.
We are witnessing part of that plan now, in the battlefields of Iraq, which has become a breeding ground for the most ruthless and militant Al-Qaeda fighters we have seen. In the process we are discovering the new face of Al-Qaeda, as a movement involved in bloody sectarian strife against fellow Muslims.
PARADOXICALLY, the strike on American home territory in September 2001 was a setback to Bin Ladens long-term plan. Al-Qaeda lost support among more moderate Muslims, who sympathised with the victims. It lost its safe haven and training camps in Afghanistan. And, crucially, there was dissent within the movement itself.
Some inner-circle Al-Qaeda members left as a result of what they considered to be a catastrophic decision, according to Abu Qatada, a radical cleric believed to be Al-Qaedas spiritual leader in Europe. (He is currently fighting a deportation order in Britain.) They predicted the US would respond with unparalleled ferocity.
Abu Qatada told me that the September 11 attacks were also opposed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who in 2001 was still a relatively obscure Jordanian associate of Al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was soon to shoot into the limelight as the central figure in this story. For, two years on, the arrival of 150,000 US troops in Iraq in March 2003 created exactly the turning point in Al-Qaedas history that Bin Laden had dreamt of.
Iraq is in many ways a better base for Al-Qaeda than Afghanistan. It provides an Arabic-speaking environment and culture. Geographically it is the heart of the region. In Islamic terms it is as important as Saudi Arabia and Palestine.
Furthermore, Al-Qaedas supporters in Iraq are the minority Sunni Arabs who have been marginalised by the aftermath of the occupation, isolated from the state institutions in a rather humiliating manner, and are eager for revenge and the resumption of power.
With chilling beheadings, Zarqawi rapidly emerged as the most ferocious insurgent chieftain though he only became the official leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq after a long wrangle with Bin Laden over attacks on the Shiite majority.
Militarily, Al-Qaeda has since been increasingly hardline and ruthless in Iraq, demonstrating indifference to collateral damage. Zarqawi has long been waging an anti-Shiite campaign with the express intention of fomenting the sectarian strife we are now witnessing.
Last Wednesdays bombing of the Shiite golden mosque at Samarra was in all probability the work of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Shiite majority have most to gain from maintaining stability, but by bombing their most sacred shrine Zarqawi has finally unleashed the threat of civil war. Previous attacks had failed to provoke the retaliatory Shiite violence that has claimed more than 130 mostly Sunni lives since the mosque attack.
Zarqawis rationale is threefold.
First, civil war will prevent the Sunni minority from joining the current political process. He has denounced democracy as heretical on the grounds that it makes man obedient to man instead of Allah.
Second, civil war will unseat the heretic Shiite leaders, render the country ungovernable and ensure the failure of the US project.
Third, Zarqawi is mindful of the huge reserves of Sunni military support in neighbouring countries both on a national level and among the individual mujaheddin pouring into Iraq to aid their beleaguered brethren struggling against the Iran-backed Shiite militias.
Civil war in Iraq could rapidly spread through the region. Many Sunni leaders are already unnerved by the growing influence of Iran in Iraqi internal affairs, and sectarian tensions have been brewing in several countries including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
Zarqawis language towards the Shiites is vitriolic. In a letter to Bin Laden dated June 15 2004 he describes them as the lurking serpent, claiming that they can inflict more damage on the umma than the Americans.
He elaborates: These are people who have added to their heresy and atheism with political cunning and a burning zeal to seize upon the crisis of governance and the balance of power in the state . . . whose new lines they are trying to establish through their political organisations in collaboration with their secret allies, the Americans . . . they have been a sect of treachery and betrayal through all history and all ages.
Initially Bin Laden was opposed to attacks on Shiites and urged Zarqawi to avoid civilian deaths. Zarqawi baldly states in his letter that if Bin Laden will not endorse an anti-Shiite campaign, he will not join Al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden apparently changed his mind. Any doubts he might have had about the legitimacy of targeting Shiite Muslims or the collateral deaths of Iraqi citizens have since been swept away in the relentless flood of bloody attacks unleashed by his latest ally.
HOW did Zarqawi become such a powerful and pivotal figure? He is a former street thug from a ghetto in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, 15 miles northeast of Amman. He was nicknamed the Green Man because of his tattoos. His real name is Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayilah Zarqawi simply means the one from Zarqa.
The turnaround in his character seems to have happened towards the end of the 1980s, when he developed an interest in radical Islam perhaps through contact with Palestinian refugees living near his home and set off for the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.
There he fell under the spell of a Palestinian religious scholar known as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Back in Jordan following the Afghan wars, both men were jailed after Jordanian police found them in possession of weapons.
Zarqawi became a prison Islamist leader, meting out violent punishments to anyone who dared disobey him. He gathered a following of hundreds of the most hardened criminals in Jordan.
Many sources testify to Zarqawis physical and mental resilience. He lost all his toenails under torture and endured 8œ months of solitary confinement.
Released under an amnesty in 1999, he resurfaced in Afghanistan, where he led his own movement, separate from Al-Qaeda. He fled with his men in late 2001 to avoid the American reprisals for September 11.
To understand what happened next, and to see how this obscure figure has emerged to such prominence, we have to look at the strange world of pre-invasion Iraq.
In enclaves in the Kurdish north, close to the Turkish and Iranian borders and beyond Saddam Husseins jurisdiction, several Sunni organisations opposed to Saddams secular regime had set up base. Jordanian contacts in one of these, Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), smoothed the way for Zarqawi to establish his own camp.
Ansar al-Islam is an important footnote to the invasion of Iraq. Much has been made of a possible connection between it and Al-Qaeda in the course of US intelligence efforts to link Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.
I met its leader, Mullah Krekar, in Oslo last year and he vigorously denied Al-Qaeda had helped it in any way. He said he had personally asked Bin Laden for financial help and had been turned down. (It must be added that many sources dispute this was their last meeting.)
Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaedas ideology, Saddam established contact with the Afghan Arabs as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed.
In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Baath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance.
According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis.
On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddams caches.
Most commentators agree that Al-Qaeda was present in Iraq before the US invasion. The question is for how long and to what extent. What is known is that Zarqawi took a direct role in Al-Qaedas infiltration. In March 2003 it is not clear whether this was before or after the invasion began he met Al-Qaedas military strategist, an Egyptian called Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi, and agreed to assist Al-Qaeda operatives entering Iraq.
Makkawi is a shadowy figure. Little is known about him except that he used to be a war strategies expert in the Egyptian army. His greater strategy for Al-Qaeda, revealed on a jihadist website, is to expand the (Iraqi) conflict throughout the region and engage the US in a long war of attrition . . . create a jihad Triangle of Horror starting in Aghanistan, running through Iran and southern Iraq then via southern Turkey and south Lebanon to Syria.
With his new role as Al-Qaeda facilitator Zarqawi rapidly gained importance. Newly arrived Arab recruits were dependent on him for contacts and local knowledge, and as the anti-American insurgency developed after the invasion he provided the intelligence for co-ordinated attacks that were instantly more effective than random independent operations. As a result he effectively became the emir of the foreign jihadis in Iraq.
I believe that his aim was to drag the Shiites into a civil war. His choice of provocative targets bears this out: he was almost certainly behind the massacre of 185 Shiite pilgrims who were killed in Karbala and Baghdad in March 2004.
Zarqawi was in negotiations with the Al-Qaeda leadership for nearly a year before they finally announced an alliance and created Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Iraq) in 2004. Already established as a formidable leader, he waited to negotiate from a position of strength over his insistence on an anti-Shiite campaign.
Perhaps he would have preferred to usurp Bin Laden as leader of Al-Qaeda, but he had the strategic sense to realise this was not going to be possible and therefore decided to submit. He needed Bin Ladens blessing and the Al-Qaeda name to bring him thousands of new recruits from all over the world (not just from Arab countries).
Al-Qaeda needed him, too. At the time of the new alliance its fortunes were lagging. The attacks on Afghanistan and increased security measures the world over had seen its numbers dwindle; its 2003 attacks in Saudi Arabia had hit its popularity in the kingdom.
A new presence in Iraq, especially with such a high-profile, magnetic (if terrifying) leader as Zarqawi, promised a new lease on life. The Al-Qaeda leadership was not to be disappointed.
Zarqawis agenda was to prove even more radical than that of the Al-Qaeda leadership; in May 2005, firmly under the Al-Qaeda banner, Zarqawi declared that collateral killing of Muslims was justified under overriding necessity. He brought a new level of psychological terror to operations with his ferocious reputation.
In July last year his old spiritual mentor, Maqdisi still in jail in Jordan questioned Zarqawis attacks on civilians, especially women and children, and his targeting of Shiites. Zarqawi responded with an internet posting asserting that al-Maqdisi is being lured into the path of Satan.
WHAT of the future? Bin Laden remains unchallenged as Al-Qaedas spiritual leader, but his fugitive status has created a vacancy for an overall military commander. This will almost certainly be filled by Zarqawi: a recent communiqué from Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers referred to him as the most likely emir of the organisation in the Middle East and North Africa.
Here I would like to introduce just one more name. When I first walked alone into Bin Ladens dimly lit cave 10 years ago, a man was there to meet me; I was astonished to recognise him as a red-bearded Syrian writer I knew quite well from London, Omar Abdel Hakim, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, a specialist on jihad and Islam.
We spoke for a few moments and I learnt that he had left Spain, where he had both citizenship and a wife, to join Al-Qaeda. Later he was to join the Taliban, and became its leader Mullah Omars media adviser. Come, he said, leading the way into another cave. The sheikh is waiting for you.
I heard from him again in 1998 when he gave me a detailed account by telephone of an angry confrontation between Mullah Omar and a Saudi delegation, which asked the Taliban leader to cede Bin Laden to the United States because he was a terrorist.
The visitors, led by Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence, flew to Kandahar in a private jet. They were heatedly ordered to leave by Omar, who was enraged by their request that a Muslim government would seek to deliver a fellow Muslim to an infidel state.
Suri was one of the key figures who, like Zarqawi, opposed the 9/ll attacks. They have since become close collaborators. The Syrian is said to be an Al-Qaeda recruiter.
Zarqawi has maintained connections in Europe for many years, and these are nurtured by Suri, who is believed to control several Al-Qaeda groups in the West. Both men are suspected of involvement in the attacks on Madrid and London claimed by Al-Qaeda in Europe.
The new generation of Al-Qaeda leaders is in place with Zarqawi and the Suri among them and the organisation has become even more hardline as a result. The new ruthlessness about relentless violence directed at a wide range of targets in Iraq is clearly designed to shock and terrorise their enemies. But Iraq has now become a platform from which to launch international operations.
Al-Qaeda is not only attempting to destabilise the western world, but the whole of the stagnated Middle East.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
05:49 ||
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#1
I forgot to add that Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi is the real name of a former Egyptian special forces colonel who is known far better on Rantburg as Saif al-Adel.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006 5:54
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I smell bullshit. Read it again, this is nothing more than an Al Qaeda puff piece.
All of Bin Laden's mistakes weren't mistakes, he planned for them all along. His greatest success, the one that most motivates us to fight, 911, it wasn't his idea, just a lapse of judgement.
Zarqawi is a "powerful and pivotal figure". Not just a blood thirsty thug willing whose total lack of humanity allows him to accomplish what anyone of us could accomplish if we were also so inclined, kill a large number of unarmed people minding their daily business. No according to this article he too is a brilliant military planner with a rationale that is "three-fold".
And of course the idea that Saddam had links to terrorists is debunked here as well.
This is pure bullshit from someone who has been an Al Qaeda mouthpiece since 1996. The only reason we got the puking scene at the beginning of this article was to help negate that obvious fact.
#5
Eagle's Nest? Wasn't that the name of Hitler's lair? Maybe this was part of Binny's planned deceit and he's no where near Tora Bora anymore. He may boast, but what's he gonna do when the Great Eagle shows up? For what is is worth Jeremiah 49:16-20 came to mind:
(Teman is in Arabia, not Afghanistan,Bozrah, and the Edomites native inhabitants of the hills of Jordan)
Jeremiah 49:16-20: The terror you inspire and the pride of your heart have deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks,who occupy the heights of the hill.
Though you build your nest as high as the eagles,
from there I will bring you down, declares the LORD.
Edom will become an object of horror; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds.
As Sodom and Gomorrah were overthrown, along with their neighboring towns, says the LORD,so no one will live there;man will dwell in it.
Like a lion coming up from Jordans thickets to a rich pastureland,I will chase Edom from its land in an instant.
Who is the chosen one I will appoint for this? Who is like me and who can challenge me? And what shepherd can stand against me? Therefore, hear what the LORD has planned against Edom,what he has purposed against those who live in Teman:
The young of the flock will be dragged away; he will completely destroy their pasture because of them. At the sound of their fall the earth will tremble; their cry will resound to the Red Sea. Look! An eagle will soar and swoop down,
spreading its wings over Bozrah.
In that day the hearts of Edoms warriors
will be like the heart of a woman in labor.
Opium from the region of southern Afghanistan where thousands of British soldiers are being deployed is helping to finance al-Qaeda operations, senior army officers believe.
Hundreds more troops are due to arrive in Helmand province this week. Disrupting al-Qaeda's funding stream from the poppy fields has emerged as a previously secret aim of the deployment.
Senior officers have confirmed briefings by the security services and Ministry of Defence officials on Helmand's role in the 'international terror network'.
The commander of the British Army in Afghanistan, Colonel Stephen Padgett, said the deployment would help protect Britain from terrorists: 'There is an international terrorism issue. Al-Qaeda benefits from the narcotics trade that goes on.
'By targeting the high-level narcotics trade it will have an impact on terrorism; by making it difficult for them to make money it will benefit Britain.'
Afghan officials said Taliban and al-Qaeda supporters had regrouped in the south of the country and were tapping into its huge opium fields for funding. Latest figures estimate the heroin trade in Helmand is worth £650 million a year.
The officer in charge of preparing Britain's deployment in Helmand, Colonel Gordon Messenger, confirmed he had received intelligence briefings linking drug money and terrorism. He described the issue as a 'festering' concern. In Kabul, British diplomats said sending 3,300 British troops would help curb al-Qaeda's free reign in the province, roughly the size of Wales.
The head of the Afghan National Army, General Ghul Agha Naibi, said al-Qaeda and the Taliban had a 'significant' presence in Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar. 'Al-Qaeda is trying everything it can to brutalise the southern areas.'
Four years after British forces were deployed in Afghanistan, attacks by a resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda are increasing. Army officers have expressed concern that insurgents will be reinforced by foreign fighters from Pakistan and Iran arriving over Helmand's border with Pakistan. Messenger said the 'porous' boundary was unlikely ever to be brought under control.
There were fears that insurgents in Helmand would adopt the tactics used in Iraq, particularly bomb attacks on British convoys. British soldiers based in Kabul have told The Observer of their concern over the Helmand deployment. One said: 'They have become increasingly sophisticated at vehicle explosives. Before you know it they're right on top of you. We expect to lose some lads down there.'
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
05:48 ||
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A day after a foiled attack against Saudi Arabia's vital oil infrastructure, an Al Qaeda branch warned in an Internet statement Saturday that there would be more suicide bombings. "There are more like them who are racing toward martyrdom and eager to fight the enemies of God," the posting said.
A successful strike on the Abqaiq complex, near Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf coast, would be devastating. Nearly two-thirds of the country's oil flows through the facility for processing before export.
Friday's attack, which was repelled by Saudi security services, demonstrated the country's success in putting tough security around the oil industry, the source of the royal family's wealth, analysts said. Two suicide bombers in explosives-packed cars exchanged gunfire with police at a checkpoint before a gate in the first of three fences around the sprawling, heavily guarded complex. One assailant's car crashed into the closed gate, exploding and blowing a hole in the fence, a senior Saudi security official said on condition of anonymity.
The second bomber drove through the hole before police opened fire, detonating his car, the official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/26/2006
05:47 ||
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EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) - A suspected militant has confessed to a role in planning deadly bombings in three tourist resorts in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, prosecutors said Saturday. Osama Abdel-Ghani el-Nakhlawi, who was arrested in September, told interrogators that he participated in planning and making preparations for October 2004 bombings at the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan as well as a July attack in Sharm el-Sheik, the prosecutors told the court at the trial of two other suspects in the Taba attack.
El-Nakhlawi will be brought in as a third defendant in the trial, joining defendants Mohammed Gayez Sabbah and Mohammed Abdullah Rabaa, the prosecution said. The trial, before an emergency court, is the first in connection with the Oct. 7 car bombings in Taba on the Israeli-Egyptian border, in which 34 people were killed.
Egyptian security officials have long said the Taba blast was connected to the July 23 suicide bombings in Sharm el-Sheik, which killed at least 64 people. The two attacks prompted massive sweeps in the mountainous deserts of the Sinai Peninsula. Prosecutors said they would present new evidence in the trial based on testimony from 19 other suspects arrested in the wake of the Sharm attacks, some of whom prosecutors said have since confessed to helping hide militants behind the Taba bombings.
The trial, which began last year, was adjourned until March 25. Sabbah and Rabaa have pleaded not guilty on a number of terror-related charges.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
00:34 ||
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THE movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, alleged to have played a role in the anti-Sunni violence over the last few days, publicly made peace with political and religious Sunni leaders overnight. Four sheikhs from the Sadr movement made a "pact of honour" with the conservative Sunni Muslim Scholars Association, and called for an end to attacks on places of worship, the shedding of blood and condemning any act leading to sedition.
Why do I get this sense that Moqie has had his cake and has eaten it as well?
The agreement was made in the particularly symbolic setting of Baghdad's premier Sunni mosque Abu Hanifa where the Shiite sheikhs prayed under the guidance of Sunni imam Abdel Salam al-Qubaissi. The meeting was broadcast on television and the religious leaders all "condemned the blowing up of the Shiite mausoleum of Samarra as much as the acts of sabotage against the houses of God as well as the assassinations and terrorisation of Muslims".
The statement made reference to the key concerns of both communities with the violent aftermath to the attack on the Samarra mausoleum which saw more than 119 people die.
The sheikhs condemned "those who excommunicate Muslims" a reference to the "takfireen" or Islamist extremists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who justify killing fellow Muslims by declaring them non-Muslims. "It is not permitted to spill the Iraqi blood and to touch the houses of God," said the statement, adding that any mosques taken over by another community should be returned.
The meeting also announced the formation of a commission to "determine the reasons for the crisis with a view to solving it", while also calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops.
On the political front, Salam al-Maliki, a cabinet minister allied to Sadr, and Iyad al-Sammaraie of the Sunni Islamic Party proclaimed their own reconciliation at a joint press conference, aired on Iraqi state television.
The Islamic Party belongs to the Sunni National Concord Front, which won 44 seats in parliament and has broken off talks on forming the next Iraqi government since Wednesday's eruption of violence.
While overwhelmingly Shiite and representing thousands of poor and disaffected Shiites across the country, Sadr's movement has often made overtures to the Sunni Arabs over their mutual dislike of the US presence in the country. Still, the roving bands of gun-toting, black clad youths attacking Sunnis and their places of worship on Wednesday were widely believed to have connections to the Mehdi Army, the armed wing of Sadr's movement.
In fact, Sadr's office in Najaf issued a statement Saturday calling on his followers to eschew their trademark black uniforms. "The order has been given to members of the Mehdi Army to no longer wear their black uniform, so that it not exploited by those who commit crimes," said the statement. The statement added that those attacking mosques were "criminal bands with no links to the Sadr movement."
Still think Moqie should be pushing up daisies.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
00:06 ||
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Doesn't matter what Sadrobot does; foreigners from al-Qaeda in Iraq and some local stooges are doing the Sunni terror.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - In an unusual round of telephone diplomacy, President Bush spoke with seven leaders of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties in a bid to defuse the sectarian crisis unleashed by the bombing of the Shiites' Askariya shrine in Samarra. Bush "encouraged them to continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord among Iraq's communities," said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.
The U.S. president's personal intervention appeared to ease Sunni fears and give new impetus to political moves to resolve the crisis. During a late night meeting at Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's residence, representatives of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish parties agreed to renew efforts to form a national unity government. "I am very happy and very optimistic," al-Jaafari said. "Our people are very far from civil war and everyone asserted that the first enemy of Iraqis is terrorism and there isn't a Sunni who is against a Shiite or a Shiite who is against a Sunni."
Sunni leaders did not explicitly say they would end their boycott of coalition talks, announced Thursday after a wave of Shiite reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. But a Sunni leader, Tariq al-Hashimi, said all sides agreement that one of the solutions to the sectarian crisis "is to form the government as soon as possible."
"(Friday) they were fighting each other," Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told The Associated Press. "Until noon (Saturday) there were no improvements but suddenly after Bush called them, they all went to the meeting. There is strong American pressure because they are very much concerned about Iraq."
A second straight day of curfew in Baghdad and three surrounding provinces kept the city relatively calm, raising hopes the worst of the crisis was past. Authorities lifted the curfew in the areas outside Baghdad but decreed an all-day vehicle ban Sunday for the capital and its suburbs. "I think the danger of civil war as a result of this attack has diminished, although I do not believe we are completely out of danger yet," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters Saturday night.
Faced with one of the gravest threats of the turbulent U.S. presence in Iraq, American officials mounted a furious effort to get the political process back on track while Iraqi authorities defended their handling of the crisis.
Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab, told reporters the government had one army division and one Interior Ministry armored brigade ready to move in case of a new outbreak of violence around the capital. "All honorable Iraqis are asked today to do all they can to preserve Iraqi blood and avoid strife, which in case it breaks out will burn everyone," al-Dulaimi said. "We do not want to burden the public with our security measures but the more we take, the more we can control acts of violence. If we have to, we are ready to fill the streets with (armored) vehicles."
Violence began to recede following calls for restraint from Islamic religious leaders, including radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose own militia was blamed for many of the attacks on Sunnis. On Saturday, al-Sadr's movement joined Sunni clerics in agreeing to prohibit killing members of the two sects and banning attacks on each other's mosques. The clerics issued a statement blaming "the occupiers," meaning the Americans and their coalition partners, for stirring up sectarian unrest. "We demand that the occupiers leave or set a timetable for the withdrawal," the statement said. al-Sadr is an idiot Bush is a hell of lot more intelligent than the liberals give him credit for.
Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special envoy for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, said the UN is examining a petition signed by former and present MPs who claimed they were pressured to support the 2004 extension of President Emile Lahoud's mandate.
Larsen said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had informed the Security Council that there was a general feeling in Lebanon that "the election (of Lahoud) was implemented with the direct interference of Syria." He stressed that "this is a Lebanese issue that should be solved in Beirut through the existing democratic institutions."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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Why didnt you warn me?
Sarerahe in the Nawa-e-Waqt stated that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the Americans that they should have informed Pakistan before attacking Bajaur. It was like a weak child in school after being slapped by a bully: why didnt you tell me before slapping me?.
We will destroy marathon!
According to the daily Pakistan, Jamaat Islami said in Lahore that its youths will prevent girls and women from running in the nixed marathon organised by the Punjab government. The roshan khayal government was going to make videos of Muslim women running in shorts and then give them to foreign kafir men to watch. The Ahle Hadith youth force, on the other hand, was sure that it would be able to put an end to the marathon with sheer force. It said that the marathon was a conspiracy of Jews (Yuhud) and Hindus (Hunud).
Maulvi gang busted at last?
According to Khabrain, the police of Narang Mandi were able to catch seven of the infamous Maulvi Gang dacoits of Punjab while they were making ready to commit another armed robbery. The police surrounded them and there was an exchange of fire with the pious criminals for three hours. The gang has looted the districts of Punjab lying between Sialkot and Gujranwala, engaged in police encounters and killed many innocent people in exchange of fire. All of the gang say five prayers during the day and recite the Quran in jail when imprisoned. While they loot the citizens they request them to observe Islam. In their appearance they look like the clerics, which is why they are called Maulvi Gang. There was an alarming increase in the gangs strength as most pious people were attracted to it.
Run in marathon with burqa!
Quoted in the Jang, MMA-JUP leader Anas Noorani stated that women should not take part in the Lahore marathon because that would be nudity, but if the women agreed to wear a burqa while jogging in front of men, then it was okay.
Dont search me, but search my delegation!
Columnist Abdul Qadir Hassan disclosed in the Jang that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had told the Americans that if he was body-searched on his visit to Washington, he would turn around and take his delegation back to Pakistan. But they had not been given the same ultimatum in the case of his delegation which was body-searched and the film of their body search was shown in Pakistan. Nazir Naji wrote that had the Pakistani delegation been probed by a team of women no one would have felt insulted by the body-search.
Marathon and Pakistans soft image
Historian Dr Safdar Mehmood wrote in the Jang that Chief Minister Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi announced that he was organising a mixed marathon in Lahore to give Pakistan a soft international image. He disagreed with the chief minister as Pakistan already had a soft image on the basis of the fact that women here were active in all walks of life and were not disallowed to drive a car as in Saudi Arabia and were not forced to sit at home and not come out in public and observe purdah.
The mob abuses Edhi and Shirani
According to Khabrain, the mob that destroyed Lahore on 14 February 2006 while protesting against Denmarks blasphemous cartoons shouted abuses against Maulana Abdus Sattar Edhi, Pakistans famous philanthropist, for calling on them not to destroy property. They also abused Maulana Shirani of MMA Balochistan for not favouring violence. The mob said that the two simply did not understand the nature of their love for the Prophet (pbuh).
Press-ganged Christians of Bhai Pheru
According to Khabrain, the Christians of Bhai Pheru near Lahore have protested that local feudal people and contractors had press-ganged many Christians into working free for them. When the Christians resisted, they were cruelly beaten. One Christian had died as a result of the beating he received after he refused to work in begaar.
The mob was not religious!
Writing in the Nawa-e-Waqt, Ataur Rehman stated that the gangs of youth who destroyed Lahore on 14 February were not from the religious parties. They did not look like seminarians and in any case they began their vandalism before the procession had begun. He suspected that there could be khufia haath (secret hand) behind the destruction. He recalled that the people were angry about a number of other acts committed by the Americans in addition to the offence of the Danish-European cartoons.
Ban rallies in Lahore!
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in the Jang that it was unforgivable to destroy the city of Lahore in the name of the Holy Prophet (pbuh). In future, the government should allow processions only after taking the pledge of peaceful behaviour from the organisers. It should actually collect a pledge fee before letting the rally take place, which could be forfeited if the rally became violent.
Prophet Muhammad PBUH and Kalki Avatar
The Nawa-e-Waqt said that a writer in India had written a book titled Kalki Autar claiming that the last awaited avatar of Lord Vishnu was no other than Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Kalkis fathers name was to be Vishnu Bhagat (servant of God) which was the same in meaning as Abdullah, the father of the Prophet (pbuh). Kalkis mothers name was to be Sumati meaning peace or comfort which was also the meaning of Amina, the mother of the Prophet(pbuh).
Dr Khwaja funded anti-insult campaigns
According to the daily Pakistan, Dr Ahmad Javed Khawaja who was shot to death in Manawan near Lahore was devoted to the cause of punishing those who insulted the Prophet(pbuh). He was supposed to have given money liberally to the organisations that were fighting for the cause of punishing those guilty of blasphemy. Most of the persons found blaspheming were Christians and Qadianis. Moinuddin Lakhwi of Ahle Hadith said that America had got Dr Khawaja murdered.
Shezan restaurant is not Qadiani-owned
According to the daily Pakistan, after Shezan Restaurant was damaged in Lahore by the blasphemy mob on 14 February 2006, its owner Mian Imran Ahmad announced that the restaurant was not owned by the Qadianis. He said that by burning down the Mall Road branch of the restaurant, the mob had deprived 50 employees of their livelihood. In all, Shezan has 10 branches employing 1,500 people. He said that Shezan International, however, was owned by the Qadianis, but this hotel was located abroad.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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The roshan khayal government was going to make videos of Muslim women running in shorts and then give them to foreign kafir men to watch.
Thanks but no thanks. I already have a subscription to Playboy.
Posted by: Rafael ||
02/26/2006 1:35
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Seems like we just had the mixed-marathon dustup for this year.
KABUL - President Hamid Karzai has handed intelligence to Pakistan that indicates Mullah Mohammed Omar, supreme leader of the Taleban regime ousted by US-led forces, and key associates are hiding in Pakistan, a senior Afghan official said on Friday. The intelligence was shared during a visit by Karzai to Islamabad last week, and comes after a wave of suicide attacks that have fueled Afghan suspicions that militants are operating out of Pakistan. Afghanistan also provided information about the locations of alleged terrorist training camps along the border and in Pakistani cities, said the official, who is familiar with the information shared with Pakistan. He declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Omar has been at large since the Taleban was ousted by US-led forces in late 2001 for sheltering Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The US government has offered a US$10 million reward for information leading to Omars capture. Pakistan denies offering a haven for Taleban leaders or fighters.
"Nope, not us, wouldn't do it now, nope, nope."
Earlier this week, Pakistans interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, confirmed that Afghanistan had handed over information about Taleban suspects. On Friday, he declined comment. He said, however, that Pakistan would capture them if they are here.
"We're a big country. They might be here. They might be elsewhere."
We have passed on the intelligence that we have about Mullah Omar and a number of his close associates to Pakistan, said the Afghan official. The intelligence is about those members of the Taleban leadership who we believe are in Pakistan. The official said other suspects believed to be in Pakistan included Mullah Dadullah, the Talebans head of operations in southern Afghanistan; and Ahktar Mohammed Usmani, a former commander in Kandahar. The official refused to give details about where in Pakistan they were thought to be hiding.
Not that it matters, the Paks aren't going to do anything about it anyway.
A Pakistani intelligence official said that during his visit, Karzai had mentioned that Omar could also be hiding somewhere in Pakistan as he keeps changing his location along the border. But he said Karzai gave no details on Omars whereabouts. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said it was easy to make the allegation, but asked, Do they have any evidence?
"Because if so, we need to move these guys fast!"
Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told The Associated Press that Afghanistan had shared with Pakistan whatever we considered was credible intelligence. They promised they would look into it. He declined to give details, other than that the information included the presence of Taleban leaders, the presence of training camps and other security-related issues. A senior Afghan counterterrorism official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issues sensitivity, said Afghanistan had given Pakistan information about 150 suspects, including senior and second-tier Taleban commanders. A lot of Taleban are living in Quetta, Peshawar and Karachi, he said, referring to three major Pakistani cities. He said Afghanistan gave specific information to Pakistan, including some addresses.
How 'bout just giving the info to us and letting us take care of it?
That's the next step.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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I imagine Karzai has shared the information with US Military, or vice versa. First step is to allow Pakistan to take action. Second step would be Hellfire action.
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 9:29
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And check out the pic of Mahmoud in the 'Kerry' bunny suit.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Russia's top nuclear official expressed confidence Saturday that the U.N. atomic watchdog agency still could resolve the international standoff over Iran's program, Russian news agencies reported. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the state atomic energy agency, said resolving the persistent questions about the intent of Iran's nuclear program "within the framework of the IAEA is absolutely realistic," Russian news agencies reported.
A resolution involving the International Atomic Energy Agency could avert U.N. Security Council sanctions against the Islamic republic. Still, Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insisted his country could endure international sanctions for the sake of their nuclear program. "The Iranian people have chosen their own way and they can withstand problems and secure their own interests," he was quoted by Iranian state television as saying after talks with China's deputy foreign minister, Lu Guozheng, over the nuclear issue.
Moscow is struggling to persuade Tehran to return to a moratorium on uranium enrichment and agree to shift its enrichment program to Russian territory to ease world concerns it could divert enriched uranium to a weapons program. Kiriyenko, who met Saturday with Atomic Energy Organization of Iran chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh, suggested Tehran must act to assure the world it is not seeking nuclear weapons.
He stressed that Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program but also said that "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is unacceptable and the international community must be certain that it does not occur under any circumstances," ITAR-Tass reported.
"It is no doubt possible to satisfy these two demands," it quoted him as saying.
Kiriyenko made the comments at a news conference with Iranian Economy Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari. Iranian media did not carry his comments.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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Madmoud looks good dressed as a condom, don't you think?
Kiryjackoff is living in an alternate universe.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 0:37
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So its very obvious Russia's top nuclear official has never even met the Iranian president....
LAHORE: Muslims around the world are in a precarious condition not because of their beliefs but because of lack of them, said former pop star Junaid Jamshed during a lecture on Youth and their Future at the College of Home Economics on Saturday.
From the picture, Junaid musta been quite a pop star ...
"Yup. Yup. We need more shariah!"
He said the controversial cartoons had been dealt with in the most shameful way. Our love for our Prophet (may his gummas heal) (PBUH) is not shown by how we react to others, but by how we act. He said such cartoons were of no consequence and what mattered was how Prophet Muhammads (may his testicular atrophy stop) (PBUH) followers behaved. Despite all slander and reprimands, he never let his fellow Muslims avenge him or raise objection, his only concern was how Muslims behaved.
Especially with swords in hand ...
Why should we assume that we love him any more than his companions (RA) did? he asked. We should act the way he would expect true Muslims to, instead of acting like barbarians.
There's a difference? Who knew?
He said there were no grey areas in religion. We conveniently blur boundaries to allow us to follow whatever we wish. He prayed for Muslims to overcome their reservations and selfish pursuits. He said the only way Muslims could prove themselves worthy of respect was by turning towards religion and giving up the constant meaningless struggle towards worldly pursuits.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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Despite all slander and reprimands, he [Muhammad] never let his fellow Muslims avenge him or raise objection, his only concern was how Muslims behaved.
Just three words completely illustrate what a stinking lie this is -- Asma bint Marwan
Wait.. I recognize him! Wasn't he in a boy band?
The backpassage boys or something...
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 13:22
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But seriously,
It is all to common for "moderate" muslims to trip like this, especially educated, middle class ones.
They are taught at a young age all the restictions of Islam but being inconvenient for living a normal life, in the modern world, they are ignored.
But subconciously there is deep guilt at being a bad muslim...
Then some personal crisis causes the moderate muslim to trip. He grows the beard, goes to mosque, orders his sister to cover herself, and grows increasinly more rabid.
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 13:29
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The evolution of the muslim male...
Got me a guitar to get the girls...
The moderate muslim who beds any girl he fancies, drinks, enjoys music etc
Life crisis - perhaps alcohol, perhaps some family problem... begins to doubt
Growing the beard... music is bad, alcohol is bad, wimmen must cover their nekkid selves..
Full mullahdom
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 13:40
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he'll let his dental hygiene go to sh&t too, Shades of the Tater
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 14:25
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This is the time bomb planted in the minds of little muslim children of the middle/upper classes.
The lifestyle of their families and local community is at variance with what is taught as islamic.
They live life in this impure state, years for some, perhaps even a decade or two for others.
They are outwardly modern, well educated, with good jobs... but inside, the bomb ticks....
Then some personal crisis, they trip... and you get the Mohammed Attas..
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 15:20
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with or without the strippers?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 15:42
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Well, he was Takfiri so the regular islamic strictures didn't apply to him...
He could drink, consume pork, cavort with whores etc...
Posted by: john ||
02/26/2006 15:44
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And as JFM pointed out here a couple of years ago, they are prime targets for terror cell recruiters: "You've been eating the kaffir's pork, drinking his whiskey, and fornicating with his wimmin. The only way that you're getting to Jannah, by Allah, is by reading this here Quran and doing everything I, um, I mean it tells you." This is very similar to the guilt trip the "Karla's" of the 30's and 40's used to recruit well-to-do young university students for the Comintern.
Great photo montage, John. I met a psychaitrist once who told me that most of her job consisted of deprogramming people from bad memes their parents/teachers/playmates/etc filled their little minds with when children. To me, Islamic memes seem to be the most enduring and the most difficult to eradicate.
I think that it goes without saying that the older the society, the greater the degree of social control it must exert over its members. While not as old as some, Islam coupled with Arab tribal law, and now it seems Leninist terror and cell structure and Facist government, seems to constitute perhaps the most effective form of social control ever devised. The post-enlightenment memes of individualism, equality before the law, rule of law, individual property rights, etc., are penetrating every society on earth. However, they are least successful in penetrating Muslim society and Arab society stands out as especially impenetrable even in that sea of backwardness. Based on this, I feel pretty safe in concluding that Islam is the most effective form of social control ever devised. Even the Confucian (and its even more highly effective Japanese branch) and Hindu social control mechanisms have been completely unable to block the infiltration of Enlightenment memes. Another bit of evidence: fewer books have been translated into Arabic during its entire history than books translated into Spanish in just one year.
#14
use their backwardness against them. What do we have, 30-40 yrs of oil dependence, at most? They'll be nothing but a boil to be lanced on the ass of historyt after their oil runs out. Time to play 4 corners, identify the cells, eradicate them, and develop the future fuels over a 20-30 yr span. Think short AND longterm strategy. If they can't find a monopoly on dirt, Islam is cooked
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 16:50
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They know that too, Frank G. That's why they lust so mightily after Europe. They're in the same situation as the Soviets were after Stalin. The leadership knew that they had one to two generations before stagnation and lack of growth killed them. Even the dissidents knew. There was a book entitled Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? (Also read Solzhenitsyn's Letter to the Soviet Leaders.) The Soviets had to succeed in some imperialist adventure in order to survive. Europe was the best prospect because of its proximity, industrial base, and relative pacifism.
Islam is in the same boat as the Soviets. If the sheikhs and mullahs don't conquer Europe in the time frame you identify, they're hosed as you correctly point out. Which, as much as Europe disgusts me and pisses me off, is why we can't afford to walk away from it. To use American military jargon, it is the strategic decisive point in the war against Islamism. Another NATO isn't going to be the answer, but we need to come up with the ways and means to win there.
When I exit my geo-political frame of mind, I feel sorry for the bastards. When we win this thing, the cultural implosion in Dar al Islam is going to make what happened in the former USSR look like a picnic. Some of the sheikhs and mullahs will be hurt, but most will have their Swiss bank accounts. As usual, it will be Mahmoud on the block that will bear the brunt of the pain.
#16
all the more reason to start exposing every theiving mullah, Imam, Iranian president, et al and their financial holdings and net worth. This broadcast and net posting would have more incendiary (and I choose that term purposely) results than anything else. The faithful can be the most outraged when they are confronted with evidence they've been hosed for a decade or two of non-islamic decadence
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 17:46
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We could do it in 10 years or less by imposing an oil import fee to keep the price of imported oil at $50 per barrel.
#18
it'll stay higher than that due to armed conflict in Nigeria, Venezuela (yes, you Hugo), and the temporary loss of Iran's fields
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 18:17
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Frank G: That's precisely the kind of thing that we need to do to win the informational aspect of this war. Ralph Peters talks a lot about going after the kleptocrats. We'd probably piss off a lot of bankers, but so what. We gotta convince the masses that it's the holy men, generals and princes that are keeping them poor, not the Joos and their American mercenaries.
NS: In principle, I think that such a tax is a good idea. In reality, I fear that our distinguished elected representatives would use the proceeds to fund social programs, pork and other guaranteeed vote getters instead of investing it in new energy sources.
The United Nations is urging donors to provide funds to keep the Palestinian Authority running after Israel starts withholding tax revenues next week, rebuffing Israel's appeal for a suspension of aid, diplomats said on Friday.
Meanwhile, the European Union is expected to approve the release of around $107,000 next week to help PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' caretaker administration.
That's walking around money for Suha.
The UN stand has put a spotlight on disagreements over Israeli and Western efforts to put pressure on a Hamas-led Palestinian government to renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by interim peace deals with it. The UN's special envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, will brief the Security Council on Tuesday on his talks in the region, aides said. He has expressed concern in recent days that an aid cut-off could lead to the collapse of the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.
Why yes, yes it would, wouldn't it. Darned shame.
Israel argues that a 2001 Security Council resolution obliging member states to cut off funds to "terrorist" groups applies to the Palestinian Authority starting on February 18, when Hamas was sworn in as the majority bloc in the parliament. De Soto countered that Israel's decision to withhold the tax money it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority ran counter to the position taken last month by the Quartet of major peace mediators - the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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Arab and other muslim "brothers" just not coughing up the cash, are they?
Right now, a few large, probably. If the Islamists win, though, his cut may well be between two of his neck vertebrae. Gratitude towards the infidel is greatly discouraged.
Hamas' candidate for Palestinian Authority prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, told the Washington Post that Hamas will examine all of the agreements signed with Israel, and will honor those that are in the best interest of the Palestinians.
Points for honesty.
Haniyeh's comments, made in an interview with the Washington daily, will be published in full on Sunday. Haniyeh, seen as a leader of the apparently more pragmatic wing compared to the real whack-jobs of Hamas, also told the interviewer Hamas would honor agreements that guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital, and those that pledge the release of Palestinian prisoners.
When asked if Hamas would be willing to recognize Israel should it agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders, Haniyeh told the Washingon Post that Hamas would agree to a peace deal in stages, the first of which would call for stability and longterm ceasefire. He also said, "We have no hostile feelings toward Jews and we don't want to throw them into the sea. All we want is to get our land back and not to hurt anyone."
"And then we'll drive them into the sea!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
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A VICTORIAN Supreme Court jury today found the 32-year-old Werribee man guilty of one count of intentionally receiving funds from al-Qaeda. Jack Thomas was found not guilty of two counts of intentionally providing resources to al-Qaeda. He also was found guilty of possessing a false Pakistani passport.
Thomas faces a maximum 25 years' jail for receiving funds from al-Qaeda and two years' prison, or a $5,000 fine, for the passport offence. His wife Maryati and parents Patsy and Ian held hands as the verdict was read out after the week-long trial presided over by Justice Philip Cummins.
Thomas was the first Australian to be charged under new terror funding laws and the fifth charged under anti-terror legislation passed by federal parliament in October 2002, following the September 11 attacks in the United States. Osama bin Laden associate Khaled bin Attash gave Thomas $US3,500 ($4,740) and a plane ticket home from Pakistan.
During the trial, the Crown alleged Thomas had struck a deal with bin Attash to be a sleeper agent in Australia for bin Laden. Thomas left Australia for Pakistan on March 23, 2001, and returned home on June 6, 2003.
The Crown alleged Thomas had a Pakistani visa which had been altered to make it appear as if he had only been in the region for two weeks, instead of two-and-a-half years. His barrister Lex Lasry QC said Thomas planned to use the money bin Attash gave him to help his family and not for terrorism. He said the case against his client was based on guilt by association and branded it a "trophy trial" for the Australian Federal Police.
Outside the court, Rob Stary, a lawyer for Thomas, said it was a win that his client had been cleared of the most serious charge of providing himself as a resource to al Qaeda. "The fact that Jack Thomas has been acquitted of ... supporting a terrorist organisation or being a resource for a terrorist organisation, which were the ... most-serious charges in our view, is a very significant victory," Mr Stary told reporters.
Thomas's father Ian said he and his wife Patsy would continue to support their son. "As we have always known, Jack had nothing to answer for with these charges," he said. "We are very pleased with the jury, we thank the jury and the acquittal has been a great victory.
Thomas's wife Maryati said the couple's three young children longed to have their father home. "He is missing his kids very much." She said she would tell the children their father loves them very much and he was looking forward to seeing them soon.
Um, guys, he's guilty and he's going to be a while before he sees the kiddies.
Justice Cummins remanded Thomas in custody until March 2 when he will attend a pre-sentence hearing.
#3
mate a few grand US$ is SOooo not worth years in prison.
Look at his face.
That is a confused, lost soul who got picked up by Islamists.
This is a warning. They are in our societies, they have infiltrated us and they are targetting Aussies, Americans and Brits for conversion.
They go into the prisons, dens for lost souls and convert with great zeal.
They offer easy answers to people with complex problems.
The answer is Islam they say. And the clincher: they offer a community of instant friends.
Part of our fight against the cult of Islamism is surely to reach out to the lonely and lost in our communities, and be better friends and citizens to each other.
Islamists like al-Qaida prey on the lonely and the weak. Western converts are prime beef because we can get through security checks and airport screening easier. We know how our societies work: the legal code, the institutions.
We need to exclude and isolate the islamists but we need to be more compassionate and caring within our society also to remove the attraction.
An armed gang with suspected Al-Qaeda links Saturday made off with up to 65 million rupees (Approx. USD39 million) from a UAE-based Bank in the capital of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, said police. The heist was made at a local branch of Al-Faisal Bank in Peshawar, said Saeed Wazir, Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) investigations. He said armed robbers before escaping in a stolen vehicle with huge haul, painted Al-Qaeda on the bank walls.
Er, does Al-Q usually announce itself with spray paint?
Police were alerted to the robbery about 30 minutes later, he said. He said the suspects might have used Al-Qaeda name to divert police attention from real culprits. However, he added, investigations into the heist have been launched. He said further details would be given at a press conference later today.
#3
Why on earth would a bank in the North West Frontier Province need to have US$39 million on hand in cash? I can't imagne that much commerce goes on in a year of transactions throughout the entire province, even including Pakistan army payrolls. It isn't like the Governor's House has to throw exotic parties on a regular basis, I shouldn't think.
DUBAI, Feb 25 (KUNA) -- UAE's Emaar Properties announced Saturday formation of an authority of Fatwa, tasked with monitoring the company's operations to see if they were compatible with Islamic Sharia.
The Fatwa Authority consists of four members: Dr. Hussein Hamed Hassan, Dr. Ajeel Jassem Al-Nashmi, Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Atram and Dr. Mohammad Abdulhakeem Zuair.
Emaar chairman Mohammad Al-Abbar said in a statement the formation of the Fatwa authority was to meet future challenges as part of the company's booming business in and outside the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This move, he added, would have a good impact on Emaar's reputation. Emaar will be compelled to abide by the authority's decisions. The Authority will be reviewed and approving financial agreements and to give religious opinion about services and products of Emaar.
#1
tasked with monitoring the company's operations to see if they were compatible with Islamic Sharia.
ok, maybe its good that the port deal is on hold. Lets all take a breather, drop the politics and ask ourselves - do we really want these people running our ports?
#2
I was reading LGF and he says that it is 21 ports, not 6 that are at stake here.
I don't know if this article was posted on rantburg previously, but I found this article about the UAE stunning. clark tipps of bin laden
Not because of this article.... I'm just posting it because its comment about Clark floored me...but I've changed my mind and decided I'm against this deal. Just a gut feeling. The only reason I was for it in the first place is because when the Dems start releasing press releases and use an issue to bash Bush, they are on the wrong side of right. I can't think of much they have been on the right side of in my life time. But even a broken clock can be right twice a day. I'm sure if they realize it really is a bad deal for America they will support it soon enough.
Don't bother to tell me why this is a good deal. It's just a gut reaction, and I trust my gut. So I don't want to be bothered with the facts. UAE isn't important enough in my mind to take the risk, no matter how small or right the cause.
#4
These ass clowns are classic double dealers and money changers. Unfortunately, the Bush family thinks they can stay one step ahead of these jackals. Not hardly. Just another target for vaporization.
Actually, they never denied it. They just tried to redefine it.
The Lebanese government publicly admitted recently, for the first time, that it had permitted the delivery of a convoy of arms from Syria to Hezbollah.
I'm not sure why the Lebs seem to have this desire for national suicide...
The United Nations responded by issuing a condemnation.
But not a strongly-worded one.
Whoa! That'll show 'em!
According to Lebanese sources, Lebanese soldiers halted a convoy of arms-laden trucks from Syria at an army checkpoint in the Lebanon Valley on January 31. However, the Lebanese Defense Ministry ordered the soldiers to allow the convoy to proceed. A report on this incident then reached the UN's special envoy to the Middle East, Terje Larsen, in New York, and Larsen instructed his staff to investigate. Eventually, the Lebanese government admitted both that it had allowed the convoy to pass, and that the arms had been destined for Hezbollah. The UN then published a statement condemning the Lebanese government for having blatantly violated UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which, inter alia, calls for disarming the country's militias.
That did a lot of good, didn't it?
The arms in the convoy originated apparently from Iran.
That doesn't surprise me in the least...
It is not known how many trucks were in the convoy or what arms they carried. Arms smuggling from Syria into Lebanon has been going on for years, seemingly with the knowledge of the Lebanese government.
Syria's just the transit point. They'd come directly from Iran, if Iran had borders with Lebanon.
Iran doesn't have a border with Syria, either ...
In this fashion, huge quantities of arms from Iran and Syria have reached Hezbollah in recent years, including massive quantities of Katyushas and other rockets that are stationed in batteries in southern Lebanon and are aimed at Israel. However, this is the first time that the Lebanese have publicly admitted the existence of these convoys, much less that it has been authorizing arms deliveries to Hezbollah. The convoy's passage was apparently approved by the office of Defense Minister Elias Murr, in coordination with the office of Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud.
We could have guessed that connection.
According to a statement published by the UN on February 13, the UN forces in Lebanon were initially unaware of the convoy's passage, though reports of the incident reached them later. When the news reached Larsen, he demanded clarifications from Beirut, adding that if the reports were true, the action constituted a gross violation of Resolution 1559. In response, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's office confirmed the convoy's arrival, but did not specify for whom the arms were destined.
He said they went to "the resistance," which is Lebspeak for "Hezbollah." Hezbollah's not a militia, y'see. It's a "resistance movement," or sometimes freedumb fighters.
At the same time, the UN contacted the Lebanese Defense Ministry, which informed it that the arms were destined for Hezbollah. The ministry added that the army permitted the transfer of weapons to the "resistance" forces - i.e. Hezbollah - in accordance with a decision made by the Lebanese government. Following receipt of this information, the UN published a second statement, in which it condemned the incident as a grave violation of Resolution 1559, expressed concern and demanded that Beirut take steps to prevent a repetition. Hezbollah claims that it is not a "militia," and therefore, the resolution's demand that all Lebanese militias be disarmed does not apply to the organization.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
"Nope. Not us."
This interpretation has also been adopted by the Syrian government, Lahoud and several Lebanese cabinet ministers. As a result, Hezbollah has enjoyed preferential treatment compared to other Lebanese militias.
As far as I know, it's the only one still under arms, with the exception of the Paleostinians.
In contrast, the Lebanese army has at times confiscated arms shipments to Palestinian organizations based in Lebanon. In December 2005, for instance, after a Palestinian group with ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization, Al-Qaida in Iraq, fired Katyushas at Israel, Lebanon arrested some members of the group and confiscated their weapons.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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I don't imagine the Lebanese were in any position to refuse permission for the convoy to transit the country. To do so would mean standing up to both Syria, which I suspect still has men under arms on the Lebanese side of the border, and Iran, which owns Hezbollah. We don't really think Iran (and Hezbollah) would respond with understanding to such an action, do we?
Police on Thursday pressed charges against three ehsar members of outlawed Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) in connection with the August 17 bomb blasts in Gaibandha last year. The JMB men -- Ziaur Rahman Badal alias Reaz, 19, Abdul Kaiyum, 22, and Harun-ur-Rashid, 20 -- had earlier confessed to their crimes before a magistrate.
"Okay, okay, I'll talk! Just stop doing that!"
Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested Reaz at Ayub Ali Ansari mosque near the LGED office at Sukhnagar on January 23. Following his painfully extracted statement, the Rab arrested the other two at Shaghat upazila bazaar and handed them all to Gaibandha police.
The police submitted the charge sheet against them to a magistrate's court under the Explosive Act and the Special Act. Reaz told the police he was holding the responsibility of the regional commander of Gaibandha and Joypurhat districts.
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Police fired warning shots and used teargas against 2,000 demonstrators outside a mosque in Indian Kashmir's main city, Srinagar, yesterday, during protests at the killing of four boys in a shootout between soldiers and separatist militants last weekend.
Five protesters and two police officers were hurt in yesterday's clash. A strike called across Srinagar closed shops and businesses. Buses and cars stayed off the roads after mobs stoned vehicles. Separately, crowds protesting at the bombing of the Shia shrine in Iraq burned effigies of President George Bush and chanted: "Down with America!"
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LAHORE: The residence of Balochistans Livestock Minister Abdul Quddus Bazinjo was attacked with rockets on Saturday night, killing one guard and injuring four others.
Senior Superintendent of Police Operations Ghulam Muhammad Dogar told Geo Television that unidentified men ran away fled immediately after firing two rockets at Bazinjos residence. One rocket landed outside the house while the other hit the target. He said that the injured men were shifted to hospital. The minister was not at home when the rockets were fired.
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DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Authorities in Tajikistan have started demolishing the country's only synagogue in order to make way for a new presidential residence, an official said Friday. The century-old synagogue on government land in the ex-Soviet republic's capital Dushanbe will be completely torn down by June "as part of the plans to build a new presidential palace," said city administration spokesman Shavkat Saidov.
Last month, city authorities demolished the synagogue's ritual bathhouse, classroom and kosher butchery, the Norway-based international Forum 18 religious rights group said. Tajikistan's Jewish community, mainly made up of Bukharan Jews, is mostly elderly and poor and cannot afford to build a new synagogue. About 280 Jews live in Dushanbe, of about 480 across the country.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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#1
Isn't eliminating churches and synagouges a requirement for any country with "stan" in its name.
The United States has agreed to grant citizenship to 7,000 Ahiska Muslims who will be settled in Pennsylvania, reported a Russian newspaper on Friday, July 23. The first 11-strong batch of the Ahiska Muslims, living in the Russian province of Krasnodar, left for Geneva on Thursday, July 22, before flying to Philadelphia, reported Novie Izvestia. It added that the Muslims would be housed near the grand mosque in Philadelphia.
The paper recalled that Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev was notified of the American decision on February 15. Izvestia said the Russian government does not treat Ahiska Muslims as citizens and has not therefore given them passports or IDs.
An official in Krasnodar administration had told Interfax on Tuesday, July 20, that of the 11,999 Ahiska Muslims living in the region, 4,943 have received Russian citizenship and 744 have embarked on Russian naturalization procedures. He added that more than 5,000 others have expressed a desire to emigrate to the United States.
Earlier, Chingiz Neiman-zade, chairman of Vatan, a Meskheti Turks association based in Georgia, said the United States had offered to accept the Ahiska Muslims living in Krasnodar as immigrants. "On February 16, the International Migration Organization began an information program in Krasnodar to explain the terms for the resettlement of the Ahiska Muslims in the U.S.," he told Chicago Tribune on Thursday, July 22.
"The immigrants will be provided with housing and furniture, they will be helped to learn the English language and to complete formalities needed for residence in the US, which is especially important, and have been promised life-long welfare allowances for pensioners and the disabled."
Ahiska Muslims were happy with the American offer. "This decision marks a great change in our life", said Tepeshon Swanidze, leader of the Ahiska Muslim community in Russia. "We thank the US administration for its humanitarian decision", he added.
Ahiska Muslims, originally hailing from Anatolia, were exiled from their homeland after Russia seized the region of Ahiska following its 1828-1829 war with the Ottoman Empire. Many Ahiska Muslims were forced to seek refugee in Erzurum in eastern Turkey after being persecuted by the Russian Csar for supporting the Ottoman Empire.
Facing a similar fate under the notorious Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Ahiska Muslims fled to Uzbekistan in 1944. One year later, they went to Azerbaijan where they currently reside.
Turkish and Azeri parliamentarians had recently appealed for an international intervention to pressure the Georgian government into allowing the return of Ahiska Muslims. Ahiska became part of Georgia in 1918.
#1
"The immigrants will be provided with housing and furniture, they will be helped to learn the English language and to complete formalities needed for residence in the US, which is especially important, and have been promised life-long welfare allowances for pensioners and the disabled."
Wonderful. Let's import a few thousand folks likely to be hostile to us, our culture, our government, and our way of life and put them on welfare so we'll be able to share the cost of creating a cancer in our midst. Apparently we've not been paying attention to recent events in Europe.
#3
agree. This idea worked so well in Europe. Let's try it here.
Whose responsible for this and how much money did they get for gracing us with a group of people whose stated goal is to undermine our democracy and replace it with Sharia?
Jeesh. I'm all for being nice. But there's a difference between being nice and allowing yourself to be abused.
#4
What in hell is wrong with us? They're Russia's problem, not ours. If Russia wants to be rid of them, let Putin send them to Turkey, not Pennsylvania. WE DON'T NEED OR WANT ANY MORE MUSLIMS IN THIS COUNTRY. WE'D BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT THE ONES WE HAVE!!!!!
Posted by: mac ||
02/26/2006 7:58
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#5
Cheer up Mac,
Maybe the plane will go down over the Bermuda Triangle or something.
#6
I dunno ... we sure don't need more hostile Muslims here.
OTOH - reading the history of this small community and knowing just how horridly the Tsars acted in that part of the world (and Stalin afterwards) I have some real sympathy for them. Maybe they will indeed add to the threat here. But I suspect that they will turn out like most of the hill tribes from southeast Asia who came here. Most showed great courage in adopting to a totally alien world and their kids are doing fine and contributing to society.
On the third hand, from the dates given in the article it appears they are already here. Given that, it is not only generous but also a prudent course of action to be sure that we don't dump them and ignore them. That would guarantee their kids would join whatever jihad movement them come up against.
Ahiska Turks, coming from Anatolia were forced to settle in the region between 1578 and the Russian invasion in 1828 and then became the indivisible part of the Anatolian Turkism. The essential homelands of Ahiska Turks are the provinces of Ahiska, Ahýlkelek, Aspinza, Adýgen and Bogdanovka that are within the lands of the Republic of Georgia and the neighbours of Turkey ... Until it was subjected to the Russian dominion in the year of 1828, Ahiska remained as a forefront city of the Ottoman State. When it was separated from Turkey, the Serhat Turks that lived in this region met with their bad destiny. In the course of the Ottoman-Russian war in 1853-1856, some of Ahiska people ran away and took shelter in Erzurum due to the intense pressure imposed upon them on the grounds that they collaborated with the Ottoman army. Pursuant to this war, Kars was broken off from the Ottoman borders and Ahiska remained far away from the border of Turkey. In this period, an Armenian migration was experienced from the North East Anatolia towards the Ahiska region.
As ethnic Anatolians they're not likely to thrive under increased Iranian pressure in the region. But I haven't seen any speculation on why Turkey didn't take them in.
(After being forcibly removed to central Asia by the Russians in the 19th century) in the end of 1980s, the attack against them has increasingly escalated in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ... Ahiska Turks had to immigrate in Krasnodar Region of Russian Federation. They have lived under primitive conditions in this region by involving in agriculture and stock breeding. Ahiskans are deprived from the citizenship rights and are not granted residence and working permission, are not provided access to the health and education services, are experienced ethnic discrimination, especially they are harassed, attacked continuously and their goods are robbed by Russian and Kazaks organizations.
Finally, after the period of 16 years, they have to immigrate to, this time, the USA with the facilities provided by the USA. Within the framework of this resettlement program, as first wave of resettling, 90 families (nearly 300-350 people) departed from Krasnodar in which nearly 30. 000 Ahiska Turks live and they are resettled to Texas and Philadelphia states (Telford town) of the USA. The American officials said that total 11-12 thousands persons will take advantage from this resettlement program.
... Ahiska Turks are informed about providing them residence and job from the date they are resettled to the USA and renewing residence permission in every period of 6 months, giving examination to them for such courses as language, knowledge about citizenship after 5 years. While Ahiskan families are allocated lands by the American officials in order to plant cotton and tobaccos, they are definitely prohibited to work in other fields rather than farming. Also they have been prohibited to travel out of the USA for 5 years, if they want to go out the USA after 5 years period, they must repay the aid of 10.000 dollars which are given them unconditionally when they came to the USA. While Ahiskans are resettled in distant regions as per 3 families, even members of the same family must be resided in different settlements. It is observed that Ahiskans concern for their future since they are broken off each other and even off their families, they consider this practice is only the result of assimilation policy.
#10
...reported a Russian newspaper on Friday, July 23.... That's July 23 2004. This very same IslamOnLine.com story was posted on Rantburg July 26 2004.(See that thread. Note Chuck Simmins' post, #4) Anyone from Pennsylvania know the latest status of this 18 month old plan? Also, anything locally about the politics, eg Wahhabist,etc., of the grand mosque in Philadelphia? I just hope this isn't another battallion of the 'unarmed invaders' I ranted about the other day in #19 of this thread.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 11:28
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#13
OMG, here I was berating the French and about to start on the Germans when I see this. What in hell is wrong with this administration ? This Congress? I USED TO BE aRepublican. No more. Not after the performance of this Repulican majority. They care nothing about our security. What is Santorum doing ? Got his headwhere the sun don't shine. Stop letting Muslims into US. They are strictly Persona non Grata. Pass a law based on political basis as with Communism. We don't want or need Muslims here. We need to get rid of the ones already here. Think of the twerp in Lodi, Ca.
#14
You know, that's the sort of thing some people said when the Vietnamese boat people came here.
And earlier, when the eastern European immigration wave hit.
And before that, about the Irish.
And before that, about the Germans.
History doesn't record much about what the native Americans said when the English and Spanish and French colonists showed up, although I suspect it included the equivalent of "there goes the neighborhood".
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 15:44
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#19
Heh. Let's be fair - back then, who knew? ;-)
When discussing the Pahtee! vs Parent issue, one is tempted to recount Nurse Nancy's tales of reproductive woe from the Saudi Clinic System... The ignorance (under Shari'a) still lives!
I freely admit that Nancy has her own, um, foibles. The have quite a bit to do with her affectation for latex...
#20
You know, that's the sort of thing some people said when the Vietnamese boat people came here.
And earlier, when the eastern European immigration wave hit.
And before that, about the Irish.
And before that, about the Germans.
Funny, I think they said the same about the Chinese. (That it was the Irish is ironic but besides the point.) Not exactly amused, am I, by many of the comments here.
... and if this article is old as hell, then why the bitchery?
Thanks, lotp. :) I appreciate your bringing this up.
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
02/26/2006 16:16
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#21
as long as they're not guaranteed welfare or unemployment (i.e.: sponsors) and they choose to assimilate and take the oaths, no problem here, either. Willing to work and become American = welcome
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 16:29
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#22
You have anything against BJ's, EY?
As a mongrel mix of Scots, English, and Native American Noble Savage (lol), plus a smattering of other mongrel ethnicities, I find the entire range of mild snobbery / racism a BIG yawn. I detect a whiff of another manufactured bit of PCism. Doesn't mean shit by the second generation if the immigrants aren't morons and assimilate in every way possible. (And yes, all the ethnic BS is baggage and boat anchors, IMNERHO. All of it.) I offer the benefit of the doubt and suggest that most of the above are referring to the morons, not to us. Don't fall for the faux outrage game, bro - you're a solid citizen and that just wastes your needed and welcomed brain power. :-)
Pentagon officials are preparing to release the names of several hundred detainees at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first time the government will publicly link names to previously revealed information about many captives at the island prison.
The change came when the government decided this week not to appeal a federal judge's order to provide names that were redacted from documents released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press. Although the government has previously released thousands of pages related to hearings on whether individual detainees are "enemy combatants," it has always withheld the names of the prisoners who participated in those hearings.
The names of hundreds of detainees have become public since the Supreme Court in June 2004 allowed them to file federal court cases contesting their imprisonment. Others have been identified in the media and by advocacy groups, some after they were released. But the Pentagon has refused to discuss individual detainees in its custody.
The document release could include information gleaned from International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross letters that detainees used to defend themselves in "combatant status review tribunals," meaning the names of detainees' family members could also be a part of the disclosure.
"The Department of Defense will comply with the judge's decision in this matter," Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.
Defense officials made it clear yesterday that the release will not be a roster of the approximately 490 detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay. Instead it will contain names associated with about 390 hearing transcripts. Some detainees did not participate in the hearings.
Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said yesterday that the ruling is a step in the right direction but will not quell concerns about the U.S. detention system. The center oversees federal cases filed on behalf of hundreds of the detainees in Cuba. "The government has detained prisoners without due process; lied about who these people are; concealed their treatment from the public and denied basic information to the very people who are authorized to represent the detainees," Goodman said in a written statement. "This administration prefers to operate in the shadows, but Judge Rakoff's ruling helps shine a light that can make this process more open and democratic."
They're illegal combatants; they don't have due process rights. And they laugh at our 'open and democratic' system.
The Defense Department, however, has given the ICRTC access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, escorted news media representatives and members of Congress through the facility, and allowed international human rights officials to visit. But department officials have strictly limited contact with detainees.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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#1
I am not sure I trust the WaPo or AP on this story. Let's wait until Monday on this.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 0:28
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#2
"they're all named Rocket J. Squirrel,.... or Haji"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/26/2006 0:39
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#3
Mahmoud the Weasel
Mahmoud the Polecat
Mahmoud the Out-of-Season Ermine
Mahmoud the Meerkat
Mahmoud the Lesser Hedgehog
Mahmoud the Number Three
and
Larry "Bud" Melman
#5
Pentagon officials are preparing to release the names of several hundred detainees at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first time the government will publicly link names to previously revealed information about many captives at the island prison.
The International Red Cross has had the name for quite a while. To maintain access, they've had to agree to end leaks of info and play by the rules. Maybe, just maybe, there's a hint there on how to treat the MSM. The CNN groveling to the Saddam regime and their cowardice over the cartoons demonstrates that's how they want to be treated.
Junior army officers who were recruited to take part in a coup against Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo have turned themselves in, a senior general said on Saturday. "Many young officers have started surrendering for fear of getting arrested," the general told Reuters, saying the army was expanding its investigation to pin down the masterminds and financiers of the plot. Arroyo, who survived a crisis last year over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, invoked emergency rule on Friday, citing a "systematic conspiracy" against her by members of the opposition, communists and "military adventurists". The officers were apparently the first to admit the existence of a plan to destabilise the Arroyo government.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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In an attempt to reach an agreement over who will succeed President Emile Lahoud to Lebanon's top post, leaders of March 14 Forces held a meeting Friday in the house of former President Amin Gemayel. Talking following the meeting, Gemayel said: "We are living in a crisis where the national and constitutional life is passive because the presidency, which is supposed to be symbol to all Lebanese, is passive."
Lahoud to Lahoud, huh? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
"The beginning of a solution for our crisis is through electing a new president, who can give back the presidency its true international and local value," Gemayel said. He added: "The positive thing about what is happening is that all political factions agree on the need for President Emile Lahoud to resign, but the problem lies in the way to topple Lahoud and who will replace him."
At this point, it looks like the only ones who don't agree are Emile and Hezbollah.
Asked whether the March 14 Forces were in contact with Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, Gemayel said: "I personally spoke with Aoun on the phone yesterday in addition to sending a delegation headed by Karim Pakradouni to visit him over this issue." He added: "We will be in constant coordination with the FPM."
Aoun doesn't seem really eager to give Emile the toss. I'm not sure why not... Let me rephrase that: I'm not sure how sordid the deal is.
Gemayel also said that after consultations, March 14 Forces decided Lahoud could be ousted through securing a two-thirds majority in Parliament. However, Aoun, who is also a strong presidential candidate, told The Daily Star over the phone that he opposed ousting Lahoud in the way March 14 Forces were proposing. Aoun said: "If they think they can oust Lahoud through providing a majority of two thirds, we can arrange a mechanism to prevent them from having the two-third majority to topple the president. Where would they bring the two-thirds from, the moon?"
Tueni, who answered questions by the media following the meeting, also stressed the need to topple Lahoud, saying: "The prolongation of Lahoud's mandate was forced on us by a foreign country." Asked by The Daily Star about Hizbullah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah's warning of using public demonstrations as a tool to topple Lahoud, Tueni said the March 14 Forces rejected any threats over this issue, and added: "Nobody wants to use the street as a tool, but if we go on demonstrations, they will be peaceful. We never used weapons in our demonstrations."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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LAHORE: Some 150 people have been arrested on the eve of a major protest in Lahore over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed said on Saturday. The police denied his claims.
"He's been drinking again!"
The police have arrested some 150 of our workers from mosques, madrassas and homes after raids ahead of Sundays protest rally in Lahore, he was quoted as saying by AFP. Police contested the figure and said that only seven to eight people had been detained in connection with rioting last week.
Anjum Herlad Gill and Qamar Jabbar add: However, government officials told Daily Times that the police had arrested 50 MMA activists, and had already detained 76 activists, mostly of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance before last Sundays protests. A few Jamaat Dawatul Irshad activists were among those arrested.
A drop in the bucket, but welcome all the same ...
Ahmed said todays rally in Lahore would go ahead despite a government ban on protests and that he would lead the rally. I will go out despite heavy police siege and lead the rally in person, he told reporters at the headquarters of his Jamaat-e-Islami party in Mansura.
However, the government sources said that Ahmed was under house arrest while the entry into Lahore of the other MMA heavyweight, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, had been banned for seven days. The entry of other opposition leaders, including Raja Zafarul Haq, Imran Khan, Sajid Mir and Sajjid Naqvi, has also been banned, Online reported. We will not allow them to stage a procession on any main road. They are free to hold rallies at Minar-e-Pakistan, one official said.
A senior government official told AFP that Ahmed had refused to receive his detention orders on Friday which had been pasted on a wall near the main gate of his party headquarters. If he defies the detention order of ban on rallies, police will have to arrest him, he said.
I can only hope he resists arrest ...
The Punjab government has imposed Section 144 in Lahore and vowed to crack down on any violent protestors. Twenty companies of the Rangers have been deployed in the city along with contingents of regular and reserve Punjab Police.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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The "Alliance of Civilizations Conference," held in the Qatari capital on Saturday, issued a statement prohibiting acts of abuse against religions and called for respecting religious symbols.
Sounds good, except that it conflicts fundamentally with the concept of a free press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and probably freedom from unreasonable search and siezure.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who arrived here earlier today to take part in the conference, read a statement on behalf of the conferees, expressing deep regret at the grave harm inflicted with the recently-published cartoons against Prophet Mohammed (PTUI PBUH), voiced sorrow at the victims who had fallen and damage inflicted in ensuing protests in Islamic countries.
Kofi has no concept of what "freedom" actually is. And I have zippo sympathy for the dead rioters.
The statement said participants in the conference pledged to adopt a "common strategy to prevent recurrence of the crisis of the cartoons," alluding to the caricatures that were published by some European newspapers, infuriating millions of Muslims throughout the world. The news conference was attended by the foreign ministers of Qatar, Turkey, Spain, the Secretary General of the Arab League and the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The conference was aimed at promoting greater understanding between Muslim countries and Western societies, and was organized in response to an initiative by Turkey and Spain.
You won't promote greater understanding between Muslim countries and the civilized world by pushing for blasphemy laws.
#1
Isn't Mr. Annan being paid great sums of money at regular intervals to work? Did he ask for unpaid leave to make regretful statements on subjects outside his area of responsibility?
#2
All we have to do is give them what they want, to the letter, and everything will be fine. Short of that we're going to have to deal with this disease we call islam. Oops! gotta go, time to feed my pet pig Allah.
#3
Do they understand such a demand would apply to them as well? Immediate recognition of Israel. Immediate permission to build churches and worship in any faith - free of harm.
Have they really thought this might apply to them as well? No, huh.
#4
I'm sure they (and Koffi) made damn suse Islam had an exemption in the fine print.
Probably something along the line that practicing religion (i.e. Islam) trumps it - and since murder, rape, killing infidels, slavery, pedophilia, etc.. are all an integeral part of Islam --- Its exempt.
#6
"The statement said participants in the conference pledged to adopt a "common strategy to prevent recurrence of the crisis of the cartoons..."
Plain talk-a prohibition on religious cartoons.
Once this "Alliance" takes the pledge from the conference and insinuates it into politcal bodies like the UN, I have a real question whether our government will take the stand it must against this prohibition.
#7
I suspect Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas could convince at least one other justice to agree that nothing the UN does trumps the first amendment. Scalia especially would love to tell the UN and Euro helpers where to put it.
#10
Kofi has no concept of what "freedom" actually is.
Sure he does. So long as he's free to skim from the UN, collect bribes, and abuse his position, all's right with the world.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/26/2006 12:10
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#11
"Nothing the UN does has no bearing on the Bill of Rights, much less trumps it."
Except perhaps one thing-accommodation from our leaders, using words like "respecting others' religions". Nimble and 6, when "respecting others' religions" means oblique approval of silencing views critical of religion, instead of accomodating those critical views, we have yielded.
#12
Perhaps the muslims should quit being hypocrites and practice what they preach by stopping the daily religious vilification of non-muslims. Also it's heartening to know Andalusia was the only non-muslim country to participate. But then I am sure the muslims would dispute my contention that Andalusia is non-muslim.
Posted by: ed ||
02/26/2006 12:25
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#13
Jules, governmental cooperation and government stopping the private printing of something are two different things. While the press has self-censored, I'd bet if the Bush Administration had asked them not to print the cartoons, they would have done so before the request was finished. And the SC would stand with the press if a case was brought.
#14
"While the press has self-censored, I'd bet if the Bush Administration had asked them not to print the cartoons, they would have done so before the request was finished. And the SC would stand with the press if a case was brought."
I agree. The left are lily-livered and deranged.
But I go further. I think the US has an obligation to ensure free speech is protected and to fill its shoes of leadership in the world on this. That Muslims' self image has been hurt in the cartoon rows is no reason for free speech to be discouraged. This self-examination in the Muslim community MUST take place, and the way it happens is likely to be "hurtful" and "disrespectful". Sadly I think Australia and Denmark are taking bolder stances for freedom and the preservation of the Western way of life than the US government is currently doing. That does not discount in any way the courage it took Bush to meet this challenge in the early days, when it was very difficult to do so, or the sacrifices and efforts of our armed forces.
#15
I hope history will show that Bush was pulling his punch a bit in anticipation of forming another alliance to take on Iran or some such comparable action. Otherwise Bush's performance on the cartoons was disappointing.
United States State Department official David Welch promised Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday that the United States will not cut off humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, even after a Hamas government takes over.
Funding just delays what eventually has to happen.
During the first high-level meeting between the two sides since the election victory of the Islamic militant group last month, Welch assured Abbas that the United States supports the chairman and his policies, and praised his speech during the opening Palestinian parliament session earlier this month, according Israel Radio reported. "The United States has long been a supporter of the Palestinian people, through a substantial contribution of our foreign assistance funds... we continue to be devoted to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people and it shall remain so," Welch said.
"It is our belief that it is important for the people in the Palestinian territories ... to have a good life in safety and security with economic wellbeing," Welch added.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Abbas told Welch the United States must respect the Palestinians' election of Hamas last month. He noted that tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid flow directly into infrastructure projects every year, not to the Palestinian government, which by next month will be controlled by Hamas. "We urged the U.S. administration to continue helping the Palestinian people, as it did in previous years," Erekat said after the meeting. "They have never transferred a single dollar to the Palestinian Authority directly. The money was being transferred via non-governmental organizations."
Every dollar better be audited.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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#1
Utter bullshit.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 0:32
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#2
this contradicts what Condi said. I wonder if Welch has the authority to say this.
#3
They have had 58 years for finding jobns and building an economy. INstead thety are still living of international dole. It is utterly immoral to send humanitarian aid to Palestinians when people are starving in Darfur and getting MUCH lower aid if any.
Not a single cent of Western aid should go to Paleonistan. Let them eat bombbelts.
#4
"It is our belief that it is important for the people in the Palestinian territories ... to have a good life in safety and security with economic wellbeing," Welch added.
#6
Aid money which goes directly to the individual/agency rather through the blackhole hands of the PA or Hamas is still aid. Wonder how long it will take the idiots to connect the dots when the real hand providing assistance is US and not a terrorist go between. Particularly when the aid is cut off just at the appropriate moment. Teaching cause and effect at the most basic level.
On principle, Pals should reject Satan's money. Start screaming about the lack of muslim support. Why only whine about the lack of your enemies support for you?
#9
In other words, 80% of US aid is untouchable. Money is fungible. Let the Arabs and Iranians spend their money feeding them rather than paying for attacks.
Another bit of trivia, 60% of Pali GDP is from foreign aid. That means the aid money is not even circulated one time before it is stolen/leaves the area and the Palis produce almost zilch.
Posted by: ed ||
02/26/2006 11:53
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#10
What means does the average American have to verify that any future aid is only humanitarian aid? Or are we just supposed to trust that the State Department will identify and stop other projects/aid? Who is carrying out America's will that no money go to fund terrorists and how can regular folks verify it?
KABUL - A court in Afghanistan on Saturday sentenced to death a former intelligence chief who was found guilty of systematic killings and other human rights violations during Afghanistans communist era. Asadullah Sarwari headed the feared intelligence department of the first communist government in 1978 and the relatives of people who were killed or went missing when he was in charge also attended the trial. Sarwari was sentenced to death for killing thousands of mujahedin (holy warriors) and Muslims while he was the head of intelligence, judge Abdul Basit Bakhtiari who headed the trial told AFP.
Sarwari was, I believe, the head of KAM, which was the predecessor to KhAD, the Afghan commie equivalent of the KGB. They were a pretty brutal bunch. He was held by the Northern Alliance, and they took him with them when the Talibs chased them out of Kabul.
He was cleared of the second charge of conspiracy against the Islamic government in the year 1992, said Bakhtiari.
I think he was actually in jug then, so his conspiring days were over.
Sarwari has the right to appeal under Afghanistans justice system.
I'm sure that will work.
Russian-educated Sarwari had served as an air force pilot under the monarchy, and later as the air force garrison commander under President Daud Khan in 1973. After a communist coup Sarwari was installed as head of Afghan intelligence for a period of one year.
That was under the Taraki regime. I don't know what he did under the Najibullah regime — probably a sinecure job, or maybe house arrest.
After the collapse of the communist regime Sarwari was arrested and remained in prison for more than 13 years before being brought to trial in December last year.
Didn't take the right side in late 2001, did he?
He didn't have a choice. He made his choices back in the '70s. Good riddance.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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BEIRUT - Lebanon has refused to extradite to the United States four suspected Shia Hezbollah members believed to have carried out attacks against Americans in Beirut during the 1980s, judicial sources said on Saturday. They said Lebanese authorities refused to extradite four Lebanese: Imad Moughaniyeh, Hassan Ezzeddine, Ali Atwe and Mohammed ali Hamadeh.
Local media said that during her visit to Beirut earlier this week US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had made the demand to Prime Minister Foaud Seniora.
Three of the four wanted Lebanese - Moughaniyeh, Ezzeddine and Atwe - are accused of participation in a 1983 attack on US Marines headquarter in Beirut in which more than 100 Marines were killed. The fourth Mohammed Hamadeh, who returned to Lebanon in December after he finished serving his jail sentence in Germany for possessing explosives, is accused by the United States of the 1985 highjacking of a TWA airliner during which a US Navy diver was killed.
Rat bastards the four of them. If we can't extradite them they might just have to have an accident ...
Authorities have also rejected a US request to hand over Wassef Hassoun, an American of Lebanese origin who deserted the Marines in 2004 and left Iraq for Lebanon and then left the southern port city of Tripoli for the US. It was reported later that Hassoun has left the US and headed back to Lebanon.
Thought we had forgotten him, huh?
The judicial sources said the general amnesty law which was adopted in 1991 after the 1975-1990 civil war ended in Lebanon covered incidents of which the four were accused. As for Hassoun, the sources gave no reason for rejecting his extradition.
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KAMPALA: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni won the country's first multi-party polls since 1980, according to official results released Saturday giving him an insurmountable lead over opposition challenger Kizza Besigye. The Electoral Commission said Museveni had taken 60.8 percent of Thursday's vote to Besigye's 36 percent with 91 percent of polling stations reporting, making his bid to extend a 20-year hold on power an unannounced certainty.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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#1
Comments? Is this good or bad? I haven't been following this and I'm sure 99.9 percent of the rest of the world hasn't either. (clicks worldmap to remind self where Uganda is).
Now if they dig up Natalie Holloway, then that will put them on the map. But in the mean time, how about a little help for the ignorant?? ;-)
Well, of course it's our fault. Everything's our fault.
Iran's foreign minister denounced the United States Friday for creating terror groups like Al-Qaeda and reaffirmed Tehran's support for a united Iraq following escalating violence there between Shiites and Sunnis. Manouchehr Mottaki, reacting to Wednesday's bombing of a key Shiite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, said "some hands" were working to stoke ethnic and religious unrest "not only in Iraq but in the Islamic world."
"We believe that there are some hands working to create ethnic war, religious war, between Shiite, Sunnis or any other groups," he said without naming any specific groups or countries. Mottaki condemned the surge in sectarian killings in Iraq where at least 140 people have been killed in recent riots sparked by the bombing of the mosque.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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#1
I noted with interest the new plates flashing that W grin.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 0:42
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Washington defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade admitted yesterday in federal court that he attempted to illegally influence Defense Department contracting officials and tried to curry favor with two House members, in addition to lavishing more than $1 million in cash, cars, a boat, antiques and other bribes on convicted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).
The new admissions, including details that identify Reps. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Va.) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) as recipients of illegal campaign contributions, are contained in Wade's agreement to plead guilty to four criminal charges stemming from his role in the Cunningham probe. The congressman resigned after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in bribes from Wade and others in return for steering federal funds and contracts their way.
Sectarian tensions, already at a peak, were further inflamed on Saturday in Iraq when bombers blew up a car in the Shia holy city of Karbala and bombers blew up a well-known Shia tomb in Taz Khurmatu in northern Iraq, police said. At least 60 people, including 16 policemen, were killed in fresh violence across the country.
The car bomb in Karbala killed at least eight and wounded 25. The bombing targeted a busy shopping street in the west of the city, as a police patrol passed by. Akil Mohammed, 30, said he saw two people drive the car into the street.
In other violence, 12 farm labourers were shot to death in an orchard on Saturday morning in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. They included both Shias and Sunnis, a relative of the victims said. Police said that seven more bodies were found in Baghdad. Two policemen were killed and five wounded when a bomb targeted the funeral procession west of Baghdad of an Al-Arabiya journalist killed on Wednesday in Samarra where she had gone to report on the shrine bombing, police said. The procession had earlier also been shot at with one more policemen killed. Three people were killed when a rocket hit a house in Baghdad. One worker was killed when gunmen stormed a factory.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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#1
unhappy with this? Thank our wonderful media and our enlightened and "pacifist" liberals. It is because of them, and only because of them, that these attacks occur. They are the most effective weapons that Al Qaeda has in their arsenal. Their idea of peace is Neville Chamberlain type appeasement. How many hundreds of millions of murders have they inspired by their weakness?
#2
nope this aint aimed at the West. Cartoon protests and claims of Islamophobia and waging law through pressure groups is their strategy for attacking the Western front.
This is aimed fair and square at provoking civil war in Iraq, and frankly it's working. The country is sliding slowly that way despite the heroic efforts of the US and the local Iraqi police/fledgeling army.
Saddam only kept the Kurds, Shia and Sunni together by brute force.
In today's climate of religious zealotry, remove the force and each group wants it's own space.
Time to split the country and save us all heartache. Maybe the US can patrol the borders until it all settles down and the borders are accepted.
Or maybe it will take a civil war bloodbath to do it.
All I ask is you arm the Kurds and give them a sizeable chunk in the North and help them defend it.
split the rest between Shitite and Sunni it's all the same both sides are flaming Islamonazis.
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 14 Iraqi police commandos were found on Saturday near a Sunni mosque in southern Baghdad, a police official said. The bodies were found with their three burned vehicles near Findi al-Kubaisi mosque in Baghdads southwestern Shurta neighbourhood, said Maj. Falah Al Mohammedawi. US forces sealed the area, he said.
The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear. The Shia-dominated police commandos were found in a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood.
You'd think 'commandos' could take care of themselves. At least make the other guys pay dearly.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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l'd think that being captured by the terrs is an automatic death sentence.People would rather die fighting.
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#3
In this case 'commando' probably is about as descriptive as 'elite repulican guard'. Just a classification that differenciates between common street cop and swat members, in this case more one of specialization of duty rather than skill.
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IRAN is believed to have begun small-scale enrichment of uranium, raising the stakes in its dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the extent of its nuclear ambitions. A report to be published by the United Nations nuclear watchdog tomorrow is expected to claim that scientists at Irans plant in Natanz have set up a cascade of 10 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium the fuel for nuclear power plants or bombs.
Iran is a long way from the 50,000 centrifuges it would need for full-scale enrichment, but experts said that getting a small number of them to work together meant it had overcome some technical hurdles.
The report, by Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, will also accuse Tehran of continuing to deny inspectors access to crucial people and sites linked to its 20-year-old nuclear programme. ElBaradeis findings will set the tone for discussions at the UN security council next month which American officials believe could lead to sanctions against Iran this summer.
International concerns over Irans intentions have been increased by the emergence in recent weeks of documents that for the first time appear to provide scraps of evidence of a covert weapons programme. Attention is focusing on the so-called Green Salt Project, a previously undeclared scheme to process uranium. The project was linked to tests on high explosives and missile design, suggesting a military nuclear dimension, the IAEA said. Inspectors travelled to Tehran this weekend to obtain more information.
It is thought that some of the clandestine work was done at a plant in Lavisan, near Tehran, under the auspices of a body known as the Physics Research Centre. Iran denied IAEA inspectors access to Lavisan until 2004 by which time the buildings had been demolished.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006
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Don't we "know" that they have a great many more centrifuges than just the 10 ElBaradei admits to being aware of?
The US has formally agreed a free trade pact with El Salvador but has told five more Central American nations that they must do more to finalise similar deals. Congress sanctioned a Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta) last year but official implementation has been delayed by a series of legal wrangles.
But the US-El Salvador agreement will now come into force on 1 March. The announcement, by the US Trade Representative's office, came ahead of a meeting between US President George W Bush and his Salvadorean counterpart Antonio Saca.
Washington has urged Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to make greater efforts to bring domestic regulations into line with multilateral standards required by the treaty.
Rules governing meat inspection remain a major sticking point. The US views certain countries' reluctance to recognise its own system as equivalent to their own as a barrier to its exports. "We hope and expect that we will be able to bring additional Cafta partners into the agreement soon," Rob Portman, the US Trade Representative said on Friday.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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What does El Salvador export to the US? Besides MS-13 members? Bannanas, sweatshop designer clothing?
Trade (2004): Exports--$3.3 billion: textiles, diverse manufactures, coffee, sugar, and shrimp. Major markets--U.S. 65.4%, Central American Common Market (CACM) 24.9%. ...
The Salvadoran economy continues to benefit from a commitment to free markets and careful fiscal management. The economy has been growing at a steady and moderate pace since the signing of peace accords in 1992 ... Much of the improvement in El Salvador's economy is a result of free market policy initiatives carried out by the ARENA governments, including the privatization of the banking system, telecommunications, public pensions, electrical distribution and some electrical generation, reduction of import duties, elimination of price controls, and enhancing the investment climate through measures such as improved enforcement of intellectual property rights.
One of the biggest challenges in El Salvador has been to manage the decline in the coffee sector ... Moderate climate and a hard-working and enterprising labor pool comprise El Salvador's greatest assets. El Salvador has sought to leverage these assets in creating new export industries through fiscal incentives for free trade zones, and currently there are 15 free trade zones in El Salvador. The largest beneficiary has been the maquila industry, which directly provides 88,700 jobs, and primarily consists of cutting and assembling clothes for export to the United States. The apparel industry has greatly benefited from the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, which allows these goods to enter the United States duty free under certain conditions. Moreover, the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), negotiated by the five countries of Central America with the United States in 2003, will make these benefits permanent. ...
U.S. support for El Salvador's privatization of the electrical and telecommunications markets markedly expanded opportunities for U.S. investment in the country. More than 300 U.S. companies have established either a permanent commercial presence in El Salvador or work through representative offices in the country. The Department of Commerce maintains a Country Commercial Guide for U.S. businesses seeking detailed information on business opportunities in El Salvador.
#5
Not sure I follow that ... the free trade arrangements with El Salvador have been in place for a good while in the leadup to CAFTA, as have the resulting business relationships.
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz yesterday asked top Israel Defense Forces brass to exercise caution in their public declarations. Halutz convened a forum of senior officers in the wake of Jordanian protests against GOC Central Command Yair Naveh's comments about the stability of the Jordanian regime and an assessment by deputy chief of staff Moshe Kaplinsky that there are "early signs of the undermining of Mubarak's presidential regime".
Halutz told the generals they must exercise "great caution and sensitivity" in public statements, as careless comments by senior officers can be incorrectly interpreted and taken out of context. He warned against the military's being dragged into public debate, through misleading representation of military and government positions on sensitive issues.
"You guys! Shaddup!"
The General Staff waited yesterday for the results of talks between the acting prime minister, foreign minister and minister of defense and Jordanian King Abdullah and senior Jordanian government officials, hoping for a quick resolution to the Naveh affair. Military sources believe how the affair ends is dependent mostly on the Jordanians. "if Jordan suffices with Israel's clarification and expression of regret, the crisis will be behind us," they said.
However, if Jordan continues to demand sanctions against the general, it is possible there will be no way to avoid disciplinary measures such as censure by Halutz.
Naveh and Kaplinsky's comments, particularly Naveh's, were very embarrassing for the General Staff, both because of the diplomatic tensions they created with Jordan and because they opened the door for political figures to attack senior military figures for running off at the mouth. Even if no immediate measures against Naveh are implemented, the affair could impact his career.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that Hamas is trying to halt rocket fire on Israel and is trying to calm Palestinian streets. Abbas, speaking to Israel's Channel 10 TV, also said that he is the one who sets Palestinian policy, and is willing to talk to Israel at any time and about any subject. "The president decides policy," Abbas said, noting that past agreements with Israel, including a February 2005 cease-fire, were reached under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he also heads.
Earlier, Abbas appealed to the Security Council and international mediators to pressure Israel after its acting premier vowed to press on attacks against the Palestinians. After the killing of five Palestinians in an Israeli Army operation in the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday, Israeli troops shot dead two more in the Gaza Strip overnight. The two included a civilian who was trying to sneak across into Israel to find work as well as a member of an umbrella organization, the Popular Resistance Committees.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/26/2006
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translation: send us $$$$
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 0:30
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Credit where credit is due. They could have easily "forgotten" to see the car bombs crashing thru the gate. And who knows? Maybe they were fragged by the other guards.
Two security men were killed in the attack on Abqaiq oil processing facility on Friday, an official source at the Interior Ministry was quoted by the Saudi Press Agency as saying Saturday. The source identified the two men as Hamad bin Salih bin Mubarak al-Marri and Badi bi Saud al-Haqbani al-Dosari. Four other security men were injured, said the source, noting that "some of them have been discharged from the hospital after receiving the required medical treatment."
A new petition demanding that President Emile Lahoud step down was put out for the public to sign yesterday, with March 14 ministers and MPs being the first to sign. Signing the petition at the Freedom Tent in Downtown's Martyrs' Square, Acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat said he hoped that "not one million, or one million and a half, but more than three million" would sign the petition. "This is a petition open to all the Lebanese who want to see a free and independent president," Fatfat said.
Talking to The Daily Star, Minister of State for Administrative Development Jean Hogaspian said the petition will eventually be raised to the United Nations, in order to reassert to the international community that the Lebanese public opinion refuses Lahoud as a president. "This petition is another step in our moves to oust Lahoud," he said. "We know that it has no legal effect, but it has a moral one and it goes to show that the Lebanese people refuse to be ruled by the likes of Lahoud," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
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TANK: Unidentified gunmen ambushed a police patrol party on Saturday evening, leaving two policemen dead and two others injured near Tank district. According to details, armed men in the Manzai area near Tank opened fire on a police mobile party and killed Akhtar Jan and Abdul Rashid, while Assistant Sub-Inspector Samiullah and Constable Kifayatullah were injured. They were rushed to Tank Hospital. A man, Fazl Rahim, was gunned down in another incident in Tank.
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ISLAMABAD: The police arrested three people, including a cleric, on Saturday on charges of desecrating the Holy Quran. Passersby informed police that 17 copies of the Holy Quran had been dumped at a drain in Sector G-6/4. During probe, police found Qazi Abdul Islam, a cleric in the Qutab Shaheed Madrassa, responsible for the desecration. Police said that Islam admitted that he had asked his two students to dump the copies of the Quran in a well. However, the students threw the copies into the drain. The police have registered a case under Section 295-B.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Note the little icon (might be a mosque) on the left (the muslim's right).
If he took this Quran with him to Saudiland for Hajj, this Quran would have been confiscated and burned because the ruling theos there don't allow such things.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel and the international community to avoid pushing Hamas "into a corner", and to give it time to moderate its stances, the Irish Independent reported Saturday on its Website.
Abbas said that Hamas would make its position in power "compatible with international policies," and praised the faction's "wise and rational" Prime Minister designate Ismail Haniyeh as "flexible and diplomatic." "They will listen to many things that will make them think about their political position. I think that in order to assume responsibility, their policies have to be compatible with international policies," Abbas said.
"Please don't let them kill me!"
He added that Hamas' tour of Arab states and Russia is likely to be influential in persuading Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel.
When asked if he will resign from power if he can't deliver what he wants in terms of the peace process, Abbas replied: "We could reach a point where I cannot perform my duty - then I will not continue sitting in this place, against and in spite of my convictions. If I can do something I will continue, otherwise I won't."
Adios!
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/26/2006
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Either Abbas has "flipped" or he is simply a flipping idiot. Or both?
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/26/2006 0:31
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Abbas was born vicious and incompetent, and he intends to die in the same state.
No, really, since he agrees with Hamas' goal of erasing Israel and the Jews, at least locally, he will do nothing to get in their way, and everything except actual action to aid them.
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 FBI informant who befriended a Lodi man charged with attending an Al Qaeda training camp said Thursday that the defendant took an interest in terrorist groups and spoke admiringly about jihad.
Rioting prisoners at the high-security Pul-i-Charkhi Jail near Kabul Sunday expressed their willingness for talks with a deputy of President Hamid Karzai.
Taliban and al Qaeda militants took control of a wing of the Afghan capitals main high security prison and at least 30 prisoners were wounded in attempts to quell the riot, officials said on Sunday. The unrest erupted on Saturday night after prisoners led by Taliban and al Qaeda militants took two female guards captive during a row over attempts to implement a new rule requiring inmates to wear 
President Ali Abdullah Saleh confirmed that three Al-Qaeda inmates who were part of a group that managed to escape from a Yemeni jail earlier this month have given themselves up to the government.
A day after a foiled attack against Saudi Arabia's vital oil infrastructure, an Al Qaeda branch warned in an Internet statement Saturday that there would be more suicide bombings. "There are more like them who are racing toward martyrdom and eager to fight the enemies of God," the posting said. 
EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) - A suspected militant has confessed to a role in planning deadly bombings in three tourist resorts in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, prosecutors said Saturday. 
THE movement of Shiite cleric 
Why didnt you warn me?
KABUL - President Hamid Karzai has handed intelligence to Pakistan that indicates 
LAHORE: Muslims around the world are in a precarious condition not because of their beliefs but because of lack of them, said former pop star 
The United Nations is urging donors to provide funds to keep the Palestinian Authority running after Israel starts withholding tax revenues next week, rebuffing Israel's appeal for a suspension of aid, diplomats said on Friday. 
Hamas' candidate for Palestinian Authority prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, told the Washington Post that Hamas will examine all of the agreements signed with Israel, and will honor those that are in the best interest of the Palestinians.
A VICTORIAN Supreme Court jury today found the 32-year-old Werribee man guilty of one count of intentionally receiving funds from al-Qaeda. 
An armed gang with suspected Al-Qaeda links Saturday made off with up to 65 million rupees (Approx. USD39 million) from a UAE-based Bank in the capital of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, said police. The heist was made at a local branch of Al-Faisal Bank in Peshawar, said Saeed Wazir, Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) investigations. He said armed robbers before escaping in a stolen vehicle with huge haul, painted Al-Qaeda on the bank walls.
DUBAI, Feb 25 (KUNA) -- UAE's Emaar Properties announced Saturday formation of an authority of Fatwa, tasked with monitoring the company's operations to see if they were compatible with Islamic Sharia.
The Lebanese government publicly admitted recently, for the first time, that it had permitted the delivery of a convoy of arms from Syria to 
Police on Thursday pressed charges against three ehsar members of outlawed Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) in connection with the August 17 bomb blasts in Gaibandha last year. The JMB men -- Ziaur Rahman Badal alias Reaz, 19, Abdul Kaiyum, 22, and Harun-ur-Rashid, 20 -- had earlier confessed to their crimes before a magistrate.
LAHORE: The residence of Balochistans Livestock Minister 
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Authorities in Tajikistan have started demolishing the country's only synagogue in order to make way for a new presidential residence, an official said Friday. The century-old synagogue on government land in the ex-Soviet republic's capital Dushanbe will be completely torn down by June "as part of the plans to build a new presidential palace," said city administration spokesman Shavkat Saidov.
Pentagon officials are preparing to release the names of several hundred detainees at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first time the government will publicly link names to previously revealed information about many captives at the island prison.
In an attempt to reach an agreement over who will succeed President 
LAHORE: Some 150 people have been arrested on the eve of a major protest in Lahore over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal chief 
The "Alliance of Civilizations Conference," held in the Qatari capital on Saturday, issued a statement prohibiting acts of abuse against religions and called for respecting religious symbols. 
United States State Department official 
KABUL - A court in Afghanistan on Saturday sentenced to death a former intelligence chief who was found guilty of systematic killings and other human rights violations during Afghanistans communist era. 
KAMPALA: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni won the country's first multi-party polls since 1980, according to official results released Saturday giving him an insurmountable lead over opposition challenger Kizza Besigye. The Electoral Commission said Museveni had taken 60.8 percent of Thursday's vote to Besigye's 36 percent with 91 percent of polling stations reporting, making his bid to extend a 20-year hold on power an unannounced certainty.
Iran's foreign minister denounced the United States Friday for creating terror groups like Al-Qaeda and reaffirmed Tehran's support for a united Iraq following escalating violence there between Shiites and Sunnis. 
Sectarian tensions, already at a peak, were further inflamed on Saturday in Iraq when bombers blew up a car in the Shia holy city of Karbala and bombers blew up a well-known Shia tomb in Taz Khurmatu in northern Iraq, police said. At least 60 people, including 16 policemen, were killed in fresh violence across the country.
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 14 Iraqi police commandos were found on Saturday near a Sunni mosque in southern Baghdad, a police official said. The bodies were found with their three burned vehicles near Findi al-Kubaisi mosque in Baghdads southwestern Shurta neighbourhood, said Maj. Falah Al Mohammedawi. US forces sealed the area, he said.
IRAN is believed to have begun small-scale enrichment of uranium, raising the stakes in its dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the extent of its nuclear ambitions. A report to be published by the United Nations nuclear watchdog tomorrow is expected to claim that scientists at Irans plant in Natanz have set up a cascade of 10 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium the fuel for nuclear power plants or bombs. 
Palestinian President 
TANK: Unidentified gunmen ambushed a police patrol party on Saturday evening, leaving two policemen dead and two others injured near Tank district. According to details, armed men in the Manzai area near Tank opened fire on a police mobile party and killed Akhtar Jan and Abdul Rashid, while Assistant Sub-Inspector Samiullah and Constable Kifayatullah were injured. They were rushed to Tank Hospital. A man, Fazl Rahim, was gunned down in another incident in Tank.
ISLAMABAD: The police arrested three people, including a cleric, on Saturday on charges of desecrating the Holy Quran. Passersby informed police that 17 copies of the Holy Quran had been dumped at a drain in Sector G-6/4. During probe, police found Qazi Abdul Islam, a cleric in the Qutab Shaheed Madrassa, responsible for the desecration. Police said that Islam admitted that he had asked his two students to dump the copies of the Quran in a well. However, the students threw the copies into the drain. The police have registered a case under Section 295-B.
