The senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan's lawless Helmand province has vowed to unleash a brigade of 600 suicide bombers against the British Army when it arrives in the area this summer.
Boo!
In a rare interview given at a hideout on the Pakistani border, Mullah Razayar Noorzai said the chance to take on British troops was a "great honour". Taliban commanders had already recruited hundreds of willing martyrs for suicide operations, he claimed, aiming to repeat the notorious defeats inflicted on British troops in Afghanistan during Victorian times.
Mullah Razayar Noorzai
A price of $2,000 (£1,150) has also been put on the head of any captured Westerner - a bounty that threatens a re-run of the Iraq-style kidnappings and beheadings.
"We are happy that they are coming to Helmand," said Mullah Razayar, who lost a leg while fighting the Russians in the 1980s. "It is both a trial and a great honour for all Muslims. We will now get a fair chance to kill them.
"We have already prepared 600 suicide bombers alone for the Helmand, and you'll see that we will turn it into their graveyard."
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006
20:52 ||
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#1
I wish somebody, anybody, would make a sneering comment to one of these jacknapes, questioning their manhood, their bowel control, and suggesting the women of their tribe give them a spanking.
#5
Big difference between then and now, my dear Mullah: then the British army was at the far end of a very long supply line, burdened by women, children and other dependents, and surrounded by a united and vicious enemy. Nowadays the British troops are amongst the hardest of the hard boys (in the nicest possible way, of course), unburdened by anything nonmilitary (excepting always the occasional newsie), have supply lines measured in hours by air, and are surrounded by a population divided into enemies, allies, and those who just want to live quietly for a change. Oh, and their spokes-Mullah is hiding in the barbarous border territories, instead of comfortably ensconced in his home village amongst his wives, children, brothers, nephews and goats. You may want to take these little changes into account as you calculate your future victories, sirrah! (How many fingers and toes equals 600, anyway?)
Saddam Hussein planned to use "camels of mass destruction" as weapons to defend Iraq, loading them with bombs and directing them towards invading forces.
The animals were part of a plan to arm and equip foreign insurgents drawn up by the dictator shortly before the American-led invasion three years ago, reveals a 37-page report, captured after the fall of Baghdad and just released by the Pentagon. It is part of a cache of thousands of documents that the United States Department of Defence says it does not have the resources to translate.
British soldier in Iraq
Earlier this month, the Pentagon released copies in the original Arabic onto the internet in the hope that others would interpret them into English.
Handwritten on official paper, one of the reports appears to be a road map for the insurgency, with detailed instructions for training what it calls suicide bombers.
In the memo, they are described as "estishehadeyeen", Arabic for suicide martyrs, and would almost certainly have been foreign volunteers.
The memo details a training commission to be headed by senior officers, including a colonel from the "Directory of Political Orientation". Their job, says the report, was to "prepare a very intensive training course", "to raise the physical fitness and train in the use of Kalashnikovs and hand grenades".
It continues: "The largest section of the course will be specialised to focus on using the explosive material in the body, in motorcycle, in cars, and in camels". Camels will be "provided by the Directory of General Military Intelligence".
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006
20:49 ||
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And it looks as if the courageous Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR has not had to back down one inch. His site says: "The policies and procedures of Anti-CAIR (ACAIR) have not changed in any way as a result of the CAIR lawsuit settlement."
From the New York Sun, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
An Islamic group has settled a $1.35 million libel suit against one of its critics, who operates a Web site charging that the organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has links to terrorism.
The terms of the settlement between the Muslim group and Andrew Whitehead of Virginia Beach, Va., are confidential, but the Web site, www.anti-cair-net.org, still includes the statements Cair contended were libelous.
"Nothing has changed in that regard. It's as if this lawsuit had never existed," said Mr. Whitehead, 48, a former Navy sailor.
An attorney for Mr. Whitehead, Reed Rubenstein, described the outcome as a victory for his client. "This is the first time somebody has stood up and stopped these folks," the lawyer said.
A spokesman for Cair, Ibrahim Hooper, confirmed that the libel case was dismissed earlier this month on the request of both parties. "It was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount," he said.
Asked if he was suggesting that Mr. Whitehead paid the organization to drop the case, Mr. Hooper said, "We filed the suit." Asked again, the spokesman simply repeated the statement.
An attorney for Cair, Jeremiah Denton III, declined to comment.
The group's lawsuit, filed in a Virginia state court in March 2004, accused Mr. Whitehead of libeling Cair by calling it "a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists." The suit also charged that Mr. Whitehead falsely claimed Cair was founded by supporters of a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Hamas, and that the organization favored the "overthrow of the United States Constitution" and the imposition of Islamic law, known as Shariah.
In June, Cair amended its suit against Mr. Whitehead, dropping its challenge to several of the statements, including the claim that the group was started by Hamas members and has received funds from terrorists.
Mr. Hooper said that despite the withdrawal of the suit, his organization, which describes itself as "a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group," still contends that Mr. Whitehead's assertions are false. "We've always denied them. We continue to deny them," the spokesman said.
Mr. Rubenstein said Cair's interest in settling the suit intensified late last year just as a judge was considering whether the group should be forced to disclose additional details about its inner workings, including its financing and its alleged ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups.
"It would have opened up Cair's finances and their relationships and their principles, their ideological motivations in a way they did not want to be made public," said Mr. Rubenstein, who represented Mr. Whitehead without charge.
#1
An attorney for Cair, Jeremiah Denton III, declined to comment.
Now I've seen everything. The son of a Vietnam POW Medal of Honor winner representing these shit-stains. I hope someone has CAIR under the world's largest magnifying glass - and eventually gets the goods on them.
#2
LR, That was my reaction when I read this elsewhere. JDII must be spinning.
For those of you too young to remember, this from his biography:
Denton's name first came to the attention of the American public in 1966, during a television interview arranged by the North Vietnamese in Hanoi. Prior to the interview, torture and threats of more torture were applied to intimidate him to "respond properly and politely. " His captors thought he was softened up sufficiently to give the North Vietnamese their propaganda line at the interview. During the interview, after the journalist's recitation of alleged U.S. "war atrocities," Denton was asked about his support of U.S. policy concerning the war. He replied: "I don't know what is happening now in Vietnam, because the only news sources I have are North Vietnamese, but whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it, I support it, and I will support it as long as I live."
Throughout the interview, while responding to questions and feigning sensitivity to harsh lighting, Denton blinked his eyes in Morse Code, repeatedly spelling out a covert message: "T-O-R-T-U-R-E". The interview, which was broadcast on American television on May 17, 1966, was the first confirmation that American POWs in Vietnam were being tortured. Denton was released on February 12, 1973, when he again received international attention as the spokesman for the first group of POWs returning from Hanoi to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. Denton was advised that as the senior POW onboard, he might be expected to say something on behalf of the group upon arrival. As he stepped from the plane, Denton turned to the microphones and said: "We are honored to have had the opportunity to serve our country under difficult circumstances. We are profoundly grateful to our Commander-in-Chief and to our nation for this day. God bless America."
Q: Mr. Secretary, I'm just curious. Do you feel at all embattled at this point in your tenure --
SEC. RUMSFELD: No.
Q: -- given the fact that --
SEC. RUMSFELD: No.
Q: -- aside from the retired two-star general calling you incompetent and asking you to step down in an op ed over the weekend, we also had a column from Maureen Dowd in which she quoted an unnamed administration official saying that you don't hold the same sway in meetings and that you're treated as, quote, "an eccentric old uncle who's ignored."
SEC. RUMSFELD: You like to repeat all that stuff, don't you? (Laughter.) On camera? Did you -- did you get that? (Laughter.) Let's make sure he got it. He loves that stuff. It's a sure way to get on camera! You'll be on the evening news.
Q: I know that you like to have the facts in the premise of the question.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Yes, I do, and you did it very well. (Laughter.) No --
Q: You can do one-arm push-ups and put all this to rest.
SEC. RUMSFELD: No. The answer is no.
Q: Do you hold the same sway in meetings?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, come on. I'm not going to get into that.
Pam.
Q: Sir, in your opening statement, you said --
SEC. RUMSFELD: If you believe everything you read in Maureen Dowd, you better get a life. (Laughter.)
TORONTO -- Iraq's embassy to Canada lashed out at the Christian Peacemaker Teams Friday, calling them "phony pacifists" and "dupes" after the anti-war group responded to the rescue of three of its kidnapped activists by condemning the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq.
In a statement obtained by the National Post, the Iraqi embassy called CPT "willfully ignorant" and "outrageous," and accused the Chicago-based group of being on the side of anti-democratic forces in Iraq.
"The Christian Peacemaker Teams practises the kind of politics that automatically nominate them as dupes for jihadism and fascism," the embassy's statement said.
"The statement shows they even share the rhetoric of the jihadists, even if they do it out of naivete. Despite their claimed affinity for 'non-violence,' this is false.
"Politically, they are on the other side of this war. Christian Peacemaker Teams are objectively on the side of the fascists, Saddam Hussein's loyalists and al-Qaida in Iraq.
"It is abundantly clear that Christian Peacemaker Teams are opposed to and, in effect, at war with Iraqi democrats, Americans, the British, and the rest of the multi-national Coalition."
#1
Appropiate and welcome statement from the Iraqis puts these assholes in perspective and removes any moral imprimature sought by the Islamo-remoras
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 18:57
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The arrogance of humility. Champions of dhimminitude.
Posted by: john ||
03/25/2006 19:03
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Hear! Hear!, for the Iraqis. It is very important that they speak out in their overseas embassies against those that oppose them. Lots of mainstream people who are dubious about their own government will actually listen when an Iraqi ambassador stands up in their country and tells them what's what.
ASAP they should open up embassy annexes in parts of the US where there are large Iraqi expat communities. Then, whenever some fifth columnist like Cindy Sheehan opens up her yap in their area, they could be johnny-on-the-spot with a rebuttal in the local area news.
These annexes would also be a great way to reconnect their expats with Iraq, which could have all sorts of positive, long-term benefits for both countries.
What's Franklin Graham's problem with Islam?
By The Associated Press
The Rev. Franklin Graham, who outraged Muslims in 2001 when he said that Islam "is a very evil and wicked religion," told an interviewer on ABC News' "Nightline" last week that he hasn't changed his mind about the faith. Why wouldn't a devout Christian Evangelical treat a competing religion with hostility? I read nothing here except free exercise of conscience. But I think that Islam is choser to an esoteric cult, propped for elite status defense, than a bona fide religion.
Asked by ABC correspondent John Donvan whether Muslim groups had succeeded in altering his outlook about Islam, Graham said "No."
"Do they want to indoctrinate me? Yes. I know about Islam. I don't need an education from Islam," he said. "If people think Islam is such a wonderful religion, just go to Saudi Arabia and make it your home. Just live there. If you think Islam is such a wonderful religion, I mean, go and live under the Taliban somewhere. I mean, you're free to do that."
Franklin Graham is the successor to his father as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, based in Charlotte, N.C. He was interviewed earlier this month in New Orleans, where Franklin and Billy were leading an evangelistic festival.
The younger Graham angered Muslims following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he told NBC News: "We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."
Posted by: Listen to Dogs ||
03/25/2006
15:27 ||
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#1
Ya know, he's right.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006 17:25
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For people who make the inevitable comparison between fundamentalist Christians and Islamists, consider the following. The bible condemns witches to death. The Koran condemns apostates to death. When was the last time you heard a Christian cleric call for the burning of Wiccans? When was the last time you heard an Islamic cleric call for the death of an apostate?
Interesting read, but long, need p.49.
Hamas recent stunning victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections has forced the international community to face a precarious challenge. As the U.S. and Israel regroup to to deal with unapologetic Islamo-Fascists running Palestinian office, several pertinent questions beg analysis: (1) Why did the Palestinians utilize a democratic experiment to elect Islamo-Fascists? (2) Why are Israeli leftists using the occasion to paint the new rulers of Palestinians as forces of social justice?
To discuss these and other questions relating to Hamas takeover of the Palestinian Authority, we have assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests today:
Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of the new book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. He also was interviewed by FP about it, and I posted the link a while back, search for it in the archive or go to Frontpagemag's ones, it's interesting.
David Keyes, who assisted a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. and specialized on terrorism at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He recently returned from the Middle East where he co-authored academic papers with the former U.N. ambassador and the former head of Israeli military intelligence research and assessment. His latest paper, entitled Al-Qaeda Infiltration of Gaza: A Post-Disengagement Assessment was published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
and
David Gutmann, Emeritus professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at North-Western university Medical School, in Chicago. As a clinician, he has practiced and taught intensive psychotherapy. As a researcher, he has conducted psychological studies of the Galilean and the Golan Heights Druse, as well as the Bedouin of the Negev and Sinai deserts.
FP: David Keyes, Kenneth Levin and David Gutmann, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
David Gutmann, lets begin with you.
In July 2000 in the Camp David talks, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians 95% of their negotiating demands, their own sovereign state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, more than 90 percent of the West Bank, and a capital in Jerusalem.
Barak offered the Palestinians sovereignty over all Arab-populated parts of East Jerusalem, over all of the Old City except the Jewish Quarter, and over the Temple Mount, with Jewish sovereignty only over the Western Wall below the Mount.
The Palestinians had a chance to enter a new era of peace, with their own state, on incredibly generous terms.
They chose death.
Yasser Arafat rewarded the Israelis for their offer by spawning another onslaught of gruesome terror the al-Aqsa Intifada.
Instead of choosing peace and their own state, the Palestinians decided it was a better idea to strap bombs onto their children and to send them into Israeli buses, cafés and teenage discos to blow themselves up alongside innocent Jews.
On the pretence of the importance of killing Jews, the Palestinians began to kill themselves along with Jews in mass numbers. The choice had been made for self-annihilation over creation. Palestinian kids detonated themselves into smithereens while their parents cheered on in ecstasy from the sidelines, proud that their children had become shahids (martyrs).
Then, as this madness ensued, we did all could to engender a democratic experiment among the Palestinians, hoping that democracy would free them from their addiction to mass death and suicide.
They finally got a democratic process. They took it and elected Islamo-Fascists.
Let me ask you a two-fold question now:
(1) What pathologies spawn a death cult like this?
(2) Many on the Israeli Left have taken the occasion of the Hamas victory to paint Hamas -- which has vowed to exterminate Jews -- as some kind of social justice party that is concerned with peace and the common welfare.
This is just as obscene as the psychology of Hamas itself. What gives here?
Gutmann: In voting for Hamas, did the Palestinians opt for warand death, or for war and victory?
I contend that they always opt for victory, but because their grandiosity leads to overconfidence and under-preparation, they end up with defeat.
In '47 an d '48 the Palestinian leadership chose war instead of the state that the UN offered them in a partitioned Palestine. It was the wrong choice: it led to defeat and to the loss of the lands designated for their state. Nevertheless, their motives in going to war were murderous, not self-destructive: they had every reason to believe that they would win a war of extermination against a relative handful of under-armed Jews - the same "Children of Death" who had gone unresistingly to the gas chambers.
And the Palestinians came pretty close to realizing this Holocaustic vision: a large proportion of Israel's precious younger generation had to die in order to stop them.
Again, the Palestinians had good reason to be optimistic in the second round of their war against the Jews, when Arafat led them into the Al Aqsa Intifada. Then, Israeli society was split between rather ineffectual Hawks and Peace-At-Any-Price-Niks, and Israel's borders were terribly porous to suicide bombers who struck almost every day.
Meanwhile, the Jewish state was condemned - also on a daily basis - by the UN, the Brits and the Europeans. Worst of all, the IDF had recently and for the first time run away from an enemy force: it had bugged out of Southern Lebanon with Hezbollah right behind it, leaving weapons, intact military installations and unprotected Christian allies in its wake.
Given this background, the Barak/Clinton offer of East Jerusalem and almost all of the West Bank was not welcomed by Arafat as a token of Israeli generosity, but as evidence of terminal Israeli weakness: "The Jews are beaten, they are suing for peace. If Hezbollah could chase them out of Lebanon, then Allah willing my Fatah boys can chase them from all of Palestine."
It took the election of Sharon, Operation Defensive Shield, the PLO's crushing defeat at Jenin, and Arafat's house arrest in Ramallah to temporarily correct this grandiose, essentially paranoid delusion. But only for a short while: Islamic dreams of slaughtering a cowardly, effeminate enemy can be temporarily refuted by reality, but they die hard.
They flourish again when, in Arab eyes, the enemy reveals some shameful weakness.
Churchill once said, "The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat." Similarly with the Arabs; and I suggest that their oscillations between quiescence and ferocity are driven by the Shame/Honor dynamic that is central to Arab psyche and Arab society. Shame and loss of honor, while toxic to the Arab, cannot be metabolized within the Arab self. Instead, the stigma must be ejected, spat out from the self, and downloaded onto lesser beings: women, defeated enemy, infidels and especially Jews. Once the weakness that originated in the Arab is discovered in the Other, then - symbolically or literally - he must be killed.
The shamed enemy has come to represent some hated part of the Arab's persona, and Killing him is a substitute for suicide, for the killing of the self. This is the psychodrama that Zionist Jews and Arabs have been playing out in Palestine for almost a hundred years.
Most recently, having crushed the Second Intifada, Sharon trades Gaza, which is a liability, for the strategic West Bank settlements around Jerusalem that he intends to keep. These would be guarded behind the Security Wall - the barrier that will, in the absence of a negotiating partner, unilaterally define Israel's final boundaries. Sharon has drawn back the better to advance; but - particularly now that Sharon is comatose - Hamas spins Sharon's calculated disengagement into a great victory for their own gunmen: "the Jews are running away from us. This is only the beginning: we will make them drown in the sea."
In it's turn, the Palestinian street sees in Hamas, the "liberators" of Gaza, the agents of final victory over Israel, and votes them into power. As in 1947 and 2001, the Palestinians smell blood in the water, indulge their triumphalist fantasies, and again choose the fever-dream of total victory over peace and statehood. They are by now so seriously addicted to Judeo-cidal Dreams that, like true junkies, they will pay almost anything - statehood, peace, the future of their children, life under Sharia law - in order to feed their habit. And in this hectic scenario, Hamas is the more reliable pusher. Again, the fantasied goals are murderous, destructive towards others; it is the Palestinian willingness to pay an exorbitant price for them that is self-destructive.
Not all Palestinians share this genocidal syndrome. Some no doubt voted against Fatah's corruption, while others elected for Hamas' Welfare State (Hitler's wartime charity, Winter Hilfe, comes to mind). But for Hamas' True Believers, why is the addiction to blood-drenched fantasy so powerful? Why this overwhelming desire to see the Jews blown to pieces, terrified, and running? Again, we must refer to the dynamics of shame: I saw the Palestinians abandon their villages in 1947 without a fight, even before we of the Israeli Hagana had enough guns or men to make them run. Their resulting shame was compounded by their Arab "brothers" in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and egypt, who contemptuously shoved the dishonoured Palestinians into squalid camps. There, refugee kids grew up hearing taunts like these: "You Palestinian whores who sold your land to the Jews, and then ran away!
To repeat, Shame/Honor societies cannot manage shame except by inflicting it back on the enemy who shamed them. Until that happens, the timeless sense of humiliation festers in the soul, and breeds Psychosis: Arab leaders still bristle at the word "Crusade," and demand the return of Seville and Andaluz (Andalusia), since 1490 the "occupied territories" of Spain.
So of course the Palestinians will always sabotage - as they did in 1947, 2000 and now in 2006 a negotiated peace with Israel. For the Palestinians, the only acceptable negotiating partners are Jews who mirror the Palestinians of '47 and '48 : defeated Jews, SHAMED Jews whose terrified mobs run like lemmings to the sea. Good faith negotiations with a still powerful, still undefeated Israel means living forever with the shame of NAQBA , and giving up the wet-dream of a total, redemptive victory.
Thus far, the Palestinian addiction to such orgiastic visions has proven too strong to be broken. In some ways Israeli and American-Jewish peaceniks are even more pathological than the Palestinians: it is the former who exhibit motivated rather than incidental self-destructiveness.
If the Palestinians constitute a typical Shame/Honor culture, then by contrast, Jews - especially Peaceniks - constitute a Guilt culture. The Arabs worry about what has been done to them by way of insults and humiliations; the Jews worry about has been done to others by them, or in their name. History is a tale of blood, and statehood shoved the Jews back into history, into the middle of the battle, where the choices were to fight or die. The Israelis proved to be successful warriors, but many Jews - Israelis as well as Americans - have sickened of the killing, and are fashioning a separate peace. They have reached the point where they plead the enemy's cause against their own people, and ultimately against their own children. Currently, they are starting to spin HAMAS as the wardens of a benign welfare state Mother Teresa with a suicide belt.
The Palestinians won't be Shame-free until they have defeated the Jews; the Peacenik Jews won't be guilt-free until they have helped them do it.
Keyes: Hamas victory in the Palestinian election shatters the myth that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is driven by a small group of fanatics on both sides. It has reaffirmed the existence of profound radicalism among the general Palestinian community. The fact that a mass-murdering terrorist group was permitted to run in the first place was a disgrace to democracy. Just as Nazis cannot run in German elections and al-Qaeda is not allowed to run in elections anywhere, so it should have been with Hamas. In any case, the election was primarily a choice between two terrorist organizationsFatah and Hamas.
Hamas has killed about 600 Israelis, executed nearly half of the suicide-bombings from 2000-2005, colluded with al-Qaeda, and encouraged the defeat of America in Iraq. Hamas couldnt be less of a legitimate resistance group if it tried; a mere two percent of its attacks have been aimed at military targets. For these reasons and many more, Hamaslike al-Qaedamust be utterly liquidated.
So why did the Palestinians elect this wretched organization? To be sure, in part it was a rejection of the systemic cronyism and dysfunction of Fatah. But Hamas main goals since its founding have been the destruction of Israel in its entirety and the implementation of strict Islamic law. Through hardly conducted in an environment of true tolerance or freedom, a majority of Palestinians have expressed solidarity with these goals through the ballot box. At the very least, it can be said that Hamas genocidal aims did not perturb the Palestinians enough to actually sway their vote. Indeed, it is the Palestinian people who bear the responsibility for this latest calamity. Even if the average German citizens primary goal in the 1930s was not the eradication of the Jews, they clearly did not mind electing someone whose chief aim was exactly that.
Hamas influence can be blamed in part on the nearly two decades of dictatorship and oppression under Arafat. Tyranny augments fundamentalism as subjugated populations seek an escape from daily suffering and repression. Totalitarianism and the absence of basic human freedoms are the well-spring of extremism and terror. The rampant hate-speech spewed from Palestinian media and mosques have also have also fostered radicalism. Palestinian children are told daily by their leaders, teachers, preachers, and in some cases even families, that martyrdom and suicide are heroic acts rewarded by eternal bliss. The amazing thing is not that so many Palestinians have chosen to strap bombs to their chest to kill Jews, but that more have not. From childrens suicide-camps in Gaza to an-Najah Universitys glorified re-creation of a suicide bombing at an Israeli pizza parlor, generations of Palestinians have been indoctrinated into a cult of death.
As for any Israeli delusions of working with Hamas or moderating them, it can only be said that we have been here before. So much of what is being said about Hamas today is exactly what was said of the PLO two decades ago. Arafat was brought back from Tunis and needed only to sign a piece of paper renouncing terror. He uttered a handful of hollow platitudes denouncing violence in English and the world went forth appeasing this murderous tyrant. He became a frequent and honored guest at the White House. Rabin even said that Arafat could fight terrorism with greater efficiency because he was not accountable to human rights organizations. This was the warped mindset that led to the disaster of Oslo. Meanwhile, Arafat never gave up his dream of destroying Israel and certainly never stopped funding suicide-bombers. Emboldened by Israels recent unilateral disengagement, Hamas promises to be even worse than Arafat. The fact that Hamas provides social services to Palestinians should be about as relevant as if al-Qaeda handed out blankets to poor Afghanis after 9/11.
But most Israelis are tired of fighting and will do nearly anything to end the conflict. Israelis are a peace-seeking people who have been besieged by implacable enemies for so long that they simply want it to end. Some on the Israeli left have craved peace so badly that they have become delusional in the process; they are willing to sign a deal with whoever has paper. But overall, Israel has shown incredible tenacity in the face of seemingly endless terror. Nevertheless, perhaps fatigue is taking a toll. Consider the following two statements by leaders in a time of war:
Winston Churchill in 1940: "We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender
Ehud Olmert in 2005: "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies."
That about says it all.
Levin: I agree with David Gutmann that the Palestinians' pursuit of their terror war against Israel, and election of Hamas, are less suicidal than genocidal. I also agree with his comments on the psychodynamics underlying the Palestinians', and broader Arab world's, genocidal agenda, except that I would emphasize the role of Arab leaders in cultivating and channeling individuals' psychodynamic predilections into murderous hatred toward perceived external enemies, most notable Jews.
On the recent Palestinian election, there has been much debate as to whether votes for Hamas were votes against PA/PLO corruption or for Hamas's exterminationist platform. But the distinction is based on a false premise in that - as David Keyes notes - the PA/PLO likewise promoted an exterminationist platform, using its media, mosques and schools over the past decade to further indoctrinate Palestinians into embracing Jew-hatred and believing in the illegitimacy of Israel, the necessity of its annihilation, and its ripeness for destruction.
As to Israelis, and western Jews, who ignore the other side's explicit agenda and replace it with fantasies of what they want the other side's agenda to be, fantasies that the Palestinians are simply asking for redress of supposed Israeli misbehavior and that sufficient concessions will end the conflict, they are the truly suicidal party, willing to risk their own lives and those of their children, their co-religionists and their countrymen for the sake of promoting their delusions.
The chief voice in this camp, Yossi Beilin, said explicitly that he was not willing to live in a world in which existential problems - such as Palestinian hostility - cannot be solved, and he chose to solve it not by confronting the enemy but by prettifying him, risking the very survival of his nation for the sake of his fantasies.
As I argue in my book, The Oslo Syndrome, embracing the perspectives of one's enemies is a common phenomenon within chronically besieged populations, whether minorities marginalized, denigrated and attacked by the surrounding society or small nations under chronic siege by their neighbors. It has been a recurrent theme in Jewish Diaspora history as well as in Israel.
A major counterweight to the psychological corrosiveness of besiegement must be leaders who convey to the community its true choices and bolster its will to resist. The Israeli-Arab conflict is ultimately a test of wills in that Israel has and will retain the military capacity to defend itself - despite its small population, its lack of strategic depth, and the rabidness of its enemies. It is self-delusion and loss of heart to defend itself that is likely to remain its greatest threat.
From this perspective, the 2005 statement by Ehud Olmert, cited by David Keyes, about Israelis being "tired of fighting" is an enormous dereliction of responsibility that, unless vigorously retracted, renders him unfit to lead the nation.
The Israeli people's response to the terror war launched against them in September, 2000, demonstrated that it was the Oslo era leadership, not the people, that had psychologically capitulated and was no longer willing to fight those determined to destroy Israel. The nation deserves leaders capable of reinforcing the nation's will, as Churchill did for England, not undermining it.
Gutmann: At the outset of this symposium, Jamie asked us to comment on the Palestinian's "death wish." But Dr. Levin, David Keyes and myself hold that the Palestinians have a death wish towards others, and that the truly suicidal version of Thanatos is lodged not in them, but in the Jewish Doves of Israel and the States. The Palestinians have no compunctions about killing: for them the act and its attendant fantasies have become eroticized - hence, addictive. They want to kill Jews so badly that they are willing to kill themselves in order to get at us.
Mr. Keyes and I agree that The Palestinians resemble the Germans under Hitler: convinced by him of their victimization at the hands of inferior enemies who did
not beat them fairly on the battlefield, the Germans poured their resulting "Victim's Rage" into various genocidal enterprises, including the Holocaust. Sharing similar delusions, the Palestinians turn their own version of Victim Rage against the Jew.
And as Mr. Keyes points out, too many Jews have become counterplayers in this psychodrama - enablers of the Arab psychosis. Guilty by nature, convinced of their own sins against the victimized multitude of third-world innocents, the Jewish Doves make the gestures of surrender. Turning the bared throat towards the knife they invite the Palestinians to punish them and their guilty nation for their sins.
I grew up among Jews like these, and agree with Dr. Levin that they are the truly "suicidal" party. While I'm surprised to see them proliferate in Israel, I can understand them. What I don't understand is the passive response of so many European Christians, citizens of advanced Democracies, to the increasingly arrogant, murderous challenge that they face from the Eurabian Jihadists. Like their grandfathers who appeased Hitler, the European Doves find all kinds of reasons to spin and minimize the Jihadist fury that now openly mocks and threatens their comfortable lifeways.
The appeaser's whimper, "Just give Herr Hitler the Sudetenland, and that will be the end of his territorial demands" is echoed today, vis-a-vis Hamas: "Make those Jews give Hamas title to Jerusalem, allow the return of the 'Refugees', and the Palestinians will be happy democrats, participants in the comity of nations..".
In the Christian case, I don't believe that "Jewish" guilt is the driving motive behind their covert surrender. Instead, I sense a kind of narcissistic passivity, which is much less treatable. Post-war affluence sponsored the "Me" generations the narcissistic personality of our times, which is founded in the demand for personal gratification. The individual demands for sexual conquest and material acquisition are idealized, and the capacity to revere entities beyond the self - family, nation, heritage, great causes and inspiring leaders - is blunted. In effect, the Jihadists reverse this syndrome. Despite their psychopathology (or perhaps, because of it) they are quite ready, even eager, to lay down their lives for nation, heritage, religion and charismatic leaders. They are like the Japanese Kamikazes, the suicide pilots who almost destroyed our Pacific fleet at the end of WWII. Confronted by God-obsessed Islam, the self-obsessed Europeans are finding all kinds of excuses to ignore and avoid the challenge. That kind of magical thinking did not work against Hitler and Tojo, and it won't work now.
We face a long struggle. As Dr. Levin reminds us, in the absence of "Churchillian" leaders, it is one that we may not win.
Keyes: Dr. Levin is absolutely correct to highlight Yossi Beilin as a symbol of the deep denial of reality that permeates many on the Israeli left. For Beilin, it seems, no moral red lines exist, whatsoever. No personno matter how evil or corruptis beyond empowering or negotiating with. This is the only possible explanation as to how he could have openly called for releasing arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti from prison in order to lead the Palestinian people. There is an Arabic proverb which states Stupidity is a disease without a medicine, and I think such words apply here. The warped mentality that allows someone to advocate freeing and empowering a convicted murderer and terrorist mastermind, is in large part why peace eludes us today. It will take sharp moral clarity and Herculean will to defeat global irredentism and jihad; those who ascribe to Beilins word-view, and learned not a whit from the mistakes of Oslo, certainly do not help in this fight.
Dr. Gutmann also raises important points regarding European appeasement. Undoubtedly, this is not a new story as Europe has historically done more than its fair share of appeasing the most brutal leaders known to man. In the modern sense, this means sending weapons and aid to the worst regimes on Earth. Take one look at the oil contracts and weapons deals that many European countries had with Saddam up until his final moments as President of Iraq. Add money skimmed from the UN Oil-For-Food program and it instantly becomes clear why certain nations were so adamantly opposed regime change in Iraq. European oil money funding mass-murder in Iraqthat was the real blood for oil, not Americas campaign of liberation against a fascistic tyrant.
Russia and China, incidentally, are often even worse in the appeasement department than their European counter-parts. Russia, for example, sends the government of Sudan, in the midst of their campaign of genocide in Darfur, the vast majority of its weapons. From oil contracts in Iran to unceasing appeasement of Hamas, much of Europe and certainly Russia and China, actively subjugate democracy and aid the forces of tyranny and terror.
If there was any doubt as to who is an appeaser of terror, simply observe who invites Hamas into their capitals. One by one, seemingly giddy at the prospect of defending yet another murderous terrorist group, Iran, Jordan, Russia, Turkey, and even South Africa, are granting Hamas political legitimacy and a platform from which to spew hateful rhetoric. At a time when this unrepentant terrorist organization needs to be totally isolated and indeed destroyed, certain countries are welcoming their leaders with open arms. Some even speak of sending financial aid to the government of Hamas-stan. The lesson radical movements throughout the world are learning is that if you kill enough civilians (especially Jews) then you too can be invited as an honored guest to Ankara, Moscow and a host of other metropolitan capitals. Who knows, you might even be funded by the European Union! If radical jihad and terrorism are to be quashed, then precisely the opposite message must be sent. Terrorno matter what the grievancemust never extract political concession.
Levin: None of the genocidal forces that have created havoc in the Middle East and beyond in recent decades, not Saddam's regime in Iraq, or the Iranian mullahs, or the Sudanese leadership, or Arafat's PLO or the Palestinians' Islamist alternatives, would have attained their capacity for mayhem had they not enjoyed the support of Western, most notably European, powers. The Europeans have indulged them first and foremost because to do so has been very lucrative. Profit consistently outweighed any potential concern for these forces' victims, such as Iraq's Kurds or Sudan's blacks, and it appears that for many Europeans the murderous Palestinian assault on the Jews of Israel was not even a weak counterweight to the profit motive that drives indulgence of all things Arab but was rather an additional incentive to business as usual.
Europe's cynicism has been reinforced by the narcissism described by Dr. Gutmann, a narcissism characterized by a focus on personal gratification and a perception of little beyond the personal as meaningful. This indifference to the world beyond one's self is distinct from the self-involvement found among the acolytes of the Israeli Left. In Israel, such narcissism is largely a cultivated stance with a long pedigree in the history of Jews seeking to detach themselves from a besieged Jewry. A common response among such souls has long been to ostentatiously declare themselves free of any identity beyond their individuality and so properly exempt from being the object of popular negative attitudes toward Jews. The narcissism rampant in Europe evolved in the context of an American security umbrella under which for half a century nothing significant was asked or expected of western Europe.
A consequence of both the cynicism and the narcissism is that Europe has been prepared to see large numbers of people murdered elsewhere without feeling any need to rethink or refashion its policies. The question is how much mayhem will it require at home before there is an effective shift in policies. It is likely that the body count will have to be high and both the terror assault and the backlash will turn ugly at best before Europe fully sheds its torpor and fashions an effective response. If one looks for Churchillian leadership, it is hard to find in Europe today even the remnants of a cultural milieu that could produce a Churchill.
Given the realities of contemporary Europe, almost the entire burden for fighting the Islamofascist onslaught will continue to fall - as is all too obvious - on America. In view of the popularity of the politics of self-delusion even in America, it is yet to be seen how steadfast even the American effort will be; or, more precisely, how much will be lost before that steadfastness firmly asserts itself.
FP: David Keyes, Kenneth Levin and David Gutmann, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.
#1
And as Mr. Keyes points out, too many Jews have become counterplayers in this psychodrama - enablers of the Arab psychosis. Guilty by nature, convinced of their own sins against the victimized multitude of third-world innocents, the Jewish Doves make the gestures of surrender. Turning the bared throat towards the knife they invite the Palestinians to punish them and their guilty nation for their sins.
Not just jews, but the whole West, led by the sucidalists.
#2
Article: In effect, the Jihadists reverse this syndrome. Despite their psychopathology (or perhaps, because of it) they are quite ready, even eager, to lay down their lives for nation, heritage, religion and charismatic leaders. They are like the Japanese Kamikazes, the suicide pilots who almost destroyed our Pacific fleet at the end of WWII.
I don't buy this premise. There is nothing preventing Muslim terrorists from carrying out suicide bombings in the West as they are doing in Iraq. Israel's Arab Muslim population is substantial, and yet few bombings have come from that direction. If we assume that they are willing to do anything (from a moral standpoint) to further their goals, this inaction tells me that they are not, in fact, willing to *personally* sacrifice everything for nation, heritage, religion and charismatic leaders. I mean that they might say these things, but they don't mean what they say.
#3
My basic point is that they are resentful, but not personally motivated enough to go all the way. I think it's more likely that thanks to the European welfare state, Muslims will become the majority via peaceful means, by replacing themselves in the way that native Europeans will not.
Zimbabwe police and soldiers have been banned from resigning from their jobs until they have served for at least 10 years, as top commanders battle to stem a tide of young officers leaving because of poor pay and working conditions, ZimOnline has learnt.
Poor salaries and working conditions have eroded morale among junior police officers and soldiers. For example, a soldier or policeman who has just finished training takes home about Z$9 million which is many times less than the $28 million the government's Central Statistical Office says an average family of six people requires for basic goods and services per month.
Sources at the discharge sections of the army and police headquarters in Harare said a combined total of 3,000 troops and police officers had left the security forces since January. At least 500 police officers had tendered their letters of resignation in the month of February alone before the Joint Operations Command (JOC) decided in the first week of this month to ban further resignations by officers who have not done 10 years on the job, the sources said. The JOC comprises the commanders of army, air force, police and prison service. It is chaired by Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander General Constantine Chiwenga.
In a memo to police provincial commanders dated March 6, 2006 and written after the JOC meeting, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri instructed that "only those members (of the police force) who have served for 10 years and above should be allowed to leave."
Chihuri also ordered his provincial commanders to thoroughly check and verify the stated reasons for resignation and said junior officers wishing to go and further studies either in Zimbabwe or abroad should provide proof including acceptance letters from the intended places of study before their requests to be allowed to leave can be processed. Several police officers and soldiers have in the past duped their commanders to grant them temporary leave of absence to study abroad but once outside the country have refused to return after finding menial but better paying jobs in countries such as Britain and the United States.
An official at the army's public and press relations office refused to discuss the ban on resignations saying the amry never discloses to the Press the number of people joining or leaving because this was a security matter. "I cannot talk about that . it is a security matter," the official said. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena would not take questions on Chihuri's memo to provincial police commanders but still insisted officers were free to leave the police force whenever they felt they could no longer work for the organisation.
Chihuri last year told a special committee of Parliament that dissatisfaction was rising among his officers because of poor pay and warned the legislators that the country was running a huge security risk by underpaying its police.
Posted by: john ||
03/25/2006 20:05
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#2
That sounds like an EXCELLENT plan! Keep pissing off those that have the training AND access to weapons and are versed in all sorts of tactics. Then when they overthrow the gov't, all can act surprised! I mean, c'mon, they are getting 9 MILLION Zimbucks; that should buy some sort of loyalty. (Sarc key busted)
This should be an interesting factor in the Israeli-Pal water wars.
The one place in water-short Israel where natural groundwater is available and not being fully exploited is of all places in the mostly uninhabited Judean desert.
This surprising conclusion arises from a thorough hydrological mapping study done as an M.Sc. thesis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Leehee Laronne Ben-Itzhak, under the supervision of Prof. Haim Gvirtzman of the university's Institute of Earth Sciences. The study provides detailed information regarding the nature, volume and path of what is called the Judea Group Aquifer, an underground water reservoir beneath the Judean desert. A report on the study was carried in a recent issue of the Journal of Hydrology
This aquifer begins in the Judean mountains and flows in a generally northeasterly direction towards the Dead Sea, with outflows at four springs adjacent to the Dead Sea the Tsukim, Kane, Samar and Ein-Gedi springs. There is also some sub-surface flow into the Dead Sea.
The rain-fed aquifer contains an average yearly volume of some 100 million cubic meters of water, of which only about 20 percent is currently used, said Prof. Gvirtzman, with the rest flowing into the Dead Sea. The water potential of the Judea Group Aquifer is sufficient to supply 5 percent of the current total freshwater usage in Israel, said Gvirtzman, and could at least meet the potable water needs of the towns of Maale Adumim, Bethlehem and Hebron at much lower cost than at present.
Currently, he says the water coming to Maale Adumim is brought sometimes hundreds of kilometers from Lake Kinneret via the National Water Carrier. Why do that when there is water literally beneath the town? asks Gvirtzman.
In addition to the mapping survey carried out by Ben-Itzhak, who is now working on her Ph.D. theses at the Weizmann Institute of Science, another study is currently being done by a second graduate student, Eldad Levi, also working under Prof. Gvirtzman, who is analyzing the interface between the fresh and saline groundwaters at various points in the Judea Group Aquifer, using a novel remote sensing technique called the deep time-domain electro-magnetic method.
"These two studies have practical implications regarding future possibilities of groundwater development for the benefit of both Israelis and Palestinians residing in the area and for conservation of nature reserves located along the Dead Sea," says Gvirtzman. "The government has allocated these waters to the Palestinians, who are unfortunately doing nothing to fully exploit this available water source," he added.
As for the impact of drawing more water away from flowing into the Dead Sea, which is rapidly becoming depleted, Gvirtzman says that in any case the current groundwater flow into the Dead Sea is totally inadequate to halt that problem and that dramatic steps would have to be taken to resolve the situation.
#3
All this because the government passed a law making it easier for companies to lay off people, and even then the law was weak, compared to other countries.
The last few months have revealed much about france. Mostly, that they live in the past, in a state of denial, and are allowing the world to shove past them.
They denied that there was any antisemitism -- clearly the horrific death of that young Jewish boy revealed the contrary
They denied that there were any disaffected, alientated groups -- the riots in the suburbs, trashing hundreds of cars, said otherwise
They denied there was growing Muslim influence -- yet they cowered when the hijab law was passed
They believed that they could be the western friend of the arab world -- yet the terror plots detected betrayed that alliance
And now, they refuse to acknowledge the realities of the worldwide marketplace demand for competitiveness, having passed both this law and one requiring no more than 35 hours in the workweek.
As a perfect example of this incredible denial (arrogance?), my own company, a multibillion dollar, global technology company, told the french government that unless they eased up the hiring laws, they would remove the european hq from paris. the french thought we were bluffing. to make a long story short, we have but a small presence in paris, no longer the EU office.
the french are DEFINITELY living in a different era. quaint, but unsustainable.
#5
All this, and Jacques walked out of the EU meeting because his members and other members were speaking in English! And I'm sure it wasn't just to return home.
#8
Just great, now we have to send troops to Europe. I hope this doesn't turn into some kind of quagmire in which they'll be there for years and years.
Becuase during the last riots the cops that beat up some "youths" were releaved of duty suspended for abuse. So you cant really blame the cops, its a picture of what happens when your leadership is peace-love-&-happiness LLL radical panzies. Something to remember come November and all the future Novembers here in the States.
#11
From what I understand, police were told not to act proactively, the justification being the "Malik Houssekim" syndrome; that is the name of a muslim student (well integrated and supposedly on his way to converting to christianity btw), who died from being beaten by an elite anti-riot police unit, les PVM (dissolved because of that, despite their remarkable effectiveness against hit-and-run urban guerilla, its components were duos of a motorcycle combat driver and his stick-wielding passenger, often a close-combat instructor, who chased rioters even in narrow alleys).
This was in 1986, prime minister was then Jacques Chirac, and a new Malik is supposed to be one of his greatest fears.
That's why during the november Ramadan riots, the police forces were IIUC expressedly told NOT to react, and there were even cases of riots police being fired on without riposting or even chasing the shooter.
#15
See after-riot images of Marc Bloch University. Their slogans are as inane as anything our moonbats can come up with.
http://marcbloch2006.skyblog.com/index.html
Marc Bloch was a Jewish Medievalist, who fought with the Resistance until he was ratted out by two-faced frogs, and murdered by Nazi occupiers. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
#16
OT : Listen To Dogs, sorry to hound you (hum...), but again, did you catch my list of french sites you might like? See comment. Hope you'll find it at least marginally interesting.
#17
5089:
I checked some of them. I don't write off the French, because Secularism is strong there and that is the only winning weapon against the Muslim-disease. When it becomes stronger than Socialism and Dhimmism, then France will be on-line.
#18
A lot of those thugs in the pictures look like your regular soccer hooligan variety. The tell-tale sign is the track-suit pants. These track-suit thugs are a problem all over Europe, not just France. They're opportunists. They come out to riot on any occasion; destruction of property being their goal and anybody who happens to get in their way is beaten, robbed, etc.
I suspect the welfare state has something to do with it. /sarcasm
Posted by: Rafael ||
03/25/2006 15:19
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#19
There was a commercial where the moniker was "pay me now or pay me later." The same here. Either the French put a stop to it, or anarchy will reign. This country will be close to 50% Muslim in 20 years. Do the math.
Posted by: Art ||
03/25/2006 15:39
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#20
LtD: The French brand of secularism, which denies that there's anything such as right or wrong, has helped _feed_ this bullshit, to perhaps a fatal degree. All the secularism in the country hasn't helped them yet.
Posted by: Phil ||
03/25/2006 16:18
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#21
A5089 - I'm not writing the French off yet either. Bring the foreign legion home for domestic policing in the immigrant ghettos. Toss any appeasement politicos. Re-establish the French ideal of internal power/justice (from a French Basque descendant, even....). Anything else is delaying the worst case
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 19:29
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#22
This doesn't happen in concealed carry states.
Sheriffs from the 24 U.S. counties bordering Mexico unanimously voted Friday to join forces.
The creation of the Southwest Border Sheriffs Coalition comes at the same time as increased violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. This week, a federal safety alert warned that nine illegal immigrants in the Big Bend area of Texas hired Mexican hit men to assassinate U.S. law-enforcement officers.
"The biggest thing of course is the borders are not secure," said Earl Wentworth, assistant sheriff for San Diego County. "Anybody can cross the border undetected if they want to it wouldn't be difficult for terrorists to figure it out if they know it's our Achilles' heel, they will use it against us."
The coalition will share intelligence information and create a second line of defense behind Border Patrol agents. The federal government will fund the transportation and housing of illegal immigrants.
The local law-enforcement officials won't be held responsible for determining the nationality or the legal status of persons detained, said Michael Doyle, chief deputy of Hudspeth County, Texas.
"The counties with the smaller populations, with the lower tax bases, we won't be able to accomplish what we need to do without help and federal funding," Doyle said.
Current support from congressional leaders was one of the main reasons for creating the coalition, Wentworth said.
Immigration legislation specifically H.R. 4437 proposed by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. is being debated on Capitol Hill. It would allocate millions of dollars in federal funding to the coalition if it passes, said Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas.
Culberson also said there is "$6.8 billion in unspent local responder money sitting in the treasury for the past three years." Those funds were designated for the Department of Homeland Security, but could be used for local law enforcement.
Cochise County, Ariz., Sheriff Larry Dever said his county is among those overwhelmed with costs attributed to the significant number of illegal immigrants passing through on their way to the U.S. interior.
Coalition members will soon start a letter-writing campaign asking local senators to push for passage of the Sensenbrenner bill, which is essential to funding more deputies and purchasing equipment, said Rick Glancey, spokesman for the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition.
"There are no (political) parties here only red, white and blue," Culberson told the sheriffs. "This is about protecting your counties, your neighbors and your country."
The coalition's duties will be similar to what the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition has been doing for the past year, Doyle said. Operation Linebacker, which was conceived by the Texas coalition, will be adopted by the rest of the sheriff's departments along the border.
The operation integrates law-enforcement resources along the border and increases both public and national security between points of entry, Doyle said. Actions include additional patrols in rural and remote areas. Doyle said.
"They are a great bunch of people with one concern and that is the security of our nation," said El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego, who was among those who recently testified before Congress. "The coalition is a great success now all we have to do is wait and hope our senators do the right thing."
#2
WANTS it to continue? Hell, they've been handing out instruction books for bypassing the border patrol. We employ their citizens, give emergency medical care on our nickel, build factories in their countries. Now they're abrogating the border openly.
#3
$6.8 Billion unspent and left lying around? Don't let Schumer know......damn
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 13:30
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#4
I hope they don't just see this as a source of cash. Do something about the problem rather than just get in front of th cameras for PR. Our San Diego Sheriff Bill Kolender is a PC-pushing ass on illegals, concealed weapons and many other issues. Ima skeptical
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 13:33
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#5
Listened to Congressman Duncan Hunter hold forth on the border enforcement bill this morning. The fence and increased border surveillance are aimed at stopping rampant drug smuggling instead of illegals. Granted stopping drug smuggling needs to be done, but these guys just don't want to understand that those of us who were born in this country are just about out of patience with the blatant disregard of our laws by illegals and their enablers in the federal, state, and local governments. Patience only goes so far.
#6
I seem to recall reading signs warning of minefields on both sides of the hiway, when I passed between both the Chile-Peru and Ecuador-Peru frontiers. If Pepe can do it, George can too.
What's with the bite-me and sit-on-this gestures? Did someone call them "Wetbacks?"
Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.
#1
Hard to tell about this. They mostly cite themselves, even on the theory. I'm not convinced.
First of all, their experimental results need to be confirmed. Then we get to interpretation, where I would think there are a lot of other possibilities out there, but maybe they can rule them all out.
If their interpretation turns out to be correct, they get to play the waiting game (there are four of them, so they have to wait for the first to die, before the remaining three can be awarded a Nobel prize)
#2
I have a little trouble with their explanation that the graviton acquires a mass when inside a superconductor. Gravitons (if they exist) aren't charged, so there's no direct effect due to being in a superconductor. Is this supposed to be some fancy coupling to Cooper pairs? I'm not up to speed on superconductor theory, so I can't back-of-the-envelope this one, but I'm suspicious.
Posted by: James ||
03/25/2006 16:05
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#3
Interesting that the USAF have part funded this.
Not so, really. The US military has expressed a deep interest in potential new drive field technologies, particularly "Heim Theory" as detailed in New Scientist in February.
This looks to me like it might be a low-power test of Heim Theory, but I'm hardly a physicist and few of them currently understand Heim Theory (though it does deal specifically with rotating magnetic fields inducing an accelartive field).
England is at an impasse. The divide between them and the Continent is far wider and deeper than the Channel. It goes back to their very roots as a nation.
It is the Common Law. It is their English way.
Continental Europe, and the EU, are products of Roman and Napoleonic Law. Likewise, it is their very definition, their foundation, meagre and flawed as it is. Their society is permeated with it.
It is their, Continental way.
And the two systems are not compatible. Common Law is the "round peg", and Roman Law is the "square hole". The round peg cannot fit within the square hole unless it is destroyed.
And England's government, and both political parties, are willing, even enthusiastic, to destroy England to make it conform to the Continental way, the Roman Law. They have so given up on the English way, are in such contempt of their own history and the Common Law, that they are willing to try reduce their people to generic nothings, so that they can belong to Europe. To strip from their people everything that they are as a people, with a sneering contempt for their Englishness, and to make of them Europeans.
That is why England is moving towards authoritarianism. In its continual, unyielding and voluntary effort to *force* their nation to be something it *cannot* be, it achieves a situation of "velvet despotism".
Not ironically, the brutal social consequences of these efforts are seen in skyrocketing alcoholism, despondency and despair. Their government, perplexed by it all, wants so badly to be part of Europe, because it loves Europe, that it has become monstrous to its own people.
They are stubborn beyond description in their arrogance. They do not want a son, they want a daughter. So each day they force their son to dress and act like a girl. They give their son only girl's toys. They tell everyone they know that their son is their daughter. They rant for hours to their son about the inherent evils of boys, and hypnotize them until they, themselves, parrot the lie.
But the truth cannot be denied. An Englishman is English, a race, and a creature of the Common Law. He is not Hindu or Moslem, or someone of African descent from Jamaica. Such people who live in England are just copies of what the English really are. People who were raised in the English way, many of whom profoundly admire and accept this way. Many who are likewise creatures of the Common Law. Even their cousins, the Americans, too, are like the English.
But they are still not English.
So how much of England must be destroyed until the English are no longer English? This is the daily question their government faces. Their government willingly faces, even looks forward to. The next possibility on the agenda. The next social experiment. The next dehumanization.
And all for the greater good of belonging to a Europe unwilling to cede even a hair's breadth of their Roman Law traditions or national cultures. A Europe aghast even at the suggestion that the Rights of Man outweighs the prerogatives of the state, or that the very authority to govern descends from the people and not the elites, born, raised, and educated to power.
#1
Europeans don't exist; they are an abstract construct from the EU's post-nationalist tranzis. There are european *people*, *Nations*, but they are being dissolved into that new concept of Europeans as well. This is not just the english here.
#2
In the context of moose's post, the distinction is meaningful. Common Law is bottom up law creation as opposed to the Civil Law which is top down. The continentals are just ethnic groups that aren't united because they won't use the same language. Chiraq's hissy fit over a speech being given in English is worthy of any Iraqi politician.
#3
I will disagree with Moose on this:
An Englishman is English, a race, and a creature of the Common Law. He is not Hindu or Moslem, or someone of African descent from Jamaica. Such people who live in England are just copies of what the English really are. People who were raised in the English way, many of whom profoundly admire and accept this way. Many who are likewise creatures of the Common Law. Even their cousins, the Americans, too, are like the English.
But they are still not English.
It is the culture more than anything that matters IMO. Although it is telling, 'Moose, that you write "English" rather than "British". For surely you are aware that Britain has been made up primarily of the Welsh (the original Britons) plus those relative newcomers the English (Angles and Saxons) and the Scots (Irish Gaels intermixed with Picts).
And these merged over more than a thousand years to form the English culture and common law you cite.
Now, you might say I'm a little sensitive to this since I have some Welsh ancestry. But the point is broader than that. 'English' common law is rooted in part in the ancient Welsh and Scots traditions of local assemblies as well as in the tribal customs of the invading Angles and Saxons and Jutes from 1600 years ago.
I'm not trying to nit pick. I think this matters terribly for our current situation around the world. Those in Britain who are embracing the continental model might well be ethnic English for generations back -- but they are no longer CULTURALLY English.
#4
"Even their cousins, the Americans, too, are like the English."
If anything, the divide is between the Continentals and the Americans, and the English are the cousins of the Americans. The cousins are transitioning from monarchy to EU authoritarianism. Velvet despotism indeed.
#5
lotp: I specified the English for a few reasons, everything from common law origins in the tribes of Gaul, Viking-Norman influences, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Law, Black's Law and the precedents of the Assizes, etc. Pretty soon it would overwhelm my point.
So tacitly, I just took English post-Civil War Common Law as the clearest and most influential example to compare with post-Napoleonic era Roman Law. Both have been relatively stable as systems of law for about 350 and 200 years, respectively.
Recognizing that both, in truth, are far more ingrained in their respective cultures than that brief time.
It is truly arrogance to assume that you can change perhaps 2000 years of culture in a people in a few generations. And yet, the basic concept of Europeanization is that all local customs, traditions, and practices be eliminated to produce a generic European, equally grey and at home in any part of Europe. A melting pot of sludge.
And yet Britain has become confused. In trying to "get along" with the Continent, they are not just surrendering their colour, and those things that lead to armed conflict, but they are surrendering to the process.
That is, Common Law is just, philosophically and practically, a better system than is Roman Law. It is foolish to give up a better, more efficient way of living, as much as if we surrendered our laws and embraced Sharia Law.
Common Law is fairer, more equitable, more conducive to creativity and business, and is filled with means to challenge the inefficient, the flawed, and the unfair.
To Americans who have studied American Revolutionary history, it seems that our entire revolt was an exercise in explaining the modern pricipals of Common Law. Our founding documents are explanations of why and how it is a better system.
The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States with its Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, and a hundred other major documents are an astounding lecture on why Common Law, and not Royal Law or Roman Law, is better.
As a glaring contrast look to Roman Law, and the feeble document that was supposed to be the European Constitution. It is a document of, by and for the bureaucrat, an effort in a bizarre way to create the legal basis for *everything* that is, and what might be. Insanity.
This is because, just the opposite of Common Law, in Roman Law, if an activity is not expressly permitted by law, then it is forbidden. In Germany, it is a running joke that they have a police regulation for everything, and everything requires a permit, in triplicate.
The European Consitituion has no Bill of Rights, though they insist that within some unsurmountable paragraph in there somewhere that it actually gives more rights, next to the regulation governing the proper amount and type of food to feed a cow.
It has the simple message, that all laws, if not people, are equal before the bureaucracy and the state. Since the state issues laws to the people, like guaranteed welfare checks, there is only the assurance that the bureaucracy will continue to do its bureaucratic thing. And that is the "right" of the masses, of man. To be ruled over.
How is this any different in substance than being ruled by a king and his court?
Democracy is supposed to be the rule of the people; which is why the Eurocrat abhors it so, and does not wish it on his office. He was raised to be a bureaucrat, he attended the polytechnic, which all bureaucrats must attend to become bureaucrats, the elite. Why should his actions be scrutinized by people with no training or knowledge of government?
He is not "of the people", he is "above the people", and this is the Roman Law way.
For the British to abandon Common Law in favor of Roman Law is, again, as if they had decided to embrace Sharia Law, an act of foolishness.
#6
I agree re: common law, 'Moose. Perhaps I was misreading you, but I took you to say that people are pretty determined by their ancestors' culture.
If that were the case then I would be a Russian autocrat, from my father's side, and he would have embraced common law here even less warmly. But that wasn't the case at all for him and his brothers, born here of immigrant parents. They chose to come here and willingly embraced the legal culture here.
I think you're right about the trend to impose a uniform EU-ness on Britain. It is not a positive trend, IMO.
#7
Well, in a manner of speaking, they are. For example, if you look at the English language, you will see that it is permeated through and through with references to the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and Shakespeare. If you try to excise those sources, the language is diminished considerably. In fact, most English speaking people would struggle terribly just to try and communicate.
And the same with Common Law. It is so intertwined with business, customs & courtesies, criminal and civil matters, etiquette, even education itself, that there is no way around it.
Social behavior collapses when the social contract is torn up. Which is why Britain is so miserable trying to adapt to Continental ways. Thousands of things that people "just did" before, now they have to ask permission from some appointed person they neither know, nor respect, nor should.
And the most aggravating part of it all is that there is no reason for the added bureaucracy, other than "because we say so." For this reason, the expression "Brussels bureaucrat" has almost become an epithet in Britain.
Nameless, faceless people far away who rule without accountability or conscience.
Does Britain face a revolution? Perhaps not yet. Their ability to tolerate amazingly oppressive situations is legendary. But then, something snaps.
In past, it was the poll tax that did it. Sooner or later, they will trod too hard on "The rights of free-born Englishmen".
The family of a Green Beret who was one of the nation's first casualties in the war on terror in Afghanistan is outraged that vandals have defaced a sign honoring the soldier's memory with anti-war graffiti.
"I felt like I was going to vomit," said Michael Petithory, the brother of Army Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Petithory.
"It was just pure rage," he told the North Adams Transcript.
Daniel Petithory was killed Dec. 5, 2001, along with two other soldiers when a U.S. bomb landed about 100 yards from their position north of Kandahar.
Michael Petithory discovered the vandalism on Thursday as he biked along the Ashuwillticook Trail.
The words "oil," "Bush" and "Christian Crusade" as well as other phrases were written in black marker on the brown metal sign.
Family and friends cleaned the sign, which is one of three along a stretch of the trail that honors the Cheshire native. The paved path is used by area residents for walking, biking and in-line skating. The other two signs were not vandalized.
"I was enraged," said Petithory's father, Lou.
"He had been in the military for 14 years, so he was one of the older guys on his team," Lou Petithory told the Boston Herald. "They made military history. They were 200 Green Berets inserted into Afghanistan, and within two weeks the Taliban was gone.
"I'm so proud of my son for being part of that," he said.
Daniel Petithory was a recipient of the Silver Star and Purple Heart. He joined the Army shortly after graduating from Hoosac Valley High School in 1987. He is buried near family members in Cheshire Cemetery.
Police in Cheshire and Lanesborough are investigating, but there had been no arrests as of Friday evening.
Cheshire police Sgt. Alison Warner said the department plans to increase bicycle patrols along the trail and make extra checks at night.
Cheshire, a town of approximately 3,500 residents, is about 140 miles west of Boston.
#1
The Anti-war crowd are a bunch of pussies anyway. Most of the "professional" protesters ironically are on the governemtn dole (e.g., food stamps, unemployment pay, etc.).
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 12:36
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#3
Don't be messing with Green Berets. Hopefully there will be a follow up story of "Hippy bastard with cans of spray paint found severely beaten with nunchuku near memorial sign, attributes attack to 'ninjas'".
About 100 new Saudi Arabian students are enrolling this summer at the University of Arizona. The added enrollment could signal the reverse of a post-September 11th trend of declining international students in the United States.
The students are part of a new large-scale scholarship program by the Saudi government.
It'll send about 6,000 students to American universities this year after just 1,442 Saudi students had visas to study in the US in 2004.
About 80 of the students are already at the U of A.
They're enrolled in English-immersion classes before they start their academic programs in the fall.
After 9-11, new federal procedures and delays in obtaining US visas caused a decline in foreign students in the United States.
#2
Nope, this is good. It means that, for better or worse, they've figured out their future lies with us. Their first team comes here to learn about the future, their second team goes to Madrassas to learn the past.
#4
There are a few in that number who are actually bright and have potential, but that's merely rare serendipity. The vast majority are the offspring of the Royals and their favored clans on the Saudi equivalent of a world tour.
If you ask yourself who would be allowed this privilege, and nobody leaves without running the gauntlet, the answer is easy: the privileged. There is no serious consideration of merit in Saudi society.
A little "seasoning" before they join the ranks of the Saudi elite. They haven't figured out anything at all.
#7
Headlines in todays "Arizona Daily Star" tout high increased enrollment of Saudi for the University of Arizona. As Lenin wisely noted, the capitalists will sell the rope to hang themselves with...
#9
I hope Homeland Security has them bugged and trailed every which way. Some will learn, some will turn, and some will lead directly to people and activities they thought could be hidden until they went boom. And, the university gets lots of money, and the local students are exposed to the rare pleasure of dealing with young Saudi asses. ;-)
After destroying the Buddhas of Afghanistan, burning the Churches of Kosovo, Muslims are now destroying the Christian legacy of France.
Here is a summarized translation of an article of www.chretiente.info .
Since the riots of November 2005, we know that the French government is not able to protect the French citizens. Instead of taking legal action against criminals, the government rewarded rioters.
Today (march 22, 2006) we learn that this government has let 1,000 years of cultural and religious legacy to become smoke and ashes.
Barbarians and savages entered in the library of lEcole des Chartes (100,000 books) in the Sorbonne, and destroyed writings of abbeys of Île-de-France containing all the official documents since the middle age.
Documents of more than TEN CENTURIES!
If the French populate is abandoned by its government, it will defend itself. However books and manuscripts can not defend themselves.
The state has failed in its 3 major missions:
1- To protect its territory.
2- To protect its citizens and their goods.
3- To protect and to transmit its cultural and religious heritage.
Our leaders have inherited more than 15 centuries of history, legacy and culture. They are not only denying this heritage, but they are also allowing the destruction of what our ancestors have build, written, thought century after century.
#1
I sense the rift in French society is nearing the tipping point. Whether or not those on the Right side are willing to fight for their ailing country remains to be seen. When folks like this guy start pointing out the irreversible damage being done to their cultural heritage, the only thing of value the French seem to recognize, perhaps that will get their attention.
If, that is, it's not already too late. Damned if I'm gonna clean up that mess.
#3
I missed the story on the Sorbonne library burning in the MSM - must've gotten bumped by a story on the decision to search the Aruban dunes again for Natalie Holloway.
#4
Barbarians and savages entered in the library of lEcole des Chartes (100,000 books) in the Sorbonne, and destroyed writings of abbeys of Île-de-France containing all the official documents since the middle age.
WTF? Chartes? damn, get the gunz. This is nutz if true. I'm off to read and waiting for 5089 and JFM to give me a clue.
#9
@ Churchill Parrott : apparently, this is true, I also got it on a conservative radio wednesday, though it got very little mention as far as I know.
Some documents were burned, some others were splatered around, and the show guests mentioned possible theft as well. This is the deed of leftists most probably, not muslim (though "sans papiers" illegals participated in the occupation, along with their leftist supporters).
Btw, check this France 2 (state tv) reportage http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/fdesouche/video/89590
about the demonstrations violence, there is a follow up second part on the occupation of another scientific school, the EHESS, during which the Revolutionnaries(tm) pillaged (stole computers with research data in it) and destroyed everything... leftists, I think, might also have been boyz from the hood, but the slogans written on the wall are revealing, like the evolution/revolution at the end. Note that the first graphitti shown by the director lady sez "death to democracy"... also heard on teevee that actual students of that school were told "death to culture", when they protested this occupation by outside elements....
As for the riots, I particulary like the two CNT anarchist order service swamped by 50-100 angry "youths", the mohawk punk guy evacuated with a brain damage (how could they tell?), and his keffieh wearing pal at the hospital, lol,... of course, th efun thing is, the lefties firts wished the banlieusards to join the demonstration, so they could add "muscle"... instead, they acted as yellow strike-breaker "lumpenproletariat", the gvt must be somewhat happy... cf. too the arrest of a wisigoth by police while his former victim shouts him something like "you treated me of dirty white!".
For an inside vid of an actual part of the riot, before, the "real" one, IE the clashes with police (notice the mixing of white anarchist/leftist and "youths", or the slogans shouted in addition to the insults, like "police everywhere, justice nowhere", a staple of the left), check here.
Police where very passive, as usual (Sarko told them to be "souple", soft), though they know how to crack heads quite well if they wish. No water cannon, no rubber bullets, the use of CS gas only (pepper spray would be much more effective, but I don't think it's much used in Europe)
#1
On this blog or another, a poster wrote that he had a friend/assoc/acquaintance in Germany and the German told him that the church in the neighborhood was growing and vibrant. The church always had something going and they were getting a lot of young families. The ami asked if the pastor had ever been to America and the pastor had. The German didn't see the connection.
My parents go to Calvary Church -- a big church --in Naperville, IL (they performed a live -- with animals -- Nativity during Christmas a couple of years ago. Calvary has an ambitious program, to open 5 new churches in the next 10 years, IIRC, in Europe. They're starting in Scotland.
They had an American preacher go to Scotland and preach, very few in the beginning, but by the end, the pews were filled and they were filled w/young people.
For two months, they spent their nights as volunteer security guards in their burglary-plagued house of God.
The vigilance paid off early Friday when a suspected burglar broke through a window and encountered a half-dozen church members wielding baseball bats and broom handles.
When police arrived, at about 1 a.m., they found the man battered and bound with rope on the roof outside a second-story window.
Evangelical church whose members are poor immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. No charges are being laid against the church members.
#1
Wonder if they pointed out the would be robber that in their faith two thieves accompanied their master that day. Or as the Romans would say - nail'em up. It deters repeat offensives.
#3
There is no evidence that these men are here illegally, Glenmore. Just my opinion, but I don't think it's the evangelical Christians from latin America that we need to worry about.
#4
There's almost never evidence any immigrants are here illegally; law enforcement either can't ask, can't follow through if they do find out, can't cooperate with other agencies who have authority to act, won't follow through even if they do have authority. I actually agree that immigrants such as these, legal or not, likely pose no threat (unless you're a robber), nor do many/most others, but we ignore the immensity of the illegal immigrant phenomenon at our great peril.
Hat tip: Drudge. EFL.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Thousands of people across the country protested Friday against legislation cracking down on illegal aliens immigrants, with demonstrators in such cities as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta staging school walkouts, marches and work stoppages.
Congress is considering bills that would make it a felony to be illegally in the United States, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border. The proposals have angered many Hispanics. I wonder how many of these 'hispanics' were legal residents or had green cards.....
The Los Angeles demonstration led to fights between black and Hispanic students at one high school, but the protests were largely peaceful, authorities said.
In Phoenix, police said 10,000 demonstrators marched to the office of Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, co-sponsor of a bill that would give illegal immigrants up to five years to leave the country. The turnout clogged a major thoroughfare. Only 10,000?
"They're here for the American Dream," said Malissa Greer, 29, who joined a crowd estimated by police to be at least 10,000 strong. "God created all of us. He's not a God of the United States, he's a God of the world."
Kyl had no immediate comment on the rally.
At least 500 students at Huntington Park High School near Los Angeles walked out of classes in the morning. Hundreds of the students, some carrying Mexican flags, walked down the middle of Los Angeles streets, police cruisers behind them.
In Georgia, activists said tens of thousands of workers did not show up at their jobs Friday after calls for a work stoppage to protest a bill passed by the Georgia House on Thursday.
That bill, which has yet to gain Senate approval, would deny state services to adults living in the U.S. illegally and impose a 5 percent surcharge on wire transfers from illegal immigrants. Both of which are damn good ideas....
Supporters say the Georgia measure is vital to homeland security and frees up limited state services for people legally entitled to them. Opponents say it unfairly targets workers meeting the demands of some of the state's largest industries.
Teodoro Maus, an organizer of the Georgia protest, estimated as many as 80,000 Hispanics did not show up for work. About 200 converged on the steps of the Georgia Capitol, some wrapped in Mexican flags and holding signs reading: "Don't panic, we're Hispanic" Maus: eah... well we only have 200 illegal aliens here but tens of thousands didn't work - beleve us!
AP Reporter: Okay. No need to verify....
and "We have a dream, too."
Jennifer Garcia worried what would the proposal would do to her family. She said her husband is an illegal Mexican immigrant.
"If they send him back to Mexico, who's going to take care of them and me?" Garcia said of herself and her four children. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you married an illegal?
"This is the United States. We need to come together and be a whole."
Anyone notice that...
1) They did not identify which of their 'protesters' they talked to were legal residents or citizens. (Personally I think they all were illegal aliens).
2) They did not interview anyone who agrees with the bill (and there are a lot of them -- most legal immigrants for example). They want to leave the impression that nobody supports it.
3) No mention of the existing legal means of immigration. They want the impression that there are none.
#2
See its nothing to do with 'immigration'. Its an invasion with the support by our own domestic quislings and useful idiots. Its not about christian compassion. Get you head out of your ass GWB. Its about being played by someone else. These people marching in the streets have zero loyalty to America.
#4
"They're here for the American Dream," said Malissa Greer, 29, who joined a crowd estimated by police to be at least 10,000 strong. "God created all of us. He's not a God of the United States, he's a God of the world."
Oh I see, it's Human Right for all humans to live in America. And God says so. Rules be damned.
#5
Okay, now we've seen they can draw a crowd. I saw the footage of these slugs surrounding Kyl's office. He's doing his job. Did they have a permit? Was this approved by local LE? Do they have a right to attempt intimidation?
They advertise these events well in advance so the party faithful, professional goons, and "activists" can get organized for the circus. The forces of Law and Order should do the same. INS should target as many "events" in as many places as they think they can handle with local LE assistance. Plan it out, get your ducks lined up, borrow prison busses, box them in and sweep the demonstrators up.
This is a classic target-rich environment. Once you've made a sweep of such demonstrations - and deported or jailed the illegals and trouble-makers - the entire mass demonstration bit will dry up and you'll have gotten some of the real bad actors off the streets.
Then send them a Thank You note for making it so easy.
#6
nice PR move with the Mexican flags, idiots. We also need to repeal the "born here = citizen" statutes...illegals cross just to have children born here (free emergency room care, citizen children = harder to deport)
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 13:36
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#8
Wake Up. We are at a tipping point about losing our country. When these thieves take control, how tolerant do you think they will be treating the Anglos who let them steal the county back as they see it? Timew for some strightforward racial profiling here. If you think there are only 10 million illegals here you are delusional. Triple that number, and the jobs that Americans don't want apparently include construction and transportation as well as service industries.. Get a clue, Southern California is already lost. If you doubt that, I challenge you to drive in L.A. and turn on the radio, AM, and seek the channels. more than 75% are not in English my friends....
#9
Please join http://www.RightMarch.com/
now, if you haven't already. Together, we are making a difference. Today there are thousands of us, tomorrow, millions.
Take back America. It's that easy.
#12
Of course they don't want to be thrown out now. They have it so good. We support their hordes of kids in our schools , hospitals, etc. Our roads are polluted and we can't drive. Noooo, they don't wannt to be thrown out. They want their rights as American citizens. Oooppss. Forgot. They are no such thing. They're illegals. Soon to be felons. I want to have one right also. I want to have the right to hunt them. I want a bounty on their heads. I want it to be legal to round them up. Do you think we'll have that right ? Or do we only have the right to donate our paychecks for their support?
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist and the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has sharply lowered his profile in recent months, and his group claims to have submitted itself to the leadership of an Iraqi.
In postings on Web sites used by jihadi groups, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the terrorist network's arm in Iraq, claims to have joined with five other guerrilla groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura, or Council of Holy Warriors. The new group, whose formation was announced in January, is said to be headed by an Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi. Since then, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has stopped issuing its own proclamations.
The Mujahedeen Shura, which continues to call for attacks against American and Iraqi forces, has stopped taking responsibility for large-scale suicide attacks against civilians, and it has toned down its fierce verbal attacks against Iraq's Shiite majority.
Mr. Zarqawi's group also appears to have stopped, at least for now, the practice of beheading its captives. Since last summer, the group has begun to carry out attacks outside Iraq.
The activities seem to follow closely the advice in a letter believed to have been written last year by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second in command.
Previously, Mr. Zarqawi's group celebrated large-scale civilian massacres, and often made videos of the attacks and of beheadings and posted the videos on jihadi Web sites. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is dominated by followers of Islam's Sunni sect, also boasted of the mass killing of Shiite civilians, whom it labeled derogatorily as "converters."
While it is impossible to verify the claims on the Web sites, experts believe it significant that Mr. Zarqawi apparently feels the need to send such signals, which offer clues about what he and other senior jihadi leaders might be thinking and doing.
Since the announcement of the Mujahedeen Shura in January, Mr. Zarqawi has stayed largely out of view. His last public statement, released a few days before the announcement, ranted in typical fashion against Americans and Jews but gave no sign that changes were afoot.
American and Iraqi officials, as well as independent terrorism experts, are divided on the signals from Al Qaeda. Most believe that Mr. Zarqawi is alive, in Iraq, and still in charge of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. They say the group remains the leading suspect in the Feb. 22 attack against the Shiite shrine in Samarra, which set off a wave of sectarian violence. No group has taken responsibility for that attack.
Sectarian attacks have helped bring Iraq to the brink of full-scale civil war. A document obtained by the Americans in January 2004, and believed to have been written by Mr. Zarqawi, calls for attacks on Shiites in order to bring about a sectarian bloodbath.
American and Iraqi officials concede that they know little about the Mujahedeen Shura or of Mr. Baghdadi or, indeed, whether they exist at all. The officials say the proclamations by Al Qaeda and the Mujahedeen Shura, as well as the claim that an Iraqi is in charge, are probably ploys to give the illusion of changes that have not taken place.
"Propaganda is a critical component of his efforts, and that's what's involved here," said an American intelligence official. "It's a shift in tactics, not a real change."
In the letter thought to have been written by Mr. Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician believed to be hiding along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mr. Zarqawi was told that he needed to cultivate local support in Iraq to ensure the survival of his movement. The letter was captured by the Americans last summer.
The letter suggested a role for a council that would unite the various insurgent groups and help lay the political groundwork for the day the Americans depart.
It also questioned Mr. Zarqawi's emphasis on killing Shiites, suggesting that such killings alienated Iraqis and detracted from the larger goal of driving out the Americans. For the same reasons, the letter said, it was not necessary to cut off the heads of captives. "We can kill the captives by bullet," the letter said.
The letter also called for Mr. Zarqawi to "extend the jihad to secular countries neighboring Iraq." In recent months, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has taken responsibility for a number of attacks outside the country, including the suicide bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan, in November, which killed more than 57 people. The group has also said it fired rockets from Lebanon into Israel last December, and a pair of missiles at American naval vessels in Aqaba, Jordan, last August.
"Zarqawi wanted to hand over Al Qaeda to the Iraqis so he could move on to the next phase of jihad," said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Institute, which tracks violent Islamist groups. Ms. Katz recently made such an argument in an opinion article in The Boston Globe.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorist expert at the Rand Corporation's Washington office, said he believed that the Mujahedeen Shura and Mr. Baghdadi were real, but was unconvinced that Mr. Zarqawi had ceded control of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Having brought the country to the brink of civil war, Mr. Zarqawi may have decided that it was a good time to step back as events in Iraq unfold, Mr. Hoffman said, "like a poker player."
There are other reasons why Mr. Zarqawi might want to take a less prominent role in Iraq. As a Jordanian, Mr. Zarqawi is a foreigner in Iraq, where family and blood lines count for a lot. In recent months, evidence has surfaced that Iraqi guerrillas resent the dominance of foreigners in the insurgency.
In addition, there have been growing indications that the large-scale suicide bombings directed at civilians were alienating Arab backers outside the country as well as ordinary Iraqis. Mr. Zarqawi is believed to depend heavily on money provided by Arabs from outside of Iraq.
The suicide attacks on the three Jordanian hotels set off a wave of popular anger so furious that Mr. Zarqawi released an audio tape to explain his actions. Mr. Zarqawi did not apologize for the attacks far from it but he was clearly stunned by the vehemence of the reaction. "As for those Muslims who were killed," Mr. Zarqawi said on the tape, "we have not thought for even one moment about targeting them, even if they are sinful people."
Ms. Katz, the director of SITE, which provided the translations of his statements, said that even if he had stepped back, Mr. Zarqawi was probably still the dominant force in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Mr. Zarqawi has long made it clear that he sees Iraq as a stepping stone to the larger goal of overthrowing what he believes to be corrupt and secular regimes across the Arab world and re-establishing the Islamic Caliphate that reigned over the Middle East for centuries.
Whatever Mr. Zarqawi is up to, the successor organization, the Mujahedeen Shura, has lost no vehemence. In one of its most recent communiqués, it celebrated an attack on an American Humvee it claimed to have carried out this week in Miqadadiya, Iraq.
"A car bomb was detonated on a Crusader support patrol, resulting in the destruction of the Humvee and all who were in it," the statement said. "Thanks unto God."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/25/2006
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#1
Yah, like "Spinal Tap" chosing to play smaller and smaller arenas.
One of the men accused of plotting bomb attacks in the UK discussed poisoning football fans by contaminating beer cans and burgers, a witness has said.
Mohammed Babar, 31, told an Old Bailey trial that suspect Waheed Mahmood, 34, of Crawley, West Sussex, talked of getting a job in a stadium as a vendor.
He and six other men deny charges including plotting a bombing campaign.
Pakistani-born US citizen Babar, who has turned supergrass, claims he trained with the men.
He has been given immunity from UK charges.
Babar has previously pleaded guilty in the US to terror offences.
Four of the men also deny having chemicals suitable for bomb-making. The trial is expected to last five months.
On his second day in the witness box, Babar told the jury he met Mr Mahmood at a house in Pakistan in 2003 where they talked of jihad.
"He could not understand why all these UK brothers were coming over to Pakistan. They could easily do jihad operation in England," he said.
He said Mr Mahmood had said: "You could get a job in a soccer stadium as a beer vendor.
"You just put poison in a syringe, injecting it in a can and put a sticker on it which would stop it leaking and give it out.
"Or you could get mobile vending carts - all those vans going round selling burgers. He said he had done it. I didn't believe it.
"He said you could stand on street corners selling poison burgers and then just leave the area."
Babar earlier told the court he had given three computers to Waheed Mahmood after meeting him in Pakistan because he was told they were needed by al-Qaeda.
He told the Old Bailey he initially travelled to the UK and then to Pakistan, with the intention of going to Afghanistan.
Babar told the court that he had visited the UK in late 2002 and attended a meeting where radical cleric Abu Hamza was speaking.
Another of the alleged plotters, Omar Khyam, was also there.
He said they were shown the "video wills" of two of the people who carried out the 9/11 attacks in the US.
Asked what the attitude of those at the meeting had been toward 9/11, Babar replied: "Everyone at the meeting agreed with it, everyone was in praise of those who carried it out."
In Pakistan he met a number of Britons mainly from the London and Crawley areas, he told the court.
He said he first became aware of Waheed Mahmood in late 2001, because his flatmate in Pakistan - a man named Asim - had identified him as his "contact".
Asked what he meant by contact, Babar said: "If you wanted to go somewhere or wanted something, to go to Afghanistan or to receive some sort of training, you needed to contact someone who will lead you to your goal."
He said Asim had come to Pakistan from east London, but he also had strong ties with the "Crawley group".
The two had lived together in a flat in Lahore and were joined by others from the "east London group" of which Asim was part.
Babar told the court that he first came face to face with Waheed Mahmood in April or May 2002 when he came to Babar's home in Lahore.
A man from east London had left a stash of weapons buried near the Punjab University and Mr Waheed had arrived to be shown where they were, he said.
"He left some weapons behind. I just wanted to show Waheed Mahmood where they were buried in case he ever needed these weapons.
"He knew what he was coming for," he said.
Babar listed the weapons as AK47s and their magazines, 2-3,000 rounds of ammunition and grenades.
Suspects Salahuddin Amin, 31, from Luton, and Omar Khyam, from Crawley, were alleged by the prosecution to have received training in explosives and use of the poison ricin in Pakistan.
Mr Mahmood, 34, Salahuddin Amin, 31, Jawad Akbar, 22, Omar Khyam, 24, and his brother Shujah Mahmood, 19, all of Crawley, West Sussex, Anthony Garcia - also known as Rahman Adam - 23, of Ilford, east London, and Nabeel Hussain, 20, of Horley, Surrey, deny conspiring to cause explosions.
Russian diplomats passed detailed but sometimes inaccurate information about American troop movements to senior Iraqi officials even as U.S. troops closed in on Baghdad during the 2003 invasion, according to a Pentagon study released Friday.
The revelations, based on captured Iraqi intelligence documents, could jeopardize U.S.-Russian relations more than any single event since the end of the Cold War, analysts said. Although they cautioned that Moscow might have an explanation, the analysts said some of the details were so sensitive that they would be difficult for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin to justify.
One of the documents, which purports to be a summary of a letter sent to Saddam Hussein's office by a Russian official, claimed that Moscow had "sources inside the American Central Command in Doha," the U.S. military's headquarters in Qatar during the war.
Russia had well-known and extensive diplomatic and economic ties to Baghdad before the U.S.-led invasion and occasionally clashed with the Bush administration during the international debate over how to deal with Hussein's regime.
But the documents, made public in a study of the Iraqi military's decision-making, are the first to assert that Russia actively passed sensitive military intelligence to Baghdad during the war.
"This is one step short of firing upon us themselves with Russian equipment," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution. "It's actively aiding and abetting the enemy tactically. It's hard to get more unfriendly than that."
Press officials at the Russian Embassy did not return calls seeking comment. An official who answered the phone in the military attache's office at the embassy said he was unfamiliar with the report.
One of the most sensitive revelations, which came in a captured letter detailing Russian intelligence on American troop movements, accurately informed Baghdad that U.S. forces were massing south of a narrow passage near the southern city of Karbala.
The April 2, 2003, letter, which was reportedly passed through Moscow's ambassador to Baghdad, informed Iraqi leaders that "the heaviest concentration of troops (12,000 troops plus 1,000 vehicles) was in the vicinity of Karbala."
The Army's 3rd Infantry Division eventually captured western Baghdad after pushing through the Karbala gap just days later. Marines moved into Baghdad from the east.
Other information provided by the Russians, however, was wildly inaccurate. In a document on March 24 and again in the April 2 letter, the Iraqis were told to expect the main U.S. offensive from the western desert, including a major attack from Jordanian soil.
Kevin Wood, a retired Army officer who served as the senior researcher and chief author of the study, said he was surprised when he learned of the Russian actions. Although there was little corroboration of the contacts beyond the documents themselves, his team had no reason to doubt their authenticity, Wood said.
But Frederick Kagan, a Russia and defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the actions would not be out of keeping with other efforts by Moscow to advance Iraq's cause internationally.
"We knew the Russians were opposed to the sanctions; we knew they opposed the war," Kagan said. "I'm not terribly surprised."
Analysts also said it would be important to learn whether upper levels of the Russian government were involved, adding that the signals were more likely to have come from diplomatic and intelligence agents in the region rather than from Moscow.
It also was unclear how much of the information was genuine intelligence and how much was educated guesswork.
Regardless, the revelations could undermine efforts to forge a united front against Iran's nuclear program.
"I think we have to assume that we can't trust the Russians to be impartial or even honest with us," Kagan said. "The Russians have ties with the Iranians that are also very worrying."
The 210-page report, compiled by staff at the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command after interviewing more than 100 former Iraqi officials and sifting through half a million documents, contains the most detailed accounts to date of Hussein's thinking as U.S. and coalition troops massed on his border and eventually pushed into Iraq.
It is unclear whether the Iraqi leader, who was not interviewed for the report, acted on any of the Russian information.
The authors depict Hussein as more worried about an internal coup or a repeat of the 1991 Shiite uprising in the south than he was about the coalition forces, even when they were on the outskirts of Baghdad. He continued to make tactical military decisions based on that fear until the last days of his regime.
Senior military commanders were ordered not to blow up bridges connecting Baghdad to southern Iraq so that Hussein could send loyal troops to quell any domestic opposition, even though the bridges made it easier for the Americans to advance.
The report also said Hussein frequently pointed to the failed American operation in Somalia and Washington's reluctance to introduce ground forces in the Balkans as proof the U.S. would not long tolerate bloody ground warfare.
And although Hussein had established loyal paramilitaries to suppress any uprisings and scattered them throughout Iraq, the report casts doubt on the idea that his regime made preparations to launch an insurgency if the Iraqi army met with defeat.
"There were no national plans to transition to a guerrilla war in the event of a military defeat," the report found. "Nor, as their world crumbled around them, did the regime appear to cobble together such plans."
The report's authors found Hussein and his top commanders to be badly out of touch with reality, both before and during the war. Hussein and his inner circle were fed a steady diet of lies, mainly overly optimistic assessments about Iraq's military capabilities, from subordinates who feared they would pay with their lives for speaking the truth.
Misinformation also flowed down through the ranks. The report cited an April 6 memo from the Defense Ministry telling subordinate units that "we are doing great" and reminding officers to "avoid exaggerating the enemy's abilities."
But as the scope of the defeat dawned on him, Hussein's tone was that of a man "who had lost his will to resist," and "knew the regime was coming to an end," said Tarik Aziz, the former deputy prime minister who was one of 23 senior officials interviewed by U.S. military researchers.
Hussein was moving from one safe house to another every three to six hours. During a late-night meeting with his sons and members of his inner circle April 6, Hussein issued orders to defend Baghdad to the death and prepare for urban warfare.
By then, however, "an American armored brigade already held Baghdad's airport," the report said, and American armor "was busily chewing up the manicured lawn in front of his palace in the center of the city."
The United States also made miscalculations, including devoting significant resources to preventing the destruction of Iraqi oil fields.
The report indicates that regional Iraqi commanders had made plans to destroy the northern and southern oil fields, and there are accounts that demolition charges and other equipment were moved into place.
The report quoted a senior Republican Guard officer as saying Hussein blocked those plans because he believed that destroying the oil fields would damage the morale of soldiers and the Iraqi people.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/25/2006
02:33 ||
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#1
fuck the russians when ppl gonna figure out they are not our allies now just like the cold war?
#2
The report also said Hussein frequently pointed to the failed American operation in Somalia and Washington's reluctance to introduce ground forces in the Balkans as proof the U.S. would not long tolerate bloody ground warfare.
Keep that in mind when Maddsy Albright lectures the Bush administration on how to manage conflict.
#3
The United States also made miscalculations, including devoting significant resources to preventing the destruction of Iraqi oil fields.
Well, they weren't destroyed now, were they? God damn fuckin' Monday morning quarterbacks, like I was expecting more from the LA Times (NYT, West Coast version). I want to bitchslap some of these pricks...
#4
Somalia and the oil fields are two reasons why the Democrats never should run wars. Protect what little infrastructure remains and get ready for a long slog. I know that, most Americans know that. Geez... This is great a psyop intel goldmine on how to confuse the hell out of our enemies. Both foreign and domestic.
Surely its only us, the USA who should be allowed to support Saddam? I'm proud as an American than Donald Rumsfeld met him only a short time after we found out he'd been gassing his own people to sell him guns and buy his oil.
Saddam was our man. We backed him and armed him. How dare those pinko Ruskies get involved!!!
#13
I take it I should stay quiet today. lotp is in a bad mood.
Posted by: Rafael ||
03/25/2006 14:32
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lotp thinks that we are facing the most serious global crisis since the early 1940s. Reasonable, sober and thoughtful people might disagree on how to deal with it. But I take exception to idiots who cannot see past their partisan or other shallowness and who delight in disrupting those who have to deal with it.
#15
Next stop, Iran. One would hope better safeguards will be in place.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006 14:52
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lotp, have you read Generations? It will make you feel more confident about the challenge we face. While there is risk, I have absolute confidence we will overcome it.
#18
Hi gang, I heard on the radio today that Senator John McCain thanked the MSM for the great job they are doing reporting from Iraq.
Don't bother running for pres Johnboy, can you spell loser ?
Mar 24: Bagmara thana police have been insisting the victims of the militant kingpin Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai to file cases, but are silent about nabbing his accomplices. Sources concerned said that a sub-inspector of Bagmara police station has been specially assigned to convince the victims of Bangla Bhai to file cases against the militant leader who had established a reign of terror in some areas.
The victims have so far filed three cases with Bagmara thana against Bangla Bhai and his associates. But plaintiffs of the cases alleged that the police arrested only one person, out of 39 mentioned as accused in the cases.
Following persuasion by police, Abdus Salam of Bhaktapara village, who was tortured by Bangla Bhai men, filed a case. "The accused are roaming around, but police don't arrest them," he alleged.
He said that police went to his home several times after the arrest of Bangla Bhai and insisted that he filed a case. "But now police are doing nothing against Bangla Bhai's accomplices," he alleged.
Since the henchmen have apparently paid their insurance.
UP member of Goalkanda union Abed Ali, Rafiqul Islam of Kalupara village and Mahabubur Rahman of Bhabaniganj village said police have been insisting them to file cases against Bangla Bhai and his cadres. But, they said that they were frustrated with the progress of the three cases filed so far and hesitating to file any new case.
Some victims alleged that police adopted a new business by insisting them to file cases and make money by not arresting the accused.
[thump]"So Mahmoud, I think you should buy a pencil from me. I got pencils for 100, 500 and 10,000 Lakh. I think you need a 10,000 Lakh pencil. Wotcha think?"
[groan] "I'd like a handful of the really nice 10,000 Lakh pencils."
[thump] "Say please, Mahmoud."
[groan] "p-p-p-please."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2006
01:13 ||
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Two housewives were killed for dowry in Comilla and Munshiganj on Wednesday midnight and Thursday. A man allegedly strangled his wife at village Shahababad under Brahmanpara upazila in Comilla on Thursday. The victim is Aysha Begum, 27, daughter of Seraj Ali of the Barershor area under the upazila.
The police, quoting local people, said Ayshas husband Sumon Miah, 30, beat his wife to death when she expressed her inability to bring dowry of Tk 45,000 from her poor parents. The man later hanged the body to prove that the death was an incident of suicide.
Didn't fool anyone since this is apparently a common rouse.
Family source said Sumon got married with Aysha seven year back and have two sons, but her in-laws were unhappy over the marriage and used to torture her.
Sumon fled the scene after the incident. The police recovered the body and sent it to hospital morgue for post-mortem examination. A case was filed with the police.
Meanwhile, a man killed his pregnant wife at village Madhyapara under Sirajdikhan upazila in Munshiganj Wednesday midnight. The deceased is Ayesha Akter Shila, 22. Locals said Ibrahim, husband of Shila, often tortured her for dowry. On Wednesday midnight Ibrahim and his family members beat her severely for the same reason.
She died on the spot. Later to prove it an incident of suicide they hanged the body from a ceiling of their house. A case was filed with the police. The police arrested her husband Thursday morning in this connection.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2006
01:08 ||
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#1
Sumon and Ibrahim are awaiting their full Yale scholarships.
#3
What a barbarous religion and culture. If youd stop selling your daughters like breeding cows, writing cheques you cant cash, sold to the lowest bidder then wiping your hands as a job well done. Knowing shes dead the minute you dont cough up the cash, and not caring cause it saves you the job of killing her. Such a problem, girls are.
Plopping kids into the world with stunning regularity kids born of parents thrown together a slave and a master no love, no respect. And in this void atmosphere are taught the same values and the hate goes on.
Im developing, against all efforts not to, a strong hatred of and outrage against islam. I have truly had it. And despair at the lack of general understanding and refusal to object. Honestly, Im starting to foam at the mouth tho that might just be the Tubourg.
Shares of Check Point Software (CHKP:Nasdaq) fell Friday after the Israeli security software firm called off its bid to acquire Sourcefire.
Check Point stock dropped $1.02, or 4.85%, to $20 in recent trading.
The companies announced they would pursue business partnerships instead. The planned $225 million deal had been under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., the same Treasury-supervised panel that approved the contentious Dubai ports deal.
"We've decided to pursue alternative ways for Check Point and Sourcefire to partner in order to bring to market the most comprehensive security solutions," Check Point CEO Gil Shwed said in a statement.
Check Point is best known for its firewall technology, while Sourcefire's expertise is in analyzing very high-speed network traffic, intrusion detection and identifying the types of systems using a network.
One industry analyst says the deal's collapse could be blamed on politics. If the CFIUS had approved a deal with the Israeli company after the uproar over the Dubai ports deal, it would have looked like the U.S. was only opposed to Arab-run security businesses, says John Pescatore, an analyst with Gartner. Pescatore, who has no position in the stock, had previously estimated there was an 80% chance the deal would be approved.
"If there had been no Dubai flap, I bet this one would have gotten approved," he says.
"The security issues make no sense," says Pescatore, who noted that Sourcefire's Snort technology for intrusion detection and prevention is open source. If enhancements had been made to the technology for the U.S. intelligence community -- beyond the standard open-source version -- it could have been kept separate or sold off to a defense contractor.
Several analysts said the canceled acquisition was bad news for Check Point, and downgraded the stock.
"We believe the company had made a major internal strategic bet with Sourcefire, including planning on putting Sourcefire people in key management roles," wrote Cowen & Co. analyst Walter Pritchard, who lowered his rating to neutral from outperform. "We believe it will take the company a couple of quarters to regroup following this event and as a result, the stock is cheap," with an enterprise value that is less than 10 times 2006 free cash flow, "but without a catalyst."
Pritchard wrote that "protectionist politics" sunk the deal. Cowen & Co. makes a market in Check Point securities.
Another analyst noted that the aborted deal could have implications for the company in the long run.
#1
"The security issues make no sense," says Pescatore, who noted that Sourcefire's Snort technology for intrusion detection and prevention is open source. If enhancements had been made to the technology for the U.S. intelligence community -- beyond the standard open-source version -- it could have been kept separate or sold off to a defense contractor.
It makes perfect sense if one remembers that Muzzies/Euros are not the only ones psychotically paranoid where Israel is concerned.
The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages.
Neither the men nor the Canadian group that sent them to Iraq have thanked the people who saved them in any of their public statements. One of them, Norman Kember, 74, a retired physics professor, of Pinner, north-west London, was in Kuwait last night and was expected to return to Britain today. He is understood to have given some helpful information. He provided details of the semi-rural area north-west of Baghdad where he was held and confirmed that his captors were criminals, rather than insurgents. Their motive was believed to be money.
The two Canadians kidnapped with Mr Kember - Harmeet Sooden, 32, and Jim Loney, 41 - were said to have been co-operative at first but less so on arriving at the British embassy in Baghdad after being given the opportunity to wash, eat and rest.
Gratitude faded mighty quick, didn't it. Plus it was an embassy bed, embassy bath and embassy food.
Previous hostages have been questioned on everything from what shoes their kidnappers wore to the number of mobile phones they had. The pacifist Christian Peacemaker Teams with which the men were visiting Iraq is opposed to the coalition's presence and has accused it of illegally detaining thousands of Iraqis.
Jan Benvie, 51, an Edinburgh teacher who is due to go to Iraq with the organisation this summer, said: "We make clear that if we are kidnapped we do not want there to be force or any form of violence used to release us."
It's the moral part of us that causes us to rescue hostages, something you wouldn't understand.
Although the CPTs has welcomed the men's release, it has not thanked the rescuers in any of its statements. It blamed the kidnapping on the presence of foreign troops in the country, which was "responsible for so much pain and suffering in Iraq today". When told how angry the coalition was feeling, Claire Evans, a spokesman for the CPTs in America, said: "We are extremely grateful to everybody who had a role leading to the men's release."
Then she went back to meowing.
Mr Kember, in a statement through the embassy, said: "I have had the opportunity to have a shave, relax in the bath and a good English breakfast. I am very much looking forward to getting home to British soil and to being reunited with my family." He did not publicly thank his rescuers.
Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the defence staff, told Channel 4 News: "I am slightly saddened that there does not seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives."
Asked if he meant that Mr Kember had not said thank you, he said: "I hope he has and I have missed it."
It emerged that about 50 soldiers, led by the SAS, including men from 1 Bn the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines, as well as American and Canadian special forces, entered the kidnap building at dawn.
Canadian special forces in Iraq? That twitched the surprise meter.
A deal had been struck with a man detained the previous night who was one of the leaders of the kidnappers. He was allowed a telephone call to warn his henchmen to leave the kidnap house. When the troops moved in and found the prisoners alive, they also let him go as promised.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2006
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#1
I'm kind of surprised they were held for four months by a criminal gang. I thought al Qaeda was in the market for Western hostages - i.e. they should have been sold a long time ago. Maybe al Qaeda is running short of cash, or it's hard to get a hold of al Qaeda middlemen these days.
#3
Canuck SF involved in Canuck PeaceNitWit rescue.
Send em back until they get some gratitude, or their heads handed to them.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006 0:27
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Assholes. They sacrificed their American cohort on the altar of Total Lunacy. For nothing. These shitheads are a total waste of skin. Take their water, Stilgar.
Posted by: Jans Snomble4884 ||
03/25/2006 0:28
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#5
the only people who will care will be the next set of hostages that don't get rescued, thanks to these pious souls.
#10
Too bad we can't send them back....but at least that Scottish git went on record and said he didn't want our icky military saving his sorry ass. I suggest we honor his desire if/when he becomes a guest of the local hostage takers, and concentrate on others who don't suffer from incurable rectal cranio-insertion.
#13
I agree - arrest them for accessory to murder. Put them in the pen right next to their hero Saddam.
I think at least an investigation is in order to see if they were 'really' kidnapped. Ask people in the neighrhood where they were found if they had been seen walking around.... partying... and carrying on with their captors.
#15
Hey Thinemp. Keep it quiet please. If the Canadian public becomes too aware, the Canuck bad asses may not be allowed to come out and play. They are great warriors and we need them on the team.
#17
50 soldiers, led by the SAS, including men from 1 Bn the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines, as well as American and Canadian special forces
That's one hell of a rescue squad.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/25/2006 12:55
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#18
What chaps my hide is that men like Colin Powell or the recently lamented Desmond Doss are more "anti-war" than these Judas-loving filthpig Nazi supporters.
"Woe to those who call good evil, and evil good."
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
03/25/2006 15:19
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#19
Perhaps, after four months with them, their captors wanted them to be found.
#20
Canada has a new conservative government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent two days this month visiting the troops in Kandahar. So I am not surprised to hear JTF-2 is in Iraq.
Harper said Friday in an interview on CTV that it's hard for him to comprehend why some Canadians have such deep-rooted objections to the military mission in Afghanistan.
Harper was asked by an interviewer: "Do you understand the Canadians who feel passionately that they (Canadian soldiers) shouldn't be there?"
Harper paused briefly and responded, "You know, in a way, I don't. In this case, I'm not sure what the case would be for not being there."
When it was suggested that people oppose the mission because it's not Canada's war, Harper quickly interjected.
"But it is our war. The entire world signed on to this mission."
UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen met Lebanese officials on Friday and offered support to national talks aimed at forging a deal over Hizbollah guerrillas that the Security Council wants disarmed. "For the first time the Lebanese are sitting down together without international or third parties and discussing independently and domestically all the difficult issues facing Lebanon," Roed-Larsen said on arrival at Beirut airport late on Thursday. "Every single difficult issue is on the table."
The Norwegian diplomat is due to present a report next month on progress in the implementation of Security Council resolution 1559, which demands that foreign troops leave Lebanon and the militias in the country disarm.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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BBWWAAAAHAA! NRA members will voluntarily disarm before "The Party of God" does same...
The top U.N. lawyer virtually ruled out on Thursday the idea that a special court to try suspects in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri could be located inside Lebanon. "There is a broad perception that for the tribunal to effectively perform what is expected, it is extremely difficult that it would be located on the territory of Lebanon," said U.N. Legal Counsel Nicolas Michel. A number of factors would be taken into account in deciding the court's location, he said, including "security of the judges, of the witnesses, of the accused and the perceived impartiality of the tribunal."
Yeah, we'd probably lose count of the number of exploding cars within a week...
Michel spoke to reporters after briefing the Security Council on the state of planning for the new tribunal. The 15-nation council may vote next Wednesday on a resolution authorizing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to begin formal negotiations with Beirut on establishment of the court, Argentine Ambassador Cesar Mayoral, the council president for March, told Reuters.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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#1
I hear Carla del Ponte's available.
Posted by: Jans Snomble4884 ||
03/25/2006 1:24
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nope, she's still gathering mounds and mounds of papers for the 1000 year Black Robe Document Inquisition.
Palestinian fighters on Friday attacked an Israeli army patrol with machine guns in northern Gaza Strip. A spokesperson for the Israeli occupation forces told the Israeli radio that none of the soldiers was wounded in the attack.
Worked well, huh?
Meanwhile, the spokesperson said the Israeli forces arrested a Palestinian citizen from Gaza Strip after infiltrating into Israel, noting that the Palestinian entered Israel by jumping over the border wall north of Gaza Strip. The source did not mention whether the Palestinian was armed or not, but said he was turned in to Israeli security authorities for interrogation.
Meanwhile, the Brigades of Al-Aqsa Martyrs, the military arm of Fateh movement, announced responsibility for firing two missiles toward Ashkelon in southern Israel on Friday. The brigades said in a statement that the missiles hit their targets accurately, noting that the attack came in response to the Israeli assassination of two members of Al-Quds Brigades on Thursday. The statement revealed that a group of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades survived an Israeli shelling attack on Friday night in northern Gaza Strip and Sifa area. The statement added that the group was attacked after firing missiles on Ashkelon from a vacant land formerly known as Dugit settlement.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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just a hunch..the paleos will soon be enjoying a rather large can of whoop ass.
Tehran, Iran, Mar. 24 Islamist hardboyz militiamen affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have launched military exercises near the Iraqi border to deal with possible unrest, Irans official news agency IRNA reported.
Members of the paramilitary Bassij force staged military exercises in the western town of Dehloran. The paramilitary forces attacked dummy enemy sites during the operation. The objective of the military exercises here is to raise the level of readiness of the Bassij forces, said Alireza Bazdar, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Dehloran. Our forces were able to capture the positions taken by the enemy and destroy the enemy forces.
This will help us prepare ourselves to deal with possible outbreaks of unrest with force and determination, Bazdar said.
The Revolutionary Guards and the Bassij have been staging a series of military and security exercises in Tehran and its suburbs since February so as to keep all the locals properly cowed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2006
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#1
Add some realism. Strafe them with Warthogs.
Posted by: Jans Snomble4884 ||
03/25/2006 0:19
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#2
"The paramilitary forces attacked dummy enemy sites" ....inflatable dolls.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006 1:13
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#3
"...were able to capture the positions taken by the enemy and destroy the enemy forces.
They pulled the plugs, and all the air fizzled out!
#5
I just love it when countries like this give us a preview of their intended tactics. Assuming they are stupid enough a) to do so and b) to think it matters.
#6
Reminds me of a Warner Bros cartoon where the protagonist (can't remember who it was) taunts a dog as he walks behind the apparent safety of a fence, only to find out that the fence ends.
Concern was growing Friday afternoon for the fate of between 15-20 people missing after a violent explosion shook the Chemical Superior Studies Faculty in the eastern French city of Mulhouse shortly after midday, security and radio reports said.
Rescue teams were still working frantically to dig through the rubble of the building, which caught fire after the ground-floor explosion, whose origin has not been established. One person has been confirmed dead and one injured in the blast, but around 150 others are being treated for minor injuries, "France Info" radio reported.
Earlier fire service official said they feared there would be many victims as a result of the blast. Mulhouse security services have implemented the emergency "Red Plan," which mobilizes all available medical and rescue services for the faculty blast.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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Over 18 militants and an army soldier were killed on Friday in a military operation in North Waziristan tribal agency bordering Afghanistan, launched following a militant attack on a military checkpost, officials said. Suspected Islamist militants fired dozens of rockets at a military checkpost in Data Khel area of North Waziristan agency, security officials told KUNA. They said rocket attacks killed one soldier and critically wounded five others. Officials said following rockets attack, troops with the support of a gunship helicopter launched the operation against the militants. They bombed the militants' hideouts in the surrounding mountains, officials said, adding that the operation killed at least 18 militants and wounded over a dozen others.
This operation came one day after President General Pervez Musharraf warned foreign militants in Waziristan of harsher action. The president said militants hiding there were violating the sovereignty of the country and held them responsible for spreading terrorism. "I warn them that they should quit Pakistan or we'll kill them all." The president said those supporting them would also not be allowed to live in Pakistan. "We'll eliminate terrorists and extremists."
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03/25/2006
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Unknown gunmen on Friday opened fire on Palestinian National Council Member Mohammad Abu Samra, leaving him with moderate to serious wounds. Palestinian security sources said Abu Samra, 45, who is no longer member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, was attacked while in his car east of Rafah city, southern Gaza Strip. Abu Samra, who was previously deported for several years from Gaza Strip to Lebanon by Israel, is leader of the Palestinian Islamic movement. Palestinian medical sources said Abu Samra was shot several times in the lower part of his body.
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Iran is racing ahead with it's date with Armageddon preparations to enrich uranium as the big powers struggle to decide on their next moves aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis surrounding the country. Las Vegas bookies are openning a betting line on if sane, middle of the roaders will take contol from the mad mullahs before the MOABs hit. Right now there set at 4 to 1 against.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, charged with investigating Iran's nuclear programme, say that the Iranians are assembling and making operational dozens of centrifuge machines for enriching uranium at their vast complex in Natanz south of Tehran. Surprise meter reading zero.
According to diplomats, the Iranians are in the process of achieving a "technological leap" by making operational a cascade of 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium for power plants or warheads. A fortnight ago they were known to have assembled only 34 centrifuges. They are believed to be rushing to assemble dozens more at a time when western negotiations with Tehran have collapsed and big power attempts to develop a coherent policy are deadlocked. They can make a technological leap...but can they leap a mushroom cloud?
"The Iranians are pushing ahead, marking out their intentions clearly," said a European diplomat. Another added: "It will be almost impossible to get them to give up, to come back down to zero." I'd say that's not entirely accurate. Once Israel decides to kick the living s**t of Iran...the only black hats that will be left will be charred.
For the first time in almost three years of dispute, the Iranian issue was passed from the IAEA in Vienna to the UN security council in New York this month. But talks this week among the permanent five security council members are deadlocked, with the Russians balking at what they see as US and European attempts to start a process that will lead to sanctions and possibly military action against Iran. Blah, blah, blah. BORE-ING.
The five powers - the US, Russia, China, France and Britain - are trying to agree a security council statement ordering Iran to restore a freeze on its uranium enrichment activities within a fortnight. The draft also terms Iran's nuclear programmes "a threat to international peace and security" - language that could later be used to trigger economic sanctions and even military intervention. Yup. That'll scare 'em into submission.
"The deadlines outlined in the proposed draft are quite categorical and provide a foundation for sanctions against Iran. We consider it all premature," said the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, yesterday. Premature? Ya think the Ruskies are scared that the West will take complete control of the Middle Eastern battlespace?
The Russians and the Chinese want the dispute handled by the IAEA, but the Americans are determined to keep it with the security council, and want the IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, to report directly to the council as soon as possible. I hear a vested interest.
The operation of 164 centrifuges would leave Iran able to process only minute volumes of uranium. But experts and diplomats say the real value lies in the know-how acquired in running highly delicate machinery. The Iranians appear determined to configure six rigs of 164 centrifuges at Natanz for what they call a "pilot enrichment plant". They have also told UN inspectors they intend to assemble 3,000 centrifuges by the end of the year. This is not going to go on forever...and 1000's of innocent folks are going to die because of it. Send your thanks ahead of time to the mad mullahs.
#1
WINDS OF CHANGE and other blogs have info both that Iran already has nukes, or is highly likely that it does but wants to keep things hush-hush.
Will say again the Mullahs want not only nukes but world-verified, world-protected Iran-centric Empire, Regional + Global - we either give them what they want, or its death to everyone and terra firma, by any means necessary.
No new facts here, but this is the story as reported by Kuwaiti state news in English.
Pressure is mounting on Afghan government in face of the trial of a convert as majority of ulema (religious scholars) seek death sentence for him while the international community, including the United States is pressing hard for his release. Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who returned from Germany, is likely to be awarded death sentence by the court for his conversion to Christianity. Abdul Rahman was arrested by Afghan police after his family members reported he had been converted to Christianity.
Majority of ulema say he must be awarded death sentence. However, the government is dilly-dallying to get more time to allay the international pressure mostly from Afghanistan's allies and supporters, including Germany and the United States. Ansarullah Maulvizada, judge of the court where Abdul Rahman case is being heard, said the accused had confessed the crime before the court during his initial trial; however, his lawyer said his client was mentally upset. In a chat with KUNA, the judge said Abdul Rahman's confession would prove the case against him and he can face death penalty because conversion is neither allowed in Islam nor under Afghanistan's laws.
The sharia (Islamic law) states that Muslim who converts to other religion should be subjected to death sentence. The case, the first of its type in the history of Afghanistan, had placed the Afghan government between a rock and a hard place. Being a tribal society and religious minded people, majority of Afghans are angry at the conversion of Abdul Rahman and they want him to be given the extreme punishment to avoid repetition such incidents in future. However, on the other hand, Afghanistan's most reliable allies, including President George Bush had recently voiced concern over the 'persecution' of the man and asked for his release.
Both internal and external pressure exerting on the government from opposite directions is proving a test for the Afghan government. Analysts believe, if the matter was raised in the parliament, where majority of the MPs are religious-minded people, would create more problems for the government because the parliamentarians too, would recommend the same treatment to him as being demanded by the people of this Central Asian country.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006 0:46
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#2
I read the tone of the article as the Kuwaitis agreeing with the Afghans, but recognize the need to appease the powerful kufr... for so long as their attention is turned in that direction. Not good.
#3
Overwhelming agreement that Islam demands the death of any muslim who attempts to refuse to submit. That islam is the religion of extreme intolerance -to leave the cult is to die.
Rahman will be killed. They have to. Otherwise he becomes proof that escape is possible. That choice is possible and that refusing to submit does not lead to death. Rahman cannot be allowed to leave either - this is also escape. It's escaping to freedom, which terrifies the MM. Death for not submitting to their demands is their ace card. Even the most moderate muslim believes that to abandon islam is to die - only those who jump the hurdle and realize it doesn't can separate their religion from an embraced freedom of rights and secular law.
The MM in Afghanistan (and other muslim countries watching this carefully) fear that if Rahman lives or escapes, a mass exodus from islam will follow. Their power of death disappears.
I love the quotes around "persecution". Nice touch - even more fully revealing about the ugly intolerance of islam. And so proudly and publicly stated.
#8
Perhaps so. We may yet find ourselves pushed into acts of great violence - acts which carry moral taint (like the firebombing of Dresden) but which we find to be the lesser of two evils.
#9
It takes a hell of a lot of hard lessons for Americans, and others of western culture, to realize what we're dealing with. A lost cause. We did all the wrong things in Afganistan. This was a perfect place to apply a lasting lesson for the ummah. Would have saved taxpayers billions, and thousands od American casualties..both dead and wounded. We should have affirmed Bin Laden's presence. We did. Then several consecutive hydrogen bombs on top of his location until the top of the mountain was gone and everything within hundreds of square miles well irradiated so that nothing would survive there for many decades.
#10
I hear you and I understand your position. But for my own part, I think that the use of strategic nukes at that point would have been so disproportionate to the 9/11 attack that most Americans would recoil from any use of military or political influence for decades to come.
I think we're stuck with a long slog against Islamacists. It's deeply unsatisfying and it is not without dangers, as we see in Iraq -- we could fail. But until we are hit with 10 or 100 times the casualties we took on 9/11, or until we stop an attack that would create such casualties, I just don't see the support for that degree of response.
#11
This Abdul Rahman affair is another data point-- along with the Danish Cartoon flap-- that strongly suggests our "Islamic Democracy Initiative" is not likely to make much of a dent in Islam's violent tendencies.
I still support what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan; to me there's a significant moral difference between saying "It'll never work" and saying "It doesn't work; we know, because we tried it."
But I'm losing hope, and at this point I really doubt we're going to reap the kind of benefits Bush & Co. hoped for when we began this enterprise.
I think we're going to have to go medieval on 'em.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2006 11:46
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#12
Could be. But don't forget Condi Rice's assessment: this is a generational struggle. I'd hate to see the typical American impatience cause us to give up prematurely -- if only because of the effects on American politics and opinion afterwards.
#13
Assume for the sake of discussion Rahman doesn't get out alive. Assume he is murdered by the Afghani gov't or, if released, is murdered by a muslim on the street before Rahman can get to safety (which is saying he was murdered by the gov't).
What would be (or what should) be the response of the Coalition? What are your thoughts and comments?
Posted by: Mark Z ||
03/25/2006 12:58
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#14
Mark, In response to your hypothetical, I think the response of the Coalition should be to continue the current policy. We've had lots of nasty allies before and will again. Would we be better off leaving Afghanistan to the Imams, Persians and Pakis?
There will be an election in a relatively few months. If we are to change our policy because of the death of this one man, let's do so after an exhaustive public debate and decision.
I expect the next turn in the road to be pretty awful. The death of one Afghani who converted from Islam to Christianity may be an important marker on the road, but not enough to justify a u-turn.
#16
Per your scenario, Mark Z, it would be symbolic dynamite. It will be used and abused by almost everyone.
The easiest prediction is media screeching that Afghanistan is a disaster, Bush policy is a disaster, that it proves Bush is incompetent, lol, per the current Democrat meme masturbator incubator. I hear quagmire memery. It will certainly put the State Dept Multiculturalists on the defensive, where they belong, but for craven political reasons. Circus Maximus.
In short, I think it would be a disaster for many interest groups, some deserving, and knock the US out of the nation-building business... something I feel is always a losing proposition where Islam is a component, anyway. But at a tragic price. I'd much rather fight that battle on other grounds.
Of course, it will be nothing compared to Rahman's loss.
#17
I think people have unrealistic expectations about what we can accomplish in Afghanistan, without putting large chunks - if not the majority - of the population to the sword. We're not there to give the tiny fraction of Afghan converts religious freedom. We're there to fight terrorists. We did not give the Soviets a hard time about their gulags while we were fighting WWII. And as long as al Qaeda and the Taliban remain a threat in Afghanistan, I'm not going to worry too much about an Afghan Christian getting executed.
Is this hypocrisy? No more hypocritical than a liberal who believes in charity, but doesn't hand over his entire paycheck to the United Way. Our foreign policy has to balance competing demands - on the one hand, we don't want to alienate the vast majority of Afghan Muslims (probably 99%) who believe that it is a sin not to execute apostates, and risk a revival of the Taliban, and on the other, we'd like to save one man from what we feel to be a grotesque fate. What will benefit Americans more? Probably acquiescing to the second. This, too, is a matter of principle - the principle that our foreign policy personnel need to take into account more often - that American lives should take precedence over the lives of foreigners, just as liberals put their children into the best schools they can afford instead using those funds to set up scholarships for poor inner-city students.
#18
"Assume for the sake of discussion Rahman doesn't get out alive. [...] What would be (or what should) be the response of the Coalition?"
I think the most appropriate response is simply to make it clear to the Afghanis (indeed, to all Muslims), in the starkest possible terms and at as many levels of contact as are available, that the American people find this kind of religious intolerance profoundly repugnant; that shariah or no shariah, we believe killing people simply because of their religious beliefs is just plain wrong; and when we see the new democratic government of Afghanistan acquiescing to this sort of barbarity it makes us wonder whether our nation-building efforts have been for nought.
I don't know that there's anything more we can do beyond that, other than taking a cold, hard look at whether this "Islamic Democracy" experiment is worth continuing anywhere else.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2006 14:36
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#19
This is a mere sideshow in the unholy circus that is Islam. How many Christians and Jews will Islam kill once the Iranian ulema have a nuke and 50,000 centrifuges spinning away, making more enriched uranium daily? How many Christians and Jews will die if there are simultaneous nuclear attacks on major western port cities?
#20
OK, ZF, we're in Afghanistan to fight terrorists. We should keep doing that.
But everything else comes to the minimum. Every penny of reconstruction money better be accounted for; anyone pulling any shit with our soldiers, dies; we make it clear that we're perfectly willing to leave and just bomb the shit out of the place if they cause us any problems.
It would cost them, what, to leave Abdul Rahman alone? Absolutely nothing -- not in cash, not in pride, not in their religious faith. They could just shrug and say, "Well, he chose otherwise. We disagree, but we're all free men." Instead, they want to kill him.
So let's say they kill him, and we just ignore it. What's that say about US dedication to freedom? What does that say to people all over the damned world about the depth of our belief in what we claim to live for and by?
It says it's shit. It says we'll roll over for the ummah, that we're dhimmi, and that nobody can count on us anywhere, anyplace, for any reason.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/25/2006 17:15
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#21
RC: So let's say they kill him, and we just ignore it. What's that say about US dedication to freedom? What does that say to people all over the damned world about the depth of our belief in what we claim to live for and by? It says it's shit. It says we'll roll over for the ummah, that we're dhimmi, and that nobody can count on us anywhere, anyplace, for any reason.
You're right - by your logic, we should have stopped Lend Lease aid to the Soviets to protest their continuing use of gulags and mass executions of regime opponents during WWII, instead of waiting until after the war. During the Cold War, we should have stopped aid to South Korea right after the Korean War because the Koreans were assassinating suspected communists and suppressing the domestic opposition. In 1965, we should have stopped aid to Indonesia for conducting a genocidal campaign, led by Muslim activists, against a large-scale Communist insurrection that led to hundreds of thousands of dead.
This is nuts. We need to fight one battle at a time. We finished fighting the Nazis before taking on the Soviets. We finished facing off with the Soviets before pushing our Cold War allies towards democracy.
As far as I'm concerned, the fates of Abdul Rahman, and every other apostate in Afghanistan put together, are not worth the bones of a single American soldier. We're not there to make Afghanistan safe for apostates - we're there to fight terrorists. We're 4-1/2 years into the Terror War, and still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Cold War lasted 40+ years. I don't think we need to be alienating the population of a key ally in the War on Terror. The Soviets riled the Afghans up by trying to impose their values on them, and got themselves a decade-long guerrilla war. We don't need to get Afghans worked up again by trying to impose *our* values on them. Remember - the reason our losses were so light was because we did not have to fight the entire Afghan nation.
An army in occupation needs to be respectful of native customs - especially one where the main force is a skeleton force strung out all over the country and depends on aerial resupply. Sir Napier's proscription of suttee (widow-burning) is commonly referred to as an example of what an occupying power can accomplish in civilizing the natives. The counter-example is the Sepoy Mutiny, where thousands of British troops were killed after a revolt touched off by the mere *rumor* that the rifle cartridges used by native troops contained lard or tallow, which offended both Muslims and Hindus alike. And then, of course, there is the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
#22
We should make a trade for Rhaman, in return Afghanistan can have three CPT activists and future considerations.
Posted by: john ||
03/25/2006 19:30
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#23
One battle at a time? Sharia in Afghanistan is different from teh Sharia fight in Iraq and Iran and....jeebus ZF! It's a world-wide clash of ideals and civilizations. Your focus on China is welcome (although I don't always buy it), but this is THE GAME we've been forced to play. One fight at a time sounds like a DNC talking point, after they cut the military in the post-cold war. We have larger attention spans, more we could be doing, and I trust Rumsfeld and W to do all things at once with priorities and committments as needed
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2006 19:34
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#24
The apostate issue is very dangerous to Islam.
As noted elsewhere, if this apostate doesn't die, it may result in lots of other apostates.
However, the death to apostate rule is the basis of the takfiri doctrine that allows a muslim to who has declared another muslim as an infidel or heretic or apostate or polytheist to kill that second muslim without trial, witnesses or warning.
#25
RC: One fight at a time sounds like a DNC talking point, after they cut the military in the post-cold war. We have larger attention spans, more we could be doing, and I trust Rumsfeld and W to do all things at once with priorities and committments as needed
One battle at a time isn't a DNC talking point - it's exactly what WWII strategists did - they did not set out to fight the Axis Powers and the Soviets simultaneously. The initial hope was to get them to fight each other. That failed initially, but they ended up fighting each other anyway. The object of the Afghan occupation should be to balance Pashtun against Tajik and Hazara against Pashtun in order to prevent them from uniting against Uncle Sam. If all of them unite against Uncle Sam, we are going to need more than one division to pacify Afghanistan - the Soviets had 90,000 men in-country, never held more than a few cities and fought for 10 years before throwing in the towel.
Note that Afghanistan is surrounded by Muslim countries that are now friendly or neutral. If they become hostile due to our insistence on cramming apostasy down Muslim throats, we are going to need a draft to keep them all down. Except Afghanistan alone is several times the size of Vietnam. Vietnam is what we encountered when the neighboring states were hostile. If China and Russia decide to start supplying a hostile Afghanistan via these suddenly hostile neighboring Muslim states the way they supplied the Vietnamese Communists via South Vietnam's neighbors, we are going to see a couple of dozen dead GI's every day.
I guess this isn't a problem if you envision a WWII type mobilization, when 10% of the population (29m males) are drafted and 50% of annual GDP is devoted to defense expenditures. But are you really thrilled at the prospect of personally having to risk your life fighting strangers in distant lands? Note that if we do this, our economy is going to be trashed when it's all over - the exact opposite of what happened in WWII. The Europeans and the Japanese will be sitting pretty, while we'll be facing the usual postwar recession - for the simple reason that their infrastructure will be intact, whereas ours will be geared towards war production and conquering vast tracts of the Middle East. We will have lost years of production while their industries purred along.
From our friends at MEMRI: please visit the link for the full interview on Dubai TV. Another frank Muslim speaks out. I've just included his final remarks. Worth the full read.
Like the Sumerians, Greeks, and Pharaohs; If the Arabs are So Inept They Cannot Be Democratic, External Intervention Will Not Make Them So
The poet Ali Ahmad Sa'id (b. 1930), known by his pseudonym "Adonis," a 2005 candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, left his native Syria for Lebanon in the 1950s following six months' imprisonment for political activity. In 1973, he received his Ph.D. from St. JosephUniversity in Beirut; in 1985, he settled in Paris, where he now works as a writer and literary critic. Among other occupations, he has edited the modernist magazine Mawaqif (Viewpoints), and translated some of the great French poets into Arabic.
The following are excerpts from an interview with Syrian poet "Adonis," aired on Dubai TV on March 11, 2006.
"The Muslims today - forgive me for saying this - with their accepted interpretation [of the religious text], are the first to destroy Islam, whereas those who criticize the Muslims - the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them - are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers."
The scales are tipping . More cartoons, more condemned Christians, more ripping off the masks and revealing Islamism for what it is. Weve got to keep the foaming nuts rampaging in the streets, in full media view, awhile longer yet. Keep forcing them to face the mirror. More and more muslim intellectuals like Adonis will hopefully help poke them along to sanity.
#1
English speaking Indians don't claim an English identity. So why would Arabic speaking Assyrians claim Arab status? Or Berbers? Or Phonecians? Or Egyptians? Or Sudanese? The answer is that Arabs are a supremacist race. The fact that they are near the bottom of the human pool, doesn't deter their arrogance.
Objectivity dictates: those who identify themselves as Arabs contribute absolutely nothing to the philosophical-technological basis of global culture. The suicide-bomb belt is the only innovation, that an Arab has produced (even there, Sri Lankan Tamils claim first use).Every idea that an "Arab" claims as a heritage notion, is pilfered from the dynamic, non-plundering states. I would rather step in dog crap than visit any country run by the supremacist parasites who raise the "Arab" flag of shame. I would only enter one of those basket cases, as a harsh, kick-ass occupier with a hair triggered rifle and the will to use it pre-emptively.
I agree, they really are supremicist. Interesting that the lowest of society wind up adopting that position. For example, I find it hard to believe that some uneducated, unemployed skinhead is, by any reasonable measure of a civilized society, in any way superior to me. Yet he firmly believes he is.
Similarly, a society that has no significant cultural, medical or scientific accomplishments in the modern world, that does not question itself, that celebrates the death of others as some sort of victory (and even of other arabs) -- well, I find it hard to believe there is anything superior about that society. Yet they believe they are.
#3
In the past few days, I've noted the flight of conversion away from Islam to mostly Christianity. However, I suspect that the Arabic intelligensia are starting to seriously consider departing en masse.
All that is needed is a "safe country" in the region, where a community of ex-Moslem ex-pats can assemble and live in relative safety, away from the Moslem enforcers.
#4
All that is needed is a "safe country" in the region, where a community of ex-Moslem ex-pats can assemble and live in relative safety, away from the Moslem enforcers.
A secular country, in a centralized location, with a variety of ethnic groups, large enough to absorb an influx of high value immigrants, under the protection of an out of region superpower. That's a great strategery. Let me think...
#5
Anonymoose:
Do you work with anyone with "Arabic" or Iranian origins? Many celebrate their abandonment of Islam. World Net Daily once reported over 300,000 converts to Christianity among the Iranian-American community. I don't trust WND, but that statistic could be accurate.
WASHINGTON - Human Rights Watch called Friday on Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to halt blatant intimidation of human rights workers after Damascus authorities arrested four activists in the past week. The New York-based group said that, in an escalating crackdown, Syrian security forces arrested human rights activist Ali Al Abdullah and one of his sons Thursday, after arresting another of his sons the week earlier.
On Wednesday, Muhammad Najati Tayyara, the former vice president of the Human Rights Association in Syria, was detained and held 14 hours before being released. President Bashar Al Assad should immediately free Ali Al Abdullah and his sons and order his security forces to halt this blatant intimidation of human rights activists, Joe Stork, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
HRW said the most recent arrests were part of a pattern of increased harassment of human rights activists in Syria.
So occasionally HRW is useful.
Earlier State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement that The United States is concerned by the Syrian governments increased repression of democracy and human rights activists.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2006
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Five worshippers were killed and 17 wounded when a bomb planted near the back door of the Saad Ben Abi Waqqas mosque in the town of Al-Khales, of the Diyalah province, northeast of Baghdad. A security source told KUNA the explosion rocked the mosque at the end of the Friday prayer and that a young boy was among the victims. In another development, police said that Multi-National Forces and Iraqi army troops and policemen, in a joint operation, arrested 30 people suspected of carrying out terror acts in the Huweija district, west of the northern city of Kirkuk.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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#1
I'm sorry, sink trap or no I just can't help but think
"It's about damn time a bomb went off at a Mosque, More please, as many as there are Mosques."
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2006 19:10
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The Hudood Ordinance has not been effective in controlling crimes falling under its ambit, concluded a report by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). The number of registered cases shows that the number of Hudood-related crimes has not decreased, the report added. According to the CII report, 361,035 cases were registered during the last five years under the Hudood Ordinance. As many as 75, 943 cases were registered in 2001 and 82,545 in 2002. Similarly 67,063 cases were registered in 2003 and 77,420 in 2004. However, the number of cases registered under the Hudood Ordinance by the end of August 2005 was 58,064, the report said.
In 2001, people were convicted in 47,518 cases while 13,266 were acquitted. In 2002, 46,874 were convicted and 12,753 acquitted. Similarly, 44,146 people were convicted and 16,748 were acquitted in 2003. At least 36,511 were convicted and 13,212 acquitted in 2004. However, 18,776 people were convicted and 5,904 acquitted in 2005 by August.
On the other hand, the number of cases registered under Zina Ordinance has also increased during the last five years and the rate of conviction in Zina cases remained low compared to acquittal rates, the report said. In 2001, at least 356 people were convicted while 1,123 acquitted. In 2002, as many as 388 people were convicted and 1,320 acquitted. Similarly, 316 people were convicted while 1,318 acquitted in 2003 and 345 were convicted and 1093 acquitted in 2004. At least 127 people were convicted and 533 acquitted in 2005 up to August, the report said. The report further said 1,501 Zina cases had been registered so far which were pending in different courts.
The report said that the ordinance had remained controversial since its enforcement with a considerable critical literature questioning the punishment of Rjam, ambiguity about Zina-bil-Jabr, traditional criminal procedure and definition and identification of Hudood crimes. The report said that there are three schools of thought about the ordinance. There were those who wanted to retain the status quo, those who wanted it be repealed and those who welcomed amendments. Those who favoured status quo argued that Hudood laws were divine and only westernised elements of Pakistani society were seeking its repeal. Others argued that Hudood laws were not divine and were framed by jurists.
Posted by: Fred ||
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London, Mar. 24 The international human rights group Amnesty International expressed concern over the possible arrest of two young Arab boys and three Arab women one of whom is pregnant in the south-western volatile city of Ahwaz, fearing that they may face torture and ill-treatment.
So Amnesty and HRW both get something right on the same day. Zounds.
Masoumeh Kabi, aged 28, the wife of prominent political activist Habib Nabgan, was arrested along with the couples four-year-old son Imad at their home in the early hours of February 27, Amnesty said in a statement issued on Thursday. Their four other children, aged between six and 13, and Habib Nabgans mother, were also arrested but were released the following day. Masoumeh Kabi and Imad have reportedly been held at the Sepidar detention centre in Ahwaz since March 8. Habib Nabgan, who has fled the country, has received threats that his family will be tortured or killed if he does not return to Iran, the group said.
Soghra Khudayrawi and her four-year-old son Zeidan were reportedly arrested in Ahwaz on March 7. Her husband, Khalaf Derhab Khudayrawi, is said to be wanted by the authorities in connection with his political activities, Amnesty said.
Sakina Naisi, a mother of five, was reportedly arrested in Ahwaz on February 27 along with her 19-year-old son Nahez and taken to the Sepidar detention centre. Nahez was reportedly released after about 10 days in detention. Sakina Naisi is three months pregnant and reportedly suffers from asthma, the statement added. Her husband, Ahmad Naisi, a prominent political activist, is said to be wanted by the authorities. Following Sakina Naisis arrest, the Iranian authorities reportedly destroyed her husbands family home in the Shoaybiyeh district of Ahwaz with bulldozers.
Amnesty International believes all five are very likely to be prisoners of conscience held solely in order to force their husbands and fathers to give themselves up to the Iranian authorities. As such they should be released immediately and unconditionally, the statement said.
Ahwaz, the capital of the Arab-dominated province of Khuzestan, has been the scene of unremitting anti-government protests since the start of 2005. Iran has pointed the finger at Britain as the primary instigator of anti-government violence in Khuzestan.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/25/2006
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#4
They're all families of political activists, no doubt connected in some way to AI. If it was the family of Habib Nasi, a pistachio grower, you wouldn't hear a peep.
The ruling Zanu PF yesterday called for the detention of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for allegedly inciting violent protests aimed at overthrowing President Robert Mugabe, charging the mass action call constituted treason. The agitation in Zanu PF came as opposition leaders urged the nation's soldiers and police to disobey orders to crush any show of dissent against the government.
The time has now come for the security forces to make that historic choice of either being with the people or against them, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
The MDC spokesman, who was elected unopposed at the partys historic congress held weekend, said nonpartisan troops had nothing to fear under any new government, but warned that those who had been perpetrators of violence against ordinary Zimbabweans for expressing their democratic rights would be arrested, tried and jailed.
Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi accused Tsvangirai of trying to cause unrest and civil commotion under the guise of fighting for political rights. Mohadis call follows another threat from the ruling Zanu PF party to Tsvangirai calling on him to desist from advocating war following his call for mass protests. The MDC has shook Mugabe's government with the threat for fresh protests to push Mugabe out of power. Mohadi said the MDC was led by punch-drunk puppets sponsored by the West to subvert Zimbabwe's national sovereignty.
Tsvangirai warned President Mugabe, charging the dictator must brace himself for a long, bustling winter across the country. The former trade union leader called on more than 15 000 supporters at a weekend conference to take part in a sustained cold season of peaceful democratic resistance. But Mohadi warned that the government would crush any protests.
Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) Ehsar members Arifur Rahman Hasib alias Akash and Jahirul Islam alias Zahir have confessed to their involvement in bomb blasts in Gazipur on November 29 and on August 17 respectively. They gave confessional statements before First Class Magistrate Hasanul Matin in Tangail under Section 164 on Wednesday. In Sherpur, JMB district commander Mujahidul Islam Sumon was placed on three days' fresh remand when he was produce before court on Thursday on expiry of his 10-day remand.
Akash of Chackpara village in Sreepur upazila in Mirzapur district was arrested in Chittagonj. He was shown arrested in Tangail after police, acting on his confession, on February 1 arrested Jahir and JMB cadres Shahadat Hossen alias Imran from Namasola village in Kaliakair upazila in Gazipur district and Mahmudur Rahman alias Russel from Asgana village in Mirzapur upazila in Tangail and recovered two grenades along with four detonators and 33 lead splinters from a bush near Russel's house. On the same day, SI Tapash Chandra Pandit of Mirzapur police station in Tangail and SI Shakil Ahmed of Gazipur Sadar police filed two cases accusing the five militants. Akash admitted that he took part in bomb blasts at Gazipur Bar Association office on November 29.
Jahir confessed to his involvement in the August 17 serial bomb blasts at Gazipur road-intersection last year. Jahir told the court that he was recruited by Gazipur JMB commander Nizam Uddin Reza and become an Ehsar member of JMB within few days. Reza is also a charge sheeted accused in Gazipur bomb blast case.
Earlier, Imran and Russel in confessions before a magistrate court under Section 164 said they got bombs from Reza and blasted those in Gazipur on August 17. Reza is yet to be arrested. Police said they are hunting for Reza hailing fromf Mollarhat upazila in Bagerhat district. Imran and Russel said they were students of Kaliakair Senior Fazil Madrasa.
Quoting the arrested JMB cadres, sources in Gazipur and Tangail police said militants were trained in 14 dens in Tangail and Gazipur districts. These were in Asgana, Kanchanpur, Taktarchala, Kalian, Namasola, Ashulia, Bhati Khalpar, Media, Solai, Rashidpur, Mazidpur, and Telina villages in Mirzapur and Sakhipur upazilas in Tangail district and Kaliakair upazila in Gazipur. They said JMB leader Enayetullah alias Jewel, arrested from Joydevpur with a huge quantity of bomb making materials few months back, had recruited a large number of militants from the areas, staying at a rented house at Balla in Kalihati upazila in Tangail district. Jwel hailed from Kotalipara upazila in Gopalganj district.
In Sherpur, arrested Sumon told interrogators that he was an aide to JMB kingpin Abdur Rahman. He was arrested from Gourdar village in Nokla upazila in Tangail on March 12. Police said they got important information from Sumon but declined to give details for the shake of investigation.
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03/25/2006
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For all of you who are as lazy as I was until just a moment ago: an upazila is a non-urban sub-district, formerly called a thana.
Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) chief executive of an upazila (sub-district), a newly created post in accordance with a decision made by the military regime of General hussain muhammad ershad. In 1982, the Ershad government constituted a committee for administrative reorganisation and reform. One of the major recommendations of the committee was to have a representative body called upazila parishad (council) under a directly elected chairman. The government did accept this recommendation and accordingly a post, designated first as thana nirbahi officer (thana executive officer) but later renamed as upazila nirbhahi officer (UNO), was created in each of the existing thanas (later upgraded and renamed as upazila) outside the metropolitan areas. About the same time all the existing subdivisions were upgraded and converted into districts. Responsibilities for all development activities at local level were transferred to the upazila parishads. It was also decided that the UNO should continue to act as chairman of upazila parishad till such time an elected chairman takes office.
NEW YORK: Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, in a rare moment of self-criticism, lashed out at what he described as backward societies in the Middle East, arguing that government heavy-handedness in dealing with political opposition stemmed from the violent nature of that dissent. You ask us, Why do you oppress opposition in the Middle East? Gaddafi told attendees at a Columbia University panel discussion on democracy Thursday, speaking in Arabic during a live video appearance. Opposition in the Middle East is quite different from opposition in advanced countries. In our countries, the opposition takes the form of explosions, assassinations, killing. Because opposition in our country is different from opposition in your country. Our opposition resorts to bombs, assassinations, explosions, subversive acts, trains in military camps - in some cases before the Sept. 11th events, said Gaddafi, whose country for years was accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism. Gaddafis comments came in response to several questions by the Columbia panel asking him to comment on shortcomings in Libyan society. Gaddafi said he was proud of what he considered a complex society and what he says is the worlds only true participatory democracy.
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#1
Everytime I see a photo of that crackpot, he appears increasingly feminine. I expect to see him in a burka some day soon.
#3
Nah, he's just criticizing the rest of the Arab countries -- his country is run perfectly. And no doubt all the savants at Columbia nodded their heads wisely in response to his words.
Gaddafis comments came in response to several questions by the Columbia panel asking him to comment on shortcomings in Libyan society. Gaddafi said he was proud of what he considered a complex society and what he says is the worlds only true participatory democracy.
#4
His son's charity was responsible for contacting the Red Cross and getting Mercer and Curry rescued in Afghanistan. I think he's distancing himself from radical Islam, as intrinsically opposed to Gaddafi's preferences, but needs to keep his head and prevent a radical coup. Let him play games, but he could be a necessary ally as the African continent heats up. Maybe the US should barter for some transgender services, as we have excellent physicians.
Registration required....article posted here in its entirety
I blame George W. Bush's election for many ills, and, to that list, I can now add the fact that I have been publicly shamed for not owning a gun. My unwilling confession took place a month ago, while I was being interviewed by the right-wing radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. He asked me whether I owned a gun and whether I had ever owned a gun (in what seemed to be consciously McCarthyite language). Later, he proceeded with a lengthier inquisition into whether I had friends or relatives in the military. He asked a version of this question some half-dozen times. ("Is there anyone that you want to bring up, like your aunt or your uncle, or the guy down the street?") I volunteered that my next-door neighbor and friend is a naval reservist, but this failed to mollify him. "Do you know anyone who's been back and forth to Iraq and been deployed there?" he asked. Sadly, I was unable to produce any evidence for my defense. In the court of right-wing talk radio, I was convicted of being a blue-state elitist.
In just about any court ...
This is a very odd cultural moment we find ourselves in, where there is a stigma attached to not owning a gun or not having friends shipped out to Iraq. I share his pain. I got teased all the time for not owning a gun, and even got dinged on my work reviews because of it back in Arizona....NOT!!
This isn't a moral question; military service is obviously admirable, but knowing people who serve is no more admirable than knowing people who donate to charity. It's a cultural question. Since Bush's election, and especially since his reelection, liberals have grown painfully aware of the cultural gap with the white working class. Ya think it's finally sinking in? Nope, me neither. How DARE those peasants think for themselves!
The approved liberal posture is cringing self-flagellation. We brought the catastrophe of the Bush administration upon ourselves with our latte-sipping ways, and we must repent. Conservatives are gleefully pressing their advantage. Did you mourn Dale Earnhardt? Do you sport a mullet? Well, why not?
I rarely hear liberals lamenting these things. I visit Kos, Atrios and Political Animal occasionally, and I don't think I've ever seen a liberal who cares about Dale Earnhardt, or who blames him/herself for any cultural gap. They blame the rest of us for not being as 'smart' as them (please note the BBC-style scare quotes).
David Brooks, in his 2004 book On Paradise Drive, taunted blue-state liberals: "They can't name five nascar drivers, though stock-car races are the best-attended sporting events in the country. They can't tell a military officer's rank by looking at his insignia. They may not know what soybeans look like growing in the field." Meanwhile, The Washington Monthly has recently published cover stories on how Democrats can save hunting and win the trust of religious voters. You don't see liberals taunting nascar fans who can't name the host of "Masterpiece Theatre" ... well, at least not publically....
... or conservatives agonizing over their virtually nonexistent hemorrhaging support among intellectuals. Instead, conservatives have indulged in an orgy of reverse snobbery. Victor Davis Hanson, writing in National Review in the summer of 2004, asserted, with his usual insight, that liberals hate Bush because "he is an unapologetic twanger who likes guns, barbeques, nascar, 'the ranch,' and pick-up trucks." Actually, the pickups don't bother us, because we realize that Bush primarily rides in armor-plated limousines like most of us Democrats. But the barbequing is indeed a real sore point. Damn that barbeque-eating president!
In yet another nervous liberal attempt to placate the red-state hordes, The Washington Post recently started a blog called Red America. The blog's author, displaying a typical hair-trigger sensitivity to blue-state elitism, used his first entry to flay his Post editors for their unfamiliarity with the 1984 pro-gun action flick Red Dawn. He also proceeded to declare, "Red America's citizens are the political majority." "There they go, rubbing in the 2004 election results again!!"
WaPo managed to report the entire election without conceding this point ...
Except that the blue states accounted for more than half the population in 2000. Conservatives cope with this inconvenient fact by redefining blue states as a few urban enclaves and making a fetish of the political map, with its misleadingly large, depopulated red states. To take a typical example, a 2004 postelection Wall Street Journal column by Daniel Henninger announced triumphantly, "[I]f you adjust the map's colors for votes by county ... even the blue states turn mostly red. Pennsylvania is blue, but, between blue Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, every county in the state is red. California, except for the coastline, is almost entirely red." This is a persuasive point if you believe in the principle of one acre, one vote.
We don't, though it's a pleasing map for another reason: if the few goofy liberals who wanted to split off from our country actually did so, they'd eat for oh, about a week or so, until they realized that all the farmland was in Jesus-Land, and we weren't sharing.
But we recognize that most of the country is varying shades of purple, and for the most part reds and blues manage to live next to each other, work together, and get along just fine, until some snotty-nosed, whiny blue-bluer starts sounding off at the office water cooler or at a party. Then we red-staters are expected to grit our teeth and take it.
Tom Wolfe recently took this analysis a step further, declaring that the blue-state elites are not part of the United States of America. "They literally do not set foot in the United States. We live in New York in one of the two parenthesis states. They're usually called blue states--they're not blue states, the states on the coast. They're parenthesis states--the entire country lives in between." I wonder if Wolfe and his fellow travelers realize how much their analysis is correct? mau-mauing of blue staters is, well, Maoist. Mao, like the contemporary American right, saw his country as divided between the great virtuous, patriotic interior and the decadent, traitorous coastal cities. Intellectuals--or, in the Maoist parlance, the "stinking ninth category," a phrase so pungent and catchy I can't believe it isn't standard at Rantburg Bill O'Reilly hasn't picked it up yet--were forcibly relocated from the cosmopolitan cities to the countryside to "learn from the poor and lower middle peasants."
The contemporary GOP, thankfully, has yet to imitate this practice, but my neoconservative friend Lawrence F. Kaplan has taken it upon himself. Writing in this space last year, Kaplan described how, after a lifetime of living in New York and Washington, he moved to a small town in Virginia, where, at last, he found himself among his ideological brethren. Delighted to leave behind his "soft-handed colleagues" at The New Republic, he reported that the national spirit indeed runs deeper among these simple village folk. "Dozens of them are serving, willingly and proudly, in Iraq and Afghanistan," he wrote. "In the breadth of their civic attachments, it seems to me that they, more than most of their critics, most faithfully embody the American ideal." And these unpretentious patriots welcomed him. Sort of. After an awkward breaking-in period, Kaplan was pleased to report, "No one pinches my fiancée anymore; no one charges me $500 to change the oil in my car; cops no longer pull me over for fun." Grain production is way up, and sexual assaults, price-gouging, and state-sponsored harassment have all plummeted, thanks to the efforts of our heroic peasants. I bet San Francisco and the Upper West Side can't match those achievements.
#1
you know the Left > Dubya is despicable LeftLiberal, not to be compared to Motherly Conservative Lefties. America under Dubya-GOP is a Socialist nation nation moving towards Socialism, Communism and OWG but God help us all, the DemoLefties don NOT know how to stop it. All Clintonian Fascist = Half-a-Commie Male Brute Amerikans can and must fight and die for an American Nation, State, and Global Empire they must afterwards unilater give up = forcibly surrender to OWG and non/anti-American nations ergo vote for the Dems in 2006-2008. D*** YOU, Dubya, you FASCIST LEFTIE FEDERALIST SOCIALIST LAISSEZ FAIRE TOTALITARIAN, REPUBLICAN EMPIRE OF THE UNION OF THE CONFEDERACY DOMINION, ......@ HIDE!?
Generally speaking, it makes good medical sense to lance the boil when it gets ripe. Yeah, that great big sucker between your ears. Do it. Then the pain will go away.
Posted by: Jans Snomble4884 ||
03/25/2006 1:17
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How well I know people like this writer. I too left the stuffy conformity of their "individualism", their perfectly manicured lawns, their being "at multicultural one" with their maids and drug dealers. How suffocatingly similar they are in their piety and celebration of dysfunction.
There is a world full of interesting people out there - and while I love many people like this writer - how tired and worn out I find the repetitiveness of their one track thought. They boast of travel to everywhere but I often wonder why they bother. Is it really possible to travel the world over and see nothing but what they left behind? Sure, the food is good in France, the people in India are colorful. But they see nothing but the same thing you can see in any blue state suburb.
#4
Cultures-of-entitlement inevitably lead to deficit spending, and a politics of perpetuation of debt. And any attempt to apply the affordability principle against the entitlement, inevitably leads to civil disorder. Check out this French website for pictorial evidence of a sick culture.
#5
He wrote "...how much their mau-mauing of blue staters is, well, Maoist..."
Granted I'm just a red state bubba, but I don't understand the mixed metaphor here. Weren't the Mau-Maus Kenyan terrorists who favored the machete to engage their opponents in reasoned discourse? While Mao was the embodiment of the Totalitarian communist state? Someone help me out...
#6
Fodamage, yep, the original mau-mau were bad news. But usually when "our betters in the political classes" (their self-image, not to be confused with reality) use the term it means to loudly attack or denounce with the aim of getting your opposition to shut up.
I think he just likes the alliteration, unless it's some kind of clever allusion to the Cultural Revolution. But I think I'm being generous on that second point....
#7
As one of the redneck inhabitants of blue states, (PA, MD, MA, CA) I can state with confidence that the reference is to Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers. The Flak Catchers are government welfare workers, not military personnel of any persuasion. If you have not read this book, you will enjoy it. It shows how little the blue states have changed in some ways, but how thankful we can be for the Roe effect. Very funny.
The author totally missed (or wanted to bypass) Hewitt's point: i.e. that he was criticizing troop actions and presence in Iraq without having any first hand knowledge or a Clue(tm).
#9
I'm really starting to think that instead of waiting for the blue counties and cities to secede, we should just expel them from the Union. Outside of ports, there is very little industrial capacity left in the blue zones. Almost all of them are revenue sinks instead of revenue sources. New Orleans was a big clue. We lost a major city and the economy didn't blink. I don't think that the same would have been true if we had lost Silicon Valley or Raleigh-Durham.
The blue areas typically have European-level fertility rates and unskilled work forces. An elite of Eloi are ruling masses of unruly Morlochs. Maybe they can join the EU after we kick them out.
#10
If I recall correctly, the author was the fellow who wrote the "I don't support the troops" editorial. I think it's him because I remember Hewitt asking him things like "do you own a gun" and "do you know anyone who's in the armed services".
The guy's striking the "Oh! I'm so put upon" pose for his liberal bretheren. Nothing more to it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/25/2006 12:43
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11A5S, If you think Silicon Valley isn't blue, you'd better look at the congress critters it sends to DC, Eschoo, Lantos, Lofgren, Stark; Anti-American Commies all in my book.
#15
I dunno, NS. I'm just not as ideological as a lot of the folks here, which is one of the reasons I've curtailed my participation at Rantburg (after I was attacked for posting an article written by a (gasp!) ideologically impure author even thought the information content was good). The folks in SV are capitalists. While I admit a lot of them are leftists, I don't see them really having a lot in common with the urban elites. They might be allies. I like having allies, especially smart, laissez faire ones.
I've lived there. It's just as blue as SF. Sure, they've got TJ Rogers and the Hoover Institution, but Stanford is as blue as it gets and the SJ Merkey News is no better than the SF Comical. I agree, they ought to be allies, but they aren't. It's more of a city - country divide, and Silicon Valley is California urban.
The UN Security Council has called for faster preparations for the African Union to hand over its peacekeeping mission in Sudan's western Darfur region to the United Nations. The 15-member body unanimously adopted a resolution on Friday that also decided to extend for at least six months the mandate of the UN mission in south Sudan (UNMIS). The text directed Kofi Annan, the UN chief, working with the AU and in consultations with the council "to expedite the necessary preparatory planning for transition" from the AU force known as AMIS to a UN operation. This would include options for how UNMIS can provide transitional assistance - such as in logistics, mobility and communications.
Adam Ereli, US State Department deputy spokesman, said in Washington: "The unacceptable violence in western Darfur and on the Chad border has influenced the discussions in New York about the renewal of the UNMIS mandate in a way that we are looking to help facilitate the transition to a rehatted UN force by putting in language and procedures to strengthen that now and not have to wait for six months."
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The US military said that Operation Swarmer, the largest air raid in Iraq since the war began three years ago, resulted in no casualties among the assaulting allied troops. According to the Pentagon, the US military arrested 104 suspected insurgents for questioning as the operation wrapped up on Wednesday. The operation that focused on the Iraqi city of Samarra began last week with a helicopter that transported about 1500 US and Iraqi soldiers to the area.
A US military statement said that forces moved through the area using intelligence provided mainly by Iraqi forces and faced "light resistance." Weapons caches were found, according to the Pentagon, that included shoulder-fired missiles, more than 350 mortar rounds, a variety of bomb-making materials, over 120 rockets, nearly 90 grenades and machine guns of various types. The raid, which was planned months ago according to high level US military generals, was aimed at ridding Samarra of insurgent hideouts.
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104, eh ? there's got to be something they can accomplish while awaiting trials. How about we lock them into the cars in the Paleo neighborhood to wait for the 10 day deadline ? Give them Hamas flags to wave. Tell them Allan is coming with a group of elfs.
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) personnel in border outposts and camps have been put on high alert so that the two JMB Majlish-e-Shura members still at large cannot flee across the border. The law enforcers, particularly the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), yesterday continued their hunt for the two fleeing leaders of the banned Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)-- Khaled Saifullah and Salahuddin.
As part of the ongoing drive against the militants, police and detectives carried out a massive overnight raid on the Housing Estate in Comilla town yesterday. But it failed to arrest any member of the militant outfit or recover any explosives or firearms. During the five-hour raid in the early hours, the law enforcers picked up 33 people for quizzing. Meanwhile, interrogators continued quizzing the detained militant top brass including JMB supremo Abdur Rahman and his second-in-command Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai at the Taskforce for Interrogation (TFI) office. "Our interrogation is currently focused on potential stocks of explosives and whereabouts of the Shura members who are yet to be arrested," MA Aziz Sarkar, director general of Rab, told The Daily Star yesterday.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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Men on the run...
Posted by: Paul McCartney ||
03/25/2006 7:12
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The Russian ambassador in Baghdad provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on U.S. military movements in the first days of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, including a piece of intelligence that contributed to a key U.S. military deception effort, according to an unclassified Pentagon report released on Friday. The document, entitled "A Joint Center for Operational Analysis of a Historical Report on the Iraqi View of Coalition Military Operations Conducted in Iraq," cites an Iraqi document as the basis for the information about the Russian role in providing data to Saddam.
The Russian ambassador told Saddam that the main attack on Baghdad would not begin until the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division arrived around April 15, the report said. This information bolstered an impression that U.S. commanders were attempting to create to catch Iraqi forces by surprise. In fact, the attack on Baghdad was under way well before the 4th Infantry arrived.
The Pentagon report said the Russians told the Iraqis that U.S. forces planned to focus on bombing in and around Baghdad, cutting the road to Syria and Jordan, and sowing confusion to force residents of Baghdad to flee.
The report, which was designed to help U.S. officials better understand how Saddam and his military commanders prepared for and fought the war, portrays the Saddam regime as being blind to the U.S. invasion threat due to inept military leadership by Saddam as well being deceived by its own propaganda. The report concluded that the largest contributing factor to the complete defeat of the Iraqi military forces "was the continued interference by Saddam." The report also revealed that while captured Iraqi documents indicated plans were made by Iraqis at the regional or local level to destroy the northern and southern oil wells in Iraq, as was done by retreating Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1991, Saddam had expressly forbidden such a scorched-earth policy. (end) rm.
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Iran is backing the Iraqs militias and insurgent groups behind the scenes while signalling its support for the countrys budding democracy, US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told The Washington Post. Our judgment is that training and supplying, direct or indirect, takes place, and that there is also provision of financial resources to people, to militias, and that there is presence of people associated with Irans Revolutionary Guard and with MOIS, Khalilzad said, referring to Irans Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The Afghan-born ambassador, in an interview published on Friday, said he was especially concerned over Irans links to the Mehdi Army, an armed group loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr whom he blamed for the latest spike in sectarian killings in Iraq.
Khalilzad repeated accusations made recently by top US officials about Irans covert involvement in Iraqs insurgency at a time when it has offered to meet with the United States to discuss stabilising its troubled neighbour. Iran has denied Iraqi Sunni charges that it supports Shia militias, who are blamed for much of the sectarian fighting and who Khalilzad said represent the biggest challenge to the yet-to-be-formed Iraqi government. The militias havent been focused on decisively yet. That will be tough, he said. More Iraqis in Baghdad are dying - if you look at the recent period of two, three weeks - from militia attacks than from the terrorist car bombings.
Posted by: Fred ||
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That picture, all you need is a few Canary feathers stuck to his lips.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2006 7:57
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Ambassador in Iraq openly accuses Iran of hostile acts against Iraq.
Reminds me of the rampup in pressure on Syria. Unfortunately, the Iraqis haven't consolidated their government yet. The next step would be for them to make these statements -- and demand that it stop. Not too likely in the near future, though.
#3
Article: The militias havent been focused on decisively yet. That will be tough, he said. More Iraqis in Baghdad are dying - if you look at the recent period of two, three weeks - from militia attacks than from the terrorist car bombings.
Sounds like the Sunni guerrillas are just about done. US casualties are starting to downtick big time. We have two enemies in Iraq - two opponents that prevent the establishment of a friendly government on a long term basis - the Sunni terrorists and the Shiite militias. The principle of defeating one's enemies in detail - i.e. one at a time, has prevented our guys from going after the Shiite militias, in favor of attacking the Sunni guerrillas first. It may be time to tackle the Shiite militias. That may mean that casualties will uptick again.
#4
the American-trained Iraqi Army will soon be the second best trained and equiped army in the Middle East. Despite Iran's best efforts to support the local militias, it is only a matter of time before the Army clears out the problem.
Posted by: john ||
03/25/2006 19:59
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The government has decided to resettle 4,000 Masuri and Raija Bugtis in Dera Bugti who are currently living in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts. Official sources said more than 100 vehicles were being arranged to take them to their homes under the supervision of the Frontier Constabulary. Nawab Muhammad Akbar Khan Bugti had expelled them from Dera Bugti in 1996. Talking to reporters on Friday, Mir Hamdan Khan Bugti, chief of his clan, said his people were leading a miserable life because allowances given by the government were too low to meet even food requirement. Sources said all the Masuris, Raija and Kalpar Bugtis would be taken to Dera Ghazi Khan Police Lines from where they would be transported to their homeland.
Mir Ahmadan Khan, also a former district council chairman, accused Nawab Akbar Bugti of playing in the hands of foreign powers who wanted to keep Pakistan undeveloped and backward. These powers are plotting to stop foreign investment in Balochistan, he said.
He said Akbar Bugti, his sons and grandsons were involved in more than 152 registered cases of murders, while he had established his own prisons and kept hundreds of innocent people in his torture cells. He accused Nawab Bugti of killing 35 member of Kalpar clan including Amir Hamza, 16 people of Rahija tribe including Sher Muhammad and seven people of Masoori tribe. He said Ata Muhammad and his son, Abdul Wahid, had been in his custody for the last nine years despite paying a ransom of Rs 2.1 million.
He said Jamaat-e-Islami Amir in Dera Bugti Amanullah Khan and his two party activists were slaughtered at Dera Bugti. An FIR was registered by Sui police because there was no permission in Dera Bugti to register a case against Nawab Akbar Bugti. Later, his father, Haibat Khan, was kidnapped and tortured. Nawab imposed a fine of Rs 800,000 for instituting a murder case against him. Mir Ahmadan alleged that Tehsildar Syed Mueenuddin Shah, Levies Hawaldar Thara Khan, a DCO office employee Ali Nawaz, Khameesa Khan and DCO driver Shah Bakhshs minor daughter were murdered by Bugtis.
Hundreds of people including government officials were humiliated by shaving off their beards, moustaches, eyebrows and heads by Bugtis. He accused Bugtis of being involved in subversive activities such as blowing up of railway tracks, oil and gas transmission lines, electricity pylons, destroying communication system, laying landmines and killing innocent people. He demanded the government take serious action against Nawab Akbar Bugti and his followers to purge Balochistan of terrorists.
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The American Army announced on Friday start of a new wide-scale military operation west of the Iraqi capital and said the action was aimed at locating and wiping out insurgents' hideouts. The army said in a statement that the assault was spearheaded with advance of American and Iraqi troops, adding that 21 suspected terrorists were arrested and large caches of arms were seized in the operation.
In the Iraqi capital, gunmen attacked a police patrol in Al-Mansour district, killing three policemen and wounding another, a security source said. The gunmen spead off in a car. Suspects were also apprehended in a mop-up operation in regions around the northern city of Kirkuk.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday his government had no plan to suspend oil supplies to United States but would prefer to give priority to energy deals with Latin American neighbors. Speaking to regional central bank representatives, Chavez took a softer line after earlier harsh rhetoric and threats to cut off U.S. petroleum supplies should Washington "cross the line" in their heated diplomatic dispute.
Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and a key U.S. crude supplier, has signed energy pacts with Latin American neighbors, China and India as Chavez seeks to break his nation's traditional economic reliance on the United States.
Chavez' comments came a day after the U.S. ambassador to Caracas said Venezuela had suspended a threat to restrict or ban flights by U.S. airlines after the two governments agreed to negotiations to end a dispute over aviation rights. But on Friday the Venezuela government said lifting the threat depended on how well talks went next week with U.S. officials in Caracas.
An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail "soon," a senior government official said Friday following huge Western pressure over the case. "He is likely to be released soon," the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday. Abdul Rahman was arrested two weeks ago under Islamic Sharia law and faced a possible death sentence in a case that has attracted widespread condemnation, especially from the United States. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday to step up pressure to free 41-year-old Rahman, who converted in Germany 16 years ago and was turned in by his parents on his return to Afghanistan.
Rice said she phoned Karzai to hammer home "in the strongest possible terms" Washington's concern over the proceedings against Rahman. "There is no more fundamental issue for the United States than freedom of religion and religious conscience," she said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Still need to apply some more disinfectant, some Sharia-B-Gone.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/25/2006 0:42
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#2
Well, the guy's going to be torn to pieces lynched as soon as he gets out, so I'm not sure this really accomplished anything. Best to put this guy on the next plane out, maybe with a green card here. I don't think we need to worry about fake conversions, since Afghan-style summary justice will be a big deterrent.
A British Army bomb disposal expert who put the lives of others before his own in Iraq has been awarded the George Cross, the UK Government announced Friday. Captain Peter Norton, 43, of Gloucester, southern England, lost a leg and part of an arm while investigating a bombing which killed four US soldiers near Baghdad last July. He is among 70 members of the British Armed Forces being given medals for their role in operations around the world. The roll of honour includes men and women who served in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.
Captain Norton, of the Royal Logistics Corps, becomes only the 22nd British Armed Forces member to receive the award since 1945. It ranks alongside the Victoria Cross as Britain's highest medal for gallantry.
On 24 July last year, a three-vehicle US patrol was rocked by a huge blast in the Al Bayaa district near Baghdad, which killed four and injured several others. Captain Norton, a married father-of-two, who lives at the Royal Air Force base of Innsworth, in Gloucester, led a team to the scene. Despite being told about the threat of a secondary explosion, he instructed the coalition forces to stay in their vehicles and alone went forward to confirm whether a command wire was present. An explosion caused extensive injuries to his legs, arms and lower abdomen. But as he lay injured he calmly instructed the others about which areas were safe and another bomb was discovered. His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Seddon, made that device safe and was awarded the Queen's Commendation for Bravery. He said Captain Norton's clear orders in the face of terrible injuries prevented the loss of seven more lives.
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The European Union agreed on Friday to impose sanctions on Belarus leaders, including President Alexander Lukashenko, over a presidential election it condemned as flawed. The 25 EU leaders also deplored overnight police action to break up peaceful demonstrations in Minsk against the conduct of the poll and demanded the release of some 200 protesters who were detained.
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Fighting on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border has sparked a new influx of refugees and threatens aid to thousands who had fled violence in Sudan's western Darfur region, the UN food aid agency warned yesterday. Most of the people affected by recent clashes between government troops and rebels only have enough food to last them a month or two, the World Food Program said, appealing for urgent financial support to stem an even bigger humanitarian crisis.
The warning came days after Chadian troops launched a major offensive against rebels who had set up bases along the unstable frontier. The operation came on top of raids into eastern Chad by armed groups involved in a civil war that has devastated Darfur. "We are at an extremely delicate stage in Chad right on the edge," Stefano Porretti, WFP's Country Director, said.
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QUETTA: Suspected militants blew up two electricity transformers in New Apzoi Town, area of Zhob. Miscreants on the night between Thursday and Friday destroyed two transformers cutting power supply of more than 100 homes and rendered a loss worth Rs 0.2 million. Meanwhile, Zhob FC recovered 675 kilogrammes of hash in a truck near Sambaza check post on Friday. The truck was impounded.FC also raided a house located in the village of Kali Sherani and recovered 1422-kilogrammes of hash. A large quantity of ammunition was taken into custody by the security forces during operations near Dera Bugti on Friday. The confiscated weapons included Kalashnikovs, Rocket Launchers, Mortar Bombs and several types of bombs and grenades. These weapons were supposed to be used in terrorist activities in the area.
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#1
Suspected militants and miscreants destroying transformers in Zhob. What is the world coming to when suspected militants are joining in the action? And when does a suspected militant become a bona-fide militant? Imr so confuzd!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/25/2006 0:45
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Iraqi police on Friday morning found 12 dead bodies in two eastern suburbs of Baghdad, a security source said. The source told KUNA seven unidentified bodies were found at the entrance of the Banks Quarter and five others in the Tareq quarter. The source said all found bodies were handcuffed and blindfolded, with shots in the head.
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Ideological extremism exists in Saudi Arabia and should be treated, according to Sheikh Saleh Al-Sadlan, professor of law at Riyadhs Imam Mohammad ibn Saud University and famous mufti. He was commenting on the events at last months Book Fair in the Saudi capital where several individuals belonging to the Islamist camp attacked a number of lecturers and speakers because they considered them secular.
In an interview with Asharq al Awsat on Wednesday, Sheikh al Sadlan indicated that the current religious discourse included several negative points and was in need of re-examination and modification. He said that khateebs, who lead prayers in mosques, committed a number of errors in directing people and that, despite the presence of authorities specializing in training Friday khateebs, systematic follow up was lacking. But he indicated that the Ministry of Islamic Affairs is responsible for monitoring the content of Friday prayers and following up on the khateebs. To this effect, a special committee had been established called the committee to monitor mosques.
The Sheikh admitted that duplicity of religious discourse that is being practiced by various Islamic preachers is a reality. He stated that there is one lenient view expressed through the media and an extremist outlook that is published on internet websites and at gatherings. Sheikh Al-Sadlan agreed with Saudi preacher Sheikh Abdullah Al-Manee, a prominent member of the Saudi Council of Senior Ulamaa (scholars) in the call for religious dialogue that incorporates all Saudi Islamic sects to be held under the supervision of Saudi leadership. However, Al-Sadlan adds that this endeavor should be carried out by a specialized authority that is concerned with this issue.
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#1
As for America on 9-11, which must either accept Socialism and anti-sovereign OWG, or be destroyed, its SURRENDER/CONCEDE/SUBMIT, OR DIE!
STALEMATE = ARMISTICE = STATUS QUO, etc. ONLY MEANS WE DIE LATER ON, NOT SOON OR TODAY. America's enemies post 9-11 want POWER AND CONTROL, THE PERM DEFEAT AND DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA, NOT AND NO LONGER JUST OUR WEALTH AND RESOURCES. American-specific Holocaust is good for everyone and the Earth and Sun, including America's 100Milyuhn or less survivors - we Amer's are supposed to be happy we were chosen for universal extermination without our knowledge or consent.
We should be doing that. Muslim Students Association Khutbah is as extreme as anything out of the Saud terrorist entity. As for need for the status quo ante, Salafists as Osama bin Laden are authentic to original Islam, and assume majority support in Sunni majority entities. The pedophile "prophet," Mohammad, participated in 59 known military operations (most being plunder raids against innocent traders), and collected 8 booty wives in addition to 5 chosen women, including one 6 year old girl. One informal post 9-11 poll of Saudis, found 95 percent support for bin Laden. The Taleban, Salafist experiment - with its brutality, economic stagnation and terrorist orientation - remains popular among most Muslims. Our Muslims condemn both terror and counter-terror. That approach promotes terror. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020311&s=hiro
MSA sponsored USC speech by Taliban emissary, on March 10, 2001. Wild applause greeted his every word. The MSA still peddles audiotapes of the jihad event. http://www.beautifulislam.com/taliban/afghani_embassador_usc.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- With Japan seeking to shed a half-century of pacifism and reassert itself in world affairs, and China acquiring vastly larger economic and military might, relations between the two are as tense as they have been at any time since World War II. Nowhere is their contest more visible than here in Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. In recent months, Japan has made a series of unprecedented overtures toward Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945. In Tokyo, leading politicians are increasingly adopting the view that Japan must come to the island's aid in the event of Chinese aggression.
Many analysts say they believe Japan's evolving interest in Taiwan could tilt the regional balance of power. The United States, which has diplomatic relations with mainland China, is nonetheless sworn by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to defend the island territory if it is attacked. "The peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait and security of the Asian Pacific region are the common concerns for not only Taiwan, but also Japan and the United States," Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian said during an interview last week. Therefore, he said, "Japan has a requirement and an obligation to come to the defense of Taiwan."
Like many countries, Japan severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in the 1970s in deference to Beijing's "one-China" policy. But lately, Japan has been less particular about its rule of maintaining a careful distance. Twice in the past two months, Japan's foreign minister, Taro Aso, has angered China by publicly referring to Taiwan as "a country." Last year, the Tokyo government dropped visa requirements for visitors from Taiwan. And Japanese and U.S. leaders have for the first time jointly declared protection of the Taiwan Strait a "common strategic objective."
In a less public gesture, Yoichi Nagano, formerly a general in the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, the army, is serving as the first military attaché at Tokyo's de facto embassy in Taipei, the Interchange Association. In an interview, Nagano said he conducts meetings with Taiwanese government and military figures and sends regular dispatches to Tokyo.
In 2004, a group of Japanese legislators formed a committee on Taiwanese security. This May, Tokyo is set to allow former president Lee Teng-hui, the Japanese-educated champion of Taiwanese democracy, to visit Japan for the second time in 18 months. So-called Track 2 meetings between Japanese and Taiwanese politicians, academics and retired military officials have intensified, according to officials in Taiwan and Japan.
These moves coincide with the rise to power in Japan of a new crop of hawks in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party headed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. During his five years in office, Koizumi has pushed aside rivals in the LDP who had long stressed the importance of maintaining a respectful distance from Taiwan.
The shift also comes as China's military buildup is causing growing concern in Japan. The Beijing government boosted military spending by 15 percent this year. Tensions were particularly heightened after riots broke out across China last year against Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and the publication in Japan of textbooks allegedly whitewashing the country's militarist past.
The Japanese view a potential Chinese takeover of Taiwan gravely. Such a move would give Beijing a perch for its missiles a mere 66 miles from Japanese territory while helping China to control the shipping lanes that carry the bulk of Middle East oil coming to Japan.
Japan has countered with uncharacteristic assertiveness. In November 2004, Japanese warships chased a Chinese submarine that had entered Japanese waters near Taiwan in what was widely seen as a test of Japan's resolve in defending the strategically sensitive zone.
Koizumi's government is also investing millions of dollars in a joint missile defense system with the United States. Some analysts say Taiwan could eventually become part of the system, turning it into a three-way defense against Chinese missiles.
Japan's pacifist constitution limits the country's ability to deploy its military abroad. But political leaders in both Japan and Taiwan are embracing a broad interpretation of a 1999 law allowing Japan to respond to threats in nearby waters. This, they say, could provide a legal basis for Japan to join the United States in responding to Chinese aggression. Most of these leaders agree that Japan would be able to contribute rear-guard refueling, transportation and medical services and perhaps conduct search-and-rescue missions inside Taiwan. If Japanese ships or personnel providing such assistance were attacked, "it would mean war," said Tokuichiro Tamazawa, a leading LDP lawmaker long involved in the Taiwan issue.
Tadashi Ikeda, chief representative of the Interchange Association, Japan's unofficial embassy in Taipei, said Tokyo remained strongly in favor of a peaceful solution to the Taiwan issue. But, he added, "there has always been a question of what Japan would do" in the event of Chinese aggression. "Now the Taiwanese can say that both the U.S. and Japan are on their side."
U.S. officials have cautiously welcomed the more assertive Japanese stance. But they have also expressed concern that too sudden a shift could embolden Chen, Taiwan's president, to take steps toward formal independence that could ignite a cross-strait conflict.
China's relations with Japan have nose-dived since Koizumi took office and promptly began paying annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's 2.5 million military dead, including World War II criminals. Japan and China have also become embroiled in disputes over territorial claims and oil and gas drilling rights in the East China Sea.
Chen said in the interview last week that relations between Japan and Taiwan were at their closest since the two countries' 1972 diplomatic break. Chen said he hoped it would lead to a three-way "quasi-military alliance" among the United States, Japan and Taiwan.
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#1
A blogger on CHINESE MILITARY FORUM had an interesting post - he basically argued that since Japan had surrendered Taiwan/Formosa to the USA only as a consequence of WW2, the USA was now the "conquereror" and de facto new home nation for Taiwan, and that since he believed the USA had never formally relinquished its newfound ownership to anyone, Taiwan is technically American territory up to present.
#2
Article: In a less public gesture, Yoichi Nagano, formerly a general in the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, the army, is serving as the first military attaché at Tokyo's de facto embassy in Taipei, the Interchange Association.
This is significant - since the US recognized China in 1979, I don't think any American flag officers (generals or admirals) have been assigned to Taiwan as military attaches. In fact, I don't think any American flag officers have even *visited* Taiwan since that time.
#3
Article: Tadashi Ikeda, chief representative of the Interchange Association, Japan's unofficial embassy in Taipei, said Tokyo remained strongly in favor of a peaceful solution to the Taiwan issue. But, he added, "there has always been a question of what Japan would do" in the event of Chinese aggression. "Now the Taiwanese can say that both the U.S. and Japan are on their side."
The following are excerpts from an interview by Osama bin Laden's former mufti Saudi cleric Musa Al-Qarni. The interview aired on Dubai TV, on March 18, 2006. It is followed by other appearances by Musa Al-Qarni on Iqra TV.
Musa Al-Qarni: "The concept of jihad is a matter of faith and Islamic religious law, which lives in the mind of every Muslim on the face of this earth. The religious education we receive through our schools, through our religious jurisprudence, our thinking, and our tradition - jihad is part of this." Throwing acid in little girls' faces, strapping bombs on the backs of children, using women and children as human shields....that's jihad.
[...]
"When we used to read the books about the laws of jihad, the laws about raids, and the laws about prisoners - at a time when the nation was not in a state of jihad, but in a state of feebleness, apathy, and subordination - we used to think that reading the books on jihad was a kind of entertainment, and that jihad was a thing of the past. We used to study the laws of jihad as if it were an issue of history, not of reality." if jihad is so important...then lead from the front, chief!
[...]
"Nobody even imagined that there could ever be jihad. Then the Islamic jihad in Afghanistan began. It began with the Russian attack on Afghanistan, the deportation of its people, the killing of its woman and children, the changing of its regime, the implementation of Communist ideology in it, the eradication of all the Islamic characteristics, even though, as everybody knows, Afghanistan is considered a very conservative country." That's because you don't even know your own religious history. Jihad is invoked at least once every 100 years...and it leads to bloodshed and destruction until everyone that gives a flying flip is dead. Unfortunately that also always includes 1000s of innocents.
"This rise of Communism... In addition, the Arabian Peninsula - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, etc. - was suffering, even before the jihad in Afghanistan, from the rise of Nasserism, which was supported by Russia. Everyone knows about the conflict in Yemen and elsewhere. People were completely driven to fight the Communist ideology. Again...you do not even know your own history. Is it because you too are unable to read like the one-eyed mullah?
"Here in Saudi Arabia, we were fighting a cultural war against the heretic Communist ideology in our universities, our schools, and so on. When the jihad in Afghanistan began, the social and ideological background was ripe for the Saudi youth to go [to Afghanistan]..." Dude...you must be on crack.
Interviewer: "There was incitement from the pulpits and in the universities in Saudi Arabia." finish the thought..."to overthrow the royal kingdom so that the Wahabiests could control the flow of oil...turn the Magic Kingdom into their own fiefdom...and you clerics could hoard the oil billions for yourselves. It's all about the Benjamens."
Musa Al-Qarni: "Of course. At that time..."
Interviewer: "You reached Afghanistan during that period. The young men you met back then - how old were the people who went to join the Afghan mujahideen?" HEY, I was just too old to put on a bomb belt...You know I had kids in the university...bills to pay...wives to keep happy. But the young ones...
Musa Al-Qarni: "Most of them were between 15 and 25 years old." and I am not a child molester in spite of the pictures and evidence to the contrary.
[...]
"At no point in his life was Osama an ordinary man. That is something we must acknowledge." Yes...your ordinary, spoiled rotten billionaire's son.
[...]
"He came from one of the richest families throughout the Gulf countries, a family known for its ties with the political regime here in Saudi Arabia, because of its construction projects and so on. In addition, he took with him [to Afghanistan] financial support. He brought his own money and the money of his family, and he also used his social influence here, as a preacher for jihad for the sake of Allah, to collect contributions. In addition, he had exceptional ties with the decision-makers, and with society as a whole here." for the sake of alllan...he led 100s, no 1000s of muslims to their deaths.
Interviewer: "I am asking about Afghanistan."
Musa Al-Qarni: "He was prominent there."
[...]
"Here in Saudi Arabia, the young men who were about to go to Afghanistan, would undergo mental and psychological preparation. They would be included in a group of people who would go together. and say, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
"Let me give you an example. Now that jihad has become a 'crime,' some people may be surprised by what I am about to say: At the Jedda airport there was a group of mujahideen whose job was to welcome those who arrived on their way to Pakistan. There were also offices in Jedda that would buy discount tickets for the people going to Afghanistan." note the keywords, "that would buy discount tickets for the people going to Afghanistan." That was not an inclusive buy. Funny how those that are so eager to push jihad are so anxious to provide a vehicle for those that actually do it.
[...]
"His ambition to wage jihad preceded the war in Afghanistan. I have mentioned this in the past. Even as a young man Osama bin Laden had the ambition to wage jihad. I have mentioned in several interviews, and it is a well known fact that when there were problems in Syria between the Syrian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood - and this was known throughout the world - Osama thought of going to Syria to join the jihad of the Muslims there. The spirit of jihad was deep in the soul of Osama bin Laden." and note that OBL somehow missed the dirtnap in Syria. I guess his jihadi heart somehow protected him.
[...]
Interviewer: "You used to be his mufti, his advisor on Islamic law?"
Musa Al-Qarni: "Perhaps he considered me something of the sort, but I..." Actually, I was his gay lover.
Interviewer: "Did the others also view you this way?" No we were very discrete. We would take long rides out on the range with our horses and herd the sheep. It was the basis of the movie, "Brokeback Sand Dune."
skip a lot of dialogue to the end.
Interviewer: "Allah help us." allan can't help you now. He skipped town and is at the Bellagio in Vegas to catch the Final Four on the Widescreens.
Musa bin Muhammad al-Qarni: "These are facts. Besides, there is a reality and we must be realistic. The infidels have invaded our countries. These occupying armies of the US and other countries have invaded the Land of the Islamic caliphate in Iraq. What did the Muslims do? Did they rush to the defense? The Prophet has noted that one of the seven major sins is fleeing on the day of invasion. That explains why the majority of muslims are killed by other muslims.
"Today, invasion has reached Muslim countries everywhere. Palestine is lost.Uh, Palestine never was a country there bud. Before that, Andalusia was lost, and today Iraq is being lost, and maybe other countries will follow. Do we have the abilities to halt this invasion? Or are we those who flee on the day of invasion? We pray for Allah to protect us from this. Amazingly, if you would at least join the 20th century, cease flying airplanes into skyscrapers, quit sending suicide bombers into crowded trains, buses, schools, and hotels..you'd be surprised how the infidels would treat you.
"Furthermore, look at how the media relate to those youth who felt a responsibility to Allah and rushed to Iraq to wage jihad there for the sake of Allah. What is our position toward them? What is the position of the media, the educators, the religious clerics, Muftis, the government officials, the politicians? What is their position toward these youth? Is it a position of help, support, aid, and reinforcement, or is it perhaps a position of abandonment, accusation of crime, and frustration?" Like I said...allan fooled you. There are 1000s of Saudi young men who are rotting in the desert, whose mother's will never know how or where they died. And, you are still eating 3 squares, living the good life with your wives and kids, talking on TV about waging Jihad. You are pussy.
Belarus's liberal opposition, its four-day protest snuffed out by police, defied a ban and called a new rally on Saturday to denounce what it calls the rigged re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Alexander Milinkevich, defeated opposition candidate in the March 19 poll, urged supporters to mass "no matter what" from 1000 GMT in October Square -- site of the tent camp cleared away by police in the early hours of Friday. If authorities sealed off the square, he said, protesters would move to a different location which he refused to disclose.
Demonstrators are demanding a re-run of the poll which handed Lukashenko five more years in power in the ex-Soviet state that he rules with an iron grip. The official tally gave him 83 percent to just 6 for Milinkevich.
It was not immediately clear what support Milinkevich could expect for Saturday's demonstration, which will also mark the independence day of a short-lived Belarussian republic in 1918. Stiff legislation against illegal assembly and unrelenting police action had kept opposition activity to a minimum in recent months. Most protests attract only dozens of activists. But authorities have handled this week's protests with comparative tolerance and police may simply divert protesters away from the city center and avoid confrontation.
The United States and the European Union issued separate statements denouncing the police action and announcing plans to impose restrictions on Belarus, including a travel ban in the aftermath of the election. But Russia, Lukashenko's main backer, expressed sympathy.
Five Iraqis were killed and three others were wounded on Friday when militants attacked a bakery in Sayidiya, southern Baghdad. An Interior Ministry source told KUNA that four bakers and a policeman were killed in the attack, adding that the militants planted an explosive device by the bakery and were able to escape before the arrival of a patrol vehicle, following which the explosion took place. Militants had attacked tens of Baghdad bakeries in the past, killing and wounding dozens of people.
In the north of Iraq, a road-side bomb blew up in an industrial zone south of the city of Kirkuk on Friday wounding three civilians, a police source said. Separately, a military vehicle of the Iraqi Army turned over in Kirkuk killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding four others.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammad ElBaradei will discuss Iran's nuclear program in Berlin on Monday, German deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg announced during a press briefing here Friday.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency will also meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Economic Minister Michael Glos and members of the foreign policy committee of the German parliament, Steg added. Merkel and ElBaradei have repeatedly called for a diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear dispute.
Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara arrived here yesterday on the second leg of his trip to the region. He visited Egypt on Thursday. Shara delivered a letter from President Bashar Assad to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. He also met with Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal.
According to a Syrian source, Shara held talks with the Saudi leadership on several issues, mainly the developments in the region including the situation in Iraq and Palestine and on preparations for the upcoming Arab summit in Khartoum. Shara also discussed with the Saudi leadership ways to develop bilateral relations in all aspects. "The vice president confirmed Syria's commitment to developing Arab cooperation in all fields," said Syrian Ambassador to the Kingdom Ahmed Nithamuldeen.
He said the vice president briefed the Saudi leadership on recent events in Syrian-Lebanese relations and said Shara's visit to the Kingdom was part of the vice president's agenda to hold talks with Arab leaders on general developments in the region.
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Shut the F*cking Borders
ht: Barenucklepolitics.com/
KFOX first reported on Wednesday night that Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West said his deputies caught a Mexican customs officer driving around one of the county roads at 9 p.m. last Sunday night. His official documentation saying that he is an officer. We called his comandante in Juarez that night, and the comandante verified that he was actually a Mexico customs officer. He didnt know why he was on the American side obviously, but he did verify, West said.
West said he has pictures that show the mans uniform and the SUV he was driving, without any license plates. The officer allegedly told deputies that he was driving to work, which is at the Mexican port of entry across from Fort Hancock. But, West said he researched the mans U.S. border crossing card and it showed he crossed two days earlier. It only takes forty-five minutes to an hour, thats all that it should have taken for him. It doesnt take two days from the free bridge in El Paso, Texas, to Esperanza overpass. You could walk it in less than a day, West said.
But, what disturbed West the most, is that he said officials found a Global Positioning System inside the officers car. I believe that he was verifying the modes of travel for narcotics to be coming in the United States. He was approximately 12 to 15 miles from the road going into the border to get to the crossing, West said.
West said his pictures are proof that Mexican officials are crossing over the border without any official business to be here. Here is a prime example of a Mexican official coming over here and doing things like facilitating illegal activities without any recourse or any kind of action taken against him, West said. whats it going to take folks..a nuke?
A diplomatic incident would be nice. Declare him PNG and make a big show of handing him over at the bridge.
#8
Interesting point. This indicates that they are recruiting mules who do not know the terrain, and since they probably can't read maps, are reliant on GPS navigation.
#9
When the goddamn Mexican military and the Customs office openly violate our border, I believe it's a bit much. Obviously, this administration condones this, or it wouldn't be happening. What we need is a forced admission by Bush that he has no desire to control our borders. Then, we can turn it back to Texans. It will happen within one day. Case closed. Border sealed. No more entry, because Mexicans know it would be strictly a one way trip.
#12
I'm a right wing republican, and I have my doubts about Bush on this border thingy. Soft on Fox, and all too friendly. What has it gotten us ? Erratic drivers and cheap lawn care ? At what cost ? Run away Social Security and healthcare, and the chronically unemployed remaining so.
Bad business this. I like the Mexys, they work hard, but they can come in the front door, damnit.
The next pres runs and wins on the WOT and closed borders. It might help to mention ISLAM with a scowl too. It might also help to question if the constitution should be amended to define a religion as supporting a good moral life not decapitation, etc. We need to identify the real enemy and stop the pussy footing.
Vote for me....I'll kick some ass.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose peacemaking policies were rejected by Hamas Islamists after they won elections, said he believed a peace deal with Israel could still be achieved in less than a year.
In an interview with Israel's Haaretz newspaper published on Friday, Abbas said he had proposed secret talks with the United States and former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, who has spearheaded peace efforts in the past. "I am convinced that within less than a year, we will be able to sign an agreement," said Abbas.
But Abbas' ability to negotiate a peace deal is in doubt, both because of Hamas' election victory and Israel's reluctance to deal with the Palestinian president. "I can promise that you have a partner for this peace. On the day after the elections you will find us ready to sit in negotiations with no prior conditions," Abbas said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2006
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#1
Gotta hold out just a little bit longer, just a few more paychecks, then he can buy that Winnebago he's had his eye on and tour the Rockies.
Posted by: Jans Snomble4884 ||
03/25/2006 1:20
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#2
Do we have a Laugh Meter graphic for articles like this?
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2006 6:38
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France's prime minister and the country's unions have failed to break the deadlock over a youth labour law at a first meeting called to discuss a crisis that has triggered mass protests and riots. Employers' groups also met with Dominique de Villepin on Friday to tell him the contract might not be the best way to reduce unemployment and warn him the violence was endangering the economy.
Villepin said the 90 minutes of union talks, in the run-up to a national strike on Tuesday, were "an important first step" and he hoped for more discussions in the coming days. But he made it clear he would not heed their call to dump the CPE First Job Contract. Jacques Chirac, the president, who has prodded his prime minister to renew dialogue with unions, said Villepin was ready to take account of protesters' views but condemned rioting by youths which marred demonstrations in Paris and some provincial cities.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
No Sphrockets, always a good sign.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/25/2006 8:06
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#2
Quelle surprise.
Take a closer look at the tioting youths. The ones who join in only at the end of the manifestations. The ones who start the fires and the riots and the destruction. Notice something? Notice something not many media outlets are reporting?
It's the November guys. It's your muslim yout'. Proxy war, sweeties. N'est-ce pas?
#4
This is actually like the violence last May, in which white niddle-class students protested some policy or other, and were shocked to find themselves assaulted, robbed and more at the hands of north African immigrants who taunted them with racial slurs.
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.
Sheriffs from the 24 U.S. counties bordering Mexico unanimously voted Friday to join forces.
Mar 24: Bagmara thana police have been insisting the victims of the militant kingpin Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai to file cases, but are silent about nabbing his accomplices. Sources concerned said that a sub-inspector of Bagmara police station has been specially assigned to convince the victims of Bangla Bhai to file cases against the militant leader who had established a reign of terror in some areas.
Two housewives were killed for dowry in Comilla and Munshiganj on Wednesday midnight and Thursday. A man allegedly strangled his wife at village Shahababad under Brahmanpara upazila in Comilla on Thursday. The victim is Aysha Begum, 27, daughter of Seraj Ali of the Barershor area under the upazila.
The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages.
UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen met Lebanese officials on Friday and offered support to national talks aimed at forging a deal over Hizbollah guerrillas that the Security Council wants disarmed. "For the first time the Lebanese are sitting down together without international or third parties and discussing independently and domestically all the difficult issues facing Lebanon," Roed-Larsen said on arrival at Beirut airport late on Thursday. "Every single difficult issue is on the table." 
The top U.N. lawyer virtually ruled out on Thursday the idea that a special court to try suspects in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri could be located inside Lebanon. "There is a broad perception that for the tribunal to effectively perform what is expected, it is extremely difficult that it would be located on the territory of Lebanon," said U.N. Legal Counsel Nicolas Michel. A number of factors would be taken into account in deciding the court's location, he said, including "security of the judges, of the witnesses, of the accused and the perceived impartiality of the tribunal."
Palestinian fighters on Friday attacked an Israeli army patrol with machine guns in northern Gaza Strip. A spokesperson for the Israeli occupation forces told the Israeli radio that none of the soldiers was wounded in the attack.
Over 18 militants and an army soldier were killed on Friday in a military operation in North Waziristan tribal agency bordering Afghanistan, launched following a militant attack on a military checkpost, officials said. Suspected Islamist militants fired dozens of rockets at a military checkpost in Data Khel area of North Waziristan agency, security officials told KUNA. They said rocket attacks killed one soldier and critically wounded five others. Officials said following rockets attack, troops with the support of a gunship helicopter launched the operation against the militants. They bombed the militants' hideouts in the surrounding mountains, officials said, adding that the operation killed at least 18 militants and wounded over a dozen others.
Unknown gunmen on Friday opened fire on Palestinian National Council Member Mohammad Abu Samra, leaving him with moderate to serious wounds. Palestinian security sources said Abu Samra, 45, who is no longer member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, was attacked while in his car east of Rafah city, southern Gaza Strip. Abu Samra, who was previously deported for several years from Gaza Strip to Lebanon by Israel, is leader of the Palestinian Islamic movement. Palestinian medical sources said Abu Samra was shot several times in the lower part of his body.
Iran is racing ahead with 
WASHINGTON - Human Rights Watch called Friday on Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to halt blatant intimidation of human rights workers after Damascus authorities arrested four activists in the past week. The New York-based group said that, in an escalating crackdown, Syrian security forces arrested human rights activist Ali Al Abdullah and one of his sons Thursday, after arresting another of his sons the week earlier.
Five worshippers were killed and 17 wounded when a bomb planted near the back door of the Saad Ben Abi Waqqas mosque in the town of Al-Khales, of the Diyalah province, northeast of Baghdad. A security source told KUNA the explosion rocked the mosque at the end of the Friday prayer and that a young boy was among the victims. In another development, police said that Multi-National Forces and Iraqi army troops and policemen, in a joint operation, arrested 30 people suspected of carrying out terror acts in the Huweija district, west of the northern city of Kirkuk.
The Hudood Ordinance has not been effective in controlling crimes falling under its ambit, concluded a report by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). The number of registered cases shows that the number of Hudood-related crimes has not decreased, the report added. According to the CII report, 361,035 cases were registered during the last five years under the Hudood Ordinance. As many as 75, 943 cases were registered in 2001 and 82,545 in 2002. Similarly 67,063 cases were registered in 2003 and 77,420 in 2004. However, the number of cases registered under the Hudood Ordinance by the end of August 2005 was 58,064, the report said. 
The ruling Zanu PF yesterday called for the detention of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for allegedly inciting violent protests aimed at overthrowing President Robert Mugabe, charging the mass action call constituted treason. The agitation in Zanu PF came as opposition leaders urged the nation's soldiers and police to disobey orders to crush any show of dissent against the government. 
Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) Ehsar members Arifur Rahman Hasib alias Akash and Jahirul Islam alias Zahir have confessed to their involvement in bomb blasts in Gazipur on November 29 and on August 17 respectively. They gave confessional statements before First Class Magistrate Hasanul Matin in Tangail under Section 164 on Wednesday. In Sherpur, JMB district commander Mujahidul Islam Sumon was placed on three days' fresh remand when he was produce before court on Thursday on expiry of his 10-day remand. 
NEW YORK: Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, in a rare moment of self-criticism, lashed out at what he described as backward societies in the Middle East, arguing that government heavy-handedness in dealing with political opposition stemmed from the violent nature of that dissent. You ask us, Why do you oppress opposition in the Middle East? Gaddafi told attendees at a Columbia University panel discussion on democracy Thursday, speaking in Arabic during a live video appearance. Opposition in the Middle East is quite different from opposition in advanced countries. In our countries, the opposition takes the form of explosions, assassinations, killing. Because opposition in our country is different from opposition in your country. Our opposition resorts to bombs, assassinations, explosions, subversive acts, trains in military camps - in some cases before the Sept. 11th events, said Gaddafi, whose country for years was accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism. Gaddafis comments came in response to several questions by the Columbia panel asking him to comment on shortcomings in Libyan society. Gaddafi said he was proud of what he considered a complex society and what he says is the worlds only true participatory democracy.
The UN Security Council has called for faster preparations for the African Union to hand over its peacekeeping mission in Sudan's western Darfur region to the United Nations. The 15-member body unanimously adopted a resolution on Friday that also decided to extend for at least six months the mandate of the UN mission in south Sudan (UNMIS). The text directed Kofi Annan, the UN chief, working with the AU and in consultations with the council "to expedite the necessary preparatory planning for transition" from the AU force known as AMIS to a UN operation. This would include options for how UNMIS can provide transitional assistance - such as in logistics, mobility and communications.
The US military said that Operation Swarmer, the largest air raid in Iraq since the war began three years ago, resulted in no casualties among the assaulting allied troops. According to the Pentagon, the US military arrested 104 suspected insurgents for questioning as the operation wrapped up on Wednesday. The operation that focused on the Iraqi city of Samarra began last week with a helicopter that transported about 1500 US and Iraqi soldiers to the area.
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) personnel in border outposts and camps have been put on high alert so that the two JMB Majlish-e-Shura members still at large cannot flee across the border. The law enforcers, particularly the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), yesterday continued their hunt for the two fleeing leaders of the banned Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)-- Khaled Saifullah and Salahuddin.
Iran is backing the Iraqs militias and insurgent groups behind the scenes while signalling its support for the countrys budding democracy, US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told The Washington Post. Our judgment is that training and supplying, direct or indirect, takes place, and that there is also provision of financial resources to people, to militias, and that there is presence of people associated with Irans Revolutionary Guard and with MOIS, Khalilzad said, referring to Irans Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The government has decided to resettle 4,000 Masuri and Raija Bugtis in Dera Bugti who are currently living in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts. Official sources said more than 100 vehicles were being arranged to take them to their homes under the supervision of the Frontier Constabulary. Nawab Muhammad Akbar Khan Bugti had expelled them from Dera Bugti in 1996. Talking to reporters on Friday, Mir Hamdan Khan Bugti, chief of his clan, said his people were leading a miserable life because allowances given by the government were too low to meet even food requirement. Sources said all the Masuris, Raija and Kalpar Bugtis would be taken to Dera Ghazi Khan Police Lines from where they would be transported to their homeland.
The American Army announced on Friday start of a new wide-scale military operation west of the Iraqi capital and said the action was aimed at locating and wiping out insurgents' hideouts. The army said in a statement that the assault was spearheaded with advance of American and Iraqi troops, adding that 21 suspected terrorists were arrested and large caches of arms were seized in the operation.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday his government had no plan to suspend oil supplies to United States but would prefer to give priority to energy deals with Latin American neighbors. Speaking to regional central bank representatives, Chavez took a softer line after earlier harsh rhetoric and threats to cut off U.S. petroleum supplies should Washington "cross the line" in their heated diplomatic dispute.
An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail "soon," a senior government official said Friday following huge Western pressure over the case. "He is likely to be released soon," the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday. Abdul Rahman was arrested two weeks ago under Islamic Sharia law and faced a possible death sentence in a case that has attracted widespread condemnation, especially from the United States. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday to step up pressure to free 41-year-old Rahman, who converted in Germany 16 years ago and was turned in by his parents on his return to Afghanistan.
A British Army bomb disposal expert who put the lives of others before his own in Iraq has been awarded the George Cross, the UK Government announced Friday. Captain Peter Norton, 43, of Gloucester, southern England, lost a leg and part of an arm while investigating a bombing which killed four US soldiers near Baghdad last July. He is among 70 members of the British Armed Forces being given medals for their role in operations around the world. The roll of honour includes men and women who served in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.
The European Union agreed on Friday to impose sanctions on Belarus leaders, including President Alexander Lukashenko, over a presidential election it condemned as flawed. The 25 EU leaders also deplored overnight police action to break up peaceful demonstrations in Minsk against the conduct of the poll and demanded the release of some 200 protesters who were detained.
Fighting on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border has sparked a new influx of refugees and threatens aid to thousands who had fled violence in Sudan's western Darfur region, the UN food aid agency warned yesterday. Most of the people affected by recent clashes between government troops and rebels only have enough food to last them a month or two, the World Food Program said, appealing for urgent financial support to stem an even bigger humanitarian crisis.
QUETTA: Suspected militants blew up two electricity transformers in New Apzoi Town, area of Zhob. Miscreants on the night between Thursday and Friday destroyed two transformers cutting power supply of more than 100 homes and rendered a loss worth Rs 0.2 million. Meanwhile, Zhob FC recovered 675 kilogrammes of hash in a truck near Sambaza check post on Friday. The truck was impounded.FC also raided a house located in the village of Kali Sherani and recovered 1422-kilogrammes of hash. A large quantity of ammunition was taken into custody by the security forces during operations near Dera Bugti on Friday. The confiscated weapons included Kalashnikovs, Rocket Launchers, Mortar Bombs and several types of bombs and grenades. These weapons were supposed to be used in terrorist activities in the area.
Ideological extremism exists in Saudi Arabia and should be treated, according to Sheikh Saleh Al-Sadlan, professor of law at Riyadhs Imam Mohammad ibn Saud University and famous mufti. He was commenting on the events at last months Book Fair in the Saudi capital where several individuals belonging to the Islamist camp attacked a number of lecturers and speakers because they considered them secular. 
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- With Japan seeking to shed a half-century of pacifism and reassert itself in world affairs, and China acquiring vastly larger economic and military might, relations between the two are as tense as they have been at any time since World War II. Nowhere is their contest more visible than here in Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. In recent months, Japan has made a series of unprecedented overtures toward Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945. In Tokyo, leading politicians are increasingly adopting the view that Japan must come to the island's aid in the event of Chinese aggression.
Belarus's liberal opposition, its four-day protest snuffed out by police, defied a ban and called a new rally on Saturday to denounce what it calls the rigged re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Five Iraqis were killed and three others were wounded on Friday when militants attacked a bakery in Sayidiya, southern Baghdad. An Interior Ministry source told KUNA that four bakers and a policeman were killed in the attack, adding that the militants planted an explosive device by the bakery and were able to escape before the arrival of a patrol vehicle, following which the explosion took place. Militants had attacked tens of Baghdad bakeries in the past, killing and wounding dozens of people.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammad ElBaradei will discuss Iran's nuclear program in Berlin on Monday, German deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg announced during a press briefing here Friday.
Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara arrived here yesterday on the second leg of his trip to the region. He visited Egypt on Thursday. Shara delivered a letter from President Bashar Assad to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. He also met with Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose peacemaking policies were rejected by Hamas Islamists after they won elections, said he believed a peace deal with Israel could still be achieved in less than a year. 
France's prime minister and the country's unions have failed to break the deadlock over a youth labour law at a first meeting called to discuss a crisis that has triggered mass protests and riots. Employers' groups also met with Dominique de Villepin on Friday to tell him the contract might not be the best way to reduce unemployment and warn him the violence was endangering the economy.
