PARIS - Friends and supporters of Al-Afif al-Akhdar are convinced: the life of the veteran fighter for secularism and democracy in the Arab world is in danger. A year ago, the Tunisian Islamic movement Al-Nahdha, which is persecuted by the authorities in its country, condemned him as the author of the scandalous book "The Unknown in the Prophet's Life." A Tunisian citizen, Akhdar has for decades been waging a stubborn campaign to expose the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, including those espoused by Sheikh Rashed al-Ghanoushi, the leader of Al-Nahdha, who has been in exile in London since 1991. In an unsigned declaration on its Internet site, Al-Nahdha referred to Akhdar, without naming him.
Two years earlier, the fingers of Akhdar's right hand became paralyzed, and the paralysis gradually spread almost to his whole body. He published the details of his illness in order to explain why he had stopped writing. Akhdar and his supporters are convinced that Sheikh Ghanoushi backed the declaration, even if he did not write it himself, which speaks of divine punishment being inflicted on the "true author" of the book that vilifies the prophet Mohammed.
In response to the declaration, which was construed as a fatwa condemning Akhdar to death, the Arab organization for the Protection of Freedom of Expression and the Press organized a petition "against obscurantist religious extremism," which called for the protection of Akhdar's life and freedom. Within two months, the petition was signed by more than 600 intellectuals and academics, most of them Arabs. Akhdar, who in the meantime regained his capacity for movement thanks to medical treatment (though he is still unable to write, because his fingers remain too stiff), recently contacted the London solicitor Daniel Machover about the possibility of taking legal action against Sheikh Ghanoushi.
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It was not by chance that he turned to Machover, an expert in international law who gained fame last year when he tried to bring about the arrest of an Israeli officer, Major General (res.) Doron Almog, who had just landed in London, on suspicion that he had perpetrated war crimes while serving in the Gaza Strip. Akhdar wants Islamic terrorists to get the same treatment as people who have committed crimes against humanity. In October 2004 he was one of three Arab intellectuals who asked the UN secretary-general and the Security Council to establish an international tribunal to try such terrorists, including clerics who issue fatwas for the liquidation of "infidels."
Machover is the son of Prof. Moshe Machover, one of the founders of the radical socialist organization Matzpen, which was active in Israel in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1970s and 1980s, Akhdar and Moshe Machover were members of a collective of Arab and Israeli revolutionaries who published the journal Khamsin in Paris and afterward in London. Already then, Akhdar had identified the danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism and assailed the support of many left-wing activists for the "anti-imperialist" Islamic revolution in Iran. In 1981 Hamsin published an article by him entitled "Why the Reversion fo Islamic Archaism?" In the search for an analysis of the motivations and origins of Islamic terrorism following the events of September 11, 2001, the article was republished on several anarchist and left-wing Web sites. The article is signed Lafif Lakhdar, the author's user-friendly name for non-Arabs.
Iran held secret talks with Shia militant leaders from Iraq and Lebanon only days before the country's nuclear negotiators threatened America with "harm and pain", independent sources in Teheran have revealed.
The Iraqi firebrand cleric, Moqtadr al-Sadr and the chief of the armed Shia group Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, held separate consultations with leading officials in Teheran.
Al-Sadr commands thousands of fighters in Iraq, with the power to destabilise further the country and target British and American troops, while Hizbollah's missile-wielding fighters are stationed on Lebanon's southern border with Israel. The revelation of their visits to Teheran has stoked fears that Iran's Shia clerical rulers are drawing up plans to wage a co-ordinated proxy war, using foreign Shia militias, in the worsening dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions.
In a statement 10 days ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran said that America could inflict harm and pain, before adding: "But the United States is also susceptible to harm and pain."
On Friday, Ali Larijani, a leading Iranian nuclear negotiator, said: "Iran has chosen the path of resistance till achieving full access to nuclear energy, because we consider it a legitimate right." Iran insists that its nuclear plans are for peaceful purposes, a claim disputed by the United States, which fears that Teheran is developing nuclear weapons.
The visits of al-Sadr and Nasrallah to the Iranian capital went unmentioned in state-controlled media, but were reported on the Iranian expatriate internet site, roozonline, widely regarded as a reliable source of information from inside the tightly controlled Iranian regime.
While Iraq and Lebanon are home to the most powerful Shia militias, the voice of Iran's ruling clerics also holds sway with Shia minorities and Iranian communities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Its capacity to destabilise the Middle East also extends to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Iran's most prominent dissident journalist has been freed from jail after six years, much of which was spent in solitary confinement. Akbar Ganji was imprisoned in 2001 for investigating the murder of five dissidents by intelligence agents.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006
21:08 ||
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#1
Will say again - Iran's Mullahs wants nukes and empire, or its death to everybody on earth. THe IRGC has an Army of mad Mad MAD M-A-D CAMEL-Kazies and they're not afraid to use them!?
#4
Iran needs to feel some pain for messing around in Iraq. I do not see any consequences so far for their dirty little activites in Iraq. They need to be sent a message. So far they are on a roll. No resistance to their actions that I see.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/18/2006 23:55
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I don't recall seeing this here before, and just picked it up via Bill Roggio's 'The Fourth Rail'. If I missed it and am being repetitive, my apologies.
BIGGEST EVER CACHE OF WEAPONS SEIZED
Release #2006-015 14 March 2006
SHEBERGHAN - Afghanistan: This week in Sheberghan the largest cache of weapons ever found in Afghanistan has been handed over as part of the Disarmament of Illegally Armed Groups (DIAG) initiative. The recovery of this cache represents a major achievement for the Government of Afghanistan (GOA) and the Afghanistan New Beginnings Programme (ANBP) who, assisted by the ISAF Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Mazar-e-Sharif, negotiated the voluntary handover.
ISAF experts have assessed the contents of the cache and initial findings suggest the presence of 1 bunker of detonators, 2 bunkers containing a total of 80 tonnes of Russian TNT, 1 bunker with 15,000 Anti Personnel and 10,000 Anti Tank mines, however, this is not confirmed at this time. A fifth bunker is also in the process of being assessed and examined. In addition to this cache, a local Commander has also handed in a significant amount of weapons and ammunition to the DIAG.
The Sheberghan Governor, Joma Khan Hamdard said, "There are illegal weapons all over Afghanistan, not just in Sheberghan. We are trying to inform everyone to hand in illegal weapons." The Governor went onto state that he will vigorously pursue the handover of all illegal weapons.
The safety of the people of Sheberghan has increased due to the destruction of these high explosives, whilst it has also decreased the risk of these weapons being used against the local population and international community. Members of the ANBP will destroy the cache.
The recovery of such a large cache is a significant step towards the disarmament of illegally armed groups, which is the primary aim of the DIAG, in the Balkh and Jawzjan provinces and ensures greater security in the region. ISAF is supporting the DIAG process with second tier security and logistics support for the Government's collection of weapons and ammunitions. The handing over of this cache is a validation of the commitment of the GOA and the ANBP to bring sustainable security to the country, thus setting the conditions for good governance and the rule of law. These conditions will assist all the Afghan people in building a better future for their country.
#7
I assume you mean prosecute a war. I always hate it when wars get persecuted, lol! Seriously, WHY haven't we heard this yet from the MSM? Oh yeah, we all know the answer to that one.
Posted by: BA ||
03/18/2006 22:37
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Cpl. Jacob Knospler, his jaw mostly blown away by a grenade, did not wake up for a month. His first clear memory is of President George W. Bush standing over his bed at Bethesda Naval Hospital. "How the hell you doin'?" asked the president. Knospler couldn't really answer, but he liked Bush. "I felt bad for him 'cuz he comes down to the hospital, sees all the wounded people there and knows he put them there," he said.
...As a boy dreaming of becoming a warrior, Knospler had hunted deer with his father. He has begun hunting in the Pennsylvania woods again, though he has changed shooting arms because of his blind eye. His shooting skill, he says, has come back more easily than he might have thought. He feels a jumble of emotions about his wound, including bitterness, though never regret. "I'm a Marine," he says. "Marines were going down and I had to go in and help them."
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006
20:02 ||
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CPL Knospler's devotion to duty and heroism are precisely why the dems will never be able to relate to service men and women. They are far too devoted to themselves to relate to CPL Knospler.
#2
I'll wager that if you asked Cpl Knospler if this hit piece accurately describes the interview he thought he gave, he'd say "NO! They left most of it out.".
On the other hand, I'm sure the MSNBC editors are as pleased as punch.
#3
Get used to it, GS. You'll see lots of this between now and the election. This is the democrats idea of looking tough on national security - misquoting or denigrating the service of our military dead or wounded. F' em.
#7
You have to understand the media. The them the concept of 'honor' and 'duty' is completely alien. Take their reaction to the CBS fiasco.... "Never mind the forged documents... what about the accusations?". Look what they did to Tillman.
They understand duty, and honor and courage as much as I (a guy BTW) understand PMS....
The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban with the help of Pakistani and Saudi engineers.
According to an account published here on Saturday, a local Afghan told the makers of a Swiss documentary on the giant statues which had stood there, carved in the side of a mountain for hundreds of years, had been destroyed by engineers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The dynamiting of the statues took place in March 2001. Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei, who has made several documentaries that have won praise at various international film festivals, shot The Giant Buddhas in Afghanistan. The film is due to be shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on 26 March.
The Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the giant statues, revered for centuries, because they considered them offensive to Islam. They ignored appeals from around the world, including UNESCO and an appeal from the then Government of Pakistan, made, it would appear now, more for the record than any serious intent to stop the Islamist zealots from destroying what the rest of the world considered mankinds heritage.
Taliban minister of information Qudratullah Jamal said in a statement later, The destruction work is not as easy as people would think. You cant knock down the statues by dynamite or shelling as both of them have been carved in a cliff. They are firmly attached to the mountain. Museums and governments around the world kept hoping until the end that the Taliban would desist from committing what the rest of the world saw as an act of cultural sacrilege but they were adamant in their resolve.
A delegation from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference went to Kandahar to urge the Taliban leaders to change their mind, but was turned down. The Taliban information minister was quoted at the time as saying, We would repeat to them as we have to other delegations that we are not going to back away from the edict, and that no statues in Afghanistan will be spared. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also urged the Taliban not to go ahead but was rebuffed. Koichiro Matsuura, the head UNESCO, said the agency would continue efforts to salvage other Afghan relics targeted for destruction. It is abominable to witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties which were the heritage of the Afghan people, and, indeed, of the whole of humanity, he said in a statement. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dispatched the Grand Mufti of Egypt to Afghanistan to plead with the Taliban rulers to spare the statues but his emissary had no success either. Zahi Hawas, the man in charge of the plateau holding the great pyramids outside Cairo, said at the time, They are making bad publicity about Islam - and Islam has nothing to do with what is happening in Afghanistan.
Xuanzang, a 7th century Chinese monk, pilgrim and chronicler, travelled to Bamiyan and wrote a graphic description of the statues. He even mentioned a giant sleeping Buddha in the area, but no trace has been found of that in modern times.
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006
19:11 ||
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Come and get it! Fresh bullshit from the NY Slimes Front Page
As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006
18:39 ||
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Thank you, Captain America, for reminding me again why I don't read the NYT anymore. Newspaper of record, indeed!
#2
By early 2004, both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had expressed alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques.
The C.I.A.'s Baghdad station sent a cable to headquarters on Aug. 3, 2003, raising concern that Special Operations troops who served with agency officers had used techniques that had become too aggressive. Five days later, the C.I.A. issued a classified directive that prohibited its officers from participating in harsh interrogations. Separately, the C.I.A. barred its officers from working at Camp Nama but allowed them to keep providing target information and other intelligence to the task force.
The warnings still echoed nearly a year later. On June 25, 2004, nearly two months after the disclosure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, an F.B.I. agent in Iraq sent an e-mail message to his superiors in Washington, warning that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 had suspicious burn marks on his body. The detainee said he had been tortured. A month earlier, another F.B.I. agent asked top bureau officials for guidance on how to deal with military interrogators across Iraq who used techniques like loud music and yelling that exceeded "the bounds of standard F.B.I. practice."
Nothing new here. Nothing that hasn't been dealt with. The only question in my mind, is the leak from the FBI or the CIA? Foolish me.
#1
In Miller's mind, the bloggers not only poisoned her relationship with the Times brass but also with her colleagues, who, she says, "believed what they read on the blogs."
Her "colleagues" evidently still have jobs, so er huh hmmm.... Who B. Right?
#2
Back in the bad old days, back before there were blogs and legions of fact-checkers, who did the reporters blame when they were discovered to be shills and whores and liars?
Oh, that's right, they weren't found out! They got away with it!
#3
god help me, I know it's wrong, I'll try to be better tomorrow, but I just love watching these kind of liars get all tangled up in the webs they weave.
#5
I'm still wondering why they invited her. One of those odd ..what were you thinking.. kind of things.
Maybe they thought she'd be bitter towards the NYT and they'd spike her lunch drink and get some really good dirt or maybe Roger thought she was cute. I guess we'll never know.
QUETTA: A toy bomb exploded in Mastoong district of Balochistan, leaving a minor severely injured. According to police sources, the toy bomb went off at a time when 11-years-old Khan Mohammad came out of his home and grabbed hold of the toy. The injured Khan was taken to a nearby hospital.
The local police has kicked off probe into the incident
Putting bombs in toys for kids to pick up is a particularly nasty practice - may the perpetrators rot in hell.
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006
16:10 ||
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Never fear. The Pakistani Consumer Product Safety Commission is on the case.
Posted by: ed ||
03/18/2006 18:02
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SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.
The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006
15:56 ||
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If this is true, and we knew Kadaffi was pumping money into the ASG, I wonder what Sadam's connection to Kadaffi is?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/18/2006 17:13
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Captain Ed's all ovr this as are Powerline and Michelle Malkin - links from CE's
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 17:53
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ht Rantburg Dan
many thousands of new documents are being translated and released..
#4
Didn't Saddam Hussein get start-up information for his nuclear program from Qaddafi? (I think that spelling is prettier) Which Qaddaffi had gotten from A.Q. Khan of Pakistan, and which AQK had gotten from China? Also Capt. Ed talks about documents showing Qaddafi moved the $$ and weapons to Abu Sayyaf that Saddam Hussein provided.
It's going to get interesting as more documents are made public.
#5
I don't mind givng attributions where do, but the author here, Stephen Hayes, literally wrote the book, "Connections".
Moreover, the Powerline folks have not reported the Philippinies terror connection as of yet.
In reality, there are several sources tracking these unfolding results. Let's not minimize one source by touting others. Each is making their own unique contribution. Sheesh.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006 18:31
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In fact, Captain Ed is citing the same Steve Hayes article on his web site as HIS source.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006 18:32
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#7
Correction: the Powerline boyz are citing the same article as cited here, again, the source is Steve Hayes' article.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006 18:36
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CA - links to others that provide insight are not bad, even if there's one original source. Otherwise Dan Rather might still be employed, Capische?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 18:45
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#9
Meant no effort to hide or diminish Hayes' work. Just like Claudia Rosette's at the UN - they do the tough legwork and original analysis and should get the credit. Others can add on.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 18:47
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Otherwise Dan Rather might still be employed, Capische?
My sentiments also. For example, Powerline really benefited from Free Republic on the Rather caper.
Too bad RB doesn't have a separate page for indexing Iraqi files materials and sources. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Lot's of linkages to the infamous terrs db.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006 19:10
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#11
We all thought the money was getting to the ASG through the OIC and Qaddafi, (thanks TW for the spell check). There are half a dozen muzzie NGO's in Zamboanga pumping money and aid into the ASG and MILF areas. I can't wait till we get the Iranian link and the circle will be complete.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/18/2006 19:17
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#12
Not a spell check, 49 Pan, just an aesthetic preference. When you're dealing with transliterations from a language whose sounds don't have a one-for-one correspondence, preference is pretty much all there is. Think of the various spelling for Hanukkah (Ch, nn, k, no h) or Jehovah/Yahweh/YHVH, f'r instance.
#13
Thanks, I learn something new every day on Rantburg, great site-great folks.
Was .com booted or just on holiday?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/18/2006 19:36
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#14
.com booted? pshaw! - tending to his loving-side, I expect :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 19:52
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#15
I hope so, our resident troll assassin needs to get back on patrol.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/18/2006 19:56
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#16
It won't matter to the Left save as more things to spin in their favor - eight years of Clinton for the Left justified Leftism-Socialism once, before, and forever. 9-11 and the WOT is about forcing SWO and OWG on unsuspecting America, more popularly known as Power and Control - facts are not facts. etc. unless the Left/MSM, and only the Left/MSM, says its the same. America volunteering to give up its sovereignty = America being forced to = America being defeated-destroyed =...THE LEFT T'AINT GONNA CARE.
#17
Resident troll assassin! I love it, pan! That's a keeper. I, too, was worried about .com after the cleanups with the sinktrap a few weeks ago. I thought he might have tired of it. However, earlier this week, he popped in and said he was doing fine. Gettin' a lil' "R&R" if you know what I mean.
Posted by: BA ||
03/18/2006 22:18
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President Bush's decision to seek Congressional support for a plan to share civilian nuclear technology with India could upset the balance of power in the region, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.
The Foreign Ministry said Bush, who visited the South Asian neighbors earlier this month, should have offered both Islamabad and New Delhi similar deals to enhance their respective nuclear programs.
The U.S. plan will "only encourage India to continue its weapons program without any constraint or inhibition," the ministry said in a statement Friday.
Congress must either amend U.S. law or approve an exception for India if the agreement is to go ahead. American law currently restrict the trade of nuclear material and equipment to countries that have not submitted to full nuclear inspections, which India has not done.
"The grant of (such a) waiver as a special case will have serious implications for the security environment in South Asia as well as for international nonproliferation efforts," the statement said.
Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in its was on terror, but Washington is refusing to share civilian nuclear technology with it, fearing it may not be able to keep the technology from other countries.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006
15:51 ||
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Reject?
I don't recall Bush or Singh asking permission from Perv?
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006 16:00
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Perv, old boy,
Don't you understand? We don't trust you or your people to come in out of the rain, much less keep secure sensitive information. We don't like what's happening in the Tribal Areas, we're tired of the constant war in Jammu & Kashmir, we're tired of the two-faced Mad Mullah loving imams that run madrassas that are little more than jihad training grounds. We'd like to see India grind you into paste and flush you into the Indian ocean, but we're too polite to say so in public. If you want a deal, show us you can actually do what you pledge, and that you actually have control of your government, especially the ISI. Otherwise, go piss into the wind.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/18/2006 16:30
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Perv made this speech at his installation as Honorary colonel of his old regiment - "The Dashing 16"
Forty-two years after gaining a commission as a second lieutenant in a Pakistani artillery regiment, known as the Dashing 16, President Pervez Musharraf became its honorary colonel commandant, reports said on Saturday.
General Musharraf was installed as the honorary colonel of the Dashing 16 at Bahawalpur garrison in central Punjab province on Friday. Founded on May 17, 1956, the regiment is to celebrate its golden jubilee shortly.
Speaking to the serving and retired officers of the regiment, Musharraf said the armed forces of the country were well prepared to face the challenges of modern warfare.
Musharraf joined the Pakistan Military Academy in 1961 and was commissioned in the Dashing 16 in 1964. He saw action in the 1965 war with India as a young officer in Khem Karan near Lahore and Sialkot with an artillery regiment.
He also volunteered and served for seven years in the Special Service Group, known as the Commandos.
He also participated in the 1971 war - again with India - as company commander in a commando battalion and served in various command, staff and instructional positions in the army before his appointment as army chief in October 1998.
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006 18:18
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What kind of drugs are they doing in Pakiwakiland? They got to be good.
No news as to whether the large puppets were able to attend. And as usual, the 'Free Paleostine' signs were all over the place.
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Anti-war protesters marched in Australia, Asia, Turkey and Europe on Saturday in demonstrations that marked the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with a demand that coalition troops pull out. Around 500 protesters marched through central Sydney, chanting "End the war now" and "Troops out of Iraq." Many campaigners waved placards branding President Bush the "World's No. 1 Terrorist" or expressing concerns that Iran could be the next country to face invasion.
"Iraq is a quagmire and has been a humanitarian disaster for the Iraqis," said Jean Parker, a member of the Australian branch of the Stop the War Coalition, which organized the march attended by very few people. "There is no way forward without ending the occupation."
Saturday's protest was small compared to the mass demonstrations that swept across the country in the buildup to the invasion - the largest Australia had seen since joining U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.
The turnout also was lower than protesters had hoped in Britain, whose government has been the United States' strongest supporter in the war. Authorities shut down streets in the heart of London's shopping and theater district for the demonstration, which organizers had predicted would attract up to 100,000 people, but police estimated the crowd was about 15,000 people.
Some protesters carried posters calling Bush a terrorist and other placards pictured Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying "Blair must go!" Britain has about 8,000 soldiers in Iraq but plans to pull out 800 by May. "We are against this war, both for religious reasons and on a humanitarian basis, too. No one deserves to be bombarded," said one march, student Imran Saghir, 25.
In Tokyo, about 2,000 people rallied in a downtown park, carrying signs saying "Stop the Occupation" as they listened to a series of anti-war speeches. In Turkey, thousands gathered in Istanbul for protests and other demonstrations were planned in the cities of Izmir, Trabzon and the capital, Ankara. "USA, go home!" said red and black signs carried by hundreds of the some 5,000 protesters gathered in Kadikoy on the city's Asian coast.
In Sweden, about 1,000 demonstrators gathered for a rally in Stockholm before a march to the U.S. Embassy. Anti-war demonstrations were also planned for a very few people in Spain, Austria, Germany, Greece and Denmark.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006
14:58 ||
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Antiwar movement running out of steam ... or aging Hippies just plain tired.
Ol' Harry was too scared to comment on Feingold's Censure measure, much less vote, now he's trying to put patriotic lipstick on the pig
Senate Democrats have mapped a political battle plan for the March congressional recess that calls on lawmakers to stage press events with active duty military personnel, veterans and emergency responders to bash President Bush on virtually every one of his national security policies.
The game plan, devised by the office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, is contained in a six-page memo distributed to Democratic senators on Thursday at a closed-door meeting at the Capitol and provided to The Washington Times by a congressional staffer. Titled "Real Security for Democratic Incumbents," the political document calls for staged town hall events at military bases, weapons factories, National Guard units, fire stations and veterans posts. "Real Security" to them means waving flags while ankle-biting whenever possible a President at war
Real security to them means getting re-elected.
"Ensure that you have the proper U.S. and state flags at the event, and consider finding someone to sing the national anthem and lead the group in the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the event," the battle plan states.
However, the Defense Department prohibits political events on military bases. The rule states, "commanders will not permit the use of installation facilities by any candidate for political campaign or election events, including public assemblies or town hall meetings. ..."
How about using DoD servers for political advocacy?
Jim Manley, Mr. Reid's spokesman, said yesterday the planned events are not part of a political campaign. They would involve only incumbent Democratic senators, some of whom are up for re-election, but not Democratic Senate challengers, he said. Democrats hope to capture Senate control in November's election. "These are events to highlight the need for increased funding for the troops," Mr. Manley said. "It's an effort to paint the White House and the Republican Congress as having a failed effort on national security issues, which is a direct result of their misplaced priorities and mismanagement."
Increased funding? Didn't the Donks vote against most of the funding for the War?
The Senate plan urges holding town hall events to "draw attention to the security vulnerabilities caused by the Bush budget and explain how Democrats fought to restore programs that keep America safe."
The plan is the latest attempt by Democrats to criticize Mr. Bush on national security issues in the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal dust-up, which Republicans conceded was mishandled by the administration. One of the few areas where Republicans continue to poll well versus Democrats is on fighting terrorists. In almost every issue in the Reid memo, Democratic lawmakers are called upon to criticize the president for not spending enough federal dollars. The plan urges the lawmakers to:
"Hold a town hall meeting with state officials and a local National Guard unit at their armory to discuss the security impact of long deployments. ... Ask National Guard members to offer input on how security and disaster response at home is compromised by long deployments."
"Hold a town hall meeting with troops at a local military installation. ... When selecting a location at the military installation for the event, make sure to select a space that allows easy press access and clearly conveys the message in the shot. Planes, vehicles, equipment and signage in the background enhance the pictures coming out of your event."
"Work with [veterans] organizations ... to find recently returned Iraq and Afghanistan veterans willing to discuss the mental effects they or their fellow veterans have experienced."
"Tour a factory in your state that manufactures military equipment like Humvees or body armor and hold a press availability afterwards with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on the importance of protective equipment."
"Visit the home of a military family that has purchased body armor on their own for a family member serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and hold an open press 'conversion' on the issue. ... Ask the family if they would be willing to hold the open press conversation/town hall meeting in their yard, on their front porch or in their home."
As commander in chief, Mr. Bush has made frequent visits to military bases in the United States and abroad. His remarks are generally limited to explaining his war policies and encouraging the troops.
The Democratic memo calls on senators to seek the help of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), which is critical of Mr. Bush. The IAVA political action committee has raised for $100,000 for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans running for the House. It has endorsed all seven Democrats in that category who are running against House Republicans. An IAVA PAC spokesman said Republican candidates chose not to seek the group's endorsement.
Since the Repubs generally stay away from moon-bats.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006
14:35 ||
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#1
I think a lot of democrats would melt into piles of stinky, reddish-brown goop if they tried to pretend they were patriotic. When you wave a flag, some act like vampires before a cross.
#2
Senate Democrats have mapped a political battle plan for the March congressional recess that calls on lawmakers to stage press events with active duty military personnel, veterans and emergency responders to bash President Bush on virtually every one of his national security policies.
So the Dems are actively courting the military to violate the law.
Art. 88. Contempt toward officials
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
I do recall a hissy fit through when a similar incident happen during Clinton's Administration. Once again, law for thee, but not for me.
The service regulations prohibit wearing the uniform in partisan events.
#3
I don't think any REAL military people will agree to this, and they cannot be coerced. The only people that belong to "IAVA" are the "political" military members who put politics above their duty to the nation. Once again the Democrats show they are incompetent to govern. They've launched a campaign that can only bring disaster and disgust upon their heads. May they all spend eternity "serving in combat" - what greater hell could they imagine?
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/18/2006 18:01
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What is not said and very interesting is the dems must be instructed, prodded and coached regarding verbal interaction and exchanges with the military, as oppoed to what comes natural with the President and many others. President Bush in a pickle suit "following the ball" onto a US Navy aircraft carrier deck is still stuck in their slimey, whimpering throats.
#5
"Work with [veterans] organizations ... to find recently returned Iraq and Afghanistan veterans willing to discuss the mental effects they or their fellow veterans have experienced."
Yeah, that'll go over well with vets.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/18/2006 18:17
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#6
All they can do is strike poses-- and they'll do it about as gracefully as Michael Moore dancing Swan Lake.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/18/2006 18:28
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#12
RINO Dems > "security" = "isolationism" > waiting for Aerican cities to be destroyed, or in the alt to pay and give all of our guns and sovereignty to Commie Asia. DO we really have to wonder why the Chicoms want maintream Americans to believe that American-specific extermination and genocide is good for everyone, even for Americans!?
Hang out at mental hospitals and see if you can get someone crazy who claims to have been in the military.
Hang out on skid row, see if you can find someone sleeping in the gutter who, in exchange for a pint of Jack Daniels, will claim to have been in the military. Bring dirty ol' Vietnam era jacket or cammies to dress them in for your photo op. Make sure to bring a flag - perhaps you can show them using it as a ground cover.
Hang out in graveyards after military funerals and see if you can find an angry family member. Best if you can interview a mother/father/wife/child but if they are supportive of their loved one's sacrifice you can always find one ol' bitch in every family that will be happy to spew blame.
Hang out at military bars and find out who'se bitter about not making rank, got fired, or got a dishonorable discharge and invite them to a town hall meeting.
And if you still have trouble finding enough men and women in the military willing to be in your charade, then have your staffers dress up in uniform and answer the questions from a sheet of talking points. It's no less legal than our other suggestions - so tell them not to worry about details like felony convictions.
#16
Robert Novak on TOWNHALL.com has an article indicating thatAL Gore may defeat and run against Hillary for 2008. WIll say again that iff the Rogues crisez remain unresolved by the Dubya and GOP-Right, I believe Hillary at best will run as VPOTUS - Americans, includ most Amer women, will NOT accept a woman as POTUS during times of national emergency or wartime; plus the Clintons may be about POWER but they are also about easy street and espec MEDIA SAINTHOOD. As quiet Commmies they, the Lefties, and aligned do not wish to be linked to anything pol incorrect and detrimental, includ but not limited to conspiracy for the attack, defeat and destruction of their own country and people for OWG and Socialism. America must "lose" even at it believes it is winning. A CLinton or Clintonite in the WH is a sure guarantee America will suffer detriment and defeat in the various Rogue crise the Mullahs will win, Kimmie will win, and TAIWAN and American superiority in the PACOA will be lost, PC of course. However imperfectly, America will have lost the WOT, its freedoms, and its sovereignty.
Tehran, Iran, Mar. 18 Irans Interior Minister pointed the finger at Britain and the United States on Saturday for an armed attack in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan in the town of Zabol which left 22 Iranian officials dead in the early hours of Friday morning.
Radical Shiite cleric Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi also claimed the people behind the attack were the same as those behind a spate of bombings in Irans south-western province of Khuzestan earlier this year and in 2005. What is clear about the recent events in Zabol and Khuzistan is that those behind the assailants were the same, Pour-Mohammadi told the state-run news agency ISNA.
According to reports received, certain American and British security officials have had meetings with certain leaders of bandits and have encouraged them to carry out terrorist attacks [in Iran], he said.
Twenty-two Iranian government and provincial officials were killed and at least seven, including the governor of the nearby city of Zahedan, were critically wounded in the ambush as their convoy was returning from a gathering in Zabol to Zahedan. The Interior Ministers comments mirrored remarks Friday by Irans paramilitary police chief, Brigadier General Ismaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, on state television that there was evidence the assailants had held meetings with British intelligence officers.
"Nice work, James. Her Majesty's Secret Service comes through again."
With an able assist from CIA, Felix."
Sistan-va-Baluchistan Province is home to Baluchis, a predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority. Iran has witnessed escalating unrest in recent months in areas populated by Baluchis, who complain just like everyone else does of discriminatory and repressive policies by the theocratic regime.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006
13:30 ||
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#1
He, he, he.
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
03/18/2006 14:43
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OK, assholes - we'll play along with your delusions. We did it. Happy now?
Whachoo gonna do about it?
(If we had done it, they would have just disappeared. Ever think about that, MMs?)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/18/2006 14:45
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How come they have not blamed DA JOOOOOOSSSS????
#5
They need to watch out for potential suicide operations on boats trying to loook suspicious. If the jihadis only kill the boarding party, they will see it as a major victory.
#1
Tevye: As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.
Mendel: Where does the book say that?
Tevye: Well, it doesn't say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Two U.S. Navy ships exchanged gunfire with suspected pirates Saturday off the coast of Somalia, and one suspect was killed and five others were wounded, the navy said. The early morning gunbattle ensued after sailors spotted 30-foot fishing boat towing smaller skiffs and prepared for a routine boarding, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.
"Heave to and prepare to be boarded!"
Passengers on the fishing boat then began shooting,
"Yar, open fire mates!" Bang! Bang! Bang!
and U.S. naval gunners returned fire with mounted machine guns.
"Give em a broadside!" BUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPP!!!!!!
Three suspects were seriously wounded and being treated on one of the Navy ships, Brown said. Their nationalities were unknown.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/18/2006
12:56 ||
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#1
Passengers on the fishing boat open fire on the US Navy.
#4
MANAMA, Bahrain, March 18, 2006 USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez returned fire early today on a group of suspected pirates in the Indian Ocean, killing one and wounding five, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command officials reported today. The incident occurred about 25 nautical miles off the central eastern coast of Somalia in international waters. Cape St. George, a guided missile cruiser, and Gonzalez, a guided missile destroyer, were conducting maritime security operations in the area as part of Combined Task Force 150, officials said.
Members of this maritime coalition task force, currently led by Royal Netherlands Navy Commodore Hank Ort, spotted a suspect vessel towing two smaller skiffs bearing west toward the coast, officials reported. As Gonzalez's boarding teams prepared to conduct a routine boarding of the suspect vessel, the two Norfolk, Va.-based Navy ships noticed the suspected pirates were brandishing what appeared to be rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
RPGs vs Cruiser & Destroyer. Take the Navy and the points.
The suspected pirates then opened fire on the Navy ships. The Cape St. George and Gonzalez returned fire with small arms in self defense, officials said.
Well, small is a relative term. 7.62 and .50 caliber machine guns, most likely.
One suspected pirate was killed and a fire ignited aboard the main suspect vessel. Boarding teams from Cape St. George and Gonzalez took 12 other suspects, including the five who were injured, into custody. The Navy boarding teams also confiscated an RPG launcher and automatic weapons. No U.S. sailors were injured in the engagement, officials said.
The Navy ships are providing medical treatment to the wounded suspects, continuing search-and-rescue efforts for any additional suspects and collecting further evidence from the vessel and skiffs, officials said. Royal Netherlands Navy medical personnel, including a medical doctor, are en route to provide assistance from HNLMS Amsterdam.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/18/2006 14:12
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Aye, yer a good man, (Lt. Cmdr.) Charlie Brown! Good work.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/18/2006 14:14
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#6
I told them to lay off the qat before heading out. But they never listen.
#16
Damn pirates--now some squid has to re-paint the bullet scuff marks on the hull. Thanks for nothing!
Posted by: Dar ||
03/18/2006 15:19
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Just how stupid/high do these clowns have to be to take on a heavily-armed NAVY SHIP?
Kinda makes you wonder what they teach kids nowadays in pirate school, don't it? Maybe the little scamps just figured the Navy was armed with Malaysian Sea Skuas.
Intelligence. You don't get much information from dead men. This way we can find out which group they work for, so we know which group to visit with a MOAB. Although at this point the entire country looks like a viable target.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/18/2006 16:22
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Too many captives are being taken. Some should be shot to encourage the balance to speak rapidly to interrogators. Captives are a big problem in the PR war.
Operation Praying Mantis was the 18 April 1988 action waged by U.S. naval forces in retaliation for the Iranian mining of an American warship.
The 14 April mining nearly sank the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts, which was sailing in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Earnest Will, the 1987-88 convoy missions in which U.S. warships escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect them from Iranian attacks. By the time the Roberts was towed to Dubai on 15 April, battered but saved with no loss of life, U.S. planning for the retaliatory operation had already begun in Washington and in the Middle East.
The battle, the largest between surface forces since World War II, sank two Iranian warships and as many as six armed speedboats.
#26
I stand corrected on Islamists first naval defeat since Lepanto. Come to think of it, does our Navy pilots' bagging a couple of Libyan jets back around the mid-80s count?
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he may consider "taking steps backward" if India does not respond to his self-rule and demilitarisation proposals on Kashmir. He, however, told Kashmiri leaders that they should "once and for all" give up their independence proposition as it was "not durable and no time should be wasted on such futile exercises".
Much better to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pak-land.
Panthers Party chief Bhim Singh told reporters in Jammu on Saturday that "Musharraf complained India was not responding to the proposals that he had been repeatedly been making to New Delhi. He said if India does not respond, he may consider 'taking steps backward'."
Singh was among the mainstream Kashmiri leaders who met the Pakistan President at the Pugwash Conference in Islamabad on March 10. Singh quoted Musharraf as saying he had offered to sit "anywhere and anytime" with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and face leaders of all the regions of Jammu and Kashmir.
Musharraf also asked the Hurriyat Conference leaders to work jointly and create a consensus on the issue. He also claimed that his government was training youths in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and had destroyed all terror hideouts there.
Training them to do what, exactly?
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006
12:46 ||
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From a Toronto Sun columnist. Paris in the spring.
By SALIM MANSUR
PARIS - During the Ides of March, the City of Light glows with anticipation of spring. But this year it is deceptively calm, and behind its gaiety lurks doubts and fear for the future.
I am in Paris - a city I am always joyful to visit - attending a conference on European security in the post-9/11 world of radical Islamism and the war on terror.
It has been a gathering of a few politicians, journalists, academics and community activists, and behind the formal presentations our informal discussions have invariably turned to the peril that France and her neighbours sense is upon them since the suburbs of Paris turned violent and ugly last autumn.
Following the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington, France and the rest of Europe initially rallied behind the United States. Newspaper headlines in Paris read: "Nous sommes Americains (We are Americans)."
But such feelings of solidarity with an America assaulted by terrorists dissipated when President George Bush decided to take the war declared on the U.S. by Osama bin Laden into the heartland of the terror network, first Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Then France's President Jacques Chirac, unlike Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, decided to make France the leading opponent of the United States at the United Nations against the war for regime change in Iraq.
Behind Chirac's decision to oppose Bush lurked the long-held belief among a segment of French politicians and intellectuals of making France "une puissance musulmane" - a Muslim power - by drawing the Arab-Muslim world under her wings.
Charles De Gaulle, France's war hero and founder of the fifth Republic, adopted this belief as a strategic policy after taking France out of Algeria, and then tilted Paris in support of the Arab countries following their debacle in the June 1967 war with Israel.
Chirac is De Gaulle's pupil, and his role in shaping Gaullist policy for the Middle East amounts to a case study in stoking the ambitions of Arab dictators, most notoriously that of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The Gaullist ambition is to have France head a coalition of countries as a counterweight to what Parisian intellectuals view as an intolerable hegemony of the United States in world affairs.
Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, who seems to me to be nursing a nostalgia for Napoleon's fleeting glory, also believed that in opposing Bush's drive to bring democracy to Iraq, they would buy security for France from politics of radical Islamists.
But Europe has failed to buy security. On the contrary, France is learning that the agenda of radical Islamists is being supported by Iran, whose bid for nuclear power has so far been uncontainable by European diplomacy.
In Lebanon Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister and friend of Chirac, was killed by Syrian agents. With this murder, a message was delivered to Paris not to mess with the Damascus/Tehran axis in the Middle East and its Lebanese proxy, the Hezbollah.
Moreover, a cluster of events - the bombings in Madrid and London, the murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the riots in the suburbs of Paris, the torture and murder of a young Parisian Jew (Ilan Halimi), a resurgence of anti-Semitic violence, the intimidation of Muslims (particularly women) by Islamists, and the effects of the recent controversy over Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed - have seemingly brought Europe to a tipping point. At last, it is awakening to the perils of a new form of totalitarianism within its borders.
In Paris this year, I sense, spring comes as a ghoulish reminder of another time when Europe watched and wondered how France would respond to a deathly menace. Hindsight, an exact science.
#1
Nice clean recitation of events regards la belle France and the cowboy America. I didn't know de Villepin fancied himself in the vein of Napoleon, LOL, but the rest is a solid fit. This is the sort of primer that the kooks I deal with need to begin teething. All they do is suck, at the moment, LOL.
Thanks for posting this, TW. I'll try it out on a few people. :)
Sympathy, in many quarters, was nothing more than a flattering suit the Europeans tried on for a few days to impress each other. If sympathy was genuine, it wouldn't have dissolved so quickly or dissolved because we went into Afghanistan to hunt down the murderers.
#5
Like secular Commies, the Muslims, i,e, God-based Socialists/Marxists/Bolsheviks, hacve no where to go but up - as illustrated by their demographic probs, or in the alt what both the Commies and Radical Islamists want America to unilater do, Westerm-Euro Socialists are "volunteering" to downwardly regress and, ultimately, to die. The Raddies = Commies > WIN BY DEFAULT, OR WIN AT MINIMUM COSTS!?
#6
Newspaper headlines in Paris read: "Nous sommes Americains (We are Americans)."
That was in hopes that the U.S. would place its vast assets at the disposal and command of the UN. That hope vanished when the U.S. essentially dusted itself off, shook Europe's hand and said "thanks for the sympathy - but we've work to do".
A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man.
The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.
Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military. A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi's claim.
The Times also overstated the conviction with which representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed their view of whether Mr. Qaissi was the man in the photograph. While they said he could well be that man, they did not say they believed he was.
The United States cannot lose this war on the field of battle.
It can only be lost in the American living room.
The MSM has chosen to ally with America's enemies in this war.
Even in a major set back such as this the MSM continues to blame the U. S. Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military.
One wonders whether the military is now waging war against the MSM using passive-aggressive techniques such as non-correction of errors.
They should also set Rummy out on Monday to ridicule the NYT for trying to pin the blame for their failure to do proper research on the military. They didn't even read their own prior articles!
Link to full NYT page 1 article in today's edition covering the fiasco as news.
#1
my belief is that MSM is losing credibily and impact in ordinary American/Canadian homes. the internet connections, blogs must have helped.
I'm hearing water-cooler discussions in the last three months that I wouldn't have believed possible last year. The cartoon wars and the lack of response from MSM is a big thing, cooler-talk wise.
Reaction against the demand by Afghanistan that Pakistan stop naming their WMD after Afghan kings
Farrukh Khan Pitafi
There should be only one standard to judge everything. If you call yourself civilized, there should be no word like double standards in your dictionary. Then, candidly speaking, there is only one tenuous difference between a dictator and a puppet ruler. The dictator pursues dirty policies to strengthen his own rule, whereas the puppet figurehead introduces even dirtier policies just to placate his foreign suzerains. From Pinochet to Najibullah, there emerges a clear pattern to substantiate this argument. If there is no gainsaying that General Musharraf is a despot, it can also not be denied that President Karzai is a puppet on strings. And in the world of puppeteering, there is a single rule that defines the game. The one who can sell his conscience once, can sell his soul to more than one bidder. While Karzai was planted by the US forces, his recent postures prove that he is effectually dancing to the Indian tunes as well. You dont believe it? Just take a closer look.
When owing to its identity crisis Pakistan wanted to sell its Central Asian credentials and historical profile, Karzai stood up claiming that Afghanistan was a South Asian country. When Pakistan named its missiles after the Muslim conquerors of Afghan origin, especially after Sultan Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghauri who had defeated Hindu Raja Prithvi Raj Chauhan (Prithvi being one of the Indian missiles), the Karzai government formally asks Islamabad not to use names of Afghan heroes for such a purpose, obviously to please the Indians. Likewise, the Afghan government literally begged the US administration to arrange President Bushs surprise visit to Kabul before his itinerary so that a whimsical case against Pakistan could be presented to bolster New Delhis position vis-à-vis Islamabad. In doing so, Mr Karzai cared a fig about the fact that India, which has sold its strategic ally Iran to win a nuclear deal from Washington, can do much worse to his country to gain much lesser benefits in return.
The question of using names of Afghan rulers for our missiles too needs a closer look. In my view, Pakistan should have no qualms in renaming its missiles provided two queries are addressed. First, since the concept of nation states and hence of national heroes has evolved ages after the rule of Mahmud Ghaznavi and Shahabuddin Ghauri, does Kabul recognise Pakistan as a separate political entity dating back to the mediaeval ages? If it does not, this request obviously holds no water and therefore is a malicious attempt to deny Pakistan its heritage and history. Yet, if it does, it is high time that Kabul acknowledged and apologised for the horrendous crimes committed against our people by its former rulers. The scorched earth policy of these and other Afghan rulers, who considered areas now comprising Pakistan as their expendable periphery, is proverbial. Ghaznavi ransacked the region and took away the regions wealth and most valuable possessions. Ghauri quenched his thirst with this regions blood. Ahmed Shah Abdali, in the name of piety, robbed the land of its virginity and purity. None of these rulers committed any less a crime here than Kaiser William IIs armies in Europe before and during World War I. Why then, what is sauce for the goose should not be sauce for the gander?
And then the crimes do not end here. Our Afghan brethren proved mercenaries to the British in their war of our conquest and confronted the Raj only when they were not paid money. When the Muslims of South Asia tried to migrate to their country owing to continuous political persecution and a religious edict, Afghanistan like modern day Australia closed its borders and let uncountable amongst them perish. When Pakistan was created, these folks left no stone unturned to snatch NWFP and Balochistan away from us in the name of Pakhtoonistan and Greater Balochistan, by fuelling unrest and insurgency in these areas. There has hardly ever been a time when they did not aid our enemies. And is Zalmay Khalilzad, the sworn enemy of Pakistan, not an Afghan by origin?
What did Pakistan do in response? It opened its doors to the Afghan refugees during the Soviet invasion. It tried to broker the best deal possible between the Afghan political groups so that a lasting post-Cold War settlement could be achieved. Even when it all failed, the Taliban policy was created only to ensure that the Afghans do not resort to their old habits of serving Pakistans enemies. If it blew up in our face, it was only because of the fact that it was a logical extension of the US strategy of using Islam to counter communism in Afghanistan. Even at this moment, Pakistani soldiers are dying in their own country fighting a war to protect Kabuls new regime and often innocent Pakistani citizens are killed, abruptly dubbed as collateral damage, for the purpose.
Small voices are heard already in Islamabad, expressing doubts that maybe it is in the Afghan blood to deceive their Muslim brothers and to fraternise with their enemies. These voices further point out that maybe it is better to rename our missiles, because the weapons christened with the Afghan names may one day explode on our own heads rather than on our enemys. I can only hope that they are wrong. Yet given the lessons of our long past history, it seems reasonable to just rename them.
Since there should not be double standards in affairs of any realm, Pakistan should ask Kabul to table its demands of renaming the missiles through some international forum. Once Kabul does that, owns Ghaznavi, Ghauri and Abdali as its leaders, and brands Pakistan a separate entity since those times, Islamabad should not have any hesitation to not only rename its missiles but also to demand reparations for the crimes committed by these people against our ancestors. Germany had to pay 132 billion gold marks or $40 billion (which in Kissingers words are equal to $323 billion today) as reparations after World War I. I think the same amount would be good enough for us. Or else Pakistan should be allowed to devise its Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. After all, there must be one standard to judge everything. As for Mullah Omars alleged presence in Pakistan, even though Islamabad knows he is not here, he was head of a government that we recognised. Hence we have every right to accord him diplomatic immunity if we so wish. Meanwhile, the friends in Kabul should first look into the mirror before pointing a finger at Pakistan.
The writer is an Islamabad-based independent columnist and media policy consultant
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006
08:09 ||
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#1
It all boils down to reparations. Even if Mullah Omar isn't in Pakistan it's ok if he is...so why doesn't this wanna be AP stringer turn Omar in for the fast $10M reward?
#2
Quite odd that Pakistanis would think India would name a missile after a defeated King of Delhi.
Especially one so gullible.
Mohammed Ghauri attacked Pritviraj many times but was repeatedly defeated. He was however forgiven after each assault. The final time, he won.
The muslim Ghauri was not so forgiving as his Hindu enemy Prithviraj.
He had Prithviraj sent in chains to Afghanistan, where he was blinded. He was later tortured and beheaded.
Even in death, he was disgraced. He was buried at the entrance to Ghauri's tomb, so that vistors would forever walk over the unmarked grave of the king of Delhi.
The Indian Prithvi missile is named after the sanskit word for "earth".
Indian missiles are named Prithvi - earth, Akash - sky, Agni - Fire, Sagarike - oceanic, Nag - snake, Astra - weapon
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006 12:27
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#7
6, could you possibly be a bit less opaque please. Some of us here (me, for example) need things kind of 'spelled out' for them. Sorry if I am not as quick, but I would like to understand what the hell you are talking about. Thanks in advance.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/18/2006 23:02
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Producers of Steven Spielberg's T-V miniseries, "Into the West" are being sued because of a haircut. He should be sued for his mirror imaging of Mossad and Black September, in "Munich."
A Mescalero Apache family in New Mexico has filed a federal lawsuit claiming a set stylist cut their daughter's hair without regard for tribal customs. They're asking for more than 300-thousand dollars for emotional distress and damages.
The lawsuit claims the stylist cut the eight-year-old girl's hair to make her look more 'Indian' and like a male Indian child because there weren't enough young male extras. Mescalero tradition forbids cutting a girl's hair as she approaches puberty. "Tradition"? It wasn't that long ago that our tradition wouldn't let natives leave the reserves. We dumped ours; you dump yours.
The lawsuit names Turner Films and an unidentified stylist as defendants. Turner Films says it doesn't comment on pending litigation. Good, then we won't have to hear from terrible Ted.
Posted by: Listen To Dogs ||
03/18/2006
07:47 ||
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#1
So the kid just wandered onto the set and was scalped and forced to play a role? Or did her parents/guardians farm the kid out for an acting job and then get ticked off that their little star didn't get a speaking role?
#2
Make no mistake, Apaches are still a warrior tribe. And while they don't have so damn many taboos as do the Navajo and Hopi, they take the ones they have seriously.
In this case, a young girl's coming of age ceremony is probably their biggest celebration. They permitted parts of one to be video taped some years ago. The ceremony lasts several days and the girl has seven bells beaten out of her in the process.
The cost can run into tens of thousands of dollars. The girl is regarded as tremendous good luck, so several hundred people want to touch her as many times as they can. Everything is covered with yellow corn pollen, which is also good luck.
The girl has a bodyguard of four old grandmothers, and goes through a dozen or more elaborate costume changes, leading into her doing a slow dance that lasts most of a day.
About every four years or so, one girl in particular is selected for the "giant size" version of the ceremony, and not only gets a small fortune in gifts, but is on the fast track to a leadership position in the tribe.
Yep, Spielberg and Co. really screwed up her bat Mitzvah all right.
#6
WTF, where were her parents while she was on set, she at least has to have some kind of legal guardian on set with her at all times, thats the movie biz.
Posted by: bk ||
03/18/2006 10:48
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#9
I have some sympathy for this family. Whatever they might have been paid for the girl's participation was probably quite welcome: if they are traditionals they are probably living in poverty financially.
My guess is that they were given vague promises that nothing would be done with her and then, when the producers realized they didn't have enough boys, someone just grabbed her and started trimming.
'moose is right about the US military veterans in that tribe.
#10
I lived in Alamogordo 1969-1970,and visited the Mescalero Indian reservation east of there. Not only are these people warriors, they're some of the most savvy cattle-breeders in the world. They also have money - millions, not pocket change. My wife worked (head bookkeeper) at a bank that handled a couple of their accounts. One of the local bank officers mouthed off to some friends, and was overheard by one of the trustees of the Mescalero accounts. The Mescaleros retaliated the next day by withdrawing over $6M from the bank and putting it in another bank. You do NOT cross these people - they have the power to retaliate.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/18/2006 18:38
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I'd have $6 million dollars too if I didn't have to pay any taxes.
#13
Thanks for the info on the Mescaleros, OP. Our daughter was friends with both Apaches and Navaho from NM. Their extended clans weren't in on the riches that it appears this group has and I just extrapolated from that.
Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine
Quick what columnist alleged in an article Thursday that President Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about? That Bush has used bribery and coercion to block every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end? That in order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran, he and a black opts [sic.] group will orchestrate [an] attack on U.S. soil?
One would never expect to hear the author is chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Ronald Reagan. That progressively unhinged man is nationally syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts... Roberts was a high profile, heavy hitter in the Reagan administration. As was Pat Buchanan a major Nixon speechwriter and spokesman. What happened? When their belief in the globalist aspect of the Neo-Con ideology collapsed, adoption of a critical conservative-nationalist position did not satisfy their piety lust, and they chose to run with the wild-eyed left. Buchanan has resorted to promoting Justin Raimondo's mean-world spews, and Roberts is predicting a Bush scheme (Plan 9, I assume) to explode a nuke off the Atlantic coast, as a pretext for stomping Iran. Reality dictates: Ha. Ha. Ha.
Posted by: Listen To Dogs ||
03/18/2006
06:11 ||
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#1
Buchanan in particular is a textbook case of the pre-WWII American isolationist. He is a true believer that the US needs to interact with nobody, to include foreign trade, can seal its borders to all outsiders, and probably thinks that it would be good if we jammed all foreign transmissions or other information that might enter our country.
#3
This simply amazes me. I remember Roberts and he was no idiotarian. He may be a capitalist first and foremost, however.
It appears that the money is much better in the Illuminati Idiot Industry than in any legitimate or rational pursuit. Chomsky, et al, are doing a gang-busters business selling amazing whoppers to the lost children. This segment of the west is much larger than I would've guessed offhand.
The slew of turncoats who have been kicked out or have resigned from government over the last 5 years (and I guess the credit for their departures can be blamed on Bush, LOL) and the Clinton era sycophants who were, quite suddenly, left in the lurch when Gore lost... Altogether they certainly seem a powerful force if one only considers their "credentials" and doesn't consider their motives and apparent greed. The mainstream media collaborates with them, of course, even coordinating to hold stories from publication so they will coincide with their book releases and such.
What do we do with such parasites? I think many are much more than simply opportunists and gadflies, I think of them as traitors. What do we do with them? How do we end the constant requirement to refute their twisted arguments and charges? When will Bush get serious about prosecuting the leakers and slanderers?
Carter, Clinton, Wilson, Scheurer, Clark, Tenet... the list is long, indeed. It's a witch's stew of disinformation which has completely unhinged the Democrat Party and left our Republic flying on one wing. Something very wicked this way comes.
#4
Chomsky, et al, are doing a gang-busters business selling amazing whoppers to the lost children.
That's a great line. These guys (left and right) are the trolls of our national discourse. And we're feeding them like crazy.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/18/2006 10:09
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Matt - My son, 13, asked me about a month ago if 9/11 had been a Mossad plot. Up to that moment, I had placed great trust and store in him, honors in math and science (yay!), I thought I had a real winner. My smug complacency vaporized and I realized that, no matter how absurd it was, I would have to very calmly explain it to him - or it would insult him that I didn't take him seriously. He actually thought that he had considered this idea carefully and it made sense. To my relief he hadn't arrived at this independently - he directed me to several websites to show where he had found the "proof" - he had filled in the blanks for himself and was sold on it. Scared the living hell out of me.
I am very careful, now, in making sure he knows I won't ridicule him but will, instead, work through the rationale. Since then, he's brought me several of these whoppers to discuss and a couple of his friends have joined in the "discussions". Thank God the 8 yr old couldn't care less, at the moment. One natural skeptic, and his gang of over actively imaginative buddies, is more than enough to keep me occupied tracking down facts that he can absorb on his own and arrive at the true story without my dictating it. That would terminate his trust in me in a heartbeat. Scary.
#7
Take heart, GS. Your son will learn at an early age that just because it's in writing, it doesn't mean it's fact. Unlike our generation that had nothing but the fake but accurate drum beat of Dan Rather, he will have information from many, many sources.
It's impossible to know where it will lead - but one thing is sure, this generation will learn to think for themselves.
#12
One thing that may be helpful is to point out to your son that there are many rich, unstable, and oppressive countries in the muddle east that are dependent on most of their populations (and a substantial subset of ours) believing such bullshit as "Mossad did 9/11" in order to continue existing, and they have a budget of tens of billions of dollars to push this very necessary (to them, at least) lie.
By comparison, the US propaganda budget is probalby something on the order of a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Posted by: Phil ||
03/18/2006 16:19
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mid 90's Paul C Roberts was a stable guy with solid/smart commentary....WTF happened?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 17:04
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Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) chief Abdur Rahman has confessed before the law enforcers that the suicide bombing in Netrakona on December 8 killing eight people and injuring 50 others was in retaliation for not releasing two JMB operatives.
After Netrakona police arrested JMB cadre Sanaullah on October 11 and Kawser Alam Sumon on October 13 at Mawa in Gouripur upazila of Mymensingh, the militants phoned the superintendent of police in Netrakona. They asked him to release the two immediately or face reprisal for the arrests.
"As he did not release them, we decided to teach him a lesson," Samiul Alam, officer-in-charge (OC) of Netrakona Police Station, quoted the detained militant leader as saying, reports our Netrakona correspondent.
Rahman said he chose to go for the attack in the constituency of State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar 'so he took notice of JMB's might and the consequence of not paying heed to its demand'.
Eight people including the suicide bomber and Udichi's district unit joint convenor Khwaja Haider died and 50 others including 10 policemen were injured in the blast in front of Udichi office in Netrakona.
OC Samiul and Sub-Inspector Mohammad Alauddin, who are investigating two cases filed in connection with the blast, interrogated Rahman at Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) headquarters in Dhaka on last Tuesday.
The JMB chief has been made the main accused in both the cases.
Rahman said the attack was a special operation and Shura member Salauddin, who still evades capture, was in charge of mounting the assault.
He confessed that he had sent two well-trained suicide squad members to Netrakona for the operation. He, however, declined to divulge the identity of the two.
"The first bomb went off before time near some policemen. And minutes after, the other suicide bomber carried out the attack successfully," Saimul quoted Rahman as saying.
He said Mawa is the main den of militants in greater Mymensingh region and over 200 JMB operatives led by Moulana Abdur Razzak are still active there.
Although my men arrested Sanaullah and Sumon, we've failed to net the others due to non-cooperation of Gouripur police, added the police officer.
He said police will interrogate Bangla Bhai too in this connection once the doctors release him from hospital.
Three more cases were filed with Raninagar Police Station in Naogaon Thursday against Bangla Bhai and his 52 accomplices, reports BDNEWS.
According to first information reports (FIR) of two cases, Sufal and Sushanta of Chapta village have been missing since they were abducted by cadres of Bangla Bhai on May 12 and 13 in 2004.
Fathers of the two youths filed the cases 22 months after the incidents.
Rafiqul Islam of Vote village in Raninagar filed the other case against Bangla Bhai and his vigilante gang for maiming him on April 15, 2004.
Meanwhile, the investigators have yet to begin quizzing Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai, JMB Shura member and lieutenant of the militant chief. He is still undergoing treatment at Bangladesh Rifles hospital in Dhaka for burns and other injuries he sustained during his capture in Rampur village of Muktagachha, Mymensingh on March 6.
Sources in the Rab said he will be taken to Mymensingh and produced before a court to be placed on remand.
"Doctors are yet to release him. We thought he would be released by Thursday but he was not," Commander Masuq Hassan Ahmed, director of Rab Legal and Media Wing, told The Daily Star.
On getting a remand order from court, members of the Task Force for Interrogation (TFI) will interrogate him at Rab-1 office in Uttara.
The TFI members have been continuing quizzing Rahman under a 10-day remand, Commander Masuq added.
Bangla Bhai's wife Fahima Khatun, arrested a couple of hours before the capture of his husband, was placed on a 12-day fresh remand by a Mymensingh court yesterday, reports our Mymensingh correspondent.
On completion of a 10-day remand at the TFI, Fahima was produced before the court of First Class Magistrate Rokshana Tarannum.
The court ordered the law enforcers to interrogate her for seven days in explosives case and five days in arms case. Both the cases were filed with Muktagachha Police Station after Rab captured Bangla Bhai and recovered huge firearms and explosives from Rampur.
Police yesterday picked up Shafiqul Islam from Kautoli area of Brahmanbaria town for suspected links with militants.
Shafiq was held after four JMB activists of the district, who were captured Wednesday, told interrogators that he knows a lot about JMB activities and network.
The police continued interrogating the four -- Sohel, Alamgir, Arafat and Sheikh Mohammad -- on the second day of their five-day remand yesterday.
Domar police of Nilphamari yesterday arrested field-level JMB activist Abdul Jalil at Pramanikpara, acting on the information obtained from two JMB activists rounded up Wednesday by the BDR, our Nilphamari correspondent adds.
Nilphamari SP Shoeb Ahmed said all three arrestees have given some significant information.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:20 ||
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The four Jamaatul Mujahideen, Bangladesh (JMB) cadres arrested in Brahmanbaria on Thursday confessed to police that they were involved in the August 17 bomb blasts in the district town.
Arrested Alamgir, 28; Sohel, 25; Arafat, 26; and Shaikh Muhammad Suman, 25 were being interrogated on the second day of their five-day remand yesterday.
Police said they got some important information from the JMB cadres but declined to disclose those for the shake of investigation.
The four were arrested following information given by JMB cadre Sabbir Ahmed Dulal, arrested in Dhaka on March 8.
Police picked up another youth Shafiqul Islam, 28, -- from Kautoli in the town yesterday. Police said Shafiqul Islam has not been arrested. He has been taken into custody for interrogation in connection militancy. Police declined to say when newsmen asked whether he was a JMB suspect. "We will tell you later", a policeman said at the Sadar police station.
Earlier on Wednesday, police picked up four others but released them after interrogation. They were Sukumer Roy, 60;. Alamgir, 35; Zilani Abdul Ashique, 30; and Hossain Al Mamun, 35, on Wednesday for asking some-thing. They are under watch, the Officer-in-Charge of Brahmanbaria Sadar police station said.
He said JMB cadre Sabbir Ahmed Dulal arrested in Dhaka on March 8 and sent to Brahmanbaria, has been sent to Sylhet for interrogation in a case filed against JMB kingpin Abdur Rahman there.
Sabbir was arrested from a saloon in Paltan area in Dhaka city after his cheque book (No. 11674) of Janata Bank branch in Brahmanbaria was found during the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) operation at Surajadigal Bari in Sylhet city from where JMB chief Abdur Rahman was arrested.
It is learnt that arrested Sheikh Muhamad Sumon was JMB 'commander' of an area in Brahmanbaria town.
Brahmanbaria police and Detective Branch (DB) personnel raided at least 18 place in the town in the last few days in their hunt for Islamist militants, source said.
Some sources claimed that JMB Sura member Salah Uddin was hiding in Brahmanbaria.
Additional Police Superintendent Abdul Kuddus Amin told newsmen at his office yesterday that raids were launched following information that Salah Uddin was hiding in the town. "We have launched a massive hunt for him", he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:19 ||
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Afghan bandits with links to US and British security services have killed 22 people in Iran and seized an unknown number of others in an ambush that also left a senior official critically wounded, Iranian officials said.
Police said 'a group of armed bandits who crossed the Afghanistan border killed 21 people and injured another seven innocent people driving in their vehicles' between the border city of Zabol and Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchistan.
The southeastern province's deputy governor general for security, Mohsen Sadeghi, later raised the death toll to 22 and said that, 'according to the reports we got, one of the seven injured people is in a critical condition.'
A source in the interior ministry said: 'Hossein Ali Nouri, the governor of Zahedan, and his deputy have been critically wounded and both are in intensive care in hospital.'
According to some Iranian news agencies, Nouri and his deputy were shot several times in the chest and abdomen.
The interior ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that 'apparently a number of people have been taken hostage'.
'Iran is seriously pursuing the case, and that is why the head of police is here to command the search for the bandits,' he added.
The officials were returning to Zahedan after attending a ceremony of war commanders in Zabol, the reports added.
'A number of victim's families have told us that their relatives have been taken hostage, but we cannot confirm it yet,' he added.
Iran's police commander, Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam, told state television 'we have information that the bandits in Sistan-Baluchistan area had some meetings with the British and the American security services'.
'These services have dictated plans to the bandits on how to destabilise the area. They are trying to spread disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. This is a terrorist action against innocent civilians,' he told reporters upon arriving at Zahedan's airport.
oh and forget what I said about war commanders, 'kay?
Ahmadi-Moqaddam said the bandits had killed Shiites, who were stopped at a mock checkpoint.
'There is the possibility that the bandits have escaped to Afghanistan since the area is close to the border,' he added.
Sistan-Baluchistan, a mostly Sunni Muslim province in predominantly Shiite Iran, is notoriously lawless and is a key transit route for opium and other drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed for Europe and the Gulf.
Some three month ago, a group of Iranian soldiers was kidnapped near the border with Pakistan by a hardline Sunni Muslim group operating in the unruly border area. They were later released. Iranian officials and media had initially said the kidnappers were bandits, drug traffickers or dissident tribesmen.
Bandits, Balochis, insurgents, dissidents ... what's the dif??? depends a lot on what the "hardline Sunni group" is.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:18 ||
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#1
Sounds like some of phil_b's mechas went haywire, heh.
Can you rustle up some more, phil? Say about 10,000?
#13
And badges. Some bandits will have badges. And pirates. Some bandits will be pirates and some of them will have badges. That's all I'm allowed to say.
PEOPLE calling the terror hotline could have their phones tapped but only where it was believed it could lead to a terrorist suspect, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said.
Mr Ruddock today rejected claims that proposed new telephone interception powers could be randomly used to tap the phones of anonymous callers to the National Security Hotline.
He said information provided to the hotline was always treated with the strictest confidence and could be given anonymously.
"I am satisfied the strict reporting and oversight mechanisms will ensure this additional power is used responsibly by police and agencies whose duty it is to protect our community from a terrorist attack or serious criminal activity," Mr Ruddock said.
News Limited newspapers today reported the Australian Federal Police as saying they would use proposed new telephone tapping powers covertly on civilians who offer information about suspected terrorists.
Under what are known as B-party warrants, police who can't identify the phone service used by a suspect or can't intercept a target phone service will be permitted to tap phones belonging to the target's family, friends and associates.
Mr Ruddock said changes in the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 2006 were part of the Government's commitment to providing appropriate tools to law enforcement and national security agencies.
He said the laws would be available in only very limited circumstances to target the communications of terrorist or criminal suspects when all other investigative means had been exhausted.
Interception of third party telephone conversations would be permitted only when an issuing authority such as a judge was satisfied there were reasonable grounds for suspecting a person was using or likely to use that telecommunications service.
The judge also had to be satisfied information obtained would assist in investigation of a suspected serious offence such as terrorism, murder or kidnapping.
Mr Ruddock said that could only happen when the police or security agency had exhausted all other methods of identifying the telecommunications service likely to be used by the suspect.
"To ensure the use of the proposed new laws is strictly limited, the issuing authority must also consider additional factors such as the impact on the privacy of any person, the gravity of the alleged offences, the usefulness of the material likely to be intercepted and to what extent alternative methods of investigating the offence have been used," he said.
Two journalists were charged with exposing German state secrets on al Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a case their defenders called a blow to press freedom.
Prosecutors in the city of Potsdam, near Berlin, said on Wednesday they were pursuing a case against German reporter Bruno Schirra and the foreign editor of Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick, Johannes von Dohnanyi, over an article for the German political monthly Cicero in April 2005.
Authorities believe Dohnanyi obtained a classified report produced by the German federal police (BKA) and passed it on to Schirra, who quoted it in a story alleging links between Zarqawi and Iran.
In an investigation of the leak at the BKA, prosecutors raided the offices of Cicero in Potsdam and Schirra's Berlin apartment and seized files and computers disks, in a move sharply criticized by journalist groups.
The spokesman for the German Journalists' Association, Hendrik Zoerner, told the AFP news agency that the charges brought Wednesday were "superfluous and damage press freedom" and would have a chilling effect on investigative reporting.
Investigations concerning Cicero editor-in-chief Wolfram Weimer's role in the case were recently dropped after Weimar agreed to pay a 1,000 euro ($1,200) fine. However, he claims the agreement does not translate into an admission of guilt. "I wanted to shorten the process and just concentrate on letting the court in Karlsruhe decide what a scandal the whole matter is," said Weimar. Cicero has filed a complaint against the raids with the country's highest court.
The interior minister at the time of the raid, Otto Schily, was forced to appear before a parliamentary committee last October to explain his order to carry out the searches.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:17 ||
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#1
Why is this a state secret?
I Greater Germany involved protecting Iran from its connections with Zarkboy?
Or maybe the German govt was embarassed to have it be known that they actually do understand the real nature of AlQ and the risks we face. After all that rather dents Schroeder's stance, no??
AUSTRALIA, the US and Japan have sought to step up the pressure on Iran over its nuclear ambitions during the inaugural ministerial-level security talks between the three nations. In a joint statement issued after today's trilateral security dialogue in Sydney, the three nations called on Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment program and also praised China's "constructive engagement" in the Asia Pacific region.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today ended her first official visit to Australia with the trilateral meeting, three years to the day after Prime Minister John Howard committed Australian troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq. While the trio discussed the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, foremost on the agenda was the worsening nuclear stand-off in Iran and the growing political and economic influence of China.
Dr Rice this week made it clear the US had serious concerns about China's military build-up, and called on China to be more transparent about increases in its defence spending. But in a joint statement after today's trilateral talks, the three nations said they "welcomed China's constructive engagement in the region".
Mr Downer said Australia, the US and Japan were extremely worried about Iran's nuclear program, amid suspicions the hardline Islamic state had lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), insisting for 18 years its nuclear program was intended only for civilian use. "There's no doubt about it, all of our countries are very concerned about the situation in Iran," Mr Downer said. "Iran should abandon its decision to proceed with its so-called research program into uranium enrichment.
"It should comply with resolutions of the International Atomic Energy Agency and fully cooperate with the United Nations ... and the broad wishes of the international community."
Mr Downer said Australia and Japan had strengthened political and strategic ties in recent years but China had nothing to fear from their closer relationship. "It's natural that countries that have a lot in common, like Australia, Japan and the US, spend a lot of time talking to each other," he said. "It's not for China to feel that we're ganging up on China. We certainly don't have a policy of ... trying to constrain China."
Dr Rice, Mr Downer and Mr Aso agreed to support emerging democracies in the Asia-Pacific region, while also calling on North Korea to return to the six-party talks about its nuclear weapons program. The joint statement also praised India's decision to place its civilian nuclear programs under international scrutiny.
After signing a deal to import nuclear technology from the US, India has asked Mr Howard to consider exporting uranium there to fulfil its burgeoning demand for energy. Such a move would require a major shift in Australia's nuclear policy which Mr Howard has said he cannot rule out.
The statement hailed today's talks as "a significant step in intensifying the strategic dialogue between our countries". "It's been a great pleasure to have Condi Rice here for a few days, and Taro Aso," Mr Downer said, before Dr Rice left for the Pacific islands. "These people are all good friends of Australia and this trilateral strategic dialogue ... has got off to a flying start."
The Muslim pilgrims' road to the holy city of Karbala was a highway of bullets and bombs for Shiites on Friday. Drive-by shootings and roadside and bus bombs killed or wounded 19 people, ratcheting up the sectarian tensions gripping Iraq.
Security forces, including U.S. armored reinforcements, girded for more bloodshed leading up to Monday's Shiite holiday. And north of Baghdad, in the Sunni Triangle, a two-day-old operation involving 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops swept through an area near Samarra in search of insurgents.
It was in Samarra that the insurgent bombing of a Shiite shrine last month ignited days of violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. More than 500 people died.
Authorities had feared new attacks as tens of thousands of Shiites, many dressed in black and carrying religious banners, converge on Karbala, 50 miles south of the capital, for Monday's 40th and final day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.
The U.S. military announced this week it was dispatching a fresh battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, about 700 troops, to Iraq from its base in Kuwait to provide extra security for Shiite holy cities and Baghdad during this period.
Friday's bloodshed in Baghdad began as groups of faithful, many of them parents with children in tow, trekked down city streets headed for the southbound highway to Karbala.
At about 7:30 a.m., a BMW sedan driving alongside pilgrims in the western district of Adil opened fire, killing three young men and wounding two other people, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. Police later reported a second shooting, also in western Baghdad, in which men riding in a car fired on pilgrims near Um al-Tuboul Square, wounding three.
Then, about midday, a bomb left in a plastic bag of vegetables exploded on a minibus, killing two passengers and wounding four in a Shiite district of Baghdad, police reported. Later in the day, a roadside bomb went off as a crowd of pilgrims passed in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, wounding five people.
Elsewhere, police in a Shiite area of east Baghdad late Thursday found the bodies of four Sunni men who had been seized from a taxi by masked gunmen the day before in western Baghdad. And police reported that six mortar rounds landed on six houses Friday in a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of Khan Bani Saad, 10 miles north of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three.
In the western city of Ramadi, U.S. forces again exchanged fire with attackers. The clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents began about 6:30 p.m. Friday around the U.S. base at the provincial government headquarters, according to a doctor at Ramadi hospital, Dheya al-Duleimi. He had no immediate information on casualties.
Iraqi troops killed one attacker in a firefight with insurgents in nearby Fallujah, police Lt. Omer Ahmed reported.
In the big helicopter-borne operation north of Baghdad, only light resistance was reported as some 1,500 troops from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and Iraq's 4th Division swept through a 100-square-mile area in search of insurgents and weapons.
Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, 101st Airborne Division spokesman, said about 40 suspects were detained, 10 of whom were later released, and six weapons caches were found.
The only casualty reported in the operation was a 101st Airborne soldier shot and killed Thursday while manning an observation post in Samarra.
Two U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division's Task Force Band of Brothers were killed and another wounded in indirect fire on a base northwest of Tikrit, the U.S. military said Saturday. The attack on Contingency Operating Base Speicher happened Thursday. No names were released.
At least 2,314 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
"Operation Swarmer," described as the largest air assault operation in three years, was focused on an area of Salahuddin province that was a stronghold of Sunni support for Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.
Speaking by video conference with Pentagon reporters, the U.S. second-in-command here, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, stressed that the majority of troops in the operation were Iraqi. He said the goal is to have Iraqi security forces in control of 75 percent of Iraq by this summer.
The U.S. command has sought to spotlight development of Iraqi military potential. As Iraqi forces improve, American officials say, U.S. forces in Iraq can be reduced.
Iraqi political leaders, meanwhile, met in another round of talks to break the Sunni-Shiite logjam over the makeup of a new government. They emerged after two hours with no breakthroughs to report.
Minority factions are trying to prevent majority Shiites, the biggest bloc in the new parliament, from dominating the major jobs - prime minister and defense and interior ministers.
Representatives of the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs said that on Friday they discussed formation of a National Security Council, a compromise proposal for a joint body to oversee the defense and interior ministries.
More meetings are needed, they said. Tarek al-Hashimi, of the Sunni bloc's Iraqi Accordance Front, said the country faced "a dangerous political dilemma." His Kurdish counterpart, Barham Saleh, said the sectarian crisis runs "much deeper" than the dispute over a Shiite effort to name acting Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari as the future government chief.
U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told The Associated Press on Friday that talks were under way about when he would meet with Iranian officials to discuss the Iraqi political situation. The talks should be held in Baghdad, Khalilzad said.
Iran's Shiite leadership has considerable influence among Iraq's Shiite groups.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:15 ||
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THE father of Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks said Britain would be responsible for retrieving his son if it loses a bid to strip him of his recently won citizenship. Terry Hicks today said his son was struggling to stay positive after the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in London began hearing an appeal from the British Government, which is trying to prevent Hicks from obtaining UK citizenship.
Even though the British High Court determined Hicks had a right to British citizenship through his mother, the Government has tried to prevent him getting it. The Home Office suspended granting citizenship to Hicks, who was captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the US.
In December last year, the High Court ruled the Home Office decision was illegitimate and ordered him to be registered as a UK citizen. The British Government is now appealing that decision.
Terry Hicks said it was hard to know how the appeal process would end. "It's at a crucial stage this could be over in a few hours or it could be a number of days," he said.
The former Adelaide chicken processor and one time jackaroo has been detained at the US military prison in Cuba for more than four years as he awaits trial before a military commission on terrorism-related charges. "His condition is not really good," Mr Hicks said of his son. "Physically he's got a bad back, he's got trouble with his ankles, trouble with his neck and his eyesight.
Sounds like most middle-aged Americans I know.
"He needs to be looked after psychically as well as psychologically."
Mr Hicks said he last spoke to his son on Christmas Eve. "He told me then that he wasn't travelling too well," he said.
And now he's not travelling at all.
"I don't think he's giving up hope but he's in a situation that nobody else can understand and he's struggling."
If the appeal fails, Mr Hicks said it was up to the British Government to act on his behalf. "If David wins the appeal then it falls on the British Government to get him back," he said.
They can try, but I don't think they want him.
If he loses the next step would be the Supreme Court, Mr Hicks said.
Recruits at Osama bin Ladens terrorist training camps in Afghanistan were clamoring for suicide missions against the United States more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to al-Qaida documents declassified by the U.S. Defense Department.
One document published on the Pentagon Web site this week contained rare criticism of bin Laden from an al-Qaida operative, who accused the terrorist leader of monopolizing decision-making and ignoring advice.
We must completely stop outside operations until we sit down and consider the disaster we have caused, said the operative, who used the name Abdel Halim Adel.
Adel appealed to a friend in the al-Qaida leadership to steer the group away from the policies of bin Laden, whom he referred to as Abu Abdullah.
Stop foreign operations, stop sending people to detention, and stop planning new operations, whether they are ordered by Abu Abdullah or not, he wrote.
The documents provide a rare glimpse of the mentality and training of recruits at al-Qaidas camps in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based until late 2001. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the United States threw its weight behind opponents of the Taliban regime that hosted bin Laden.
While the camps in Afghanistan have been destroyed, many of those who trained there have returned to their home countries, taking al-Qaidas ideology and tactics with them.
The U.S. military said the documents, published Wednesday, were captured during recent operations. Some were seized in the 2003 invasion of Iraq but many, according to U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, were found in Afghanistan.
Why have the martyrdom operations against the Americans been delayed? one recruit wrote on a calendar page dated July 8, 2000.
Another recruit referred to the 1998 suicide attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 231 people, saying: We look forward to martyrdom operations like the ones in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. What are the characteristics of the man that is required to execute such operations?
A third recruit asked the leadership why it disapproved of assassination: Why do you oppose and find it inappropriate, knowing that it cleansed many tyrants?
The recruits called bin Laden sheik, a clerical title. But it was not clear whether their questions were addressed to him or to one of his lieutenants.
Our sheik, you have previously given us lessons and asked the question: How do we drive the infidels out of the Arabian Peninsula? a recruit said in one document.
He then asked: Is striking at the origin (America) the priority or is it driving them out (of Saudi Arabia)?
The documents show al-Qaida members were concerned about their safety and the safety of their families, although they embraced suicide attacks.
Adel, the operative who criticized bin Laden, protests the leaderships posting on the Internet of a letter in which he sent kisses to his children.
Please quickly take it off because I think the whole world now knows how many kids I have and their names, he wrote.
A recruit said a reconnaissance plane had been spotted over the camp and asked: Why arent there enough personal weapons (Kalashnikov rifles) for the self-defense of all the holy warriors, particularly as an attack on the camp by the global infidels is possible anytime?"
Bin Laden is thought to have written one of the documents a letter to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. It is not clear whether the letter was written before or after Omar was overthrown.
Bin Laden told Omar that if they continued attacks in the Islamic republics apparently Muslim-dominated areas of the former Soviet Union it will keep the enemies busy and divert them away from the Afghan issue and ease the pressure.
It is a fact that the region of the Islamic republics is rich with significant scientific experience in conventional and non-conventional military industries, which will have a great role in future holy war against the enemies of Islam, the letter said. It was not specific about the type of non-conventional armaments, but seemed to refer to biological and chemical warfare.
The letter also addressed the importance of communicating with the media, a matter on which Mullah Omar would have disagreed. The Taliban leader was known for refusing press interviews and avoiding cameras.
It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods (of struggle). In fact, its ratio may reach 90 percent of the total preparation for battles, bin Laden wrote.
The release of the documents, which is expected to continue for months, is designed to allow U.S. lawmakers and the public to investigate issues such as what Saddam Husseins Iraqi regime said about weapons of mass destruction.
The Pentagon cautioned it has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:10 ||
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#1
It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods (of struggle). In fact, its ratio may reach 90 percent of the total preparation for battles, bin Laden wrote.
'Nuff said. I wonder if anyone at MSNBC realizes the irony of this statement appearing in their article?
The Mujahideen Shura Council issued a statement today, March 17, 2006, addressing the new military campaign recently launched by American and Iraqi forces in the north of Iraq. The group notes the campaigns moniker of being the biggest attack with area support since the start of the War in Iraq, and disparages the forces as losers for launching the offensive as an alleged means to frighten the Sunni people and coerce them to accept the new Iraqi government. To meet the enemy, the statement reads that the Mujahideen Shura Council has prepared for the attack and warns the Sunni people to not believe the propaganda and deception of the unbelievers in their psychological war.
Further, the message addresses previous large-scale campaigns and states: Only their noses were rubbed in the mud and their voices were heard loudly calling to leave. This operation will end up the same way as the previous ones.
Operation Swarmer, reported as the largest air assault since the initiation of the War in Iraq, consists of over 1,000 troops of the American and Iraqi forces being deployed into the north of Samarra.
The Mujahideen Shura Council is composed of seven insurgency groups in Iraq: al-Qaeda in Iraq, Victorious Army Group, the Army of al-Sunnah Wal Jamaa, Ansar al-Tawhid Brigades, Islamic Jihad Brigades, the Strangers Brigades, and the Horrors Brigades, collaborating to meet the unbelievers gathering with different sides and defend Islam.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:07 ||
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#4
Unless he was a heretic or an apostate, of course. In which case it's our DUTY to do so and collect our virginsraisins payoff. In small notes, please.
#5
"Happy St. Patrick's day, Al Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers responds,..."
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 14:25
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al-Qaeda in Iraq, Victorious Army Group, the Army of al-Sunnah Wal Jamaa, Ansar al-Tawhid Brigades, Islamic Jihad Brigades, the Strangers Brigades, and the Horrors Brigades,
Geez, if they weren't such pains in the arses, these group names would be absolutely hilarious. The "Victorious Army Group", which hasn't won a single battle yet, Army of al-Sunnah side up Wal Mart Jamima, the Strangers to winning Brigades and on and on. We need an al-Rantburg PSHAW Brigades, lol!
Posted by: BA ||
03/18/2006 22:24
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An Iraqi-U.S. operation targeting insurgents in the vast hardpan desert northeast of Samarra has led to the capture of a possible ringleader of the bombing of the Gold Mosque, Iraqi officials said today.
On its second day, Operation Swarmer resulted in 48 arrests and the discovery of at least six weapons caches consisting of mortars, AK-47s and insurgent training manuals, officials said.
The most important capture may be a leader of the group responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque, which set off a wave of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites. More than 500 have been killed and hundreds more wounded. The insurgent group was also believed to be involved in the killing of a journalist for Arab television.
Iraqi security forces are spearheading the mission that has used 50 Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters to drop soldiers into the sparsely populated area, 80 miles north of the capital Baghdad.
U.S. officers say the operation is just as valuable as an indication of the growing competence of Iraqi forces. Military officials said the raid was planned and carried out by Iraqi commandos based on information from their own intelligence sources.
"This fight is at the intelligence level," said Col. Skip Johnson, one of the American commanders supporting Operation Swarmer. "The Iraqis know the culture and they know the people."
In Washington, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the multinational corps in Iraq, also stressed that the operation was "primarily" conducted by Iraqi forces.
"It was a large operation, consisting of Iraqis and U.S. forces," he said at a Pentagon briefing. "Had we tried to accomplish a mission like this 11 months ago, it would have been primarily U.S. forces, but in this case I think you've all seen the numbers as we have, primarily Iraqi forces supported by U.S. and coalition forces."
Operation Swarmer involves 1,500 troops, about 800 of whom are Iraqi.
That is fewer total troops than have taken part in assaults to drive insurgents from Fallouja, Ramadi and other cities. But more than 50 aircraft, mainly helicopters, transported the troops and gave them air cover, making it the largest airborne attack in Iraq since April 2003, military officials said.
A statement by the U.S. command said that the raids by the Army's 101st Airborne Division and Iraq's 1st Brigade would continue for several days, and that a number of insurgent weapons caches containing artillery shells, explosives, army uniforms and materials for making car bombs had been discovered.
Residents of the area, northeast of Samarra, said they heard large explosions in the distance after troops, helicopters and armored vehicles swooped in. They said the operation was concentrated around four villages that have harbored insurgent followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose Al Qaeda-affiliated organization has been blamed by U.S. and Iraqi officials for the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque.
Repeated sweeps by American troops have failed to secure the Samarra area. U.S. and Iraqi officials said the timing of the latest raid was unrelated to the mosque bombing or next week's third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
03:04 ||
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The Israel Defense Force finds bomb-factories by temporarily detaining large numbers of persons. Someone always talks, and the terrorists wouldn't dare kill everyone caught in the dragnet.
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.
The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
02:58 ||
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All of which will be shreaded after being read by the mainstream media journalists and emptied from thier leftist memorys so they can fit in yet more Gauntanamo bay allagations. dosnt matter that Saddam was coordinating and up to no good with terrorist who would like to wipe us all out, oh no what matters is evil cartoons and orange jumpsuits.
Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Omar vowed a ferocious offensive against US-led forces in Afghanistan, saying on Thursday they would soon face unimaginable violence.
An insurgency that has killed more than 1,500 people since the start of last year has intensified in recent months with a wave of suicide bombings, including at least 12 this year.
Ten US troops have been killed in combat this year and US commanders have said they expect violence to increase in coming months as the weather warms, snow on mountain passes melts, and Afghanistans traditional fighting season begins.
With the arrival of the warm weather, we will make the ground so hot for the invaders it will be unimaginable for them, Omar said in his message, read by Taliban spokesman Mohamed Hanif over the telephone from an undisclosed location.
The fugitive Taliban leader, who carries a $10mn reward, also said a stream of young Afghans were volunteering for suicide missions, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said.
Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for more Pakistani co-operation in fighting militants after Islamabad derided Kabuls accusations that Mullah Omar was in Pakistan.
On Wednesday, Afghanistans Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said he was sure the Taliban leader was not in Afghanistan, although Taliban spokesmen insist Omar is leading the insurgency from his homeland.
Mullah Omar is not in Afghanistan, thats as much as I can say with a degree of certainty, Abdullah said during a visit to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
Afghan officials complain that the Taliban use Pakistans tribal regions as a springboard for attacks, and despite Islamabads denials, many suspect Pakistan harbours long term ambitions to have a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul.
A US commander said last week an upsurge in violence was expected as US and Nato forces extend their reach into parts of Afghanistan where the insurgent presence is greater.
We anticipate that we are going to see a fairly violent spring and summer and then an improvement in overall conditions, US Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, US Central Command director for plans and policy, told a congressional hearing.
The 26-member Nato alliance is preparing to expand its International Security Assistance Force mission - already in the north, west and in the capital Kabul - to the more volatile south and ultimately the east, raising its troop numbers to 16,000 from 9,000.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
02:55 ||
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#1
With the arrival of the warm weather, we will make the ground so hot for the invaders it will be unimaginable for them
Oh, that's just 'effing great, the dread Afghan summer.
The Specialized State Security Penal Court acquitted Karama Khamis Monday, March 13. Khamis was freed from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but Prosecution appealed his release, charging him with drug trafficking.
Two days prior to U.S. troop arrivals in Afghanistan in 2001, Khamis gave himself in pledge to an Afghan drug trafficker. The pledge was in return for 50,000 Saudi Riyals, increased to 100,000 Saudi Riyals upon the deals completion. Khamis brought 2 million Saudi Riyals worth of drugs into Yemen.
After three years imprisonment at Guantanamo, Yemeni authorities received Khamis in mid-2004. However, he proved to be neither an Al-Qaeda nor a Taliban member. Pakistani troops captured him and handed him over to the U.S.
In a separate case, the court released Ghalib Al-Zaidi on commercial bail. Al-Zaidi was accused of hiding Mohamed Hamdi Al-Ahdal, Al-Qaedas number two man in Yemen. Following the USS Cole attack in Aden, Al-Ahdal hid in Al-Zaidis house for a month and then in Al-Jawf until his December 2003 capture in Sanaa.
Al-Zaidis release followed his defense attorneys demand, which stated that he should be released as he had served three years in prison for hiding the first suspect in his house in Sirwah district in Marib. Defense added that Article 190 of the penal law stipulates that whoever hides a suspect should be fined or imprisoned no more than three years.
The court also held a hearing on testimony involving Al-Ahdal nicknamed Abu-Asim. The Attorney General confirmed that Al-Ahdal traveled to Afghanistan and Bosnia and collected money for mujahideen in Chechnya. He was accused of collecting money in Yemen for Chechen fighters under the name of the Caucasus Charitable Society. Prosecution said Al-Ahdal trained in various types of heavy and small weaponry in Pakistan and Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
The Attorney General affirmed that Al-Ahdal had connections with a man in Saudi Arabia who sent him three cars and money for transporting Al-Qaeda members in Yemen. Al-Ahdal also collected 61,000 Saudi Riyals from some Saudi citizens to distribute among martyrs, prisoners and Guantanamo detainees families.
Prosecution confirmed that Al-Ahdal met Abu Ali-Harithi after 2001 and became his companion. While living in Al-Huson area, through Al-Harithi, Al-Ahdal became acquainted with two Saudis who traveled to Iran and Afghanistan via Hadramouts Raian Airport.
Prosecution mentioned that Al-Ahdal met an Al-Qaeda financial official at the house of an Al-Qaeda mujahideen named Abdulraziq Al-Amir. He also met Al-Qaeda leaders while in Saudi Arabia. Prosecution disclosed that Al-Ahdal was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for more than a year for charging some youth with infidelity.
Last Saturday March 12, the State Security Specialized Penal Court held its third session to try 17 suspects accused of forming an armed band affiliated with Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The band, which includes Saudi nationals, is charged with plotting terrorist acts targeting senior government officials and foreigners residing in Yemen.
At the hearing, the court allowed suspect No. 1 to affirm his allegation that he voluntarily surrendered electrical circuits to political security, while suspect No. 13, Musaed Mohamed Al-Barbari, was transferred to a legitimate physician.
The court also allowed defense team head Abdulaziz Al-Samawi to defend his clients and have a copy of the indictment against Ali Al-Harithi and Mohamed Saeed Al-Qabsh. According to Al-Samawi, the indictment is untrue.
Al-Samawi said the Attorney General accused the suspects of forming an armed band and planning to travel to Iraq. He pointed out that there are more than 130 court cases attributed to individuals accused of forming armed bands, with approximately 30 suspects in each case, as if all Yemenis have transformed into armed bands.
Al-Samawi cast doubt on the authenticity of charges attributed to his clients, saying such harms Yemens independence and unity. He commented that authorities filed charges against his clients in response to U.S. Administration demands pressuring Yemen to prevent the suspects from traveling to Iraq.
The defense team head said the U.S. Administration exploits terrorisms spread to exert pressure on Arab regimes to fulfill its demands. He told the court chief to be brave and do the right thing.
Al-Samawi noted that the indictment says the suspects were planning to travel to Iraq for jihad. Jihad is mandatory for every Muslim in such circumstances when we see British troops beating Iraqi children and U.S. soldiers inflicting sexual abuse on Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison, he added.
Seized arms including a gun, a pistol and three cartridges were displayed at the hearing. The court adjourned until concluding appeals at its final sitting Saturday, March 25.
The 17 suspects face charges of targeting foreigners and senior government officials, which, according to the court, exposes society to risk. They use forged identity cards and passports and claim they belong to Al-Zarqawis group.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
02:52 ||
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Sunni Arab political leaders on Friday denounced an agreement between the United States and Iran to hold face-to-face talks about solutions to the unrest in Iraq, saying the conversations would amount to meddling by foreign nations in Iraq's domestic affairs.
The Iraqi Consensus Front, the country's main Sunni political bloc, issued a statement calling the agreement "an obvious unjustified interference" and asserted that it was not obligated to comply with any results of the negotiations.
The Sunni leadership has long criticized Tehran's influence over Iraq's powerful Shiite religious parties, and its opposition to the talks could add another obstacle to the grinding efforts by Iraq's political leaders to forge a coalition government.
"The Iraqis in the current government should have these talks with the Iranians and discuss the level of intervention of Iran," Naseer al-Ani, a member of the Sunni Arab bloc, said in a telephone interview. "It's not up to the American ambassador to talk to Iran about Iraq."
The agreement between the United States and Iran was announced Thursday. Ali Larijani, general secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Iran's participation came at the request of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party with ties to Iran.
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the Bush administration would not meet with Iran to negotiate the future of Iraq but rather to voice its concerns about what he called Iran's "unhelpful role" in Iraq. It remained unclear on Friday whether Iraqi leaders would be invited to the meetings.
The Sunni criticism came as leaders of Iraq's major political blocs, as well as the American ambassador, gathered in the heavily fortified compound of President Jalal Talabani to discuss the formation of a new Iraqi government.
According to several participants, the discussions focused on the proposal to create a national security council composed of leaders of the executive, judicial and legislative branches, as well as representatives of the country's main political blocs. The council would be consulted on pivotal national issues, like the economy, oil policy, public services and security.
Some Sunni leaders wanted the council's decisions to have binding executive authority. But, several participants said, the Shiite leadership and others were insisting that the council have only advisory powers, thereby safeguarding the constitutional powers of the executive.
A working group planned to continue the discussions on Saturday and was expected to submit its conclusions to the blocs' political leaders by Sunday, officials said.
In Halabja, Kurdistan, militias loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party that governs the eastern part of the autonomous region, began a crackdown after a riot on Thursday in which demonstrators destroyed a museum dedicated to the thousands who perished in a poison gas attack by Saddam Hussein's security forces in 1988.
The riot began as a rally against government corruption but became violent after government guards fired weapons over the protesters' heads.
"The episode is a painful reminder that reforms are needed everywhere in this part of the world," Barham Saleh, Iraq's planning minister and a Kurd, said in an interview on Friday.
Although the riot may have arisen in part from the legitimate grievances of frustrated people, he said, radical Islamists might have taken advantage of the discord to foment violence. "Obviously this has to be investigated thoroughly," he said.
American and Iraqi security forces continued their search for insurgent hide-outs near Samarra on Friday, the second day of an assault in the area, north of Baghdad, though the results appeared to be modest and the American command began to return some troops to their bases.
About 10 people were detained on Friday, bringing the number of suspected insurgents captured during the raid to 47, said Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, a spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division, which is leading the operation. At least 17 have been released after questioning, he said, adding that troops uncovered no new weapons stockpiles on Friday.
The operation has garnered widespread attention, in part because Samarra is where a Shiite shrine was bombed by insurgents last month, setting off a wave of sectarian violence. But the military has not suggested that this assault was a direct response to the bombing.
The American military command described the push as the largest "air assault" since the invasion in 2003. The military defines air assault as the insertion of troops by aircraft. Some television networks erroneously used the term "airstrikes," conjuring images of the "shock and awe" bombing campaign that heralded the invasion.
But there were no reported aerial bombardments during this operation, and Colonel Loomis said Friday that the American and Iraqi forces had encountered no armed resistance and suffered no casualties.
The American military reported that a soldier from the 101st Airborne was shot and killed at an observation post in Samarra on Thursday, but the incident appeared to be unrelated to the operation.
In Baghdad, the authorities recovered two more bodies, both handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head, according to an official in the Interior Ministry. At least 170 bodies, all showing evidence of execution-style killings, have been recovered around Baghdad in the last 10 days, according to Iraqi officials.
Though the motives for most of the killings remain unclear, officials fear that the wave of executions is a continuation of the sectarian reprisals that followed the destruction of the Samarra shrine last month.
Gunmen fired on Shiite pilgrims in several locations on Friday, killing at least one and wounding 12, the ministry official said. An improvised bomb, apparently directed at pilgrims, exploded on the road between Mahmudiya and Karbala, killing one and wounding four, the official said.
Thousands of Shiites are converging on Karbala, in the south, to celebrate the end of the 40-day mourning period commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/18/2006
02:50 ||
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And totally fails to find the bigotry that she obviously expects. Who's the bigot now?
In her normal life, Vincent, a newspaper columnist for the L.A. Times, lives in Greenwich Village, New York, with her wife. She's done fabulously well on the money wheel, and Self-Made Man will surely net her a nice sum, judging by its trajectory on the New York Times bestseller list.
So Vincent does a little weightlifting to pad her unusually tall 5'9" frame and glues fine particles of her hair to her face to create the stubble effect. Add in a few lessons with a voice training coach from Juilliard, and presto: Norah Vincent is Ned.
Ned isn't really "manly" -- he's a metrosexual, a bicoastal twerp you might find blathering in the opinion pages of a major newspaper: David Brooks or Michael Kinsley trying to pour concrete. That's the kind of man Vincent became, not your average Joe.
Ned's life in Manville starts in a blue-collar bowling league with a bunch of construction worker types. Vincent lets us know at the beginning of that chapter that she's aware the obstacles of class difference are going to impede on her epiphanies about what makes men men. Her "proudly self-confessed trailer-trash" friend warns her, "Just remember that the difference between your people and my people is that my people bowl without irony."
Vincent translates that for us in case we didn't get the point: "Hide your bourgeois flag, or you'll get the smugness beaten out of you long before they find out you're a woman." We're on notice that she's on notice.
Yet not three pages later, Vincent is sneering at the playground of the lower class, savaging the bowling alley as only a bourgeois could: "There were the smells; cigarette smoke, varnish, machine oil, leaky toilets, old candy wrappers and accumulated public muck."
That's before she meets the guys who have agreed to let her join their league. When she does meet them, out again comes the smugness. Here's part of her account of meeting Jim, one of the most sympathetic and interesting guys in Vincent's book: "His face was permanently flushed and pocked with open pores; a cigarette-, alcohol- and occupation-induced complexion " His job, his Marlboro, his bottle of beer -- that's Jim's "masculinity," and his face is stained with it.
When it comes to the expected gay bashing, chauvinist, racist, etc., behavior of the guys in her league -- the painfully obvious objective of Ned's first gender-bending expedition -- Vincent has disappointing news for the readers back in New York. These trailer-park beer guzzlers are among the most enlightened and tolerant Americans ever born. They "never spoke disrespectfully of black people." "Gay people and their affairs didn't much interest them." Outrageous jokes are introduced with an "appropriate caveat." Even as these men slip out to the occasional titty bar, they "cherished their wives" and spoke about them with "absolute reverence."
Most of all, they reward Ned's appalling bowling scores with grace and aplomb, even offering a face-saving joke as he brings down the whole team. This surprises Vincent: "I had expected these guys to be filled with virulent hatred for anyone who wasn't like them."
It turns out their only consistent prejudice is against "comparatively wealthy clients for whom they'd done construction, plumbing or carpentry work[.]" People just like Norah Vincent.
#1
Quite a wake-up, wasn't it Ned. You see, investigative, immersion journalism is about finding the truth of a story and then reporting it.
It is not about seeking "proof" of an ill-founded opinion for bucks.
Looks good on her. The only one who learned anything was her.
I learned long ago that the red-neck construction worker types down at my local watering hole are more accepting of this gay old lady and all others - more open to discussion and rational arguement and truly committed to equality of all (no matter how different or strange) - than the howling extreme liberals and socialists that pop by for a pint at the same place.
#2
Just like all those shows with the slim beautiful model types dressing up in fat suits and going into up-scale shops in "trendy" neighborhoods and getting dissed and scorned.
Never see them doing the same in a rural blue state Wal-Mart. If they did, they'd find themselves treated just fine.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/18/2006 10:28
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re: "Never see them doing the same in a rural blue state Wal-Mart. If they did, they'd find themselves treated just fine."
Steve, you meant to say red-state, yes? Your point is well taken, I just wanted to be sure of the coloring involved. :-)
#4
So Vincent does a little weightlifting to pad her unusually tall 5'9" frame and glues fine particles of her hair to her face to create the stubble effect.
#5
"So, Norah - figured out the asshole is you yet?"
Umm, yes, she did, actually. I think that you need to actually read the book. The chapter where she dates women as Ned is hilariously tragic. On one date, she winds up with a resentful "feminist" jargon-spouter and comes yeah close to ripping off her stubble and telling her to stick the Dworkin where the sun don't shine.
"Ya know, this thread's a lot better without pics."
Don't worry Raj, you're eyes would be safe. (G)
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
03/18/2006 16:56
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#6
She may have BDS politically, but, when it comes to gender issues, Vincent has more in common with Tammy Bruce than Andrea Dworkin, guys.
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
03/18/2006 17:02
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#7
If I were lesbian (deep inside, I am) - Tammy'd be my first shot. Hot. Smart. Confident.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 17:12
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#8
Her "proudly self-confessed trailer-trash" friend warns her, "Just remember that the difference between your people and my people is that my people bowl without irony."
Vincent translates that for us in case we didn't get the point: "Hide your bourgeois flag, or you'll get the smugness beaten out of you long before they find out you're a woman." We're on notice that she's on notice.
She completely missed the point of his comment. Bowling is considered kitsch by the bobos, it's a joke to them; it's a sport for him and his friends, they take it seriously. No doubt she was confused by his correct use of the word "irony".
Most of all, they reward Ned's appalling bowling scores with grace and aplomb, even offering a face-saving joke as he brings down the whole team. This surprises Vincent: "I had expected these guys to be filled with virulent hatred for anyone who wasn't like them."
This is shocking only to people who never leave the bobo enclave, who buy into what they're told by the other people who never leave the bobo enclave.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/18/2006 18:13
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#9
or who've never seen Big Lebowski, dude?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 18:41
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#10
his correct use of the word "irony".
It's a synonym for "metallic", right?
Listening to this gal on NPR, what made the bowling story even funnier for me was that not only was "she" a terrible bowler, but her teamates figured she was gay and they were *still* nice to her. I guess men are people too, eh?
#12
I just want to be told all the things the Secret Rantburg Cabal decided can't be mentioned. That way I won't be killed like I was after I related the history of Mr. Davis, Mrs. Davis, Gentle and That Troll. Self-reincarnating is darned hard work, you know, and I only have three lives left. Y'all can have my pony -- horse, of any size, isn't kosher anyway.
And I want magically to become a poet. And have invisible fairy wings, for when there's a traffic jam. And, and.... and I want to be clever enough to think of better wishes!!!!
#16
I wandered lonely as a clod
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden imbeciles;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the imbeciles.
Any changes around he haven't had an effect on the content on bit. If one doesn't like the comments they are free to ignore them. Don't like the site don't come here.
Posted by: SPoD ||
03/18/2006 20:33
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A TERROR suspect allegedly linked to al Qaeda has visited the Houses of Parliament as the guest of a Labour peer.
Former detainee Mahmoud Suliman Ahmed Abu Rideh even sat in the Commons public gallery for a debate. He was invited to Westminster on Tuesday by Lord Ahmed, who met him at Regents Park mosque three weeks ago.
The father of five suspected of being a money man for terror groups was given a SECURITY sticker for his Parliamentary visit. And he boasted yesterday of sitting in the Commons gallery, adding: It was very interesting.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis last night said Abu Rideh had been able to walk around one of the UKs biggest terror targets.
Lord Ahmed confirmed he invited Abu Rideh, 34, to see him and said he QUIZZED him over the suspected al Qaeda link. He said: I gave an appointment to see him this week. He came to see me as a Parliamentarian. It was my duty to hear what he had to say.
He came through the peers entrance. He went through the security check and I met him at security. He did not leave me for one second.
I did not take him into any public gallery.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006
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#14
Gee From 30 days to 2 years. I'd say we got our moneys worth out of it, if it stopped dead right now. Wonder if they can "reboot the system" if it'll work?
Posted by: Ben Franklin ||
03/18/2006 20:44
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#15
The Rovers have six wheels, Adriane.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/18/2006 23:56
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Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) chief Abdur Rahman has confessed before the law enforcers that the suicide bombing in Netrakona on December 8 killing eight people and injuring 50 others was in retaliation for not releasing two JMB operatives. After Netrakona police arrested JMB cadre Sanaullah on October 11 and Kawser Alam Sumon on October 13 at Mawa in Gouripur upazila of Mymensingh, the militants phoned the superintendent of police in Netrakona. They asked him to release the two immediately or face reprisal for the arrests. "As he did not release them, we decided to teach him a lesson," Samiul Alam, officer-in-charge (OC) of Netrakona Police Station, quoted the detained militant leader as saying, reports our Netrakona correspondent.
Rahman said he chose to go for the attack in the constituency of State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar 'so he took notice of JMB's might and the consequence of not paying heed to its demand'. Eight people including the suicide bomber and Udichi's district unit joint convenor Khwaja Haider died and 50 others including 10 policemen were injured in the blast in front of Udichi office in Netrakona.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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Two Palestinians have been killed and three more injured in an explosion in northern Gaza, Palestinian security sources say. The sources said initial indications suggested the blast in Bait Lahiya happened while the men were preparing an explosive device of some kind.
Don'tcha just hate it when that happens?
Another workmans' comp claim for Mutual of Gaza.
"I'm sorry, we don't cover acts of God"
"I'm sorry, we don't cover acts of Allan"
The Israeli army said it was not carrying out any military activities in the area at the time.
"Wudn't us."
Meanwhile, an eight-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead by the Israeli occupation army in the northern West Bank on Friday. Palestinian hospital sources said the girl was in a car being driven by her uncle in Yamun, east of Jenin, when she was hit by gunfire. Her uncle was wounded.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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let me guess - her uncle was "just some guy..."?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 19:20
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Anything any member of the illustrious Enezi clan is for, I'm against.
Member of the Arab Provisional Parliament, Awad Burd Al-Enezi, on Friday said he was confident the Arab parliament would live up to its role in reflecting the will of Arab people regarding important issues. Speaking to KUNA, on the sidelines of the ongoing meeting of the Arab Parliament at the Arab League headquarters in the Egyptian capital, he welcomed "the significant step forward, which was achieved when the Arab Parliament was launched." "It (the step) was not easy," he said. He added that, during Thursday's meeting, the guidelines for the launching of the parliament were approved. "We also approved the parliament's standing orders," he said.
He added that the standing orders, according to which the parliament would perform, comprised 5 articles and 73 clauses.
He said that members of the Arab parliament enjoyed immunity as they "should not be questioned on the way they perform their duty or prosecuted on that account," according to the seventh clause.
A bomb has exploded in a city in central China's Hunan province, injuring 12 people and damaging five vehicles. The Xiaoxiang Morning Post reports the bomb, which was hidden under the backseat of a motorcycle parked in front of a cafe, exploded in Yongzhou city on Tuesday afternoon. It says two people were knocked to the ground, while 10 others nearby sustained light injuries.
The motorcycle where the bomb was hidden and another motorcycle parked nearby were destroyed. Three other vehicles were lightly damaged. The windows of seven shops nearby were completely smashed. According to initial police investigation, the bomb contained ammonium nitrate and TNT. The newspaper reports authorities suspect the bombing was an act of Dire Revenge™. No other details were given.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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Gunmen firing from a motorcycle killed a former police chief as violence surged in a southern Afghanistan Taliban stronghold, police said Friday. Abdullah Khan was killed Thursday afternoon while driving his car in Argandab, a town in the southern Zabul province about 160 kilometres northeast of Kandahar, said Zabul province Police Chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail. Two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle fired at Khan's car and then fled the scene, said Malakhail. No motive was known for the slaying of Khan, who was replaced 18 months ago as a district police chief in Zabul, which borders Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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AHMEDABAD: Police shot dead four suspected Islamic militants on Friday believed to be plotting attacks and recruiting fighters for a campaign against Indian rule in the Indian held Kashmir, officials said. The men, including two Pakistanis, were killed in a shoot-out during a raid at a home on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, officers said. The four were suspected of being from Harkatul Mujahideen. "These people had come here to get new recruits," said senior police official PP Pandey. Police found four handguns, ammunition, money and a bag marked "Mission Kashmir" believed to contain about one kilogramme of explosives in the two-bedroom house.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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More than 20,000 supporters of a radical Islamic group held a peaceful rally against the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons Friday in an eastern Pakistan city and accused the government of being "soft" on the West over the controversy. "The government should have taken a hard stance against those countries where these cartoons were published to insult our beloved Prophet Muhammad," Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the leader of Jamaat al-Dawa group, told the mass gathering at a park in the city.
Saeed is a nutcase renowned cleric and a former leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic militant group that was banned by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2002 in an effort to curb extremism and militancy. Since then, Saeed has set up the Jamaat al-Dawa group, which mainly preaches Islam, runs seminaries and operates medical centers. The government had recently put Saeed under house arrest for several days to stop him from leading rallies against the cartoons after a spate of violence during protests last month left five people dead.
On Friday, Saeed urged protesters to continue organizing rallies to force the government to sever diplomatic ties with all countries where the cartoons, regarded by Muslims as blasphemous, were published. "All Islamic countries should immediately boycott the products of such countries, and we will not tolerate any bad thing against Islam, the holy Quran and our beloved Prophet Muhammad," he said.
Several other anti-U.S. clerics also addressed the rally. Although leaders of several countries where the cartoons were published have expressed regret for the offense caused by the caricatures' publication, some hard-line Islamists in this Islamic nation of 150 million say the cartoonists should be sentenced to death.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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#7
Says a lot about the enemy, no ?
We should be mass producing those cartoons and dropping them from B52s all over muzzieland. That and pictures of jelly rolls with "Eat Me, I'm a Danish" written on them.
LONDON: A British man who bought equipment which might have been used in attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan was jailed on Friday after he admitted being a terrorist quartermaster, UK police said. Mohammed Ajmal Khan, 31,
That's a stout British name, isn't it?
bought material that was sent to and used by the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group fighting in Indian Kashmir and that Britain says has links to Al Qaeda. The group was banned in 2002 after being blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament.
It's banned whether it has links to al-Qaeda or not. And if it was fighting allied forces, do you care?
British police said that Khan had provided material for the group when it was planning and conducting operations in Afghanistan in 2002-3 when coalition forces were involved in heavy fighting in the region. Khan is a terrorist, said Peter Clarke, head of the UKs anti-terrorism branch in a statement. He has been trained in violence. He went to great lengths to buy terrorist equipment, some of which could well have been used against British forces.
That makes him a traitor, too. Have you thought about cutting his head off? That's what Good Queen Bess would have done. In fact, she'd have done it so quick it would have made his head... ummm... spin.
Londons Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that Khan had access to more than $35,000 to buy equipment, which included 1,000 sq metres of Kevlar a material used to make armour plating for vehicles and for bulletproof armour. He was also involved in buying remote high tech videos and a global positioning system which were used to test an unmanned aerial drone.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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Belarus's authoritarian president threatened to "wring the necks" of opponents preparing to take to the streets during tomorrow's elections, which he is widely expected to win with 70% of the vote. Alexander Lukashenko, who has been accused of heavy-handed tactics in attempting to prevent a repeat of the "revolutions" that took place in Georgia and neighbouring Ukraine, said yesterday that his liberal opposition had "neither the brains, the strength or the resources to take over anything".
Talk about a sore winner.
He added: "God forbid they should commit any sort of act in our country," he said. "We will wring their necks as one might a duck."
Victory should come easily for Mr Lukashenko, who is expected to win a third term making him Europe's longest serving leader. State television shows him in a land of plenty, riding high on economic stability and "independence" from an expansionist Nato to his west. But amid the harmony lies great discord. "Lukashenko looks tired and worried despite him having the vote sewn up," said one senior western diplomat, who concedes he may enjoy between 25% and 50% of the electorate's support.
The burly former collective farm boss is emboldening his enemies more than he is keeping his friends. In a week that saw dozens of opposition activists arrested and foreign election monitors turned away at the airport, the KGB - which retains its Soviet name - claimed that Georgian embassies in Lithuania and Ukraine were plotting to destabilise the vote.
Yesterday the Bush administration turned the screw on this "outpost of tyranny" by releasing a dossier detailing Mr Lukashenko's personal finances and Belarus's arms deals.
Heh, there's a neat trick.
The EU and the US have accused Mr Lukashenko of denying free speech and controlling the media, warning that "targeted sanctions" may follow if, as expected, observers declare the election fraudulent. The EU is funding an "independent radio station" that on Thursday began broadcasting from Poland.
Even Mr Lukashenko's ally, Moscow, has been muted in its support, although it is keen to prevent a repeat of the "revolutions" that turned Ukraine and Georgia towards the west. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, who feels little personal warmth for his Belarussian counterpart, has kept silent about an election that would draw both western condemnation and embarrassment for him during Russia's G8 presidency.
Yesterday Russia's human rights ombudsman said any violence against opposition protests would harm relations.
Protesters, due to hit the streets at 8pm tomorrow dressed for a "denim revolution", have been warned they could be charged with terrorism, and face the death penalty. "Without fear to hold it together this place would fall apart," joked one taxi driver.
Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate, has been accused of trying to seize power through a foreign-funded coup. At least 50 of his activists were arrested last week. "People are still very afraid, but we have politicised the country," Mr Milinkevich told the Guardian. "They are reacting to us."
The message from Minsk riot police to protesters yesterday was that they will be "forced to the ground". But EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana warned of "strong international reaction" if violence were used on peaceful demonstrators.
Alexander Kozulin, another opposition candidate, was beaten by special forces officers when he tried to enter a hall where Mr Lukashenko was speaking. One of the assailants shot out the tyres of his car. Mr Kozulin was taken to a police station where he damaged a portrait of the president, for which he is now facing charges. "Lukashenko is the destabilising factor. We have a fascist state here," Mr Kozulin said. "It is 'Lukashism'. His place in The Hague has been freed by Milosevic."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006
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wow from the headline he sounds like a real friendly fella!
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Nearly 1,000 Egyptian judges held a half-hour silent protest Friday to demonstrate for full judicial independence and against the government's order to interrogate of six of their colleagues who criticized recent elections. The protest was larger than previous actions by the judges and drew participants from across the country. Last month, dozens of judges in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria held a similar protest after authorities stripped the immunity of six colleagues. ``The independence of the judges is the battle of the whole nation, and we all have to defend it,'' Zakaria Abdel Aziz, head of the Judges' Club, told the audience.
State security prosecutors want to interrogate the six pro-reform judges about their contacts with the media regarding parliamentary elections in November and December 2005. They had been outspoken about allegations of fraud.
The general assembly agreed to support the six judges in rejecting the interrogation order, according to a statement issued after the meeting.
Judges have demanded the right to supervise polling stations. The recent election was marred by government supporters intimidating and police blocking voters outside stations, as well as allegations of ballot stuffing. Egyptian judges also have been urging parliament since 1986 to adopt legislation that would make the judiciary completely independent of government control.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006
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STOCKHOLM - Danish Muslim organisations are to take the Mohammed cartoon case to the United Nations High Commisioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the Danish Islamic Community organisation said on Friday.
"Our human rights wuz violated! They drew pitchers of the Profit!"
The move came after Danish State Attorney Henning Fode on Thursday ruled that the controversial drawings of the prophet Mohammed published in daily Jyllands-Posten did not violate Danish blasphemy and racism laws.
"What part of the concept of 'free press' is beyond your comprehension?"
"All of it."
The UN is the natural place for us to file our complaint, Islamic Community spokesman Kasem Said Ahmad told the Ritzau national news agency on Friday. Muslims living in the Islamic world have greater confidence in the United Nations than in the European Union, he said. The state attorneys ruling was lousy.
More confidence in the U.N.? Now isn't that a telling statement.
If they'd gotten their way, they'd have thought it was just ducky.
Ahmad Akkari, the Imam in Denmarks second city Aarhus, accused Denmark of breaching UN human rights conventions.
"It clearly sez in the UN Convention of Human Rights that you can't draw funny pictures of the Profit! You can look it up!"
Our point is that in failing to censure Jyllands-Posten, Denmark has committed a breach of its duties as a signatory of UN conventions on human and political rights as well as international agreements on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, he said in a statement issued late Thursday.
Your point is on the top of your head. Our point is that free speech means just that, including the right to offend.
The Danish Islamic Community is an umbrella organisation for 27 Muslim organisations throughout Denmark. The organisation had previously said it might take its case to the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg. Of Denmarks 5.3 million people, 200,000 are Muslims.
And the tail is trying to wag the dog.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006
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#1
Such thin skinned idol worshippers.
Posted by: ed ||
03/18/2006 1:20
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#2
To do what, exactly?
Do these fools think the EU and UN actually merged into a Pan-Euro OWG?
Why, that'd be crazy! Think of all the bureaucrats who'd suddenly become redundant and have to go find those job things!
Good grief! The "people" think Kofi's their Sheikh!
#7
Do these fools think the EU and UN actually merged into a Pan-Euro OWG?
They seek "external balancing".
Quite common for many islamos..
They recognise that their states are weak so they seek to use another party to exert influence.
You'll see the Arab states whining to the UN about Israel, Pakistan complaining to the Word Bank, UN and the OIC about India etc.
Posted by: john ||
03/18/2006 13:11
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#8
I better start working on a good Mohammad cartoon then. I want my very own sternly worded letter and Fatwa. PTUI
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 15:02
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#9
Our point is that in failing to censure Jyllands-Posten, Denmark has committed a breach of its duties as a signatory of UN conventions on human and political rights as well as international agreements on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, he said in a statement issued late Thursday.
Once again, let's repeat class....Islam is NOT a race, as much as they want to make it one. Now, go home and write this 100 times and bring in for credit tomorrow. NEXT!
Posted by: BA ||
03/18/2006 15:13
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#10
Just checked the MOL (Muslim Offense Level) at The Relgious Policeman. It's still at 'Elevated: Quite Offended'.
btw, his march 16th blog entry is hilarious...
Hamas will finalise its cabinet on Saturday and hopes to soon submit the names to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group said on Friday.
"Unless he resigns and dissolves the Paleostinian Authority first, of course."
"The government will be ready tomorrow with its formation and its ministers but we will not announce the government before we hand it over to the president," spokesman Salah al-Bardaweel said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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Wait, Abbas, we want the target list before you flee.
Hundreds of Palestinians lined up outside bakeries in Gaza yesterday to buy bread as shop owners complained they were running out of flour because of Israels closure of a commercial crossing into the strip.
That'd be the one the Paleostinians shot up and swarmed across, right? Wonder why they closed it?
And to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian economy, donor countries are looking into the possibility of paying salaries directly to 140,000 Palestinian Authority employees.
Oooh. That's gotta hurt. No rakeoff at the top.
Israel has been closing Karni, the main commercial crossing with Gaza, on and off for the last two months, citing security concerns.
What's a few shootouts, a riot here and there? That's hardly any reason for closing it down, right?
It has said the closures were not a response to the election victory of Hamas in January.
Might have had something to do with the booms, though...
Palestinians have complained of looming shortages of many basic food stuffs while UN agencies have warned that stocks were running low and prices skyrocketing. Outside one bakery in Gaza City, at least 70 Palestinians jostled and pushed each other to get bread. The owner said he had to limit the quantities people could buy. Hisham Al-Shanti, owner of one of the largest bakeries in Gaza City, said he had enough flour for one more day. If the crossing continues to be closed, we will shut the doors of the bakery, Shanti told Reuters.
Life's tough. It's tougher when you're armed, dangerous, and stoopid.
An Israeli Army spokesman said Karni had been closed again on March 13 after being open for several days. There were no immediate plans to reopen it, he said. An Israeli security source said an alternative crossing at Kerem Shalom could be used from tomorrow to transport goods in and out of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have rejected such alternatives in the past.
"Kerem Shalom? A second-rate crossing. Not up to our standards. Bring us a better offer!"
Palestinians said the crossing has not been kept open long enough to make up for the previous closures.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Still working on the cause / effect principle. After they master that, probably somewhere around 2100-2200, we will give them the wheel and the plow. That will keep them busy until the next millenium. The debate continue on whether to ever give them fire.
#3
I get this visual - manna from Heaven... Only these are Paleos, not thankful Jooos, so they immediately start bitching... Why no zatar? Where's the laban? What, no hummus? This isn't as good as my mother used to make...
And God finally just says, "Aw, fuck it." and blasts the bitches off the face of the planet.
#6
Funny. Israel is a tiny country. You'd think, like the rest of the world, the Paleo's might be able to get their flour elsewhere. But it appears they can only get it from hated Israel. Go figure.
#11
2b, the Israelis control all access into / out of Gaza. They patrol the sea approaches and man checkpoints on the roads and of course it is walled. The only exception is the Rafah crossing into Egypt and that is currently only open to people, not goods. An additional crossing is planned but is held up pending an agreement on it between the Palestinian govt and Israel.
#13
ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNND, the Israelis have the Big Knife Switch for electric power, as well as the Big A$$ed Gate Valve for water. The Paleos have all the saline wells they can handle. The Paleos have sh*t royally into their own mess kit.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/18/2006 21:30
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#14
What's wrong w/flour from Egypt or another of their neighbors?
#16
There's no money in flour, but arms importing seems to be a big profit enterprise. Maybe flour has to be more scarce befire it is worth importing. Supply and demand thing, ya know. Econ 101.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/18/2006 23:58
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Only 54 percent of Pakistan's population has latrine and toilet facilities, according to a study on sanitation facilities conducted by the environment ministry.
A greater proportion owns guns, and probably about the same proportion owns heavy weapons. Much better to spend the money on weaponry than on plumbing.
Out of this 54 percent, 70 percent reportedly live in urban areas, while 30 percent reside in rural areas. The report said that in urban areas only 44 percent of the households used underground drainage systems, while in rural areas, 68 percent of the households had no such system, adding that most of the drainage systems lacked maintenance. It was revealed that there were very few sewage treatment plants and over 50 percent of the urban population lived in 'katchi abadis' (slums) whose sanitation plans had not been integrated into the city's sanitation plans.
On the other hand, Pakistan does have a nuclear weapons program, so it considers itself a regional power.
Most small towns were found to be without an underground sewerage system, while most of them used open drains that posed health hazards to residents.
Approximately 5000 years ago, Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, on the very same real estate, had covered sewers. But they hadn't yet invented the turban, so that probably explains it.
It was further revealed that more than 50 percent of the garbage generated from major cities was lifted and dumped into sites that were not officially approved, while most cities were without any waste management system at all.
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Don't understand! As long as I have a tree, I have a toilet.
Posted by: Almost Anonymous5839 ||
03/18/2006 0:18
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#3
Of the 54% of the population with facilities, only only 25% of the faithful actually use them. (Saving their remaining left hands for other things.)
#7
Islam is a supremacist ideology that blinds adherents to their abject primitivism. Wherever a Muslim has a problem, the savage will always point the blame the wrong way.
Muslim countries submit statistical data to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (most post some info in English). Their stats aren't something to be proud of; of course devout Muslims are incapable of shame.
#8
The irony of this is that many eastern doctors are just appalled at the unsanitary use of toilet paper, instead of water cleaning with the left hand. It grosses them out.
#10
Recent Pakistani immigrant joined our workplace. Peed in the corner of the stall, not the toilet. My fault, m'kay, I'll add a new section on toilet training.
What interested me was that when asked to use the toilet and shown accepted procedures, her reaction at the humiliation was to tell me that she "follows Allah" and that the (very nice) washroom is "harram" because infidels use it.
#12
when asked to use the toilet and shown accepted procedures, her reaction at the humiliation was to tell me that she "follows Allah" and that the (very nice) washroom is "harram" because infidels use it.
And when you fail to keep her on after probation period, on the grounds that she failes to observe standard office hygeine or whatever, she will sue for religious discrimination. So be sure you can NAIL her on performance issues. or/and, write an explicit policy about bathroom use, back it up with a gazillian quotes from public health regulations, and restart her probation period.
#13
Thinemp Whimble2412 - I call bullshit on that one.
Although I'll admit I've never been in the stall with any of them, all of the Muslims I know use the toilet in the proper manner. (And yes, they're observant, including fasting during Ramadan.)
This is not about religion, it's about public health laws. And her willful ignorance.
But as lotp says - document, document, document! Put everything in writing. "Religious freedom" doesn't give her the right to pee on the floor. Basic public health laws/regulations do give you the right to demand she doesn't if she wants to work there.
Wotta maroon.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/18/2006 12:38
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#14
Gotta wonder what she does in her own home ya know?
#18
Barb, we had a large Arab population at our univ and it took them the first year to learn to use the toilet. They stood on it and made a horrid mess. drove the school staff crazy. Sorry, TS just might be right.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/18/2006 17:11
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#19
Toilet lid perching it's called, correct balance is crucial. Wet Nike prints on the seat are a dead give away.... as is the muzzie no-flush policy. They really miss the small hose.
The Palestinians' incoming prime minister suggested Hamas could one day make peace with Israel, but undercut his statement by saying his militant group wouldn't disarm or recognize Israel unless it recognized a Palestinian state within boundaries the Israelis reject. Israel dismissed the comments as doubletalk.
Asked in an interview with CBS News aired Thursday if he could foresee a day when he would be invited to sign a peace agreement with Israel, Ismail Haniyeh replied, "Let's hope so." But Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in a landslide in January, has rebuffed Israel's conditions for talks, namely, that the group disarm and recognize the Jewish state's right to exist. Haniyeh told CBS that Hamas wouldn't meet those conditions for talks unless Israel "recognized a Palestinian state within the boundaries of Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem."
Israel, while accepting the principle of an independent Palestinian state, has said many times that it has no intention of returning to the borders it held before capturing those territories in the 1967 Mideast war. Haniyeh is considered a pragmatist, but he does not call the shots in the Palestinian government. Major Hamas decisions are taken in secret by a group of leaders inside and outside Gaza and the West Bank.
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This guy musta attended the Kerry School of Finer Double-Speak. I was for peace with Israel; that is, until we demanded boundaries that they will not accept.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/18/2006 0:34
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They keep their shit up, they might just be surprised at whose grave it is.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/18/2006 11:03
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#4
Hamas wouldn't meet those conditions for talks unless Israel "recognized a Palestinian state within the boundaries of Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem."
They rewrite history and imagineer geography. There never has been a Palestinian state within those borders. Historically, the Philistines inhabited modern Gaza and Lebanon, the Edomites had the east bank of the Jordan, and the sons of Ishmael were settled from Havilah to Shur in the desert near Egypt and all of Arabia. Israel's boundaries, with Jerusalem as its capitol, included the West Bank and extended to near Damascus. Maybe science could determine these true ethnic homelands using DNA? If they don't like Israeli law then a move to Jordan would be more comfortable. But if they insist on being unreasonable, the Palestinians will be "unrecognizable". ;)
#5
I think it's time to field-test the MOAB. Gaza would be a perfect place to do that - there's nothing socially, culturally, or politically significant there, just a bunch of seethers and whiners. The world won't miss them. I think I'll pass this along to DOD for comment.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/18/2006 18:14
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Ramallah, Paleostine (Rantburg News Service):The Fatah party, ably led by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, says it will stay out of a government being formed by the Islamist movement Hamas. "We're not in charge anymore," pointed out Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "They're going to hose it. When the hummus hits the fan, we'd rather be out of range."
Fatah says it has exhausted all means to try to reach an agreement over Hamas's political program, the BBC has reported. "We tried," Erekat said. "Allen knows we tried, but you just can't talk to them. Those people are crazy!"
Fatah, the party founded by Yasser Arafat, dominated Palestinian politics for decades but a spokesman has confirmed that it will now go into opposition. "We've already got plans in place for an intifadeh against them," a Fatah spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Fatah had said it would only join the new government if Hamas accepted all the past agreements that Fatah leaders have made with Israel but Hamas refuses to recognise Israel, saying that would constitute acceptance of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. "We tried to explain to them," Erekat said, "that accepting the agreements doesn't mean you've got to abide by them. We never did. But they just wouldn't listen."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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Fatah still has the arms, security apparatus, and hidden skimmed euros. Wait til Hamas demands that Fatah disarm and turn over the Euros....and that all foreign aid come through Hamas instead of Fatah...hee hee...
Is that popcorn buttered? salted? excellent!
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 16:30
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Fatah will form an opposition abroad.
Damn, rents on Parisian flats are gonna go up again ...
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 18:42
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#5
Is this some weird Paleo variation of Groucho's joke about how he wouldn't belong to any club that would accept him as a member?
If they want to run with the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" meme, Fatah could hook up with the Israelis to stamp out Hamas. Wouldn't that be fun to watch! There is not enough popcorn in the world for that.
Ramallah, Paleostine (Rantburg News Service): Fatah officials have asked the Palestinian president to resign, dissolve the Palestinian Authority and return responsibility for the occupied territories to Israel in protest against Tel Aviv's actions. "If we can't be in charge," said Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, "then there's no reason to have a government. Just forget the whole thing."
Senior Fatah officials said on Friday the idea of scrapping the Palestinian Authority (PA) was debated for the first time on Thursday night by the Fatah central committee, which controls Mahmoud Abbas' faction. "We knew as soon as we lost the election that the whole idea of Paleostine was a bust," the official said.
The discussion highlighted frustrations within Fatah, beaten by Hamas in January elections, following Israel's seizure of a Palestinian leader in a West Bank prison raid this week. "The whole idea behind the Paleostinian Authority is power," Erekat explained. "If you don't have power, what have you got? You're... ummm... powerless. So we're going to just call the whole thing off. Hamas can do what they want. We're outta here."
A senior Fatah official said Abbas' top aide, Tayeb Abdel-Rahim, had sparked the debate in the central committee at the behest of his boss. "Abdel-Rahim said at the meeting Abbas must consider resigning and dissolving the Palestinian Authority if Israel continues with its attacks and unilateral measures," said the official, who asked not to be named. "Why should we accept blow after blow to President Abbas whom the world claims to support?" the official quoted Abdel-Rahim as saying. "We've fought the Israelis for years, and now Hamas has won. Since we couldn't lick the Israelis, and since we like them better than we like Hamas, we'll join them."
Abbas, who resigned once when he was prime minister under the late Yasser Arafat, and has threatened to quit since becoming president, told the central committee he would consider the proposal, the official said. "I guess I could do that," he stated, cautiously. "But I couldn't do it without a pension. A big pension. And some jobs for my relatives. Maybe I'll run for president. I have experience..."
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03/18/2006
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#1
Must be some $ in government scrap, and quiting would get him a consulting job with Murtha. Win win...uh, lose lose is a winner.
#4
Fence them off, and advertise it as the world's biggest "Rage in the Cage: Fatah v Hamas". Put it on pay-per-view. The proceeds (broadcast rights, t-shirt royalties, popcorn concession, etc.) might even exceed what we have been paying them in welfare for the last umpteen years.
Get either that guy who says, "LET'S GET READY TO RUUUUUMMMMBBBBLLE!" as the announcer, or even that Latin guy who screams "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAALLLL!" during soccer games on the Spanish channel to do the play by play, and you have ratings gold.
Police yesterday arrested an ally-turned-critic of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for illegal assembly as the crackdown on the president's foes continued two weeks after she lifted the state of emergency she imposed on the country to quell an alleged coup attempt. Two suspected followers of former Sen. Gregorio Honasan, wanted for his alleged role in last months thwarted coup, were also arrested, officials said.
Former Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman was taken to a police station along with activist Vicente Romano as the two were leading a silent protest at Manilas popular Baywalk promenade. The two were with about 30 people wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan Oust Now, apparently calling for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resign. Police said they were arrested for holding a rally without a permit. We are not holding a rally, we are just strolling. We are not disturbing anyone, we dont even have placards, said Soliman, one of 10 key Arroyo officials who resigned their positions in mid-2005 at the height of a crisis sparked by allegations that Arroyo cheated in the May 2004 elections.
"We wudn't doin' nuttin'! We wuz just walkin' down the street, mindin' our own bidniz..."
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Honasan is the single most destablizing person in the Philippines. He has had a hand in every coup for the last 20 years. His partner COL Lim and Ping Lacson plan and organize coup after coup in attampts to destablize whoever is the pres, hoping for military rule. Last note is the rumor on the street there is that China funds Lacson and all this coup attempts.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/18/2006 7:12
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Spain and Mauritania have agreed to operate joint coastal patrols and target illegal people-trafficking networks to deter thousands of African migrants from trying to reach Europe by sea. A Spanish government delegation met Mauritanian military chiefs late on Thursday to discuss methods to deal with a crisis which the Spanish Red Cross estimates has cost more than 1000 lives since the start of the year. "The two sides have studied the best ways to handle the migration flows and have adopted a series of measures to tackle this serious humanitarian situation," the two governments said in a joint statement on Friday.
Under the agreement, Spain pledged to help Mauritania build and manage reception centres to receive detained migrants. The two sides also agreed to launch joint coastal patrols and Spain would give Mauritania four patrol vessels and help train their crews. Spanish experts would also train Mauritanian security forces to track down migrant-smuggling networks and would give advice on how to detect false identity and travel documents. Madrid also pledged to ask the European Union to give emergency aid to Mauritania.
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A roadside bomb has blown up a police convoy, killing five officers who were transporting the bodies of four Macedonian workers kidnapped in southern Afghanistan a week ago, an official said. Asadullah Khalid, the provincial governor of Kandahar, said police found the bodies of the Macedonians late on Thursday in a mountainous region in the Maiwand district of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold. The men were employees of a German company. They were purportedly abducted by Taliban fighters last Saturday.
The bomb hit one vehicle in the convoy as it was returning the bodies to Kandahar late on Friday. Five officers died and three were wounded, Khalid said. Other vehicles in the convoy continued on to Kandahar and the bodies were later transported to Kabul.
Macedonia's Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm that the bodies of the missing foreigners had been found. Four Afghans and four Macedonians of Albanian descent were abducted in either Kandahar or Helmand, two neighbouring southern provinces, last Saturday. The four Afghans were later released. All eight worked for Ecolog, which provides sanitation services at US and Afghan army bases.
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Exiled Syrian opposition leaders including a former vice-president and the head of the Muslim Brotherhood said on Friday they were forming a united front to replace President Bashar al-Assad with democracy. Former Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, who broke with Assad last year after serving under his late father Hafez al-Assad, told Reuters he held talks with nationalists, liberals, Islamists, Kurds and communists and would announce a common programme for a transition to democracy on Friday.
"The Syrian people are fed up with the current situation and we expect that a lot of new circumstances will lead to the uprising of the Syrian people," he said in an interview. Khaddam forecast "regime change" in Damascus this year, within a few months, because he said Assad was making many mistakes and "digging himself into a hole" and the economic and social situation was becoming more intolerable.
This year? You mean like prior to 9-11-06? Good idea.
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All this talk of Pencilneck going down, it begins to give one hope.
BRUSSELS - Syrian President Bashar Al Assad faces the same fate in the coming months as Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu suffered in 1989, according to Syrias former vice-president, who broke with Assad last year.
I think Pencilneck might have guessed that by now. Argentina's probably starting to look pretty good...
Taking time out from late-night negotiations with a coalition of opposition movements from Islamists to communists in a smoke-filled Brussels hotel conference room, Abdel-Halim Khaddam predicted a popular revolt to oust Assad soon. Poverty is very widespread, corruption is extremely widespread also, security is very tight. People are not allowed freedom of speech and the economic situation is at its worst.
That's Syria for the last 30 years.
... and there hasn't been a popular revolt in all that time. Not a successful one, anyway.
All those factors combined resemble a lot the position of Romania which led to the uprising, the former foreign minister and ruling Baath party official said.
They resemble lots of places that haven't had popular revolts, too. My guess is that a coup's more likely than a successful popular revolt. A year from now Syria could be Burma.
Like the men who ruled Romania after Ceausescu and his wife were toppled, summarily tried and shot in 1989, Khaddam has re-invented himself as a democrat in the belief that the Syrian people will turn to reformists from within the ruling party to govern them after a revolution.
And make him Mr. Big, at least for a while.
There is a big part of reformists within the Baath party who totally support my actions. They will be active partners in the regime change and there will be no massacre, said the diminutive, soft-spoken political veteran, who was in government for 35 years until he fell out with Assad last year.
Nope, no massacre at all, except for everyone with the last name of Assad.
And then everyone who opposes the new regime.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006
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Burma? You probably know it as Myannmar, but it will always be Burma to me!
Posted by: J. Peterman ||
03/18/2006 22:09
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An official from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan on Friday denied reports on involvement in the recent violent incidents in Halabja, northern Iraq.
"Wudn't us...well, mostly not us. Maybe a little. Possibly a little gun sex, who knows?"
Member of the Political Office in the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan Kamil Al-Hajj said the movement is ready to be held legally responsible for the violent incidents if there are any evidences proving such accusations. In a statement to a local radio station in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq, Al-Hajj touched on the Halabja victims' memorial, considering it a symbol for the martyrs of Halabja and the crime of dictatorship against the city. He also denied claims on the IMK leader's descriping of the memorial as a temple.
An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale has rocked Indonesia's Maluku islands this week, triggering a small tsunami that has left three people dead. The Republika Daily quotes Buru deputy district chief Bakri Lumbessy as saying three people have died after waves as high as five metres swept away at least 116 village houses on Tuesday. Most of the village's 1,200 residents had fled to the hills to escape the tsunami.
Indonesia's Aceh province was devastated by a tsunami that hit nations around the Indian Ocean after being triggered by a 9.3-magnitude quake off Sumatra island on Boxing Day, 2004. Some 168,000 Acehnese were killed. Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) will strive to be a credible enforcement agency and create its own identity through the adoption of best practices in the Coast Guard environment despite its present personnel shortage, said its director-general, Laksamana Madya Datuk Mohammad Nik. The MMEA, which will be officially launched on March 21, currently operates with 1,200 personnel, only 30 percent of the targeted 4,000.
"We have to start small but that first step is a big step for us," he said, adding that the agency was in the process of recruiting more personnel as not all the vessels that it received from the various agencies came with the crew. Although many of the MMEA's personnel formerly served with the Royal Malaysian Navy, many also came from other branches of the government.
Given the specialised nature of the MMEA's operations, Mohammad said conversion training was being conducted at its recruitment centre in Johor Baharu for the recruits who came from diverse professional backgrounds.
"Their experience is in their own assignments but we have to formulate our own training requirements to develop our skills and competency," he said, adding that the MMEA had also established a new training centre in Lumut, co-located with the RMN's training facility at the naval base. Over the long term, he said the MMEA planned to set up its own training centre and academy under its strategic development plan. In the meantime, it has also sent its personnel to more established Coast Guard agencies in the United States and Japan.
In outlining the primary tasks of the agency, also known as the Malaysian Coast Guard, he said they included maintenance of law and order; preservation of the peace, safety and security; prevention and detection of crime; apprehension and prosecution of offenders; collection of security intelligence; and conducting search and rescue.
The Malaysian Maritime Zone refers to Malaysia's internal waters, territorial sea, continental shelf, exclusive economic zone and the air space over the zone. On the MMEA's task to cover 600,000 sq km under the Malaysian Maritime Zone, Mohammad admitted that it would be a Herculean task to cover every inch of it. To be really effective, he said the MMEA has chosen to focus on areas with a high concentration of illegal activities through co-ordinated patrols using both vessels and aircraft.
The MMEA has received and will continue receiving a total of 70 vessels for its operations from the Royal Malaysian Navy, Marine Police, Fisheries Department and Customs Department spanning three phases from July last year until July this year. The agency has also purchased 38 Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats from the Mara Shipyard Engineering (Terengganu) to augment its fleet.
To improve its surveillance capability, the MMEA is also in the process of leasing patrol planes and helicopters.
The Head of Iraq's Islamic Revolution Higher Council, Abdel-Aziz Al-Hakim, on Friday held a phone conversation with Iran's Secretary-General of National security Ali Larijani on Iran's nuclear row with Washington. According to a statement issued by the council, of which a copy was received by KUNA, Al-Hakim thanked Iran for taking into consideration his advice to engage into a dialogue with Washington over the nuclear issue.
"We do not approve any plan for turning Iraq into a platform for conspiring against other countries," Al-Hakim said before a crowd of supporters at Sadr City. He called for getting rid of "armed gangs, whose aims extended to other countries." "We call on Iran's officials to engage into a frank and open dialogue with the Americans on issues regarding Iraq," he said. He stressed that he expected Iran, which always stood by Iraqi people, to reach agreement with the US over Iraqi issues.
However, the Iraqi Consensus Parliamentary Coalition, the largest such Sunni Muslim group in parliament, said it was opposed to any such negotiations and was not committed to implementing them.
MIRANSHAH: Schools and shops reopened here on Friday as authorities relaxed a curfew imposed after clashes between pro-Taliban militants and the military, officials and residents told AP. Shop owners closed their businesses and thousands of residents fled when troops backed by helicopter gunships attacked militant hideouts two weeks ago. The fighting, which the military estimated killed more than 100 militants and eight security forces, was the bloodiest in the region in two years and prompted authorities to impose a 24-hour curfew.
On Friday, Syed Zaheerul Islam, the top government administrator of the region, told The Associated Press that "normalcy" had returned and the curfew had been lifted between 8am and 6pm. Also, AFP reported that tribal militants attacked a paramilitary post in Khamranz. "Militants fired five rockets at the post and then attacked it using small arms early on Friday," said a local security official.
That sounds fairly normal for Miranshah...
He said forces responded with fire and repelled the attack. "A hunt is on for the attackers in the area." Separately, a paramilitary soldier was wounded when militants fired several rockets at a security checkpoint in Speenwan late on Thursday.
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US and Iraqi troops have arrested dozens of suspected extremists during a joint massive military offensive in northern Iraq, security sources in Tikrit said yesterday. One of the arrested suspects is believed to be a wanted terrorist from Samarra, the sources said. Soldiers arrested several suspects in a factory in Dur, one police officer said. Out of the people detained initially, 20 were released, Salahuddin province Deputy Gov. Abdullah Al-Jebara said in Tikrit.
Operation Swarmer was launched Thursday northeast of Samarra, where an insurgent bombing on Feb. 22 badly damaged a major Shiite shrine and ignited days of sectarian bloodshed across Iraq in which more than 500 people died. Up to 200 foreign terrorists are believed to have been hiding out between the cities of Samarra and Dur. However, in Tikrit there was speculation the terrorists had learned of the US plans in advance and had fled the area.
Mahmoud the Weasel, still on the job...
No foreign fighters had been arrested yet, according to the deputy governor. No resistance or casualties have been reported yet. They are not so much attacks as raids, one reporter from Al-Arabiya television said.
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"I am certainly not hiding like a little girl. What? Why am I whispering? A little hay fever, is all."
Jamhoori Watan Party Chief Nawab Akbar Bugti has said that he is in his own area and with his own people. He said, in a phone call to BBC office in Islamabad on Friday, that the news about his departure to another country was part of a government campaign to demoralise his people. Nawab Bugti also claimed two vehicles belonging to security forces struck land mines killing atleast four personnel and injuring six. Provincial Spokesman Raziq Bugti said no such incidents were reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
So, reports of Buggi's departure are greatly exagerated. The collect call came from where?
Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has been grilled in parliament during a debate on the treatment of Syrians being deported from the Netherlands. MPs reacted with incredulity on Thursday to the news a Syrian government delegation demanded and was granted the right to question 181 of the deportees individually without a representative of the Dutch immigration service IND being present.
Under the normal circumstances IND officials could have been present at all interviews, Verdonk said. But after 12 meetings the Syrians indicated the IND was no longer welcome because their present made the meetings "awkward".
"Begone, infidels. This is for human ears only."
The interviewees were not allowed to have a lawyer present either. Secret footage screened on a Dutch news programme on Thursday showed a deportee expressing shock to an IND official about the way the Syrians wanted total control over the interviews. He feared any information he would give would be relayed to the Syrian Secret Service.
An additional concern is that a shadowy Syrian is purported to be the mastermind behind the Hofstad Group and Theo Van Gogh's killer.
It has been alleged the Syrian delegations asked the interviewees whether they had sought asylum in the Netherlands. Verdonk admitted in parliament she could not rule this out. MPs and Amnesty International warned people can face persecution and jail in their native country if the authorities learn they applied for asylum elsewhere.
Coalition party D66 asked how it was possible the Syrians were given such control over the interviews in light of the controversy last year about deportations to the Congo. Verdonk was forced to admit last year in that case the IND passed on information to the Congolese authorities. Human rights campaigners said the information could have helped identity the deportees as asylum seekers. The deportations of Syrians questioned by the government delegation have been put on hold until parliament debates the issue again next week.
#4
LTD, some of the deportees may not be the right flavor of the month for Damascus. Pencilneck learned from his daddy how to handle dissidents.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/18/2006 13:04
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#5
Rita's doing her best to turn that dhimmi ship around - give her credit. Deporting Syrians to Syria is the right move - how many are actual political asylum seekers rather than economic? Won't each and every deportee claim political?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/18/2006 15:00
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Gunmen targeting streams of Shiite Muslim pilgrims heading for the holy city of Karbala shot and killed three people on Friday morning and wounded two others in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad, police reported. Elsewhere, a bomb left on a minibus killed two people, and the bodies of four Sunni men were found in Shiite east Baghdad, as tensions between the Muslim sects heighten across strife-torn Iraq. Tens of thousands of devout Shiites are converging on the holy site for Monday's celebration of Arbaeen, marking the end of the 40-day mourning period after the date of the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, killed in Karbala in 680 A.D.
The prospect of attacks on Shiite pilgrims had led the U.S. command to reinforce the American troop presence here. A battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, about 700 troops, was dispatched to Iraq from its base in Kuwait to provide extra security for Shiite holy cities.
Groups of Shiite faithful, many parents with children in tow, trekked down Baghdad streets on Friday, headed for the southbound highway and Karbala, the shrine city 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of here. At about 7:30 a.m., a BMW sedan driving alongside pilgrims in the western Baghdad district of Adil opened fire, killing three and wounding two, said police Lt. Thair Mahmoud. Further details, including identities and ages of the victims, were not immediately available. Police later reported a second incident, also in western Baghdad, in which armed men riding in a car fired on pilgrims near Um al-Tuboul Square, wounding three. The killings were at least the second fatal attack during this holy period. On Tuesday, a roadside bomb exploded among Shiite pilgrims near Baqouba, north of Baghdad, killing one and wounding seven.
At about 1 p.m. on Friday, a plastic bag of explosives covered by cucumbers and tomatoes blew up on a minibus in a Shiite district, killing two passengers and wounding four, said police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi. Police said the bag had been left there by a departing passenger.
In the continuing cycle of apparent reprisal killings, police in a Shiite area of east Baghdad late Thursday found the bodies of four Sunni men who had been seized from a taxi the day before in western Baghdad. Victims' relatives said the driver told them masked gunmen in black clothes stopped his taxi and abducted the four after seeing their identification cards from Azamiyah, a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad. In another example of the nonstop violence afflicting much of Iraq, six mortar rounds landed on six houses at 1 p.m. Friday in a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of Khan Bani Saad, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three others, police reported.
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When the turbans finally gain power Ima going Shia, they've got more holidays.
White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley expressed skepticism on Friday about Iran's offer to talk to the United States about Iraq, saying it may be an attempt to divert pressure over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Hadley told a group of reporters his concern was that the Iran offer was "simply a device by the Iranians to divert pressure that they are feeling in New York," where members of the U.N. Security Council are debating a statement aimed at reining in Iran's nuclear program.
The United States offered last November to hold talks with Iran about U.S. allegations that Iranians were shipping components for homemade bombs into Iraq for use against Iraqi and U.S. targets and otherwise acting to provoke instability. Iran initially rejected the offer. But Tehran shifted course on Thursday and said it was willing to open a dialogue with the United States on Iraq.
Hadley said the United States was still prepared to hold talks with Iran but reiterated they would be limited to U.S. concerns that Iran was stirring up trouble in Iraq, not used as a way to open negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, would be the U.S. representative for any such talks.
Hadley said that by offering to open a dialogue with Washington, Iran appeared to be "trying to drive a wedge between the United States" and its allies at a time when the international community is trying to stay united and force Iran to give up its nuclear program. Washington and its allies will not let that happen, he said. His comments appeared to be an effort to tamp down any expectation that Washington and Tehran were on the brink of a breakthrough in icy relations.
The police late on Thursday raided a home and detained three suspected Taliban members in Zabul's provincial capital of Qalat, about 60 kilometres south of Argandab, Malakhail said. It was not immediately clear if the detained men had been involved in any of the recent spate of attacks across southern Afghanistan targeting either foreign troops or local security forces.
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WASHINGTON - The US military expects to have turnedcontrol over 75 per cent of Iraq to Iraqi security forces by the end of the summer, a top US commander said on Thursday. Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the Multi-National Forces-Iraq, praised the performance of the Iraqi army during the recent bout of sectarian violence and said it was well trained for counter-insurgency warfare.
Despite a heightened threat of civil war, Chiarelli said battlespace was being turned over to Iraqi army units at such a rate that it is hard for me even to keep track of on a daily basis. To the point where by this summer about 75 per cent of Iraq -- that battlespace will be owned by Iraqi units, he said, adding later that he meant by the end of the summer.
That would put the transfer of security from US-led forces to Iraqis well ahead of President George W. Bushs stated goal of having most of the country under Iraqi security forces by the end of the year.
General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said on Thursday he expects the downward trend in US force levels to continue despite heightened tensions in the wake of a bombing of Shiite shrine February 22. Were finding Iraqi units with our support can be used in about any operation we do in a counter-insurgency role, Chiarelli told reporters at the Pentagon via a video-link from Baghdad.
And this is a force we have built, and the Iraqis have built for that counter-insurgency fight, he said. And I think they are particularly well prepared, well trained and have the ability to do that, both in the cities and as you saw in Swarmer out in the middle of the desert.
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PESHAWAR: Pakistani Taliban are in control of parts of the countrys tribal zones bordering Afghanistan, where they have established a reign of terror in the name of Islam, military and security sources said on Friday.
Comes as a surprise, doesn't it? I know. It floored me, too...
In Waziristan they have used force, threats and persuasion to create a rigid social order based on a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia.
Why argue with people and try to persuade them, when you're armed and dangerous?
In several villages, witnesses say video cassettes had been burned and internet cafes destroyed. They said FM radio stations broadcast the orders of the Taliban and bodies had been found with notes saying: American spy.
That flow of outside ideas is a dangerous thing. First you get bobbling Indian boobies. That's bad enough — causes otherwise solid bully boyz to go all turgid. But then they move on to the hard stuff: watching the news. Pretty soon people are forming opinions. Next thing you know, they're ignoring the local holy men. Contributions drop off, and you've got mullahs living in penury. Can't have that, y'know.
These local Taliban are a few local people, coming out of madrassas where they are misled by certain miscreant mullahs, said Sikander Qayyum, the Peshawar-based security chief for the tribal zones.
Have you considered tearing down the madrassahs and sowing the ground where they stood with salt?
They create an environment of fear, pretend they are in charge. We cant let those Taliban impose what they want. Thats why in some places we used force.
"We're in charge! We say where the money goes! We'll do all the exploiting around here! They can have Afghanistan!"
Qayyum said some 120 pro-government tribal chiefs were assassinated by Islamic extremists in recent months. In Peshawar, witnesses said the situation in the tribal areas was like that of southern Afghanistan during the 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban regime and even local journalists and humanitarian organisations were not allowed to enter. Ive been in Tank recently. Barbers are not allowed to shave beards. You cant play music, said a retired army colonel.
Could that possibly be because it's the same people, doing the same things?
Azmat Khan, a professor at Peshawar University, said a council of tribal elders recently met in a village. The programme was destruction of TV sets.
"They got jiggling Indian boobies on 'em! Honkers, fergawdsake! And thighs! And rounded buttocks! And... And... Oh, Allah! Where is my gun? I must... I must... I must shoot off! My gun, that is..."
The local Taliban were threatening tribal chiefs and pretending to fight crime in order to gain popularity, he said. A DVD filmed in Miranshah in December shows three corpses hanging from pylons. A Talib in traditional costume grabs some children to scare them. Contacted by telephone, a local tribal elder said the Taliban were in charge of maintaining order in the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/18/2006
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#1
"misled by certain miscreant mullahs" Almost great phrase. Make that: misled by all of the many miscreant mullahs, and you've got something.
#3
One of these days the Afghan army, backed by the US and around 500 NATO troops, is going to pour over the Afghan/Pak border. I only wish we had about six extra divisions, and could borrow three or four regiments of Ghurkas to assist in the attack. It's time to put a stop to the ISI and their constant meddling in Afghanistan's affairs.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/18/2006 16:57
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Cpl. Jacob Knospler, his jaw mostly blown away by a grenade, did not wake up for a month. His first clear memory is of President George W. Bush standing over his bed at Bethesda Naval Hospital. "How the hell you doin'?" asked the president. Knospler couldn't really answer, but he liked Bush. "I felt bad for him 'cuz he comes down to the hospital, sees all the wounded people there and knows he put them there," he said.
QUETTA: A toy bomb exploded in Mastoong district of Balochistan, leaving a minor severely injured. According to police sources, the toy bomb went off at a time when 11-years-old Khan Mohammad came out of his home and grabbed hold of the toy. The injured Khan was taken to a nearby hospital. 
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Two U.S. Navy ships exchanged gunfire with suspected pirates Saturday off the coast of Somalia, and one suspect was killed and five others were wounded, the navy said. The early morning gunbattle ensued after sailors spotted 30-foot fishing boat towing smaller skiffs and prepared for a routine boarding, said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. 
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he may consider "taking steps backward" if India does not respond to his self-rule and demilitarisation proposals on Kashmir. He, however, told Kashmiri leaders that they should "once and for all" give up their independence proposition as it was "not durable and no time should be wasted on such futile exercises".
Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right 
Afghan bandits with links to US and British security services have killed 22 people in Iran and seized an unknown number of others in an ambush that also left a senior official critically wounded, Iranian officials said.
THE father of Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks said Britain would be responsible for retrieving his son if it loses a bid to strip him of his recently won citizenship. Terry Hicks today said his son was struggling to stay positive after the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in London began hearing an appeal from the British Government, which is trying to prevent Hicks from obtaining UK citizenship.
A TERROR suspect allegedly linked to al Qaeda has visited the Houses of Parliament as the guest of a Labour peer.
Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) chief Abdur Rahman has confessed before the law enforcers that the suicide bombing in Netrakona on December 8 killing eight people and injuring 50 others was in retaliation for not releasing two JMB operatives. After Netrakona police arrested JMB cadre Sanaullah on October 11 and Kawser Alam Sumon on October 13 at Mawa in Gouripur upazila of Mymensingh, the militants phoned the superintendent of police in Netrakona. They asked him to release the two immediately or face reprisal for the arrests. "As he did not release them, we decided to teach him a lesson," Samiul Alam, officer-in-charge (OC) of Netrakona Police Station, quoted the detained militant leader as saying, reports our Netrakona correspondent.
Two Palestinians have been killed and three more injured in an explosion in northern Gaza, Palestinian security sources say. The sources said initial indications suggested the blast in Bait Lahiya happened while the men were preparing an explosive device of some kind.
A bomb has exploded in a city in central China's Hunan province, injuring 12 people and damaging five vehicles. The Xiaoxiang Morning Post reports the bomb, which was hidden under the backseat of a motorcycle parked in front of a cafe, exploded in Yongzhou city on Tuesday afternoon. It says two people were knocked to the ground, while 10 others nearby sustained light injuries. 
Gunmen firing from a motorcycle killed a former police chief as violence surged in a southern Afghanistan Taliban stronghold, police said Friday. Abdullah Khan was killed Thursday afternoon while driving his car in Argandab, a town in the southern Zabul province about 160 kilometres northeast of Kandahar, said Zabul province Police Chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail. Two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle fired at Khan's car and then fled the scene, said Malakhail. No motive was known for the slaying of Khan, who was replaced 18 months ago as a district police chief in Zabul, which borders Pakistan.
AHMEDABAD: Police shot dead four suspected Islamic militants on Friday believed to be plotting attacks and recruiting fighters for a campaign against Indian rule in the Indian held Kashmir, officials said. The men, including two Pakistanis, were killed in a shoot-out during a raid at a home on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, officers said. The four were suspected of being from Harkatul Mujahideen. "These people had come here to get new recruits," said senior police official PP Pandey. Police found four handguns, ammunition, money and a bag marked "Mission Kashmir" believed to contain about one kilogramme of explosives in the two-bedroom house.
More than 20,000 supporters of a radical Islamic group held a peaceful rally against the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons Friday in an eastern Pakistan city and accused the government of being "soft" on the West over the controversy. "The government should have taken a hard stance against those countries where these cartoons were published to insult our beloved Prophet Muhammad," 
On Friday, Saeed urged protesters to continue organizing rallies to force the government to sever diplomatic ties with all countries where the cartoons, regarded by Muslims as blasphemous, were published. "All Islamic countries should immediately boycott the products of such countries, and we will not tolerate any bad thing against Islam, the holy Quran and our beloved Prophet Muhammad," he said.
LONDON: A British man who bought equipment which might have been used in attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan was jailed on Friday after he admitted being a terrorist quartermaster, UK police said. 
Belarus's authoritarian president threatened to "wring the necks" of opponents preparing to take to the streets during tomorrow's elections, which he is widely expected to win with 70% of the vote. 
STOCKHOLM - Danish Muslim organisations are to take the Mohammed cartoon case to the United Nations High Commisioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the Danish Islamic Community organisation said on Friday.
Hamas will finalise its cabinet on Saturday and hopes to soon submit the names to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group said on Friday. 
Hundreds of Palestinians lined up outside bakeries in Gaza yesterday to buy bread as shop owners complained they were running out of flour because of Israels closure of a commercial crossing into the strip. 
Only 54 percent of Pakistan's population has latrine and toilet facilities, according to a study on sanitation facilities conducted by the environment ministry. 
The Palestinians' incoming prime minister suggested Hamas could one day make peace with Israel, but undercut his statement by saying his militant group wouldn't disarm or recognize Israel unless it recognized a Palestinian state within boundaries the Israelis reject. Israel dismissed the comments as doubletalk. 
Ramallah, Paleostine (Rantburg News Service):The Fatah party, ably led by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, says it will stay out of a government being formed by the Islamist movement Hamas. "We're not in charge anymore," pointed out Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "They're going to hose it. When the hummus hits the fan, we'd rather be out of range."
Ramallah, Paleostine (Rantburg News Service): Fatah officials have asked the Palestinian president to resign, dissolve the Palestinian Authority and return responsibility for the occupied territories to Israel in protest against Tel Aviv's actions. "If we can't be in charge," said Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, "then there's no reason to have a government. Just forget the whole thing." 
Police yesterday arrested an ally-turned-critic of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for illegal assembly as the crackdown on the president's foes continued two weeks after she lifted the state of emergency she imposed on the country to quell an alleged coup attempt. Two suspected followers of former Sen. 
Spain and Mauritania have agreed to operate joint coastal patrols and target illegal people-trafficking networks to deter thousands of African migrants from trying to reach Europe by sea. A Spanish government delegation met Mauritanian military chiefs late on Thursday to discuss methods to deal with a crisis which the Spanish Red Cross estimates has cost more than 1000 lives since the start of the year. "The two sides have studied the best ways to handle the migration flows and have adopted a series of measures to tackle this serious humanitarian situation," the two governments said in a joint statement on Friday.
A roadside bomb has blown up a police convoy, killing five officers who were transporting the bodies of four Macedonian workers kidnapped in southern Afghanistan a week ago, an official said. Asadullah Khalid, the provincial governor of Kandahar, said police found the bodies of the Macedonians late on Thursday in a mountainous region in the Maiwand district of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold. The men were employees of a German company. They were purportedly abducted by Taliban fighters last Saturday.
Exiled Syrian opposition leaders including a former vice-president and the head of the Muslim Brotherhood said on Friday they were forming a united front to replace President Bashar al-Assad with democracy. Former Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, who broke with Assad last year after serving under his late father Hafez al-Assad, told Reuters he held talks with nationalists, liberals, Islamists, Kurds and communists and would announce a common programme for a transition to democracy on Friday.
An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale has rocked Indonesia's Maluku islands this week, triggering a small tsunami that has left three people dead. The Republika Daily quotes Buru deputy district chief Bakri Lumbessy as saying three people have died after waves as high as five metres swept away at least 116 village houses on Tuesday. Most of the village's 1,200 residents had fled to the hills to escape the tsunami. 
The Head of Iraq's Islamic Revolution Higher Council, Abdel-Aziz Al-Hakim, on Friday held a phone conversation with Iran's Secretary-General of National security Ali Larijani on Iran's nuclear row with Washington. According to a statement issued by the council, of which a copy was received by KUNA, Al-Hakim thanked Iran for taking into consideration his advice to engage into a dialogue with Washington over the nuclear issue. 
MIRANSHAH: Schools and shops reopened here on Friday as authorities relaxed a curfew imposed after clashes between pro-Taliban militants and the military, officials and residents told AP. Shop owners closed their businesses and thousands of residents fled when troops backed by helicopter gunships attacked militant hideouts two weeks ago. The fighting, which the military estimated killed more than 100 militants and eight security forces, was the bloodiest in the region in two years and prompted authorities to impose a 24-hour curfew.
US and Iraqi troops have arrested dozens of suspected extremists during a joint massive military offensive in northern Iraq, security sources in Tikrit said yesterday. One of the arrested suspects is believed to be a wanted terrorist from Samarra, the sources said. Soldiers arrested several suspects in a factory in Dur, one police officer said. Out of the people detained initially, 20 were released, Salahuddin province Deputy Gov. Abdullah Al-Jebara said in Tikrit.
Jamhoori Watan Party Chief Nawab Akbar Bugti has said that he is in his own area and with his own people. He said, in a phone call to BBC office in Islamabad on Friday, that the news about his departure to another country was part of a government campaign to demoralise his people. Nawab Bugti also claimed two vehicles belonging to security forces struck land mines killing atleast four personnel and injuring six. Provincial Spokesman Raziq Bugti said no such incidents were reported.
Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has been grilled in parliament during a debate on the treatment of Syrians being deported from the Netherlands. MPs reacted with incredulity on Thursday to the news a Syrian government delegation demanded and was granted the right to question 181 of the deportees individually without a representative of the Dutch immigration service IND being present.
Gunmen targeting streams of Shiite Muslim pilgrims heading for the holy city of Karbala shot and killed three people on Friday morning and wounded two others in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad, police reported. Elsewhere, a bomb left on a minibus killed two people, and the bodies of four Sunni men were found in Shiite east Baghdad, as tensions between the Muslim sects heighten across strife-torn Iraq. Tens of thousands of devout Shiites are converging on the holy site for Monday's celebration of Arbaeen, marking the end of the 40-day mourning period after the date of the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, killed in Karbala in 680 A.D.
The police late on Thursday raided a home and detained three suspected Taliban members in Zabul's provincial capital of Qalat, about 60 kilometres south of Argandab, Malakhail said. It was not immediately clear if the detained men had been involved in any of the recent spate of attacks across southern Afghanistan targeting either foreign troops or local security forces.
WASHINGTON - The US military expects to have turnedcontrol over 75 per cent of Iraq to Iraqi security forces by the end of the summer, a top US commander said on Thursday. Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the Multi-National Forces-Iraq, praised the performance of the Iraqi army during the recent bout of sectarian violence and said it was well trained for counter-insurgency warfare.
PESHAWAR: Pakistani Taliban are in control of parts of the countrys tribal zones bordering Afghanistan, where they have established a reign of terror in the name of Islam, military and security sources said on Friday. 
