[The] Foreign Ministry on Sunday summoned United Arab Emirates (UAE) charge d'affaires in absence of the ambassador to inform him of Iran's protest to the UAE government over seizure of an Iranian launcher boat. Director of Social Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry voiced Iran's protest to the UAE government over seizure of the boat four months ago and beating of the crew on board.
He called for an immediate release of Iranian nationals under arrest in the UAE and sought compensation for the moral and material damages caused by such a conduct. He said that the boat had developed technical fault before being seized by UAE.
The charge d'affaires said that he would convey the protest to Abu Dhabi and would do his best to resolve the case as quickly as possible.
MULTAN: Seven armed men kidnapped the wife and sister of a labourer and gang raped them for 19 days in Noor Shah police precincts. Mashkoor Azhar and Ali Abbas and their five accomplices allegedly kidnapped Muhammad Saeeds wife, Nusrat Bibi, and sister, Rubina Bibi, 20, at gunpoint. They took them to a house in Pakpattan district where they subjected them to sexual assault for 19 days. The women managed to escape from the accused. Sadar police have registered a case.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
23:08 ||
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PORTLAND, Ore., March 25 (UPI) -- Oregon is testing the idea of collecting highway funds through a tax on miles driven, rather than gasoline consumed.
Eighty percent of Oregon's highway money comes from its 24-cents-per-gallon gas tax. If the state promotes reducing gasoline consumption and consumers tend to buy the fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, highway revenues would take a hit, The New York Times reported. So they don't really want people to drive less or buy fuel-efficient cars, unless they can still get their baksheesh.
The test program uses a global positioning system to track miles driven, using a black box to calculate how many miles are clocked in-state, out of state and during rush hour. If the citizens of Oregon accept this shit, they deserve it. As far as I'm concerned, it's none of the state's fucking business where and how far I drive.
The experiment is designed to increase state revenue for road maintenance without raising gasoline taxes, but critics say collecting GPS records poses new privacy issues.
"The existence of such a database, which would, for the first time in history, allow for the creation of detailed daily itineraries of every driver, raises obvious privacy concerns," said David L. Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington.
What are these commie-wannabes going to do about people driving in from out of state - meet them at the border with a gps? Is there something in the water out there that makes them fucking nuts? Pfui.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006
18:09 ||
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#1
Why do I think that whoever suggested this gets his or her panties in a twist over NSA spying on calls to bin Laden?
#3
What's next-- forced implantation of RFID chips at birth? Tattooed numbers on forearms? Sheesh...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/26/2006 21:30
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Since it depends on the GPS tracking and since that's an unwarranted invasion of privacy this will be struck down so fast it will be a joy to watch their heads spinning from the impact.
There are certainly a LOT of RFSP in the Oregon legislature.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 21:50
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The test is to see if the system works and if confidentiallity is protected. The mileage calculations can be hidden behind a secure wall (with keys if law enforcement requires it) so that no one actually knows who went where when. The State will only know the total number of miles driven; how many miles were driven during 6-9 am, how many between 4-7 pm, etc.
March 26, 2006: Britain has had an increase in desertions since 2003. In that year, 135 troops walked away from their military service. That's from a force of about 187,000 troops. In 2004, there were 230 desertions, and 383 last year. The less serious AWOL (Absent Without Leave) cases amounted to about 2,600 a year, and has not changed much. About 110 British troops have been killed in Iraq so far. There are currently about 8,000 British troops in Iraq, with a much smaller force in Afghanistan. Normally, desertions are caused by personal problems having little to do with the military. But the recent increase indicated that between one and two percent of the troops ordered to Iraq, decide to desert instead. Britain has an all-volunteer force, but the government is trying to make the penalty for those who desert, after being ordered to a foreign posting, life in prison. Currently, deserters risk, at most, a few years imprisonment. While some deserters are making a political statement, most are just unhappy with the frequent overseas deployments British troops have been subject to since the war on terror began.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006
18:01 ||
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#1
They musta missed the "kill 'em there so they don't boom here" memo, no?
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 20:59
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March 26, 2006: Deaths from revenge killings now exceed those from terrorist or anti-government activity. Al Qaeda is beaten, and running for cover. The Sunni Arab groups that financed thousands of attacks against the government and coalition groups, are now battling each other, al Qaeda, and Shia death squads. It's not civil war, for there are no battles or grand strategies at play. It's not ethnic cleansing, yet, although many Sunni Arabs are, and have, fled the country. What's happening here is payback. Outsiders tend to forget that, for over three decades, a brutal Sunni Arab dictatorship killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shia Arabs. The surviving victims, and the families of those who did not survive, want revenge. They want payback. And even those Kurds Shia Arabs who don't personally want revenge, are inclined to tolerate some payback. Since the Sunni Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the population, and no longer control the police or military, they are in a vulnerable position.
After Saddam's government was ousted three years ago, the Sunni Arabs still had lots of cash, weapons, and terrorist skills. Running a police state is basically all about terrorizing people into accepting your rule. For the last three years, the Sunni Arabs thought they could terrorize their way back into power. Didn't work. Now the Kurds and Shia Arabs are not only too strong to defeat, but are coming into Sunni Arab neighborhoods and killing. Sometimes the victims are men who actually took part in Saddam era atrocities. But often the victims are just some Sunni Arabs who were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The government doesn't want all these payback killings, most of them carried out by men working for extremist Shia Arab political parties. In particular, the Badr and Sadr militias, both backed by Iran, have the most blood on their hands, although other Shia Arab groups, and even some Kurds, have joined in. The government has avoided cracking down on the Iran supported militias so far. Militarily, the government has had its hand full with the Islamic terrorists and Sunni Arab gangs. Taking on the pro-Iran Shia Arab gangs would produce political fallout as well, because these militias belonged to Shia Arab political parties. While the Shia Arabs are 60 percent of the population, if they split into too many mutually hostile factions, they could lose control of the government to a coalition containing Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
The Shia Arab death squads are basically terrorists, and if there's one thing all Iraqis can agree on, it's the need to stamp out the terrorist activity. This is providing the government with an opening against the Iran sponsored militias. Iraqis, even Shia Arab Iraqis, have always been fearful, and suspicious, of Iran. Iraqi Shia Arabs fought against Iran during the 1980s war, not because they loved Saddam, but because they feared Iranian domination. The Sadr and Badr groups are vulnerable in this area, and the government is apparently going to exploit it.
March 24, 2006: Back on March 7th Muhammed Hilah Hammad al Ubaydi, better known as Abu Ayman, was arrested by Iraqi and Coalition security forces. He was the principal terrorist leader in the southern part of Baghdad Province and northern Babil. When Saddam was in power, Abu Ayman was a senior aide to the Chief of Staff of Intelligence. The leadership of the Sunni Arab terrorism against the post-Saddam government has been men like Abu Ayman. Several hundred of these guys, all former commanders in Saddams force of professional terrorists, have been running a bloody, clever, although unsuccessful, campaign against the new government. In particular, the Sunni Arabs have worked the Arab and Western media effectively. Careful observers will note that a disproportionate number of the Iraqis interviewed by the Western media are Sunni Arabs. The clueless Western journalists often let their subjects admit that they, or someone in their family worked for Saddam military or secret police. Naturally, these interviewees are not happy with the new government and all those American troops. That's what the foreign journalists want to hear, and fellows like Abu Ayman, who were in charge of playing the foreign media when Saddam was in charge, are still there to help arrange those interviews.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006
17:45 ||
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#1
Heh.
What's Arabic for "what goes around comes around"?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 18:00
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#2
Insh'Allah, Barbara, Insh'Allah. Translated into Russian: Tough Schitskis. Cannot help but be cynical.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/26/2006 18:57
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Four and a half years after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Kandahar-based correspondent Sarah Chayes tells of the "steady erosion of security" that has left Afghans fearing for their lives. A resurgent Taliban is engaged in a campaign of terror and intimidation, carrying out judiciously executed murders and threatening retaliation against anyone seen collaborating with foreigners or the Afghan government. And there is abundant evidence that this resurgent Taliban is supported by U.S. ally Pakistan, Chayes reports.
Posted by: john ||
03/26/2006
17:25 ||
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#1
A closed circuit of shortsighted policies has brought the United States to this pass: All other goals, such as democracy and reconstruction, have been consistently subordinated to the obsession with Al Qaeda,
Spot on, and the way it should be and not short sighted at all. AQ attacked the United States of America, they are our number one enemy, period! Afghanistan harbored AQ, they fall and the government that supported them was destroyed, good job. This is the price they paid for supporting the attack on America. Afghanistan will never get out of the 13th century, they are no real threat to America, why should I care if they cant get past tribal fears. Our only real concern is if they are able to help rebuild AQ, otherwise so what?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 18:09
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49pan: Our only real concern is if they are able to help rebuild AQ, otherwise so what?
You have to remember - this article is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - whose doomsday clock is set at 7 minutes to midnight today. Having a sense of perspective isn't one of their more obvious qualities.
#3
Zhang Fei, your right, there I go again joustng wind mills.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 19:35
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#4
Little more to add to this exchange, only that to focus on anything other than AQ would advance the day that it has nuclear weaponry to inflict even greater harm on innocence.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 20:31
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I'd like to disagree.
Al Qaeda isn't _the_ problem.
It's _a_ problem.
In a way, it's just another brand name.
_The_ problem is larger than Al Qaeda.
Posted by: Phil ||
03/26/2006 21:03
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Israeli Ambassador to the United States Daniel Ayalon criticized Israel's electoral system Saturday, and said the country should adopt the American system.
Speaking Saturday to congregants at the New York Synagogue in Manhattan, Ayalon said that Israel's electoral system is in need of fundamental changes. He said that the time has come for Israel to emulate the American method.
Ayalon said that the American system was superior because it promises the self-sufficiency of the executive branch and frees it from being held hostage by political parties.
He added that Israel should give the prime minister the same responsibility as is given to the American president, to allow the prime minister the freedom to assemble the cabinet without depending on the parties.
The New York Synagogue is considered one of the city's leading Orthodox institutions.
#3
The parlimentry system doesn't work. I wish people would stop trying to use it. Not enough checks and balances like a republic has. Our founding fathers were true geniuses (or were just THAT cynical).
#5
Steven Den Beste had a piece on his views comparing American vs. parliamentary election systems. It's a long technical essay (is there any other kind from SDB?), that basically says our system is like a more fault-tolerant electronic system with a better S/N ratio. Fascinating read if you have the time and inclination.
Brushing aside Western threats to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear activities, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that his country would soon master nuclear technology in the new Iranian year, which starts on Monday AFP reported Sunday.
Speaking during a meeting with Syria's visiting First Vice President Farouq Al Shara, President Nejad noted that "enemies intend to stop our progress by broad propaganda. But God willing, the Islamic republic will fully gain access to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in this (Iranian) year," Mr Ahmadinejad, said. Coincidentally, this is the same time frame which the Israelis said would be when they would have their first nuclear weapons. I guess it just depends on what your definition of "peaceful" is.
#1
Ahmadinejad is confident that he will survive the year. He thinks that we will strike his missiles and naval forces first and that will give him a chance to get into a deep bunker. He is wrong. Missile and leadership targets will be struck simultaneously. There are cruise missiles with his name on them.
#2
There are cruise missiles with his name on them.
Spot on!!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 17:50
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After some of Saddam's leadership was able to play cat and mouse, avoiding such things, this time I would suspect we will be very sure of our targets.
#7
Festivities commence shortly have US elections in November. Seasons Greetings, ahMAD
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 20:56
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Well, the Israelis cannot let the M²s get a nuke for blackmail. And President Bush said that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuke, so I have to take them on their words. The world cannot allow the M²s to have a nuke, which will get into the hands of a proxy. Even the EUniks, whether they like it or not. We are all playing for all the marbles now.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/26/2006 23:14
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#9
Will say again that the Mullahs and MadMoud are willing enough to risk mutually/world-destroying, geopol/nuclear confrontation between the US-West and Russia-China - they know both sides, espec the weak Chicoms and Russian Half-a-Commie, are not ready for limited nuke war at this time, but they Iran also know they cannot unilater stop or prevent any US-led invasion andor occupation of Iran, even iff they had [primitive]nukes. The question for Dubya and Admin is not iff the US-Allies will prevail in invading Iran only, but what will be the Russo-Chicom response afterwards, immediate or long-term.
Iraqi police say Sadrs militiamen tried to stop US troops from entering the Mustafa Mosque to make arrests. Witnesses say the dead were unarmed worshippers. The US military has not commented on that incident. At the same time American sources report US troops arrested in Baghdad Iraqi soldiers holding 40 hostages. No details provided of this incident.
In the Mull Eed village near Baquba, 30 mostly headless bodies were found on the main street, many of them shot. Another 13 bodies were found earlier Sunday in Baghdad. These episodes fit with the sectarian violence raging in Iraq since last months blast at the Shiite Golden Dome mosque in Samarrah.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006
14:31 ||
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#1
Arabs invented the zero to explain Mullah Mookies I.Q.
#3
Looks like collaborative reporting from a different source:
US troops today arrested at least 40 Iraqi Interior Ministry forces who were holding 17 foreigners in a secret bunker complex, political sources said.
A Reuters reporter who approached the bunker complex today was turned away by Shiite militiamen.
It was not clear who the foreigners were but the Shiite-led Iraqi government has launched a crackdown on Sunni foreign fighters from Arab states it accuses of carrying out suicide bombings which have killed thousands of mostly Shiite Iraqis.
US troops last year found 173 mostly Sunni Arab prisoners held in a secret Interior Ministry bunker.
They showed signs of torture and malnourishment in a scandal that embarrassed the government.
Sunni Arab leaders accuse Interior Ministry forces of working alongside Shiite militias who run death squads, a charge the ministry denies.
#5
By now one might think Tatars'Tots would understand there is a huge difference between drawing down on unarmed Sunni a**holes, women and children and the US military.
Posted by: Mark Z ||
03/26/2006 18:48
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#6
I look at the a**hat's teeth and it makes think of the Marathon Man...and how I wish Dr. Hess (Sir Laurence Olivier) could get a hold of his mouth for a few hours.
A Muslim couple in Jalpaiguri district have been ordered by local religious leaders to separate as the husband allegedly uttered talaq three times in his sleep.
While the couple, who have three children, refused to obey the order since there was no discord between them, the community leaders are adamant that they must separate or face a "social boycott".
Aftab Ansari and Sohela have been married for the past 11 years. However, on the night of December 20 last year, Aftab allegedly uttered talaq three times in his sleep after a tiff with his wife.
The matter came to light when Sohela discussed it with her close friends and soon it reached the ears of the Muslim leaders.
The leaders, quoting the Shariyat, ruled that the talaq has to be implemented and if it is not acceptable, the only alternative was temporary separation for 100 days during which the wife will live at her father's house and spend a night with another man.
She can remarry her husband only after the man has given her talaq.
As the couple was unwilling to accept the verdict, the matter went to the family counselling centre at Falakata police station in Jalpaiguri district.
The counselling centre, attended by judges of the Alipurduar sub-divisional court, discussed the problem in detail on Saturday, but failed to find a solution.
The additional district session judge (second track), Muhammad Abdul Jalil, has directed the general secretary of the Anjuman Committee, Muhammad Abul, to settle the issue, sources in the counselling centre said.
Posted by: john ||
03/26/2006
14:20 ||
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#1
What's this "spend a night with another man" nonsense? Someone pls explain.
her mistake is telling the girls what hubby says when he sleeps, as a joke and thinking it's cute. the religions mistake is adhereing to well - the religion. I thind that muslims are fed up with this too - it's why the riots. They hate to be shown there is another way of living.
#2
TW, it's for real. She's supposed to be married to another man and have the marriage consummated before she can remarry her previous owner husband. Thats if hubby #2 will go along with the playbook.
Sadr trying to stir up violence against US troops.
Police and a top aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Sunday that 18 people were killed in a clash involving U.S. and Iraqi army forces at a mosque in eastern Baghdad. The U.S. military said it had no information on the reported violence.
The announcement came hours after a mortar round slammed to earth near al-Sadr's home in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. The popular anti-American cleric home but was not hurt, an aide said.
Iraqi authorities also said late Sunday that U.S. forces raided an Interior Ministry building and arrested 40 policemen after discovering 17 non-Iraqi prisoners in the facility.
Interior is Shiite territory and they've been running death squads pretty openly
Police 1st Lt. Thayer Mahmoud said the arrested police were being held for investigation, but the reason was not known. Mahmoud said the U.S. forces remained at the building and were guarding the 17 foreigners.
Abdul-Zahra al-Suaidi, head of al-Sadr's office in Baghdad, said U.S. forces and Iraqi soldiers opened fire at the al-Moustafa Shiite mosque in the Ur neighborhood, killing 18 people in what he called an unprovoked attack. Separately, Iraqi police Lt. Hassan Hmoud said 18 people were killed in the mosque. He said he had no other details.
U.S. Sgt. 1st Class Keith Robinson, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division that has responsibility for Baghdad, said late Sunday his office had no information on the reported mosque clash.
Greg Fazho, a spokesman for the U.S. command, also said the press center had not received any "releasable information" about any incident in that area. "We're still trying to find out what is going on," he said.
A child and at least one guard were wounded in the mortar attack earlier Sunday that hit some 165 feet from al-Sadr's home, according to police and al-Sadr aide Sheik Sahib al-Amiri.
Iraqi troops sealed the area and the cleric's Mahdi Army militia surrounded the home after the attack, al-Amiri said. Al-Sadr lives near the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad.
Shortly after the attack, the cleric issued a statement calling for calm. "I call upon all brothers to stay calm, and I call upon Iraqi army to protect the pilgrims as the Nawasib (militants) are aiming to attack Shiites everyday," he said ahead of Wednesday's commemoration marking the death of the Prophet Muhammad.
Najaf police chief called the assault a "cowardly attack" by those still loyal to Saddam Hussein aimed at dividing the Iraqi people.
"But this will not happen," Maj. Gen. Abbas Mi'adal told reporters near al-Sadr's home. "We are ready to confront any terrorist schemes and protect the pilgrims."
At least 10 Iraqis were killed in violence elsewhere, including a 13-year-old boy killed by a bomb as he walked to school in the southern city of Basra. Police also found 11 handcuffed and bullet-riddled bodies dumped in Baghdad and two in the city of Baqouba.
The Iraqi army said it also had dispatched troops to investigate a report of 30 beheaded corpses in a village north of Baghdad, but the soldiers turned back before reaching the site, apparently fearing an insurgent ambush.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said the U.S. could withdraw a significant number of troops from Iraq this year if Iraqi forces are able to assume greater control of the country's security.
"I think it's entirely probable that we will see a significant drawdown of American forces over the next year. ... It's all dependent on events on the ground," the chief American diplomat said Sunday, echoing military commanders.
Just this past week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to predict when U.S. forces would be out of Iraq. President Bush has said that decision would be up to a future U.S. president and a future Iraqi government.
Rice, on NBC's "Meet the Press," noted that Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, "has talked about a significant reduction of American forces over the next year. And that significant reduction is because Iraqi forces are taking and holding territory now."
There were conflicting reports about Sunday's attack in Najaf, which came a day after the cleric's Mahdi Army militia forces battled with Sunni insurgents near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of the capital. Seven people most civilians killed in their homes by mortar fire died in the gunbattle and several others were wounded.
Al-Sadr's aide said two mortar rounds fell near the home Sunday, wounding two guards and the child, while the police chief said it was just one mortar round that wounded one guard and the child.
Al-Sadr, who routinely blames the United States for the violence that has beset the country, said American troops were trying to drag Iraqis into "sectarian wars."
"I call upon my brothers not to be trapped by the Westerners' plots," he said.
#1
Foxnews has footage but says it is too graphic to put on the air...
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/26/2006 14:56
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The US military says they never entered a mosque. Looks like the Sadrists moved their bodies. Can't get a battlefield victory? Then settle for a propaganda victory.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006 18:08
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#3
"U.S. forces remained at the building and were guarding the 17 foreigners."
Seems like they were Sudanese without proper immigration docs (US Border Patrol, take note). US forces determined no mistreatment, no improper detention, and withdrew, leaving the prisoners to the Iraqis.
#1
Here is an uncommon reference that sort of puts the Egyptian empire in perspective:
Rulers of Ancient Egypt
(all dates B.C.E.)
Menes c2960
Djoser 2630
Snefru 2575
Khufu (Cheops) 2551
Khafre 2520
Menkuare 2490
Teti 2323
Pepi I 2289
Pepi II 2246
Mentuhotep I 2140
Amenemhat I 1991
Senwosret I 1971
Amenemhat II 1929
Senwosret II 1897
Senwosret III 1878
Amenemhat III 1844
Amenemhat IV 1797
Sobek-nefru 1787
Ahmose I 1550
Amenhotep I 1525
Thutmose I 1504
Thutmose II 1492
Thutmose III 1479
Hatshepsut 1473
Amenhotep II 1427
Thutmose IV 1400
Amenhotep III 1390
Akhenaton 1349
Tutankhamen 1336
Haremhab 1323
Ramses I 1295
Seti I 1294
Ramses II 1279
Memeptah 1213
Seti II 1200
Sethnakht 1186
Ramses III 1184
Ramses IV 1153
Ramses V 1147
Ramses VI 1143
Ramses VII 1136
Ramses VIII 1129
Ramses IX 1126
Ramses X 1108
Ramses XI 1099
Sheshong I 945
Osorkon I 924
Osorkon II 874
Shabago 712
Tarhargo 690
Psamtik I 664
Necho II 610
Psamtik II 595
Apries 589
Ahmose II 570
Psamtik III 526
Ptolemy I 304
Ptolemy II 285
Ptolemy III 246
Ptolemy IV 222
Ptolemy V 205
Ptolemy VI 180
Ptolemy VII 145
Ptolemy VIII 145
Ptolemy IX 116
Ptolemy X 107
Ptolemy XI 88
Ptolemy XII 80
Ptolemy XIII and
Cleopatra 51
Ptolemy XIV and
Cleopatra 47
Cleopatra and
Ptolemy XV 44
#6
#1's list starts with Menes (Possibly also Narmer) and then skips to the beginning of the forth dynasty when they began building the pyrmids. We know of other Pahraos in between. It also seems to skip others afterwards.
Posted by: Scorpion King ||
03/26/2006 21:10
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The Kings List.. Actually Manetho's list contains scores of names before Menes. The only problem with them is the chronology, excessive longevity being the point of contention, hence these rulers considered 'mythological'. However, it is possible that the time was counted differently in those times, say months instead of years.
Speaking of longevity... there seem to be at least two very long lived sum'abitches:
Sobek-nefru 1787 - 1550
Osorkon II 874 - 712
I know, so called "intermediate periods". But what the heck would have to transpire that the whole edifice of Egyptian power disappeared for more than 100 years, to be revived after that time. Musta been some nasty shit hitting the fan. It is not, perhaps, as amazing that after more than three generations the system almost returned in its former glory, as the fact that it did return.
Mass. pols take note...
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A bored Canadian bureaucrat fed up with office drudgery is seeking C$1 million ($860,000) in donations so he can quit his job and "do something that makes a difference in my life and the lives of others." Yeah, he must work for the government. He wants everybody else to pay for it. Maybe they can make him an honorary Palestinian?
The unnamed man, who claims to have worked for a large civil service organization for over 10 years, has set up a Web site -- saveabureaucrat.com -- on which he explains he is desperate to escape his job. "After a while it starts to sap the energy and soul out of you and you realize that you have become a true bureaucrat ... I feel like an old curmudgeon frustrated by having to deal with paper being passed around at a snail's pace," he writes. Welcome to the club, bub. It's a big one...
"Retirement will free up my time for volunteer activities such as tutoring children and counseling people who are going through rough patches in their life. On a daily basis I will be a much more pleasant person to be around," he adds. I knew it. It's..."for the children".
Despite promising not to spend donations on "Rolls-Royce cars, 10 bedroom houses, airplanes," the bored civil servant has quite a way to go. As of Wednesday morning, five sympathetic souls had sent in a total of just C$59.26. Proving that there is one born every minute...
#3
He needs to join the Christian Peacemaker Teams. Someone might actually rescue him.
Posted by: john ||
03/26/2006 14:43
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#4
He almost has enough for a Saturday Night Special and a box of bullets.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006 15:04
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#5
Well, he's entitled to his entitlements. It's a Canadian public worker thing.
Those of us who haven't sucked at the public tit for a decade, pulling down the most for the least, wouldn't expect the world to sympathetically hand over a million dollars to this Homer.
We would have quit when the job didn't meet expectations and looked elsewhere.
#6
lol
"honorary Palestinian"
Hey I'm tired of my job ya wanna give me some money so I can get out of my job?
Posted by: Jan ||
03/26/2006 18:03
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#7
Ummmm, I'm a poor, underpaid security officer at one of the nations' leading laboratories nestled 850-ft above the city of Berkeley, CA, one of the most leftist, liberal, socialistic cities in America.
I can't leave my job or California because of the paltry wage I am forced to contend with just to live and keep a roof over my head (and that of my poor sick mother and her poor sick roommate and our two old doggies) and the high cost of living in California.
Please, send me money so I can relocate to somewhere more conservative and lead a lifestyle more fitting to that which I would like to become accustomed.
Please, send me money so I can get the hell outta' California and away from Berkeley.
If I can collect at least $100k I'll be able to get away from here and start a new life. That's not even $1 million.
LAPD estimates 500,000 at protest; Bush faces wedge issue for party
LOS ANGELES - They surprised the police, and maybe themselves, their T-shirts turning block after block of downtown Los Angeles streets white in a demonstration so massive that few causes in recent U.S. history have matched it.
Police said more than 500,000 people marched Saturday to protest a proposed federal crackdown on illegal immigration. Wearing white as a sign of peace, and waving flags from the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala and other countries, they came to show that illegal immigrants already are part of the American fabric, and want the chance to be legal, law-abiding citizens.
Police used helicopters to come up with the crowd estimate. Ive been on the force 38 years and Ive never seen a rally this big, said Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr., incident commander for the rally.
In Denver, more than 50,000 people protested downtown Saturday, according to police who had expected only a few thousand. Phoenix was similarly surprised Friday when an estimated 20,000 people gathered for one of the biggest demonstrations in city history, and more than 10,000 marched in Milwaukee on Thursday. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006
11:55 ||
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#1
... and want the chance to be legal, law-abiding citizens.
#3
Illegal immigration is a criminal act and should be treated as such. And I'm appalled by the blatant racism of our naturalized Latino citizens who are siding with these criminals over their own country because they "look like us".
#4
As a Californian I'm disgusted with our politicians response to this invasion. Illegal aliens are here illegally! Throw them out!
I'm infuriated every time I see an advertisement posted on city buses in Spanish. Damnit! This is the USA - Speak English! I have no desire to learn spanish and (damn it!) I shouldn't have to learn their damn language to live in my own damn State.
#5
Immigration reform can not work. All the debate, rhetoric, and political capital will do nothing to change the situation which causes this problem. These theatrical displays are only focused upon the symptom of the problem and the underlying causal factor.
The problem is in Mexico City. The multi-generational oligarchy that constitutes Mexicos ruling class has absolutely no motivation to change the situation. In fact they must encourage it. The depth of their corruption and economic impact of their xenophobic chauvinistic constitution insures the continuation of their double digit unemployment. If they could not unload eleven million unemployed upon their neighbor, Mexico and its rulers would have faced revolution and reform decades ago. I was stationed in Korea in the late 80s. Heres a country which was leveled in the early 1950s in a war. Yet, with an area of Kansas, no natural resources and a much smaller population, Korea is listed as 13th in GDP. Mexico, far larger, gifted with both abundant natural resources and arable land, a greater population upon which to draw, and no destruction of its infrastructure, is 11th. Tells you something about how the ruling class in Mexico has prioritized its concerns. This is not in competency. This is corruption to the very base level of governing. Its a cancer. As long as that cancer is there, it is not in the interest of the oligarchy in Mexico to stop the flow of its citizens out of the country to allow them, the ruling class, to retain power.
No where in any of the talk about immigration or immigration reform do I see these thoughts. As long as it is ignored, nothing on immigration is really going to change. Weve taken the UN Security Council approach to the issue. We know what needs to be done, but it is too unpalatable to do that we instead choose to issue papers and wish the problem would go away. Given that like any group in power is unlikely to voluntarily surrender power or agree to reforms which will diminish their power, the choices are not pretty and therefore unlikely to be articulated.
However, the trans-national progressives [tnp] offer an opening. They argue for reform based upon humanitarian considerations and the surrender of national identity. Well its time to play that back into their face. If theyre really concerned about the obreros, why just the ones that are able to make it to the US? What about those back in the towns and villages who are unable to take such a trek? And if we are asked to surrender our sovereignty, why shouldnt Mexico? Why not press the issue back. Would not the people of Mexico be better off given a stable currency, stable economy, free flow of labor and capital, and an injection of cultural intolerance of governmental corruption? Does not the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico enjoy such a status now? Why would a Commonwealth of Mexico not also enjoy such opportunities. Right now were saddled with all the responsibilities and none of the benefits. It wont be easy. Nothing worthwhile usually is. However, I have to wonder how such a dialogue among us be received by the ruling class in Mexico? Suddenly, the ruling class will see another threat other than reform to their power. Youll see the first indication when they rally the people around the Mexican flag. Like we havent seen that show already played in recent days. I think it is time we begin a propaganda war. One based upon the advantages to the average Mexicans which offers them a positive alternative to their failed government. Watch the ruling class when that happens. Itll follow the usual pattern of exploiting nationalism to engender power. Just keep pointing out that every body that crosses that border is another vote for Commonwealth status. Keep hitting that line. Remember most wars are not won on the defense, theyre won on the offense. The Mexican political establishment has been at war with El Norte for decades, eating away at their neighbors sovereignty. Its time to reverse the flow.
#6
TG, yes, you've described the cause. However, we in the US are like a patient with a severed artery. We have to staunch the blood flow immediately or later measures mean nothing. We HAVE to seal the borders now. Both north and south. We, our entire system, are being over run. Once a permanent change is made, there is no going back. If all high level jobs are outsourced, and low level ones insourced( ie. illegal work force) what in hell will your children and grand children do ? Of course, the aristocracy of Mexico, a few families of european origin, have run the country like Old Spain for centuries. tehy are only deporting the native Indian cast-offs. They relish this solution. Unfortunately, the American aristocracy love it also. Drops their wage base dramatically. Some people here don't care, until their own job/livlihood is directly affected. Even now your health and healthcare system are directly affected, but you pay no attention. The day you or yours appear in emergency and have to lay on a gurney for an hour because emergency personnel are attending walk-ins with no insurance and your loved one doesn't make it, you'll finally wake to present day reality. It will be too late for you. It'll be too late for others also. These cahnges and impacts are not benign as these corportae employers might have one believe. They tell you we can't survive without illegals. Seems to me the US was MUCH more vibrant and prosperant in the 50's & 60's and not any illegal workforce at all. How is that ?
#7
Well, in part it's because we had an industrial base after WWII and most of Europe didn't -- but they had aid and a deep need to buy things.
That prosperity here at home was a direct outcome of the disparities after the war. By the late 60s, when they had begun to catch up, we faced stagflation as a result.
#8
I only hope that the Republican leadership (sic) doesn't cave because a MINORITY protest. Every time that California has put so-called "anti-immigrant" proposals on the ballot they have won by HUGE margins.
#10
If we stop giving free care as in emergency medicaid and all the other free services, that may slow the migration down.
The employers need to offer insurance to the workers if they work for them. They can't have it both ways. Businesses that benefit by their cheap labor, and the rest of us are stuck paying medical costs for the worker and the whole family.
It would also be good to insist on english; to separate our country using 2 different languages isn't a melting pot. We need to encourage folks that want to be here, to join in our culture, not bring theirs. To keep their culture and ways alive in the home is one thing, but to embrace america's values and way of life in public is very important. Diversity is good, but sameness is important too, with similar values upheld. We've become too politically correct here. I really don't like the direction our leaders are taking us in.
It's not right to be here illegally and expect to attain legal status by such a bold and defiant manner. Too bad the chance was missed, I bet most at the rally were illegals and could have been rounded up. A form of penance needs to be paid of sorts, don't you think?
Posted by: Jan ||
03/26/2006 17:58
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This is what is coming to in the American Southwest folks. Their real intention is open borders, wresting control of governance (with the open support of the Democratic Party) from enfranchised citizens, and recreating Alta California. It is almost certainly too late to stop it absent actual bloodshed, and Americans frankly don't have the stomach for it. Kiss the American Southwest Goodbye, it will look and run like Baja, replete with the corruption and bullshit kleptocracy they have in Mexico now. Ever since we stopped using deadly force as a means of last resort to control the borders in the late 80's, the USBP has been playing tackle football against literally millions a year for years now. ANd if you think the number of illegals here is 10-12 million, look at the streets of L.A. I'd guess closer to 20 million, and you are paying for them, in healthcare, ruined schools, declining social services, infrastructure maintenance defered to shore up failing systems (drive I-5 in LA or even up the central valley sometime).
But above all, the sheer ARROGANCE of these shitheads just galls me to rage.......... theives in the night stealing the heritage of my grandchildren like it was their damn right......
Posted by: Just About Enough! ||
03/26/2006 18:39
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One thing the illegals are doing is killing the welfare system. Everyone talks about how hard these people work, but they are massively subsidized by the taxpayer. Their medical care through emergency rooms, their kids swamping public schools to the point of total dysfunction, welfare..... There may not be political will to stop illegals, but the will to fund the mounting welfare bill for both citizens and illegals is evaporating and the system may be effectively defunded within 10 years.
A mortar attack hit the compound of Moqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric and militia leader on Sunday, injuring one guard and a child, a top Sadr aide said. Sadr was inside his house at the time of the attack but escaped injury, aide Mostafa Yacoubi said.
Two 82mm mortar rounds hit the Shiite cleric's compound, which is in a neighborhood controlled by Sadr's forces in the northeast of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
One round struck by the front gate, injuring the guard and a neighborhood child, Yacoubi said. Yacoubi gave no details of any casualties inside Sadr's house, except to say Sadr was not wounded.
Yacoubi said the strike appeared to have been fired at close-range from another house in the neighborhood. Angry followers of the young Shiite cleric surrounded Sadr's compound after the barrage.
Shortly after the attack, the cleric issued a statement calling for calm among his followers.
"I call upon all brothers to stay calm and I call upon the Iraqi army to protect the pilgrims as the Nawasib (militants) are aiming to attack Shiites everyday," the statement said, according to the Associated Press.
In other violence, a 13-year-old boy was killed by a roadside bomb as he arrived at school in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, news agencies reported. The bomb outside the school went off at 7:30 a.m., just as children were arriving for classes in Basra's city center, police Capt. Mushtaq Kadim said, according to the Associated Press. In Iraq, the school week runs Sunday to Thursday, with Friday a rest day for the Muslim day of prayers.
Yacoubi, al-Sadr's aide, refused to call the mortar attack on al-Sadr's compound an assassination attempt, but rather called it a threat to al-Sadr's life.
Al-Sadr, Yacoubi said, "is calling on his followers and the Iraqi people to remain calm, and not to be dragged into sectarian strife."
In the past two months, attacks on two Shiite targets -- a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, and Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, a stronghold of Sadr support -- have unleashed the greatest sectarian bloodletting since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sadr issued similar appeals for calm after both attacks.
However, Sadr's thousands-strong Mahdi Army militia is accused by many U.S. officials and others in the violent retaliation to the mosque bombing and Sadr City attack. Sadr inherited the house from his father, and uses it as his house and as his main office, where he meets with dignitaries and others.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/26/2006 12:31
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#5
"fired at close-range from another house in the neighborhood"
Yeah, I considered that myself when my neighbor's dog was yapping at midnight. Note to self: use more than two rounds.
Imam Ahmed Akkari has issued death threats against Naser Khader of the Social Liberals. Naser Khader founded the organisation Democratic Moslems in February, as an organisation for moderate, Democracy-minded Moslems to join. See this article for biography and background on the enmity between Naser Khader and the Imams in Denmark.
Today Jyllands-Posten reports that Imam Ahmed Akkari was recorded on a hidden camera by journalist Mohamed Sifaoui of the French TV-Station France 2 which will show a documentary tonight detailing the doings of the Danish Imams. The documentary also reveals that the Danish Imams have been using the affair as a lever to go against their political opponents in Denmark.
Ahmed Akkari is quoted as saying:
If [Naser Khader] becomes the Minister of Foreigners or Integration, why dont we send out two guys to blow up him and his ministry?
The Danish reaction to this has been consternation and revulsion.
Peter Skaarup of the Danish Peoples Party:
Its pure threats and it only goes to show how crazy these Imams have been acting. I will at once ask the Minister what punishment can be given for making such statements and whether it is a punishable offense
Jens Rohde of the Liberals:
This is certainly very disturbing and it shows what were up against. Thats also why I am worried about what is happening at that conference in Bahrain which Ahmed Akkari is a delegate to
John Jay Ray at Agora is all over this story. A second story is breaking here as well: Danish imam Abu Laban apparently knew about a planned Martyr action on February 21st. Danish political leaders are not happy.
In working-class Parisian suburbs like this one, heavily populated by North African immigrants, the word "Jew" is now a standard epithet. It appears in graffiti on middle school walls and neighborhood playgrounds and on the tongues of the young.
"It's blacks and Arabs on one side and Jews on the other," said Sebastian Daranal, a young black man standing in the parking lot of a government-subsidized housing project with two friends.
Eight men beat the son of a rabbi here in March. Another Jew was attacked the next day.
In the wake of the torture and killing in February of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jew, attention has focused on an undeniable problem: anti-Semitism among France's second-generation immigrant youth, whose high jobless rate the government is trying to address with a law drawing widespread protests across the country.
The law, intended to increase employment, especially among the young, has drawn opposition because of a provision that allows companies to hire people 25 or younger for a two-year trial period, during which they can be fired without cause.
Schools are the battleground over anti-Semitism, and teachers complain that the government has done little, despite many proposals.
"The minister of education has done nothing," said Jean-Pierre Obin, an inspector general of education in France, who wrote a report in 2004 that called anti-Semitism "ubiquitous" in the 61 schools surveyed. "He prefers not to talk about it."
Mr. Obin wrote in the report of "a stupefying and cruel reality: in France, Jewish children and they are alone in this case can no longer be educated in just any school."
Ianis Roder, 34, a history teacher in a middle school northeast of Paris, said he was stunned by what he witnessed after Sept. 11, 2001. The next day, someone spray-painted in a stairwell of the school the image of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center beside the words "Death to the U.S., Death to Jews."
When he told his class months later that Hitler had killed millions of million Jews, one boy blurted out, "He would have made a good Muslim!" Mr. Roder told of a Muslim teacher who dismissed her class after a shouting match over Nazi propaganda. The students said the offensive images accurately depicted Jews.
Even today, he said, there is widespread belief that the Sept. 11 attacks were a Jewish plot and that Jews were notified beforehand.
Barbara Lefèbvre, a history teacher who has taught in several of the working-class suburbs, said many people minimize the anti-Semitism among France's youth.
"They say, 'That's the way the kids talk they don't mean it in the same way that you or I would,' " she said. Ms. Lefèbvre, who is Jewish, said she had to argue with the principal of her school several years ago to get an investigation when a student wrote "dirty Jew" on a notebook used by her class. The student, a French-Arab boy, was ultimately given just two hours of detention.
Some teachers simply gloss over subjects likely to elicit anti-Semitic responses. Ms. Lefèbvre said she knows teachers who even show fictional films, like Roberto Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful," instead of treating the Holocaust directly.
France was the first European country to offer Jews full citizenship and has done as much as any to exorcise the ghosts of Nazi collaboration. But the postwar climate for Jews has steadily soured as attention has focused on the Palestinian cause and Muslims have moved here in large numbers.
With the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada against Israel in 2000, anti-Semitic attacks in France skyrocketed. While the number of reported incidents has fallen since peaking in 2004, anti-Semitism is now entrenched in many of the country's working-class housing projects.
The Arab communities of North Africa had no postwar sense of Holocaust guilt. If anything, distress over the creation of Israel in 1948 reinforced anger at Jews to the point that successive waves of anti-Jewish riots drove most of North Africa's Jews to Israel and Europe primarily France in the 1950's and 1960's.
Some people say that many of the North African Arabs who subsequently moved to France carried anti-Jewish prejudices with them and passed them to a second-generation, where they have been reinforced by support for the Palestinian cause. And French guilt over colonialism has made such prejudices harder to counter.
"As long as anti-Semitism came from the extreme right there was a reaction," said Ms. Lefèbvre, who has written about anti-Semitism and sexism in the schools. "But when it came from that part of the population that itself was a victim of racism, no one wanted to see it."
Sitting in a room hung with posters deploring racism at a youth center in La Courneuve, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, Yannis, the 16-year-old son of a French father and Algerian mother, said racist talk was common. "We've become used to it, hearing it day after day, so we've all started to speak like that," he said, adding that even 7-year-olds say, "Don't eat like a Jew," if someone is being stingy with food.
Fahima, 14, with long black hair and limpid eyes, doing her homework beside him, spoke of a confrontation she had with a Jewish teacher two years ago.
"He said, 'You blacks and Arabs will never get apartments in Paris,' " she said, explaining that he meant the students would never manage to move out of the poor suburbs. Fahima, who is French-Algerian, said she retorted, "You Jews only have apartments there because you were picked on during the war."
"I was mean," she said, playing with a shiny cellphone. "But I'm not anti-Semitic."
The girls with her complained about the teacher, saying he talked often about his family's suffering in the Holocaust. "He cries whenever he mentions his grandmother," one girl said with exasperation.
Some schools have tried to defuse the problem without addressing it directly. After a Jewish girl was harassed in Saint-Ouen two years ago, the administration of her school decided to show "Night and Fog," a haunting 1955 documentary film that includes graphic footage of Nazi death camps.
Initially, teachers feared that showing the movie risked inciting confusing comparisons between the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but then relented.
At the film's end, one boy not a Muslim asked how Jews who had known such suffering could treat Palestinians "the same way."
No one responded, though Carole Diamant, a philosophy teacher, said she spoke to him privately later about why he was wrong. "I felt like we were on a wire," she said, describing the tension. Since then, the school has included the Holocaust in a broader program on genocide.
Anti-Semitism is felt most acutely in communities like Sarcelles, where many North Africans settled in the 1950's and 1960's. Sarcelles is home to one of the most concentrated Jewish communities in France, surrounded by an unsightly sprawl of apartment blocks that house the North African and sub-Saharan immigrants who arrived later.
France has a well-established Jewish community with European roots, many of whose members occupy the upper echelons of French society. Hundreds of thousands of poorer North African Jews have more recently swelled the Jewish community to about 600,000, making it the largest in Europe. Those North African Jews and their children bear the brunt of the anti-Semitism in the working-class neighborhoods.
Each time anti-Semitic attacks make news, the Interior Ministry promises more security around Jewish institutions. But "more police aren't the answer because it remains in the spirit of the people," said Dr. Marc Djebali, a spokesman for the Jewish community in Sarcelles.
Laurent Berros, the synagogue's rabbi, said local imams had evaded his suggestion that Jewish and Muslim leaders go together into troubled neighborhoods. "They say that bringing a rabbi into these neighborhoods isn't easy," he said. "There is a fear that they'll be seen as collaborators."
The deteriorating climate has led thousands of French Jews to move to Israel in the past five years, including about 3,300 last year, a 35-year high.
Murielle Brami, 42, whose parents immigrated to France to escape anti-Jewish riots in Tunisia, has the sinking feeling that history is repeating itself. "All the Jews in France want one thing, to leave for Israel or the United States," she said. That is hyperbole, but it is a sign of the anxiety percolating through France's Jewish community. "When our parents came, it was paradise here," said Ms. Brami, who remembers staying out late without worrying about her safety.
Now she avoids certain neighborhoods even in the day and no longer allows her son to wear a yarmulke in the street after some youths put a knife to his throat last year.
#2
History repeats itself, but this time it's not the Germans demanding the death of Jews, it's the Muslims. And France answers with the same silence. Not understanding that this time, it only starts with the Jews. Everyone else is next.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 12:29
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#4
For the French, it's not a problem as long as it's only Jews being persecuted.I'd accuse the French of losing their moral bearings, but you can't lose something that you've never had.
#6
True. But it's also the case that the young adults in Frnace have been put in a box by their greeder elders. The elders have the jobs, have job security and are promised huge pensions, all of which the kids have to pay for, but for which they have no secure jobs themselves.
I would have respected de Villepin more if he had cut to the root of things and proposed to allow firing of ANYONE for non-performance. Of course, that would bring down the government overnight.
#7
Disagree. The French economy is in the tank. The system is sucking air with no hope in sight. It's not a generational issue, but a matter of survival.
Now, back to the issue of anti-semitism, anyone of Jewish decent remaining in France needs to get out. The French government is defenseless and incapable (assuming they sincerely wanted to) of defending innocent Jews. France is simply a corrupt and inept country.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 15:28
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#8
Yes, the Obin rapport was quite clear, some territories of the french Republic, incluidng many schools, are judenfrei...
French are not an antisemite Nation, IIRC surveys find numbers of admitedlly antisemite people lower than in the USA (needs confirmation, not sure); during WWII, as JFM pointed with more accuracy (he knows History, I'm just a dork), the french jews had the highest survival rate in all occupied Europe, circa 50%; even the collaborationnist Vichy gvt had the foreign jews deported rather than french jews, and many run-of-the-mill french guys helped jews as they could.
Anyway, traditionnal french antisemitism was "maurassian", catholic and anti-modernist, certainly not racial à la nazi, though this doens't change much.
Result is, the french ideology (Msm, Enlightened Elites, academia, leftists,...) is rabidly antizionist and pro-paleo. The Al Durah blood libel comes to mind, here. This was the protocols ofd the elders of Zion of the 21st century, and it was made possible by gvt-owned tv, either in passive complicty, or in full knowledge, in a propaganda war directed against Israel.
So, the cultural and religious antisemitism of the "youths", compounded by the racial antisemitism imported from the West, is given a favorable terrain by ALL of the msm's messages, which tell over and over the israelis are oprressing the paleo-victims.
This is a poison, even more so than it meets what Mr. Taguieff (a french scholar) calls "the new judeophbia", IE the new-look antisemitism coming from the left (jews = zionists = racists = nazis, paleos = WWII jews), which allows purely antisemite figurehead like the sinister black stand up comedia Dieudonné ("I wipe my *ss with the french flag and the israeli flag") to go scot-free 17 times in a row when sued for racist libel... hey, he's a leftist, rules don't apply to him...
Long, but very worthy, set of observations on the current troubles in France from a frequent American visitor. Get a fresh refill of coffee, snuggle up and spend an hour to be educated and entertained. This is what the Sunday NY Times might have been.
Nous sommes tétanisés, said my French friend. [We are paralyzed.]
The French are beginning to wake up, beginning to lift up their Ostrich head from the sand. As opposed to the frequent dismissals I ran across in the past when it wasnt accusations of racism I now met an increasing number of people willing to say, we dont disagree (the French really dont like to say youre right). But, as my friend put it, we dont know what to do. Were paralyzed.
I have been visiting France fairly regularly all my life, but particularly since 2000, the nature of those visits has changed, and Ive watched a radical split occur between the Jewish community in France (which has grown increasingly alarmed at the violence against them) and your typical Frenchman and woman, who consider Jewish alarm if they even notice it as, well, alarmist. (For earlier posts on what I noticed, see here.)
I havent been in France since last Spring, so a number of factors played in the mixture. Obviously the Fall (Ramadan) 2005 riots that started in the Parisian suburbs and spread through France sobered people considerably, despite the official position of the media, political, and academic elites that this was not a religious or cultural issue, but one of socio-economic inequities that could be solved by addressing those inequities. But more recently, there had occurred two things that sobered them considerably. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006
09:36 ||
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#1
"Nous sommes tétanisés" is not we are paralyzed. Paralized is paralisés.
In the mediacl sense Tétanisés is the state you are after an electric shock or when you get tetanos. You are paralyzed but all muscles are contracted while the muscles of "paralysés" (ie people who are in a wheel chair due to a spinal lesion) are flaccid
It is never used when implying you are blocked from taking action because the other side is much more powerful than you, has an unassailable contract or can can blackmail you.
It is exclusively used for a sudden emotional blow who leaves you temporarily unable to react: when the twin towers crumbled America was "tétanisée" but certainly not "paralysée" ie unable to move due to Jihadist strength.
An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.
"Hot potato! Hot potato!"
The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul Rahman, a move that risked angering Muslim clerics who have called for him to be killed.
Not being allowed to kill him will cause a great weeping and gnashing of teeth among the adherents of the Religion of Blood...
An official closely involved with the case told The Associated Press that it had been returned to the prosecutors for more investigation, but that in the meantime, Rahman would be released.
"This is a test. You are being released for the moment, until they can build a better case. This is a bus ticket to Europe. If you don't use it, you're crazy. Think about it."
"The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case," the official said Sunday. "The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow," the official added. "They don't have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case."
"We need a day or so to get the bus gassed up and to put new tires on it."
Abdul Wakil Omeri, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, confirmed that the case had been dismissed because of "problems with the prosecutors' evidence." He said several family members of Rahman have testified that he has mental problems. "It is the job of the attorney general's office to decide if he is mentally fit to stand trial," he told AP. A Western diplomat, also declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case, said questions were being raised as to whether Rahman would stay in Afghanistan or go into exile in a foreign country.
Yeah. It's a test to see if he really is crazy.
Rahman was being prosecuted under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for converting 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
You're simply not allowed to do that in Islam. The penalty is death, which is why no Islamic country can allow freedom of thought.
Some Islamic holy men clerics had said Rahman would face danger from his countrymen if he were released. Earlier Sunday he was moved to a notorious maximum-security prison outside Kabul that is also home to hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida militants. The move to Policharki Prison came after detainees threatened his life at an overcrowded police holding facility in central Kabul, a court official.
And the difference between the holy men and the crooks and thugs in jail is...? Right. The holy men aren't behind bars.
Gen. Shahmir Amirpur, who is in charge of Policharki, confirmed the move and said Rahman had also been begging his guards to provide him with a Bible.
I'm guessing the one he had was taken away from him and desecrated. I'm starting to seethe, here...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Karzai last Thursday and asked for a "favorable resolution" to the case. Karzai also heard from Pope Benedict XVI, who urged Rahman's release out of respect for religious freedom.
In a Muslim country? Right. And I'm going on a tour that includes a stop at the Basilica of St. Abdullah in Mecca.
The pope used the case Sunday to talk about Christians around the world who are persecuted for their beliefs. "My thoughts turn, in particular, to those communities who live in countries where there is a lack of religious freedom, or where despite claims on paper, they in truth are subjected to many restrictions," the pontiff said as he delivered his traditional Sunday blessing from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square. "I send them my warmest encouragement to persevere in the patience and charity of Christ," Benedict added.
#1
They want him to leave the country but with the case against him open so that they can imprison and execute him if he ever returns to try to retrieve his kids.
#2
Some Islamic clerics had said Rahman would face danger from his countrymen if he were released.
Very simple solution. Make public that in case something happens to him or even if he disappearsn for more than 24 hours then every imam in a radius of ten miles will face a very unpleasant death.
#3
I believe Rahman had previously tried to get refugee status in Germany. I wonder where he will now end up.
I hope many Americans have been paying attention (though I doubt it) and learned that not everyone has values that are in any way compatible with ours.
Posted by: ed ||
03/26/2006 9:35
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#4
Gen. Shahmir Amirpur, who is in charge of Policharki, confirmed the move and said Rahman had also been begging his guards to provide him with a Bible.
That'll take care of the problem. He'll be dead within 24 hours. Either a prisoner or a guard will take care of the problem and Karzai will have clean hands.
"Lack of evidence" - so Converts will be killed according to law rather than acknowlege that the Constitution does have a clause guaranteeing religious freedom.
The problem remains, Karzai, and it's still a topic. He dies - at anyone's hand - we hold you responsible.
#5
TW: The problem remains, Karzai, and it's still a topic. He dies - at anyone's hand - we hold you responsible.
Karzai is our guy. But the Afghan population doesn't dance on his strings. Karzai can't even protect himself - our boys do that for him. He certainly can't protect Abdul Rahman. Heck - NGO's with resources to hire bodyguards can't protect themselves. How is a lone individual going to stay alive? Ideally, we should hand this guy a green card and ship him stateside. Maybe even sedate him and tie him up if necessary. I'm sure church groups will be happy to help him adjust (and maybe help him start a new family). Besides, he spent years in Europe. He should do just fine. Outside Afghanistan.
#6
Zhang, I know he'll do just fine outside Afghanistan. The Mad Mullahs cannot let him leave alive. It would prove an escape from islam is possible. Local reports have the fundo truly annoyed that he might be whisked out safely. It's their nightmare.
And it is Karzai's responsibility to ensure that that Sharia does not trump democracy and Article 18. Else it's not democracy and becomes the very thing from which we have fought so hard to free them
We cannot support a government - however fledgling it may profess to be - (Fledglings follow the basic rules in the nest.) that embraces a law of intolerance, violence and hatred.
And whether Karzai can, or will, or understands that acting in the name of human rights is within his realm. As a good muslim, he should cherish the chance at martrydom. It's him or Rahman.
#7
TS: We cannot support a government - however fledgling it may profess to be - (Fledglings follow the basic rules in the nest.) that embraces a law of intolerance, violence and hatred.
Say there's a general rising in Afghanistan. How many men are we prepared to lose enforcing a right to apostasy? A hundred? A thousand? I think we're about to find out just how much Afghans (and the Muslim world) value the right to kill apostates. And how much we value liberal democracy. Afghanistan has a representative democracy - it's just not a liberal democracy, meaning minority rights aren't guaranteed.
Still, I'm not totally pessimistic - I think our persistence in Iraq has shown the Muslim world that Uncle Sam will give them a run for their money - that it isn't easy to outlast us. The response to 9/11 showed that Uncle Sam will hit back hard if struck at home. It's quite possible that the natives will be quiescent in response to our insistence upon religious freedom. One can only hope.
#8
The Mad Mullahs cannot let him leave alive. It would prove an escape from islam is possible.
The "mental problems" story is precisely a way for them to save face here.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would modernize Afghanistan overnight. Its people would be prosperous, employed, educated, connected happily to the outside world. And in such a state I doubt very many would care about Rahman's religious convictions.
But at the moment, that's a ways off. What IS nearby is the need to pressure Iran from the east and Pakistan from the west. Our presence in Afghanistan is a key move in dismantling the Islamacist nuclear threat and Karzai is a key player in supporting that.
One step at a time, folks. This is, as Condi Rice keeps reminding us, a generational war. There will be plenty of time to demand a full change of heart re: fundamentalism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Right now we need to deal with the immediate threat and set some bounds, as with the Rahman case, the publication of the cartoons etc.
#9
Thinemp, source on the mullahs' nightmare being that someone whisks Rahman out to the US safely?
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
03/26/2006 13:16
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My own take is that Karzai and many want just that, in order to save this guy's life without taking on an impossible fight.
On the other hand, the Taliban would LOVE for this to be framed as the West versus the inherent demands of Islam. It plays right into their hands, because your average dirt poor, uneducated Afghan is not about to appreciate the secular arguments for religious freedom, when Islam is the one thing he has that he can hold to proudly.
*IF* we are both wise as serpents and patient as ... well, more patient than Americans tend to be, anyway ... then we have a chance to see that country evolve in ways that will cause the Taliban to wither away at the roots. But it will not happen overnight.
As to why our troops should support the mission there anyway, I could quote Condi Rice on remembering that it took us more than a year or two to evolve into non-discrimination against blacks - a fact that she gently suggests is an opportunity for us to be a little humble when looking at the progress of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But I don't have to. Our military presence in Afghanistan is for our own needs in dealing with Iran, Pakistan etc. It also supports the creation of a moderate, democratic country there over time, which will be to our benefit eventually as well.
But first and foremost it's a flanking move to shape the battlefield with the Islmacists. This is not the time to abandon Afghanistan into their hands, giving up the position we worked hard for and undercutting Karzai in the process.
The Taliban-aligned prosecutor who brought these charges against Rahman wants just that outcome. I for one do not want to give it to him.
#11
Edward It was a Yahoo AP item in the news - just in the body of the early stories as the charges broke. Searched but can't find to give you a link. The statemant surprised me, actually - along the lines I stated, I wish I could find.
lotp I'm not advocating leaving at all. Same reasons. And more determined, but feel a real punch for the 1 step forward, 2 steps back hit.
#12
The CBS radio report about this case alleged that "Christian groups" were "close to the Bush administration" and that is why we put pressure on the Afghans...
Last Saturday morning, needing help to move several heavy cartons of books from my apartment in central Paris to a storage room, I hired two movers and a van from the want ads. Students were in the streets protesting the Contrat de Premier Embauche (CPE) -- a law proposed to combat unemployment by giving employers more flexibility to fire young employees -- and the barricades and traffic diversions made our four-block drive into a half-hour ordeal. As we turned down one obstructed street after another, the movers -- both Arab immigrants -- became more and more incensed."They're idiots," said the driver, gesturing toward the ecstatic protesters. "Puppets for the socialists and the communists." He pantomimed pulling the strings of a marionette.
"It's us they hurt," added the second man. By this he meant immigrants and their children, particularly the residents of France's suburban ghettos, where unemployment runs as high as 50 percent. And, of course, he was right, as everyone with even a rudimentary grasp of economics appreciates: If employers are unable to fire workers, they will be less likely to hire them. It is now almost impossible to fire an employee in France, a circumstance that disproportionately penalizes groups seen by employers as risky: minorities, inexperienced workers and those without elite educations, like the outraged man sitting beside me.
This is the second time in four months that France has been seized with violent protests. And in an important sense, these are counter-riots, since the goals of the privileged students conflict with those of the suburban rioters who took to the streets last November. The message of the suburban rioters: Things must change. The message of the students: Things must stay the same. In other words: Screw the immigrants.
The issue at stake is not, of course, the CPE, which in addition to being unknown in its effects would apply only to a two-year trial period, after which employees would still, effectively, be guaranteed jobs for life. The issue is fear of a real overhaul of France's economically stifling labor laws. While some of the suburban hoodlums have joined in these protests -- after all, a riot is a riot -- it is clear that unless this overhaul proceeds, the immigrants are doomed. If so, last year's violence will seem a lark compared with what is coming.
France is still in the grip of precisely the political mentality that has prevailed here since the Middle Ages. As the protesters themselves cheerfully declare: It's the street that rules. Today's mobs, like their predecessors, are notable for their poor grasp of economic principles and their hostility to the free market. Only wardrobe distinguishes these demonstrations from those that led to the invasion of the national convention in 1795, when first the mob protested that commodity prices were too high; when the government responded with price controls, it protested with equal vigor that goods had disappeared and black market prices had risen. Similarly, the students on the streets today espouse economic views entirely unpolluted by reality. If the CPE is enacted, said one young woman, "You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked."
Imagine that.
As a legacy of this long tradition, the choice in France now is between popular legislation -- that is, useless legislation -- and the street. Thus the paradox at the heart of the protests: Those who want power exploit the mobs to maneuver themselves into position, but having gained power cannot use it to achieve anything worthwhile, lest the same tactics be used against them. The fear of the mob has created a cadre of politicians in France who are unable to speak the truth and thereby prepare French citizens for the inevitable. No one in France -- not one single politician, nor anyone in the media -- is willing to say it: France's labor laws are an absurdity, and if they are not reformed at once, France will go under. "What do they think?" said my driver, who was not, he told me, a mover by trade but an unemployed radio journalist forced to moonlight. "Do they think that jobs just fall from the sky?"
Apparently, they think just that.
In this regard, France, like every European country, remains blackmailed by its history. French rulers, seemingly unable to appeal to the legitimacy they possess as elected leaders, instead behave as popular kings, or as leaders of some faction -- like a king's ministers. They cannot seem to forget what happens when a king loses his popularity. There are thus two choices for the French ruling elite, as they see it: toady or go under.
When Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, an urgent question hung in the air: In Britain, who rules? It was a question to which Britain's powerful unions had a ready answer: We do. Men such as Arthur Scargill, the head of the miner's union, were convinced that although they would never lead Britain, it was within their power to run it and to run it for their benefit through labor laws that anyone beyond the union halls could see would destroy the nation as a competitive economic power. Thatcher so thoroughly crushed both Scargill and his union that neither recovered. For a brief moment, power politics stood revealed. The unions had made a bid for power. They lost.
The same question is now being raised in France: Who rules? This is the second time in 11 years that a popularly elected government here faces dismissal not from the voters, but from the streets. If this does not represent a direct challenge to the government's power, it is hard to know what would. Should the government fall, the question will have been answered.
#1
"I'm entitled to my entitlements." It's becoming a far too familiar cry in Canada too. When labour rules, nothing gets done. Labour supports the weakest link in the chain and encourages striving for the least effort for highest pay and lifetime guarantees. France the model.
Scientists in north-eastern Ethiopia said today that they have discovered a hominid skull that could be a missing link between Homo erectus and modern man. The hominid cranium found in two pieces and believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old comes from a very significant period and is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human, said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia. Archaeologists found the cranium at Gawis, in Ethiopias north-eastern Afar region, five weeks ago, Sileshi said.
Afar's a pretty rich source of hominid fossils. Lucy was found there, too.
Sileshi, an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist based at Indiana University in the US, said most fossil hominids are found in pieces but the near-complete skull - a rare find provided a wealth of information. The cranium dates to a time of transition from African Homo erectus to modern humans about which little is known. The fossil record from Africa for this period is sparse and most of the specimens poorly dated, project archaeologists said. The face and cranium of the fossil are recognisably different from that of modern humans, but it bears unmistakable anatomical evidence that it belongs to the modern humans ancestry, Sileshi said. The form of the face and the brain are among the best means for exploring the evolutionary path of humans and the Gawis cranium preserves both areas, according to the statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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With B-cup-sized breasts, a feminine gait and long, curly hair, Christopher "Kitty" Grey causes a stir every time the inmate enters a cellblock. But instead of reveling in the attention as he is moved from prison to prison, Grey, who is serving 16 years to life for molesting an 8-year-old girl for five years, said he cringes every time he hears the whistles and catcalls.
The transgendered inmate said he belongs in a women's prison, but, by state policy, he can't because he has male genitalia. Well....let him loose in the general population, and I'm sure the other inmates will take care of it for you for free, pervert.
Grey believes Colorado has a constitutional obligation to perform a sex-change operation on him so he can go to a women's prison. I guess he was too busy molesting that kid to catch a bus to Trinidad. He's filed a lawsuit against the state, demanding he be given a psychologist who is a gender specialist.
The state is already providing Grey with 2 milligrams a day of estrace, which softens his skin, and 50 milligrams of aldactone, which suppresses testosterone and promotes breast growth.
He and 18 other transgendered Colorado inmates get the medicine or special psychological counseling. Those who get the medicine do so because they were already using it before their convictions and it would cause too much emotional upheaval in their lives if it were denied.
Hormone treatments cost between $50 and $500 a year, said Dr. James Michaud, chief of mental health for the Colorado Department of Corrections. And a sex-change operation can cost $14,000 or more, Grey said.
"We're not in the business of providing elective care," said Dr. Cary Shames, the Department of Corrections' chief medical officer.
Currently, no state pays for or performs sex-change operations for inmates, although some inmates have tried to get them to. But some, including Colorado, do allow for hormone treatment, and other states, including Kansas, have tried to fight that.
In other prisons, he twice became the sexual partner of tougher inmates who protected him, saying it was only for survival's sake. "I shouldn't have to prostitute myself to remain safe," Grey said. Inmates at every prison he's been at have insisted he become their lover, and he has narrowly escaped being raped, he said. Unlike your victim, who put up with it for five years....
Guards also have been perplexed about what to do with Phillip "Sabrina" Trujillo, a transgendered inmate who is in Colorado's Sterling Correctional Facility.
Guards have repeatedly tried to wash Trujillo's eyeliner and moles off his face only to discover that the features are tattooed on. Even though information about the tattoos is documented in his prison file, it hasn't stopped guards from "writing me up" for using makeup, he said.
"It's not for show. It's who I am," Trujillo said. "I'm a lady." Cue Aerosmith....
He said guards frequently strip-search him and rifle through his cell looking for feminine possessions, such as perfume, which is contraband. He also says he's been beaten.
"They're homophobic," Trujillo said. "They try to make prison more of a living hell." Er...nope. Not all gay men dress as girls. They just don't dig ugly crossdressers. And you wouldn't have been in that "living hell" if you would have been a nice boy/girl. Try again, sunshine.
In his teens, Trujillo stabbed a man six times in the groin during a fight started because the man was angry after discovering Trujillo's true gender. He spent time in a juvenile facility. In 2002, he was sentenced to 16 years for motor-vehicle theft and robbery. So...he can still catch the bus to Trinidad when he gets out in 2018, right? Start saving your pennies, now, "Sabrina", and they can fix you up any way you like, honey...
Trujillo said he is consigned to his fate in a male prison but believes, like Grey, that he belongs in a women's facility.
Grey has been in segregation since he arrived at Limon and was told there was a death threat made against him by gang members.
It was the latest evidence, he said, that he should never stop fighting for a sex change. "If I can't change my brain to match my body, I'm going to change my body to match my brain."
#2
It's all about his "emotional upheaval". All about him. what he needs and makes him happy.
No mention of the victim or a his part in a horrific crime that must have caused massive emotional upheaval. Nope, just about him and his emotional happiness.
#3
To bring you up to date, DB, Dr Stanley Biber, the sex reassigment surgeon who put Trinidad, Colorado on the sex change map, died in January at age 82. He had previously retired in 2003. However,there is another doctor in Trinidad, a woman, who does that kind of surgery. So I guess we can still make jokes about the place.
SAN FRANCISCO - A Christian youth rally that drew more than 25,000 people to AT&T Park this weekend met resistance from city leaders and some residents, who questioned the rally's agenda in this largely intolerant, liberal, gay-friendly metropolis.
The two-day rally, called "Battle Cry for a Generation," was intended to guide young people away from a popular culture that organizers say glamorizes drugs, violence and sex. Except those and flowers in the hair are the things that attract young people to San Francisco.
Ron Luce, whose Texas-based Teen Mania organization put on the event, said it hopefully would inspire a "reverse rebellion" against corrupting influences such as MTV and the online meeting hub, MySpace.com.
The rally, which also will visit Detroit and Philadelphia, featured religious rockers, speakers and the debut of what Luce called a Christian alternative to MySpace.com - at advance ticket prices of $55 and walk-up prices of $199. How's they miss Seattle and Boston?
"This is more than a spiritual war," said Luce, 44, a Concord native and a President Bush appointee to a federal anti-drug abuse commission. "It's a culture war."I wonder if Luce posts here.
City leaders prepared for the battle earlier this week, when the Gay Taliban Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the "act of provocation" by an "anti-gay," "anti-choice" organization that aimed to "negatively influence the politics of America's most tolerant and progressive city."
Luce said it was the first time one of his events has been officially condemned.
Both sides clashed Friday outside City Hall, where Luce led a pre-Battle Cry gathering of teenagers waving triangular red flags flown from long, medieval-looking poles that went with the event's military metaphors. I hope they had sharp pointy tips.
"Are you ready to go to battle for your generation?" he asked, to which the crowd roared "yes!"
A Battle Cry invitation had made plain the symbolism of gathering at "the very City Hall steps where several months ago, gay marriages were celebrated for all the world to see." Besides which it's a great open plaza with easy access for media trucks and cameras.
Barricades separated Luce's crowd with counterprotesters about 6 feet away who said the Friday and Saturday event amounted to a "fascist mega-pep rally."
Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, told counterprotesters that while the Gay Pride Parade such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting and they should get out of San Francisco."
The resistance didn't discourage Luce, who said he plans to return to San Francisco next year to chart the progress of his youth movement. Best free advertising I ever got.
Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, told counterprotesters that while the Gay Pride Parade such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting and they should get out of San Francisco."
NB: If one of us said that about ActUP, Stonewall, or other gay identity groups, we'd be committing a "hate crime".
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/26/2006 11:58
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#4
"negatively influence the politics of America's most tolerant and progressive city."
Hmmmmmmmm. Might wanna reword that. Maybe put in the exclusions to the "tolerance and progressive" thing. Just so everybody knows where you stand...
Next time bring Big Giant Puppets instead of long, medieval-looking poles. That'll confuse them. Long, midieval poles have another conotation there...
#5
The rally, which also will visit Detroit and Philadelphia, featured religious rockers, speakers and the debut of what Luce called a Christian alternative to MySpace.com - at advance ticket prices of $55 and walk-up prices of $199.
What the **** is Luce talking about?
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
03/26/2006 13:20
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#6
Lots of sexual predators hang out in MySpace.com. We've had a couple young girls in our area be enticed into meeting up with a few of them in real life after chatting online via that site.
What Luce wants in place of it I don't know, although I could guess: an online place to meet up that is monitored sufficiently to keep things a bit more wholesome.
#7
This could as well have been a silent rally. The SF loons have given us a very good understanding of how screwed up they are.
My last visit to the Mission District is unforgettable. Streets where curbs are filled with passed out drunks, empty bottles in brown paper bags everywhere.
One particular drunk was passed out underneath a store sign. The store's name is Decadence.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 14:49
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#9
I wonder if these city leaders realize that they live in a city by the name of San Francisco, in a state whose capital is Sacramento, with other cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, and also Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and look, there's even San Rafael.
Notice a pattern? Hint: Franciscans.
Posted by: Rafael ||
03/26/2006 15:41
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#10
Does anyone still watch MTV since they stopped playing music videos? I certainly hope that the VH1 Classic still does that, because VH1 is now the "I Love the '80s" channel.
I guess I'm looking forward to "ala carte" cable, at least if I can get more channels that I want.
As I was preparing for this article, I asked a friend who is Jewish if it was appropriate to use the term "holocaust" to portray the worldwide violence against women. He was startled. But when I read him the figures in a 2004 policy paper published by the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, he said yes, without hesitation.
One United Nations estimate says from 113 million to 200 million women around the world are demographically "missing." Every year, from 1.5 million to 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect.
How could this possibly be true? Here are some of the factors:
In countries where the birth of a boy is considered a gift and the birth of a girl a curse from the gods, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.
Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to brothers, fathers, husbands and sons.
In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners. These are called "honor" killings, though honor has nothing to do with it.
Young brides are killed if their fathers do not pay sufficient money to the men who have married them. These are called "dowry deaths," although they are not just deaths, they are murders.
The brutal international sex trade in young girls kills uncounted numbers of them.
Domestic violence is a major cause of death of women in every country.
So little value is placed on women's health that every year roughly 600,000 women die giving birth.
Six thousand girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the World Health Organization. Many die; others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain.
According to the WHO, one woman out of every five worldwide is likely to be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
What is happening to women and girls in many places across the globe is genocide. All the victims scream their suffering. It is not so much that the world doesn't hear them; it is that fellow human beings choose not to pay attention.
It is much more comfortable for us to ignore these issues. And by "us," I also mean women. Too often, we are the first to look away. We may even participate, by favoring our sons and neglecting the care of our daughters. All these figures are estimates; registering precise numbers for violence against women is not a priority in most countries.
Going forward, there are three challenges:
Women are not organized or united. Those of us in rich countries, who have attained equality under the law, need to mobilize to assist our fellows. Only our outrage and our political pressure can lead to change.
The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement Shariah, or Islamic law, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education and forced into a life of domestic slavery.
Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values - an "Asian," "African" or "Islamic" approach to human rights.
This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.
Three initial steps could be taken by world leaders to begin eradicating the mass murder of women:
A tribunal such as the court of justice in The Hague should look for the 113 million to 200 million women and girls who are missing.
A serious international effort must urgently be made to precisely register violence against girls and women, country by country.
We need a worldwide campaign to reform cultures that permit this kind of crime. Let's start to name them and shame them.
In the past two centuries, those in the West have gradually changed the way they treat women. As a result, the West enjoys greater peace and progress. It is my hope that the third world will embark on this effort. Just as we put an end to slavery, we must end the gendercide.
(Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch legislator, lives under 24-hour protection because of death threats against her by Islamic radicals since the murder of Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the film "Submission" about women and Islam.)
This woman has displayed more resolve in the struggle to preserve the values of Western civilization than any other European legislator that I'm aware of. If only more politicians - there and here - had her gonads!
Maybe it's the species' natural means of population control? You have to eliminate a LOT more men to have the same long-term population limiting effect. The sub-groups she cites as examples of 'gendercide' seem to have a significant correlation with the groups with the highest/most rapidly growing overpopulation (and the least 'civilization'.)
#2
Legal standards at The Hague, impose "command responsibility" on leaders and military officers and oblige "prevention and punishment" of offenders of the Genocide Convention, etc. That mechanism could assist the war against women. The problem is: the authority of international law tribunals is based on a "statute of the tribunal," which is enforceable only when trial participants are prepared to back that statute with their own statute, as in the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials. The US participates on a case by case basis, where the cause is judged to be right, as in the Slobo case. The US doesn't accept Tribunal sovereignty over US law, because that would enable arbitrary enforcement of successful moonbat claims. Numerous Israelis cannot travel in Europe because specious ex parte indictments for "war crimes" have been issued, and the EU states are under obligation to prosecute. The EU turns a blind eye to general Arab oppression of women, unless the oppressor is pro-US, because Arabs are a protected minority in Europe. All persons are equal, but Arabs are more-equal than women.
#4
Even to a cynic like me this is appalling. While we read the individual cases here, it's sor t of like the 14 year olds in the hills of Appalachia who get married. It happens, but how much is there? Some times it's good to see the tree, sometimes it's good to see the forest.
#6
I'm not sure if Asia or Africa is the worst, both are terrible. But if these nombers are even close, and they don't mention the child trafficking horrors, it is something that needs action. Identify the countries that condone this and embargo them through the UN for starters.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 19:54
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A WOMAN allegedly conspired to bomb a Sydney location using deadly explosives, a Sydney court has heard.
Jill Courtney, 26, a Muslim convert, was arrested in a joint NSW and Australian Federal Police counter-terrorist operation on Friday.
She appeared in Parramatta Local Court yesterday charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiring to plant explosives in or near a building, vehicle or public place.
The court was told both conspiracies are alleged to have occurred between July last year and last Friday.
Police will allege Courtney had a relationship with convicted killer Hussan Kalache and agreed to the bomb plot at his request.
Kalache allegedly told Courtney he was angry over the Cronulla riots and if she carried out her mission to bomb a public place in Sydney, he would marry her.
No target had been selected for the attack and no explosives had been obtained.
Kalache is serving a 22-year sentence for the shooting murder of a rival drug dealer in 2002. It is understood Courtney first met him during a jail visit and has been a regular visitor since.
Police will also allege Courtney, who faces court tomorrow, had accessed material on how to carry out the attack.
Her lawyer, Adam Houda, told the court his client needed psychiatric treatment and did not apply for bail.
He asked the court to ensure she was assessed by a psychiatrist while in custody.
Courtney was charged on Friday night after Federal and State Police swooped on two properties at Casula and Hoxton Park, in Sydney's south-west.
A neighbour, Elaine Smith, 71, said she was shocked when dozens of police and forensic officers descended on the sleepy Casula estate.
"It was incredible there were just so many of them I thought it might have been a drug raid," she said.
Ms Smith said Ms Courtney lived with her father, John, whom she described as "a lovely man".
She said she often saw Ms Courtney coming and going, sometimes dressed in traditional Muslim outfits and sometimes in Western clothes.
"I hadn't seen her for about two months, until police came to take her away (on Friday).
"When they brought her back a few hours later, I thought all of it had been a misunderstanding.
"But then they took away boxes and computers and I heard someone say they would check her bed."
It is the first major arrest by counter-terrorist police since 18 men were arrested in simultaneous raids in Sydney and Melbourne in November.
#1
Damn, guess the unholy nuptials are off! Sure hope I can return the electric skillet....
Is is just me, or are more and more of these "converts" keeping their names instead of changing them to things like Fatima al-Boomeri? They've long recruited in prisons, are they going to psych wards now, too?
#2
It was for something, all right - but not love.
Here's a clue, loser: If you have so little respect and regard for yourself that you have to take up with a clown like this to feel "loved," just kill yourself and leave everyone else out of it.
Wotta useless, pathetic maroon.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 12:43
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PRIME Minister John Howard says he is pressuring Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to intervene in the possible execution of an Afghani citizen who has converted to Christianity.
Mr Howard has today said he found it deeply concerning Australian troops were fighting to assist a country that would take such action.
"I am filled with disgust about the possibility that somebody could be executed because of their religion," he said.
"It breaks every rule of tolerance.
"I will not drop off this issue, I will not just be content to write a letter and leave it at that.
"I will continue to press very, very strongly. I do feel very deeply about this, particularly because there are Australian soldiers risking their lives to fight the Taliban and we're not fighting the Taliban to allow something like this to happen."
Mr Howard said he had written to President Karzai about the matter.
He told reporters he would raise the matter again today when he met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Australia, the United States and NATO allies Germany and Italy, all of whom have troops in Afghanistan, have expressed concern at the trial of 41-year-old Abdul Rahman.
Rahman is believed to be the first Christian convert accused in Afghanistan under the strict Islamic Sharia law for refusing to return to Islam.
The case is being seen as a test of democracy and freedom for Afghanistan, where religion retains a tight grip on society four years after the toppling of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.
#5
BUT the case is being kept open. In other words, escape now and never come back, but we won't change our laws and if you do return you're dead meat.
#6
Good to hear. Some of the old ways will take years, generations, to overcome. The objective is to turn the culture, and that take generations. This is a good step. Thanks 4 the update Mous.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 9:43
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#7
This is a good step.
How is "we'll ignore it, for now" a "good step"?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/26/2006 12:02
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#8
I think the issue should be pushed. First of all, it is a win-win issue for the Talibs; it forces the debate to be on their arguments.
So the only way to argue it is with intolerance. That is, not allowing a grey area or half-measures, based on an enemy advantage. Give them no advantage. Force through a harsh ban on any religious discrimination. Put them on the deep defensive.
Of course, they might see it as an opportunity, *but* it is an opportunity that they *must* take immediately, no matter their current strength or preparation. So if the government is prepared, it could round up all sorts of stinkers, agents, provacateurs, and traitors all at once.
The trick is for the Afghan government to be prepared in all sorts of ways, not just militarily. They should have a propaganda campaign ready to go, have a bunch of moderate mullahs ready to preach, *and* not only be able to break up any demonstration in a hurry, but to round up any instigators.
Most importantly, they should turn hatred and oppression against other faiths into a disastrous, embarassing, and humiliating defeat for the Talibs and anyone else who supports it. They should just cringe and change the subject when it is mentioned.
#9
How is "we'll ignore it, for now" a "good step"?
Well how else do you think we're going to stop the practice? We stopped this one. We'll stop the next one. Pretty soon they'll figure out they aren't going to do this any more. Sort of the way the Indians stopped practicing suttee.
What's your alternative? Should they take a trip to Damascus so they can be blinded by the light?
#10
Agreed, NS. This is not an issue that will be forced once and for all. It's an issue of gradual change. As the Afghans see political stability and economic improvement, they will care more about their kids getting good jobs and getting into schools than about killing apostates. But force it now as a matter of principle, when they have little besides their religion, and Karzai loses, we lose, the Taliban win.
#12
No leader can legitimately excuse themselves from knowing that execution for abandonment of Islam, is integral to that vulgar cult. USC has been posting the Bukhari Hadith - source of the extermination doctrine - since 1998. It might seem crude to force feed Western leaders objective information on the Arab murder cult, but we can't afford to be led by ignoramuses.
Who knows why Muslim men are permitted 4 wives? The military-historical context of the permission, is: Mohammad's Murder squad was killing so many husbands and fathers - mostly as prisoners of war - that there were surplus unmarried women. Captive women were deemed war booty. There is even a Hadith that permits rape of sex booty, and forbids contraception of rape-semen.
Anyone who wants to export freedom of conscience to a Muslim country, might as well try selling sand to Saudi Arabia. If they knew the real cause of their primitivism and stagnation, there would be a cleric hanging from every lamppost in those countries.
Well how else do you think we're going to stop the practice? We stopped this one. We'll stop the next one. Pretty soon they'll figure out they aren't going to do this any more. Sort of the way the Indians stopped practicing suttee.
What's your alternative? Should they take a trip to Damascus so they can be blinded by the light?
Using your own example -- treat this as murder. Treat it as a crime against humanity. Punish the people and societies that make a practice of it.
Honestly, I'm sick of the barbarians. If we tolerate their barbarism, if we even wink at it like we have here, we're surrendering our own principles. Yeah, we'll probably lose some "moderate" allies -- but how fucking moderate is someone who wants to murder converts?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/26/2006 14:30
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#14
Robert, if they don't kill the guy, where's the crime?
I'm sick of them too. But they are like children. It's going to take a lot of patient, repetitive, boring, unrewarded work to get them to grow up. Look at the shit we have to put up with from the Europeans.
But what are the alternatives? Let them win or genocide. I'll take the work.
#15
Again, I say that half-measures and gradualism can only be done when both sides are acting from a position of reasonableness. Otherwise, you are allowing axioms of crap like murdering people to be one side of the argument. See how stupid that looks when the west tries to compromise over things like beheading cartoonists? "Well, what if you agree to only behead them halfway? That might be acceptable to our side."
Who the hell thinks it is reasonable to "compromise" between the 21st Century and the 11th Century by agreeing to act like we're living in the 16th Century? Hey, it's compromise, right?
No, you demand that the 11th Century people behave themselves like anybody else should who lives in the 21st Century. Barbarism is not a reasonable point from which to debate, and barbarians have no right to expect civilized people to either stoop to their level or tolerate them continuing to do so on their own.
Afghanistan has a 21th Century-type government, at least theoretically. Their people have voted in a democratic manner, again a 21st Century thing to do. Certainly if *some* of them wish to keep the unimportant trappings of the olden days, they should be at liberty to do so. But *not* when those primitive traditions threaten the well-being of others.
*No* beheadings for *anything* is reasonable. Most of the civilized world is against execution of any kind for any reason, much less for violating some bullshit religious taboo. If the Afghans want to be a modern nation, they have to act it.
Afghans are not simple children, either. Many women in Afghanistan know better, and are terrified that some ignorant rural Imam is going to torture or kill them because they have a Bachelor's degree.
All that has to be done is to admit the truth: if you want to remain a primitive bastard, you are a Taliban, and on their side, and we will kill you. Otherwise, you have to act like a civilized person.
#17
No doubt you are a "instant gratification" generation guy there Bizarre. Lts look at American history and itegration of the blacks into the ican mainstream. 30 years ago we were just getting past the bigots of hate. It has taken us 30 years to get to where we are, some say 100, but none the less the bigots and hate still exists. Take a culture that makes our bigots look like amatures and any reasonable person will understand it will take generations to turn the hate and ignorance around.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see this over right now, I have fought in this war and I see my kids fighting in it which is frightening, but it aint gonna be over any time soon. We are going to have to fight it out for the next 50 years and bring them into the 21st century or kill them all.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 17:45
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#18
Boy did I screw that up. Please excuse my spelling on this one.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 17:46
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#19
No doubt you didn't understand sarcasm, 49 Pan.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 17:54
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#21
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
#24
AS, perhaps not ALL, but a very large number of them may die before this is over. It is no longer technically difficult to do if one is not concerned about bein indiscriminant. I believe we'll get there, but not for years.
#25
hey bizarre, please don't be calling 49 pan a bigot. Someone who has fought in this war and is worried about it continuing on for generations, has a point that needs to be heard.
Comparing our history with what's going on with this backwards culture is right on.
Posted by: Jan ||
03/26/2006 18:19
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#26
AS, your right on that one. Means to me we will be in this fight for a while. This is extreemly disapointing because I would hate to see my sons fight in a war "my" generation did not finish.
As for being a bigot there Bizarre, grow up.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 18:21
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#27
Go easy, 49, I think Bizarre's suffering from burger-flipper elbow... and parent's-couch stiff neck syndrome... and Grape Kool Aid purple tongue.
The difference between Shiites and Sunnis is sometimes explained simply as a disagreement over who should have become the leader of the Muslim community after the Prophet Muhammad died nearly 1,400 years ago.
But in Iraq, the divide goes beyond that, partly because of geography and partly because of history. With sectarian tensions rising, Iraqis are paying more attention to the little things that signal whether someone is Shiite or Sunni. None of the indicators are foolproof. But a name, an accent and even the color of a head scarf can provide clues.
Complicating all of this is the reality that many Iraqis have intermarried and that for much of Iraq's history, the two communities have coexisted peacefully. Very rarely has sectarian identity been a life or death matter, the way it is now on some of Baghdad's streets.
Shiites split off from Sunnis after the Prophet Muhammad died in the seventh century. That created a crisis over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. One group of Muslims chose Muhammad's friend, Abu Bakr. They would become the Sunnis, a vast majority of the world's Muslims.
A smaller group believed the rightful successor was Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and cousin. They would become the Shiites, who today are concentrated in India, Pakistan and Persian Gulf countries. Abu Bakr won out, though after he died Ali eventually became caliph. He was assassinated, and the Muslim community began to splinter. Ali's son Hussein led a rebellion but he, too, was cut down, in a battle in Karbala, Iraq. Hussein's death was the beginning of Shiism and it started a culture of martyrdom, evident each year during a festival in Karbala when Shiites whip and cut themselves to symbolize Hussein's pain.
Over the years, the rivalry between the partisans of Ali and those who supported Abu Bakr evolved into two schools of theology. For example, when it comes time to pray, Shiites believe a person's arms should be straight; most Sunnis say they should be bent. Shiites allow temporary marriage; Sunnis say it is forbidden. In some cases, Shiite inheritance law is more generous to women than is Sunni inheritance law.
Shiites follow ayatollahs, or supreme jurists, who some believe have divine powers. Sunni Islam is more decentralized among local imams.
Southern Iraq is essentially the center of Shiite Islam, with holy shrines in Karbala, Kufa and Najaf. The Sunni Arabs are concentrated in the west, especially in Anbar Province, the heartland of Iraqi tribal culture. In Baghdad and eastern cities like Baquba, the populations are mixed, while in the north, Sunni Kurds predominate.
In Iraq, tribal identity is also important, and many people use tribal names as last names. Because certain tribes are rooted in certain areas, a last name like Saidi, Maliki or Kinani may be typically Shiite, while names like Zobi, Tikriti and Hamdani are typically Sunni.
Certain first names may also reveal sect: Omar and Othman are Sunni names; Haidar and Karrar are Shiite ones.
Dress, too, can be a sign, but again not because it has religious significance. In western Iraq, the favored headdress is white and red; in the south it is white and black.
Historians say Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq have had periods of peace and conflict. Saddam Hussein exacerbated the rivalry, most notably after 1991, when Shiites in the south revolted and he used predominantly Sunni tribes to crush them.
Nearly 60 percent of Iraq's population of some 25 million are Shiite, with Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds making up roughly 40 percent.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
03:20 ||
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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.
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.
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."
Mullah Razayar's threats will fuel concerns for the safety of the 3,300 troops who will arrive in Helmand over the coming months to hunt Taliban remnants and help Afghan forces to tackle drugs barons. A regiment of 600 Royal Engineers, protected by 150 Royal Marines, arrived last month to begin building a base for the troops in the Helmand capital, Lashkar Gah.
The province, in southern Afghanistan, is close to the site where more than 900 British soldiers were slaughtered by 25,000 Afghan tribesmen at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880 - a humiliation Mullah Razayar is keen to inflict again. "They are children of the same army who were killed and buried in Helmand, and they will soon be reunited with their grandparents," he said.
Mullah Razayar, 48, has been assigned to lead the Taliban's operations in Helmand by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the movement's one-eyed spiritual leader. Although now a fugitive himself, with a $10 million price on his head, Mullah Omar is believed to be the mastermind behind the resurgence of the Taliban after it all but petered out in 2004.
The Sunday Telegraph came face to face with Mullah Razayar after weeks of lengthy negotiations with intermediaries aimed at securing an interview with the Taliban's senior ranks. So security conscious were his aides that they would not even reveal in advance which commander it would be.
After meeting at a rendezvous at 11pm, a reporter was driven for almost three hours to a modest, mud-built homestead in a remote valley. The vehicle took a deliberately circuitous route in order to avoid being followed and to confuse the reporter.
Inside the hut, Mullah Razayar sat cross-legged, surrounded by guards wearing traditional baggy trousers and carrying AK47 assault rifles. Others quietly positioned themselves on the rooftops of nearby houses and on the dusty track, ready to hustle the mullah away at the slightest alarm.
Mullah Razayar said that, contrary to the British insistence that the Taliban had no popular support, locals were queuing to join its ranks.
"Men are coming to sign up to fight at the frontline," he claimed. "Women are bringing their sons, and giving us their jewellery to sell and buy weapons to enable us to fight these infidel invaders. We have so much support here from the locals - more, probably, than the British soldiers have back in London."
There has already been a marked increase in suicide attacks across Afghanistan, where once they were almost unheard of. There have been 19 across the country since last November, killing more than 80 people, including a Canadian diplomat and American and Afghan soldiers.
Volunteers for suicide operations were being schooled in how to maximise the impact of their attacks, said Mullah Razayar. In addition to car bombs, they were being given explosive-laden vests, which can enable attackers to get much closer to their victims. A determined campaign using suicide vests would hamper any British "hearts-and-minds" strategy, which involves mingling with locals in shops and streets.
A filmed report on Mullah Razayar Noorzai and the Taliban in Helmand can be seen on ITV News this week.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
03:17 ||
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#1
thats him fooked then... and 600 less fruitcakes to worry about
#6
US to Taliban commander: We have 50,000 girl pole dancers who can kick your ass.
And that's just in Fort Lauderdale.
Semi-OT I wuz thinking (hush) prepaid 900# phonecards. Dumped like juche over the barren Afghan plains, like love Manna.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/26/2006 12:25
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#10
"900 British soldiers were slaughtered by 25,000 Afghan tribesmen at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880"
So they won with a 28-to-1 advantage on the field.
Of course the Brits didn't have cluster bombs in those days. Looks like the Taliban has forgotten the lessons of 2001.
#11
A reliable estimate of Afghan casualties in the 1880 battle is 3,000. If Mullah Razayar reads the following account, he may not want to repeat the battle on modern terms, even without air power involved:
http://www.britishbattles.com/second-afghan-war/maiwand.htm
#13
Funny thing about dime store thugs, they are all bluster and no balls. I suspect the Brits are well capable of dealing with these dead enders. They have learned a great deal from their experience in So. Iraq.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 20:35
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Middle Eastern terrorist groups rely on criminal organizations in Latin America to acquire false passports and raise funds, although there is no evidence they operate directly in the region, a U.S. State Department anti-terrorism official said Thursday.
''We are not aware of any operational cells in this hemisphere by al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas,'' said Harry Crumpton, antiterrorism coordinator at the U.S. State Department. ``But we do have information that these organizations raise money in the hemisphere and are tied in to transnational criminal networks.''
The U.S. official was in Bogotá for a three-day meeting of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, or CICTE for its initials in Spanish, a gathering of antiterrorism officials from 34 nations sponsored by the Organization of American States.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has boosted efforts to identify and arrest terrorists before they reach American shores.
While most of the attention has focused on the Middle East, lax border controls and widespread corruption is believed to make Latin America vulnerable to infiltration by terrorist groups seeking recruits and money to plan future attacks.
To enhance the region's security, the United States was pledging an additional $2.25 million to strengthen and expand port, airport, land border and document security activities, as well as training for Customs officials, Crumpton said.
The contribution -- the equivalent of about $65,000 for each nation in the hemisphere -- barely registers in the overall war on terror. But it's the United State's biggest contribution yet to the multilateral antiterror effort, a $400,000 increase over last year's commitment, representing 80 percent of the funds raised by CICTE, Crumpton said.
Although Crumpton said terrorist groups had no tactical base in Latin America, he also said links with transnational criminal organizations for the purpose of fundraising were increasing and ''posed a great threat'' to regional security.
U.S. officials suspect the lawless, porous border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is a haven for fundraising for Islamic militant groups.
In Colombia, officials in January arrested four Jordanians and a Palestinian belonging to a false passport ring that they said may have had links to al Qaeda.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
03:05 ||
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US forces were involved in heavy fighting with Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan on Saturday but there was no immediate word on casualties, provincial officials said.
Afghanistan has seen a surge in attacks by Taliban insurgents and their militant allies in recent months and the Taliban have vowed to launch a spring offensive against US-led foreign forces and the Western-backed government.
The clash erupted after US troops backed by helicopter gunships and jets launched an operation in the Sangin district of the southern province of Helmand, after being tipped-off about the presence of Taliban in a village, police said.
"There was bombing by jets and helicopters," Matiuallah, police chief of Sangin who uses only one name, told Reuters. Given the "very intense" fighting, Matiuallah said he assumed their would be casualties but he had no confirmation.
Afghan forces had been sent to join the US forces battling the insurgents, another official said. US and Afghan forces fought the biggest battle in months against Taliban fighters in the same district at the beginning of February.
A US military spokesman said he had no information about a clash. A Taliban commander, Mullah Zainullah, said by telephone from the area Taliban fighters had killed five Afghan troops.
Several villagers from Sangin said by telephone some Taliban had been staying a house that got bombed. Helmand has been a bastion of Taliban insurgents since US and Afghan opposition forces ousted their government in late 2001.
The province is also Afghanistan's main opium-growing region and the insurgents are in league with drug gangs, complicating efforts to bring security and stamp out drugs, security officials say. British troops have been arriving in the province in recent weeks as part of an expansion of a NATO-led peacekeeping force into the Afghan south. In all, 3,300 British troops will soon be based in Helmand.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
03:03 ||
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#1
You do not want to kiss the ass of stupid islamists. You do anhilate them. This is the best way to tell those stupids to behave. This the way it works there.
Tehran is also investing in constructing a military-intelligence network in Afghanistan on the Iraq model, the same Iranian officer disclosed. It will penetrate and work through local Afghan anti-American groups and seek to isolate the Karzai regime in preparation for its eventual downfall.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 14:30
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As violence continued to plague Iraq on Saturday, two U.S. senators visited the country and asked leaders to overcome political obstacles and form a long-awaited national unity government.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, was joined by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, as he said that he was "guardedly optimistic" that Iraqi leaders could form a government "within weeks."
"I come away with the impression that the Iraqi leaders understand the sense of urgency that we have conveyed to them," McCain said. "We all know the polls show declining support amongst the American people, and we feel that it would be important to have a government, not only for American public opinion, but for the Iraqi people to have a government they can identify with and rely on."
Earlier in the day, nine people were killed in a trio of attacks that included the fatal shooting of a Sunni imam who was driving in Baghdad, police said.
Sheikh Abed Farhan was imam of the Aqtab Arba'a mosque in the Bayaa neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad.
South of Baghdad, in the Babil province town of Mahmoudiya, four people were killed and 13 others were wounded when six mortar rounds crashed into a residential neighborhood.
In southeast Baghdad's al-Waziriya neighborhood, a bomb hidden inside a booth used by traffic police killed four people when it exploded as a minibus passed, police said. Two others were wounded in the blast.
On Friday night, six bodies were found -- apparently tortured and strangled -- inside a parked car in the al-Khadraa section of western Baghdad, city police said.
A seventh unidentified body was found Saturday morning in the Saydiya neighborhood of southwest Baghdad, police said. The victim appeared to have been tortured and shot in the head.
Saturday's violence came a day after a bombing outside a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad. Worshippers were leaving midday prayers when the blast went off, killing five people and wounding 17, police said.
# U.S. and Iraqi soldiers on Friday detained 52 suspected insurgents in eight villages in and around Hawiya as part of Operation Scorpion, the U.S. military said Saturday. The city is near Kirkuk. Iraqi soldiers said that "24 out of the 52 detainees were on their target list, built from their own intelligence gathering." The other detainees were being held for questioning. The operation has since ended.
# In a supporting operation, U.S. and Iraqi troops conducted raids for suspected terrorists in Kirkuk, They detained six and discovered a weapons cache, the military said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
03:02 ||
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Italian officials have known for some time that their country was exporting Islamic militants and that the city of Milan is the center for these potential terrorists. Now the officials worry that militants may return from fighting in Iraq to carry out bombings in Europe, according to the BBC
Considered the center for radical Islam in Europe, Muslims have arrived in Milan more recently and relatively few have acquired citizenship.
Prosecutors in Milan and Rome ordered dozens of raids in the aftermath of the London bombings last July, resulting in almost 200 arrests. Four expulsions of suspected Muslim extremists followed -- including an imam, a vice-president of an Islamic institute in Como, and a suspected member of an armed Algerian fundamentalist group, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC think-tank.
"It's a community without integration," says Magdi Allam, well-known Egyptian-born columnist at the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
"The majority of Muslims in Italy don't speak Italian in a proper way, don't know the culture or the religion of the Italian people, and don't share the values of Italian society," he said.
He is deeply suspicious of mosques which have fallen under the sway of radical imams, according to the BBC. Sometimes these radical clerics resort to violence or threats of violence to push out more moderate Islamic clerics from their mosques.
Jihadist networks span Europe from Poland to Portugal, thanks to the spread of radical Islam among the descendants of guest workers once recruited to shore up Europe's postwar economic miracle, according to Robert Leiken of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In European cities such as Milan, Madrid and Marseilles, immigrants or their descendants are volunteering for jihad against the West. It was a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, born and socialized in Europe, who murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last November.
Leiken notes a Nixon Center study of 373 mujahideen in western Europe and North America between 1993 and 2004 found more than twice as many Frenchmen as Saudis and more Britons than Sudanese, Yemenites, Emiratis, Lebanese, or Libyans. Fully a quarter of the jihadists it listed were western European nationals -- eligible to travel visa-free to the United States.
The emergence of homegrown mujahideen in Europe threatens the United States as well as Europe. Yet it was the dog that never barked at last winter's Euro-American rapprochement meeting. Neither President George W. Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice drew attention to this mutual peril, even though it should focus minds and could buttress solidarity in the West, according to Leiken.
Radical Islam is spreading across Europe among descendants of Muslim immigrants. Disenfranchised and disillusioned by the failure of integration, some European Muslims have taken up jihad against the West. They are dangerous and committed -- and can enter the United States without a visa.
According to Dr. Daniel Pipes, a leading expert on radical Islam and terrorism, Muslim life in Western Europe and North America is strikingly different. European cities such as Milan have seen the emergence of a culturally alienated, socially marginalized, and economically unemployed Muslim second generation whose pathologies have led to "a surge of gang rapes, anti-Semitic attacks and anti-American violence," not to mention the raging radical ideologies and terrorism.
North American Muslims are not as alienated, marginalized, and economically stressed.
They show less inclination to anti-social behavior, including Islamist violence. Those of them supporting jihad usually fund terrorism rather than personally engage in it. Therefore, most jihadist violence in North America is carried out by hit squads from abroad, as were the 9-11 attackers.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
03:01 ||
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#1
"It's a community without integration,"
Thus less collateral damage should the Italians ever decide to fight back.
#2
Hamburg is the center of Radical Islam in Europe. That's where the 9/11 bombers trained. The only reason the Muzzies want to stay in Milan is that they cannot be as easily identified by their smell.
Muslims immigrate to Europe and refuse to integrate. The isolation and humiliation this refusal to integrate causes them to teach their children to refuse to integrate. And the isolation and humiliation at not being able to join others at school, to bring home new ideas or even try to learn about others.
The anger and humiliation at knowing your own beliefs are what stand in the way are what make you want to destroy what you are not allowed to have. And your jealous fury at what is denied you - because you are muslim and the laws prohibit it - lead you to destroy it.
#4
I live in Milan. There is certainly a problem with some mosques which have witnessed considerable radical activity, but I rule out that the majority of the Muslims living here are potential terrorists or jihad supporters.
Magdi Allam (the columnist mentioned in the article) is well-known for earning a living from being a cheap Islamophobe and for his analyses and predictions, all turned to be wrong. Choose another testimonial if you want to be credible.
As for the charge of "a surge of gang rapes, anti-Semitic attacks and anti-American violence," [by second-generation Muslims] it is simply lacking of any statistical evidence. Crap, in other words.
Gerd, by the way... I don't think you smell any better than me. Quite the other way round. At least, the "muzzies" know which hand they should wipe their ass with. You're not even at that stage.
Posted by: Inter Milan ||
03/26/2006 17:45
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Milan -
Why do I get the distinct impression that you are yourself a malcontented Muslim in Milan?
Iran has significantly increased funding to a Palestinian insurgency group.
Officials said Iran has bolstered allocations to Islamic Jihad, regarded as the most active group in the Palestinian war against Israel. They said Iran intends to provide Jihad with millions of dollars in 2006.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Iran relayed $1.8 million to Jihad in February 2006. In an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot on March 21, Mofaz said this was the largest one-time Iranian transfer to Jihad in years.
Officials said Jihad has been working with Iran and Hizbullah to carry out a spate of attacks before the Israeli elections, scheduled on March 28. They said two suicide attacks were foiled in Israel in as many days.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
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The Chechen Interior Ministry has categorically denied reports by a number of media outlets alleging that dozens of local police officers have defected to illegal armed units.
"An analysis of these reports shows that certain media outlets inspired have in fact launched a provocative ideological campaign against Chechnya's law enforcement agencies," Chechen Interior Ministry press secretary Ruslan Atsayev told Interfax on Saturday.
"Not a single instance of treachery by Chechen law enforcement officers, not a single instance of defection to illegal armed groups has been recorded in the past year," Atsayev said.
During the past week a number of media outlets have published "fictional reports claiming that over forty armed policemen defected to militant groups in the Vedeno district," he said.
"We would like to know the names of these people, as the entire personnel of the Vedeno district police department are accounted for and are performing their duties," Atsayev said.
"Speculation that an operation in the mountains was designed to catch the deserters are also unfounded," he said.
"This operation is preventative in nature and is designed to uncover militant bases, hideouts and weapons caches an the operatives engaged in the operation are looking for Basayev, Umarov, Khalilov and other leaders of militant groups," Atsayev said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:57 ||
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AN IRAQI militant group which killed an Italian reporter in 2004 said it was watching foreign journalists but would only kill those it considers to be spies for its U.S.-led enemies.
Al Jazeera television broadcast an interview overnight with a man it described as the spokesman of the Islamic Army in Iraq, who accused the United States of responsibility for the car bombs that have killed thousands of civilians since 2003.
"The security bodies of the Islamic Army ... follow them constantly or at least keep watch and occasionally a journalist or another falls into their hands," said the man, who was identified as Ibrahim al-Shemmari.
He said the group's interrogators questioned those captured and a court-like body issued its verdict and sentence.
"If he was found innocent he would be freed and if he was caught red-handed in a certain situation with the occupation then he would be handled in a manner that is in line with the interests of Jihad (holy war) in Iraq," added the man, whose face was blurred.
The man described Enzo Baldoni, the Italian journalist killed by his group in 2004, as a spy, adding that journalists and other non-military foreigners were not targets "so long as they were committed to their professions".
"The Italian? He was a spy. It was clear to us from the beginning that he was a spy. Evidence were abundant but the French journalists were freed," he said of two French journalists his group released after abducting them in 2004.
More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been abducted in the anarchy that followed the U.S.-led invasion. Most foreign hostages have been released, but 54 are known to have been killed and more than 50 are believed to be held.
The Islamic Army in Iraq has claimed several kidnappings and attacks on foreign and Iraqi government forces.
But, "It is not within our targets to kill innocent civilians," said the figure, who was wearing a chequered headdress and Arab robes.
"There is information that many of the car bombs are the work of the Americans ... they have long been working to distort the reputation of the resistance so that the Iraqi people would reject it," he said.
Thousands of people have been killed by car bombs in Iraq since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Mr Shemmari dismissed the Iraqi government as a group of "sectarian gangs at whose hands the Sunnis tasted bitterness" and said his faction would not negotiate with Iraqi officials.
The Islamic Army would however negotiate with the United States if it recognised the resistance and set a timetable for its withdrawal from Iraq.
"We do not reject negotiations (with Americans) in principle as these would be negotiations for the exit of the occupiers," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:56 ||
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While Canadians rejoiced at the news that two of their citizens were rescued from captivity in Iraq, some were surprised to learn Canadian special forces were involved in the mission and curious as to how many troops are on the ground.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters Thursday that a handful of Canadian troops have been stationed in Iraq since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation, which is still widely unpopular at home.
But he insisted the special forces who helped rescue Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, along with Briton Norman Kember, were in Iraq only temporarily with the express goal of obtaining the hostages' release.
The former Liberal Party government declined in 2003 to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq unless it came under the U.N. umbrella, and many Canadians have been critical of U.S. methods in Washington's war on terror.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said about 20 Canadian troops and other personnel were in Iraq working quietly since shortly after the kidnappings of the Christian Peacemaker Teams workers on Nov. 26.
"We were there with our very best," he told The Globe and Mail for Friday editions. "We had everyone fully engaged in this operation from day one." The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, intelligence officers and diplomats were also involved, he said.
"Canada should not (be) and is not passive when it comes to its own citizens and the protection of their lives," MacKay said.
It is believed that members of Canada's elite and secretive Joint Task Force 2 were also involved, but the government would neither confirm nor deny this.
Harper did confirm Thursday, shortly after the men were rescued, that an unspecified number of Canadians have been embedded with coalition forces since the beginning of the war.
"I'm not free to say anything more than that because this involves national security," he said. He denied Canadian troops were involved in the war, however, saying: "Any involvement that Canada has had on the ground in this particular matter was obviously targeted simply at the issue of Canadian hostages."
Canadian Defense spokeswoman Lt. Morgan Bailey told The Associated Press on Friday that only a handful of Canadian troops were on the ground in Iraq. She said one soldier is serving with a U.N. assistance team helping to draft a new constitution and coordinate humanitarian operations; three other Canadian soldiers are on an exchange with British forces.
"They do their normal job, only with the British unit," she said. "If their job is to be an engineer, they would do that job with the British."
But she declined to say whether there were special forces in Iraq.
"It's our policy not to speak about special operations abroad," she said.
In March 2003, when Parliament was debating whether to send troops to Iraq - some Conservatives believed it was imperative to help the Bush administration remove Saddam Hussein from power - several MPs said special forces had secretly been on the ground in Afghanistan, though Prime Minister Jean Chretien's government denied it.
Some Canadians were also surprised to learn that a dozen troops had been embedded with British and U.S. troops during the invasion of Iraq, in what are known as training exchanges.
Eric Walton, foreign affairs critic for the Green Party of Canada, said he didn't think most Canadians would oppose Canadian Forces in Iraq to help their own.
"My feeling is, you don't need permission for a rescue mission, if it's in and out," Walton said. "But the issue I have a problem with is the way the invasion occurred, against international law, and I think Canada should have taken a stand and pulled its troops out of those exchanges."
John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy think tank in Alexandria, Va., asked: What's the big deal?
"It would seem to me that the scandal would have been if they hadn't been there," Pike said. "The lives of Canadian nationals were at stake. If there had been no Canadians involved in this and it had come to grief, then the outrage would have been: `You allowed trigger-happy American cowboys to kill our people.'"
He said it is common for countries to send their special forces quietly to train in live combat situations, as the experience is invaluable.
"I certainly have the sense that there is a much larger special operations presence in Iraq than is widely understood," Pike said. "This type of combat experience is precious."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:54 ||
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#1
"If there had been no Canadians involved in this and it had come to grief, then the outrage would have been: `You allowed trigger-happy American cowboys to kill our people."
But if the civilian Canucks had gotten their heads lopped off by the jihadinuts, that would have been just ducky. At least, that way, no trigger-happy American cowboys were involved.
#2
Actually Slarong, Pike meant that in a good way. He didn't want the usual anti US vomit that spews. It's anew group at the helm now and the relations are closer. the Lib minority still has a big voice. But for the moment, saner thoughts prevail.
For statement to Canadians - this was a good one. Not bad - it meant to deflect your point exactly.
For the first time since 1972, the United States is planning to fly to the moon, but instead of a quick, Apollo-like visit, astronauts intend to build a permanent base and live there while they prepare what may be the most ambitious undertaking in history -- putting human beings on Mars.
President Bush in 2004 announced to great fanfare plans to build a new spaceship, get back to the moon by 2020 and travel on to Mars after that. But, with NASA focused on designing a new spaceship and spending about 40 percent of its budget on the troubled space shuttle and international space station programs, that timetable may suffer.
Still, NASA's moon planners are closely following the spaceship initiative and, within six months, will outline what they need from the new vehicle to enable astronauts to explore the lunar surface.
"It's deep in the future before we go there," said architect Larry Toups, head of habitation systems for NASA's Advanced Projects Office. "But it's like going on a camping trip and buying a new car. You want to make sure you have a trailer hitch if you need it."
Scientists and engineers are hard at work studying technologies that don't yet exist and puzzling over questions such as how to handle the psychological stress of moon settlement, how to build lunar bulldozers and how to reacquire what planetary scientist Christopher P. McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center calls "our culture of exploration."
The moon is not for the faint of heart. It is a lethal place, without atmosphere, pelted constantly by cosmic rays and micrometeorites, plagued by temperature swings of hundreds of degrees, and swathed in a blanket of dust that can ruin space suits, pollute the air supply and bring machinery to a screeching halt.
And that says nothing about the imponderables. Will working in one-sixth of Earth's gravity for a year cause crippling health problems? What happens when someone suffers from a traumatic injury that can't be treated by fellow astronauts? How do people react to living in a tiny space under dangerous conditions for six months?
"It's like Magellan. You send them off, and maybe they come back, maybe they don't," said planetary scientist Wendell W. Mendell, manager of NASA's Office for Human Exploration Science, during an interview at the recently concluded Lunar and Planetary Science Conference here. "There's a lot of pathologies that show up, and there's nobody in the Yellow Pages."
In some ways, the moon will be harder than Mars. Moon dust is much more abrasive than Mars dust; Mars has atmosphere; Mars has more gravity (one-third of Earth's); Mars has plenty of ice for a potential water supply, while the moon may have some, but probably not very much.
Still, the moon is ultimately much more forgiving because it is much closer -- 250,000 miles away, while Mars is 34 million miles from Earth at its closest point. If someone needs help on the moon, it takes three days to get there. By contrast, Mars will be several months away even with the help of advanced -- and as yet nonexistent -- propulsion systems.
Not having to pay as dearly for mistakes is one key reason why the moon is an integral part of the Bush initiative. The other, as even scientists point out, is that if the United States does not return to the moon, others will.
"The new thing is China, and they've announced they're going to the moon. The Europeans want to go; the Russians want to go; and if we don't go, maybe they'll go with the Chinese," Mars Institute Chairman Pascal Lee said in an interview. "Could we bypass the moon and go to Mars while India and China are going to the moon? I don't think so."
Bush's 2004 "Vision for Space Exploration," by calling for a lunar return and a subsequent Mars mission, set goals, which, if achieved, would keep the United States in the forefront of space exploration for decades.
Since then, mishaps and delays with the space shuttle and the space station programs have shrunk both the moon research budget and the rhetoric promoting the mission.
Instead, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin has focused agency attention and resources on the design and construction of a new "crew exploration vehicle" and its attendant rocketry -- the spacecraft that will push U.S. astronauts once again beyond low Earth orbit.
Despite the moon's current low profile, however, NASA continues to plan a lunar mission and to promote the technological advances needed to achieve it. Toups, one of the moon program's designers, said NASA envisions that a lunar presence, once achieved, will begin with two-to-four years of "sorties" to "targeted areas."
These early forays will resemble the six Apollo lunar missions, which ended in 1972. "You have four crew for seven to 10 days," Toups said in a telephone interview. "Then, if you found a site of particular interest, you would want to set up a permanent outpost there."
The south pole is currently the top target. It is a craggy and difficult area, but it is also the likeliest part of the lunar surface to have both permanent sunlight, for electric power, and ice, although many scientists have questions about how much ice there is. Without enough water, mission planners might pick a gentler landscape.
Site selection will mark the end of what McKay calls Apollo-style "camping trips." "There's got to be a lot more autonomy, so we keep it simple," McKay said. "We're going to be on Mars for a long time, and we have to use the moon to think in those terms."
The templates, cited frequently by moon mavens, are the U.S. bases in Antarctica, noteworthy for isolation, extreme environment, limited access, lack of indigenous population and no possibility of survival without extensive logistical support.
"The lunar base is not a 'colony,' " Lee said. " 'Colonization' implies populating the place, and that's not on the plate. This is a research outpost."
Once planners choose a base, the astronauts will immediately need to bring a host of technologies to bear, none of which currently exist. "Power is a big challenge," Toups said. Solar arrays are an obvious answer, but away from the poles 14 days of lunar sunlight are followed by 14 days of darkness, so "how do you handle the dormancy periods?"
Next is the spacesuit. Apollo suits weighed 270 pounds on Earth, a relatively comfortable "felt weight" of 40 to 50 pounds on the moon, but an unacceptable 102 pounds on Mars. "You can't haul that around, bend down or climb hills," Lee said. "Somehow we have to cut the mass of the current spacesuit in half."
And the new suit, unlike the Apollo suits or the current 300-pound shuttle suit, is going to have to be relatively easy to put on and take off, and to be able withstand the dreaded moon dust.
After three days, Apollo astronauts reported that the dust was causing the joints in their suits to jam, "and we're not talking about three outings," Lee said of the next moon missions. "We're talking about once a week for 500 days -- between 70 and 100 spacewalks."
Dealing with dust is also a major concern in building shelters on the lunar surface. Toups said it might be possible to harden the ground by microwaving it, creating a crust "like a tarp when you're camping." Otherwise, the dust pervades everything, and prolonged exposure could even lead to silicosis.
Dust also makes it virtually impossible to use any kind of machinery with ball bearings. Civil engineer Darryl J. Calkins, of the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, warned that the combination of dust, low gravity, temperature swings and the high cost of flying things to the moon is going to define the lunar tool kit in unforeseen ways.
"You can't put a diesel up there; you can't put a 20,000-pound bulldozer up there; and none of our oils or hydraulic fluids are going to survive," Calkins said in a telephone interview. "We may have to go back to the 19th century to find appropriate tools -- use cables, pulleys, levers."
And even then, it will be difficult to level a base site and haul away the fill because there's not enough gravity to give a tractor adequate purchase. Instead, Calkins envisions a device that can "scrape and shave" small amounts of soil and take it away bit by bit.
But in the end, "you have to learn how to do it, with real people," McKay said. "This is hard, but we can learn it. And if we do it right on the moon, we will be able to answer my ultimate question: Can Mars be habitable? I think the answer is 'yes.'"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:53 ||
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#3
More likely never. Congress either won't fund it or it will receive just a trickle of funding. Too bad Neil Armstrong's first words weren't "I claim this moon in the name of the United States!" Every developed nation would have screamed "No f***ing way!" and by now you'd have a dozen different bases on the moon.
#6
anon: If congress doesn't, the Chinese will. They will in any case - they've said so.
They also said they would have an aircraft carrier ready by the end of the 20th century. Note that aircraft carriers aren't a breakthrough technology. Putting up a base on the moon is a major endeavor, and the Chinese haven't even landed there yet. In fact, Chinese astronauts will be doing a spacewalk for the first time in 2008, something that NASA accomplished in 1965. I wouldn't look for any breakthroughs in the Chinese space program anytime soon.
Posted by: john ||
03/26/2006 13:55
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#9
john: And then what?
Maybe a colony. This sun will eventually burn out. It would be interesting to see if it is possible to live off the land on some planet that isn't earth - given conditions of intense heat or cold and different atmospheric pressures. Another thing that needs to be explored is a means of propulsion that can take humans to another planetary system. Science fiction writers have posited changing the climate on entire planets in order to make them more hospitable to human habitation. That has to be examined. A lot of money will be involved. And perhaps hundreds, if not thousands, of years of research.
#13
From what I've heard, a Moonbase will be an odd thing. First of all, the big reason to go to the Moon is to harvest ultra-valuable Helium-3, a single cargo of which would pay for the entire space program since Gemini. That's why the big interest all of a sudden. One cargo that would provide all the United States' energy needs for two or three years. Big money.
The He3 is in the very abrasive Moon dust. To concentrate it, you scoop it up and heat it. The He3 comes off as a gas.
The best way to scoop it up is with a big vacuum cleaner. Shaped like a dome, you pump probably nitrogen gas through it, to create a pressure differential. It has no internal moving parts to be destroyed by the dust. Then you run the dust through a nuclear furnace to release the He3.
When people arrive in the first place, they are going to want to live underground, away from the radiation, dust, temperature differentials, and vacuum. So, the *first* thing they do is vacuum up the dust over the bedrock where they want to mine.
It's a lot easier to mine horizontally, so they will probably go into the side of a crater or a mountain. Drill a bunch of holes, then fill them with blast charges to make a crude shaft. Then insert the pre-made habitat into the shaft.
Use sealant around the habitat so that it acts like a plug, so you can continue to mine deeper, expanding the base. Large robot machines make this a lot easier, thank you in advance, Caterpillar Corporation.
The object, unlike with previous missions, is to continuously improve and upgrade the Moonbase, so that with each mission, more refined and processed goods can be brought from Earth.
Hopefully by then, there will be technologies like the Space Elevator, and a large Earth-Moon ship that just takes smaller ships from Earth orbit to Moon orbit and back, never landing itself. And probably powered by He3.
#14
Again, tell me a job that requires people in orbit or on another planet that cannot be perfectly performed easier, cheaper and on a quicker timeframe by an automated craft?
A low estimate for a mars trip in today's dollars is 30-35 billion. Not likely it'll be this cheap, but assume this is true. The cost of the 2 mars rovers was approximately 820 million; Cost: Approximately $820 million total (for both rovers), $645 million for design/development + $100 million for the Delta launch vehicle and the launch + $75 million for mission operations. Assume roughly 350 million for each additional rover. With these figures, for the cost of the lowball estimate of a manned trip to mars, we could put almost 100 rovers all over the planet. And that doesnt' take into account economies of scale...
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/26/2006 17:08
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#15
tell me a job that requires people in orbit or on another planet that cannot be perfectly performed easier, cheaper and on a quicker timeframe by an automated craft?
* Preventing the use of the moon as a military base by China or whomever.
* Preparing for the ability to have some people live off of the earth, for any of a variety of reasons ranging from 'we want to' to 'science' to 'idiots are capable of destroying us all'.
* And because it's hard. A lot of our technology breakthroughs have historically come from military or space applications that are HARD and really push the boundaries of our capabilities. DOD technologies and new space missions have historically more than paid for themselves in later commercial spinoffs. The list is extensive, but just to take a few of direct relevance to us at Rantburg:
- TCP/IP and the design of the Internet
- cell phones (based on spreadspectrum military radio technology)
- UNIX and its derivative operating systems, which are ubiquitous as servers on the Internet
- communications satellites
- global positioning satellites
- jet engines for airplanes
- real-time control system technologies (hardware and software) that are now embedded in applications ranging from manufacturing plants to automobile braking systems
- digital signal processing chips, which are now in every CD player
The list goes on and one. Everyone of the above required significant advances over the state of the art at the time and were in no way commercially possible. But once developed for military and/or space use, their eventual commercialization led to our technology lead in the marketplace.
Contrary to what some people assume, significant technical breakthroughs don't just come out of thin air - they nearly always result from efforts to solve hard problems. Manned space is a hard but doable challenge that pushes the state of the art in a wide range of fields at once. It also attracts a lot of people to work on it.
The value is there for us downstream. On the other hand, if we ignore the challenge, others will take it up and improve THEIR competitive posture instead.
#17
None of those is really an answer. I'm not arguing against space exploration; I'm saying (as if my opinion matters! HA!) that the money is better spent in different kind of space exploration.
Denial of use of assets in space is easier than lifing astronauts. I don't believe that most of the technological advances you mentioned came from NASA, but rather from military tech adapted for NASA. Notwithstanding that, assuming your premise, still think of how much we would learn about propulsion and such if we had 50 launches and missions to mars in the next decade, rather than just one big one. There is no necessary or compelling mission to be done on Mars that can't be done by robots for 1/100 the cost. So send 100 more and think of what you'd discover.
As far as establishing a colony to ensure the redundency of humankind, I don't really think that such a colony could be self sustaining in any real way. We can't even make a biodome here tha works. More likely it would one day simply go silent; we would return to find a design flaw and a bunch of dead astronauts. Another Roanoke colony, with no croatan to go to... I don't see the advantage of manned missions specifically given the current economics of humans in space and current lifing costs, except for PR purposes.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/26/2006 18:41
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#18
Re #13: As I understand it, helium-3 is only useful for fusion reactors, and we haven't made those work with hydrogen yet after 60 years of research.
#19
Darrell: That's because there are only miniscule amounts of He3 on Earth. With the right fuel, fusion becomes a lot easier.
Mark E: I partially agree with you, in that many of the "hard work" and "repetitive task" aspects of creating a Moonbase and mining He3 would be far more efficient if done with robots, instead of people.
Even if they only tunneled an inch a day, you'd still have a 30 foot long tunnel after a year.
The best bet would be to have a large, heavy, slow landing craft, with a small nuclear reactor for power, and several robots to do different tasks. Even the craft that landed them could be cannibalized for any number of specialized purposes, especially structural reinforcing for the tunnels and pressure doors for the entrance. Designed from the bottom up for dual use.
Another robot would be for dust abatement and collection. The more dust that is removed from the Moonbase area, the less damage by the dust.
Another robot could be used as an "ice miner", capable of digging verticle shafts to get to underground ice, and digging another verticle shaft in the tunnel, much wider but shallower, for use as a lined cistern. Digging "outside" would be easier, as the surface covering the ice might be just "regolith", crumbled rock that could possibly just be scraped away.
A manned expedition would be easier by several factors if they arrived on the Moon to have a safe, oxygenated tunnel with several thousand gallons of water.
Robots would be designed for multiple purposes, and be reprogrammable from Earth or on location, even "transformable" into equipment the astronauts would use after their primary mission was over.
Doing things like building a runway, so spaceships could land like the space shuttle instead of VTOL, and, of all things, making brick out of Lunar dust, water and sealer, under high compression.
The nuclear reactor over used to obtain He3 could also be used to make glass-a very functional material.
All of this means that most of the work would be done on the Earth prior to sending the robots up. And, all lessons learned could be re-used when we did much the same on Mars, long before the people got there.
#20
But why? It would end up being another ISS; the astronauts can't even keep up with the repair work....which is convenient as there are no science or other kinds of missions for them to perform anyway. Its real mission happened way back under Reagan when it was announced; PR and friendly international relations. Not worth the billions spent, that's for sure. Imagine that times a million. And with the substantial chance of loss. Imagine the space program after a possible catastrophic loss. Or, perhaps even worse, imagine the space program 5 years after man returns from mars....with no science breakthrough and no one has gone back to the colony because it costs x billion dollars for each visitor, in order for the human to do....what? I mean for the human to do what that a robot couldn't do for 1/1000th of the cost? And it has to be something worth doing or investigating in the first place. It's the same reason we havent gone to the moon again: there isn't anything there we want or need. We went to the moon to A) beat the Soviet Union, and B) to get eyes on the rocks on the moon to figure out the origin of the earth and moon. At the time, robotics wouldn't have worked to get the particular rocks we wanted to see, nor would it have worked as PR. But now, with "better, faster, cheaper" and the privatization of the design process, there is no need to have all our chickens in one basket. Full committment to the manned mars mission basically eliminates any other use for the space program.
I think it's similar to the ending of use of the x-15 inquiry into flight to orbit technology. We are on our way to some real discoveries, but instead we are gonna try and do it all right now without the real basic work yet done. If the x-15 program had developed further and technology obstacles were overcome (big ifs)instead of larger ground based rocketry, flight to orbit would be much cheaper now. If we keep up with better faster cheaper, we'll have the solar system explored, and costs of payloads cheaper as well. What we don't need is an expensive white elephant. Sometimes even the bullet to kill those things can be prohibititively expensive.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/26/2006 22:36
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Egypt was believed to have foiled an Al Qaida strike.
The Jamestown Foundation said Egypt could have thwarted a major Al Qaida attack in early March. The Washington-based foundation said Al Qaida appeared to have targeted one of the largest gasoline terminals in Egypt.
In a report, analyst Stephen Ulph cited a March 7 message posted on an Islamist forum that indicated an Al Qaida plot against Egypt's energy sector. Ulph said the plot, termed the Al Kinana Buqayq operation, appeared to have been inspired by Al Qaida's attempt to destroy the Abqiq oil refinery in Saudi Arabia.
"It appeared to indicate that Egyptian security had foiled an attempt, perhaps inspired by the recent Abqaiq operation in Saudi Arabia, on petroleum supplies in Egypt," the report, which cited http://tajdeed.org.uk/forums, said. "According to the text, there was 'trustworthy news from special sources in the Land of Kinana [a poetic term for Egypt]."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:49 ||
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Anyone ever figure out that British aviation-fuel tank farm fire from December?
For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.
Suddenly last fall, Irhabi 007 disappeared from the message boards. The postings ended after Scotland Yard arrested a 22-year-old West Londoner, Younis Tsouli, suspected of participating in an alleged bomb plot. In November, British authorities brought a range of charges against him related to that plot. Only later, according to our sources familiar with the British probe, was Tsouli's other suspected identity revealed. British investigators eventually confirmed to us that they believe he is Irhabi 007.
The unwitting end of the hunt comes at a time when al-Qaeda sympathizers like Irhabi 007 are making explosive new use of the Internet. Countless Web sites and password-protected forums -- most of which have sprung up in the last several years -- now cater to would-be jihadists like Irhabi 007. The terrorists who congregate in those cybercommunities are rapidly becoming skilled in hacking, programming, executing online attacks and mastering digital and media design -- and Irhabi was a master of all those arts.
But the manner of his arrest demonstrates how challenging it is to combat such online activities and to prevent others from following Irhabi's example: After pursuing an investigation into a European terrorism suspect, British investigators raided Tsouli's house, where they found stolen credit card information, according to an American source familiar with the probe. Looking further, they found that the cards were used to pay American Internet providers on whose servers he had posted jihadi propaganda. Only then did investigators come to believe that they had netted the infamous hacker. And that element of luck is a problem. The Internet has presented investigators with an extraordinary challenge. But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world.
The short career of Irhabi 007 offers a case study in the evolving nature of the threat that we at the SITE Institute track every day by monitoring and then joining the password-protected forums and communicating with the online jihadi community. Celebrated for his computer expertise, Irhabi 007 had propelled the jihadists into a 21st-century offensive through his ability to covertly and securely disseminate manuals of weaponry, videos of insurgent feats such as beheadings and other inflammatory material. It is by analyzing the trail of information left by such postings that we are able to distinguish the patterns of communication used by individual terrorists.
Irhabi's success stemmed from a combination of skill and timing. In early 2004, he joined the password-protected message forum known as Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami (Islam Supporters Forum) and, soon after, al-Ekhlas (Sincerity) -- two of the password-protected forums with thousands of members that al-Qaeda had been using for military instructions, propaganda and recruitment. (These two forums have since been taken down.) This was around the time that Zarqawi began using the Internet as his primary means of disseminating propaganda for his insurgency in Iraq. Zarqawi needed computer-savvy associates, and Irhabi proved to be a standout among the volunteers, many of whom were based in Europe.
Irhabi's central role became apparent to outsiders in April of that year, when Zarqawi's group, later renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq, began releasing its communiqués through its official spokesman, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, on the Ansar forum. In his first posting, al-Iraqi wrote in Arabic about "the good news" that "a group of proud and brave men" intended to "strike the economic interests of the countries of blasphemy and atheism, that came to raise the banner of the Cross in the country of the Muslims."
At the time, some doubted that posting's authenticity, but Irhabi, who was the first to post a response, offered words of support. Before long, al-Iraqi answered in like fashion, establishing their relationship -- and Irhabi's central role.
Over the following year and a half, Irhabi established himself as the top jihadi expert on all things Internet-related. He became a very active member of many jihadi forums in Arabic and English. He worked on both defeating and enhancing online security, linking to multimedia and providing online seminars on the use of the Internet. He seemed to be online night and day, ready to answer questions about how to post a video, for example -- and often willing to take over and do the posting himself. Irhabi focused on hacking into Web sites as well as educating Internet surfers in the secrets to anonymous browsing.
In one instance, Irhabi posted a 20-page message titled "Seminar on Hacking Websites," to the Ekhlas forum. It provided detailed information on the art of hacking, listing dozens of vulnerable Web sites to which one could upload shared media. Irhabi used this strategy himself, uploading data to a Web site run by the state of Arkansas, and then to another run by George Washington University. This stunt led many experts to believe -- erroneously -- that Irhabi was based in the United States.
Irhabi used countless other Web sites as free hosts for material that the jihadists needed to upload and share. In addition to these sites, Irhabi provided techniques for discovering server vulnerabilities, in the event that his suggested sites became secure. In this way, jihadists could use third-party hosts to disseminate propaganda so that they did not have to risk using their own web space and, more importantly, their own money.
As he provided seemingly limitless space captured from vulnerable servers throughout the Internet, Irhabi was celebrated by his online followers. A mark of that appreciation was the following memorandum of praise offered by a member of Ansar in August 2004:
"To Our Brother Irhabi 007. Our brother Irhabi 007, you have shown very good efforts in serving this message board, as I can see, and in serving jihad for the sake of God. By God, we do not like to hear what hurts you, so we ask God to keep you in his care.
You are one of the top people who care about serving your brothers. May God add all of that on the side of your good work, and may you go careful and successful.
We say carry on with God's blessing.
Carry on, may God protect you.
Carry on serving jihad and its supporters.
And I ask the mighty, gracious and merciful God to keep for us everyone who wants to support his faith.
Amen."
Irhabi's hacking ability was useful not only in the exchange of media, but also in the distribution of large-scale al-Qaeda productions. In one instance, a film produced by Zarqawi's al-Qaeda, titled "All Is for Allah's Religion," was distributed from a page at www.alaflam.net/wdkl .
The links, uploaded in June 2005, provided numerous outlets where visitors could find the video. In the event that one of the sites was disabled, many other sources were available as backups. Several were based on domains such as www.irhabi007.ca or www.irhabi007.tv , indicating a strong involvement by Irhabi himself. The film, a major release by al-Qaeda in Iraq, showed many of the insurgents' recent exploits compiled with footage of Osama bin Laden, commentary on the Abu Ghraib prison, and political statements about the rule of then-Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Tsouli has been charged with eight offenses including conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, conspiracy to obtain money by deception and offences relating to the possession of articles for terrorist purposes and fundraising. So far there are no charges directly related to his alleged activities as Irhabi on the Internet, but given the charges already mounted against him, it will probably be a long time before the 22-year-old is able to go online again.
But Irhabi's absence from the Internet may not be as noticeable as many hope. Indeed, the hacker had anticipated his own disappearance. In the months beforehand, Irhabi released his will on the Internet. In it, he provided links to help visitors with their own Internet security and hacking skills in the event of his absence -- a rubric for jihadists seeking the means to continue to serve their nefarious ends. Irhabi may have been caught, but his online legacy may be the creation of many thousands of 007s.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:47 ||
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#1
It makes so little sense to pay half a trillion dollars to fight counter-terror, while we indulge terror recruitment in our own backyard. The UK website operator could have reported the hacker-terrorist's PC identity at any time but chose to conceal same. Why? Because the leaders of Western Civilization believe they are upholding some peculiar notion of integral values, by facilitating terror speech. Jihadis need to be arrested on the slightest pretext - including simple verbal advocacy - and self-proclaimed civil-rights groups like CAIR and the ISNA, must be treated as the criminal organizations that they are. CAIR spokesmen claim to oppose terror, against which they take no initiative, while they wage knee-jerk assaults on every single counter-terror action. George Orwell would have fits if he saw how our depraved generation subsidizes terror while fighting terror. The air of irresolution that encompasses our use of force debates, could be cut with a knife.
#7
Churchill's Parrot:
NewSpeak indoctrination would disable comprehension of the following: it is unconscionable to fight terrorists and breed them at the same time. Sue your college for non-performance.
#8
Try harder. The e-jihadists are having a big laugh reading this website. If the front line of the Western civilization is represented by you guys at Rantburg and you "civil","well-reasoned" solutions, these are really dire times.
Crackpots.
Posted by: Now You Will Call Me Eurabian ||
03/26/2006 17:53
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"Crackpots"
As opposed to your smoking pot, EUnich Eurojerk?
Welcome to Rantburg. Come for the info, stay for the insults. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 18:23
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Pops in at the Rantburg Bus Station and thinks he knows the whole town.
You're not "Eurabian", you're a troll. And an idiot, of course.
We need a cop on the beat to, well, beat this troll and put him on the next bus. A short one would be most suitable.
#12
The secular left would be the first to die under a global Khalif. Check out the website of this Nazi-to-Muslim convert: http://www.dwmyatt.info/conversionsite.html
These sick f#@&$ belong in Gitmo. If any moonbat wants to jump off a bridge, I will give him the taxi fare to get there.
ALGERIAN militants killed five civilians, including a mayor, stepping up attacks days after the start of an amnesty for rebels aimed at ending more than a decade of strife, residents and newspapers said overnight.
Suspected members of al Qaeda-linked group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) shot dead mayor Brahim Jellab outside his house on Friday night in Boumerdes province, 50 km east of the capital Algiers, residents said.
GSPC is the only armed group operating in Boumerdes and the neighbouring province of Tizi Ouzou, Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni said last week.
Mr Jellab is the fifth mayor to be assassinated by Islamist gunmen in Bourmedes in the past four years, residents said.
Government forces killed a bombmaker for GSPC during an operation on Thursday in Boumerdes, newspapers said.
Mohamed Mayouz, 38, was shot dead in an ambush, part of an offensive on rebel strongholds.
In a separate attack, two rebels armed with Kalashnikov rifles shot dead four farmers on Thursday near Blida, 50 km south of Algiers, El Watan and Liberte dailies said.
Six government soldiers were injured on Friday in a separate attack when a home-made bomb exploded in Jijel province, 350 km east of Algiers, El Watan added.
Officials were not immediately available for comment.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:45 ||
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Algerian Islamic rebels killed four civilians in the worst attack since the government started carrying out an amnesty for rebels intended to end more than a decade of strife.
Two rebels armed with machineguns surprised four farmers and shot them dead on Thursday near Blida, 50km south of the capital Algiers, El Watan and Liberte dailies said, citing survivors.
Six government soldiers were injured on Friday in a separate attack when a home-made bomb exploded in Jijel province, 350km east of Algiers, El Watan added.
Meanwhile, government forces killed a bombmaker for al-Qaeda-linked group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), during an operation on Thursday in Boumerdes, 50km east of Algiers, newspapers said.
Mohamed Mayouz, 38, was shot dead in an ambush, part of a large-scale offensive on rebel strongholds.
Officials were not immediately available for comment.
Algeria began implementing an amnesty this month as part of efforts to end violence that broke out when the authorities cancelled legislative elections in 1992 that a now-banned Islamic party was poised to win. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed since.
The peace drive includes mass release of jailed Islamic militants as well as compensation for victims, including the families of about 8,000 missing people.
The amnesty gave rebels still fighting six months to surrender, provided they were not involved in massacres, rapes or bombings of public places.
The authorities have killed 17,000 militants since 1992. About 800 rebels are still active, the government said last week.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:43 ||
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Seized by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur is now seeking victory over President Bush in a new arena: the Supreme Court.
In oral arguments Tuesday, an attorney for Salim Ahmed Hamdan will ask the justices to declare unconstitutional the U.S. military commission that plans to try him for conspiring with his former boss to carry out terrorist attacks.
Significant as that demand is, its potential impact is much wider, making Hamdan's case one of the most important of Bush's presidency. It is a challenge to the broad vision of presidential power that Bush has asserted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In blunt terms, Hamdan's brief calls on the court to stop "this unprecedented arrogation of power." Just as urgently, the administration's brief urges the court not to second-guess the decisions of the commander in chief while "the armed conflict against al Qaeda remains ongoing."
The case may not produce a frontal clash between the judiciary and the executive -- if the court decides that a recently enacted federal law on military commissions deprives it of jurisdiction to rule on Hamdan's case. Yet another possibility is that the court could reach an inconclusive 4 to 4 tie because Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had ruled on the case while he was on a federal appeals court and must sit out now.
But if the court fears to tread on such difficult ground, it has given no sign of that. It has refused the administration's invitation to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction before hearing arguments, and, perhaps more important, it has already refused to defer completely to the president in two previous terrorism-related cases.
"There are so many issues in the case -- whether the president was authorized by the Constitution, or a statute, to set up the commissions -- right down to exactly how to fit this kind of a war into the existing laws of war," said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in Supreme Court litigation. "Most cases have two or three or four issues. This one has 10 or 12, which makes it very hard to handicap."
Whether designating an American citizen as an "enemy combatant" subject to military confinement, denying coverage under the Geneva Conventions to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, or using the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on domestic communications, Bush has said that the Constitution and a broadly worded congressional resolution passed three days after Sept. 11, 2001, empower him to wage war against terrorists all but unencumbered by judicial review, congressional oversight or international law.
Those assertions emerged in Bush's Military Order No. 1 of Nov. 13, 2001, which established the commissions and set off one of the first political debates in the United States over terrorism after two months of relative unity after the attacks.
The administration wanted a tough-minded alternative to the civilian court system that the Clinton administration had used against terrorists. Yet the swift and certain punishment that supporters of the commissions expected has not materialized. Though 10 of the 490 terrorism suspects currently held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay have been designated for trial, not a single case has been decided.
From the outset, the commissions have been plagued by questions about their fairness and workability. Critics argued that the commissions were flawed because, as Hamdan's brief, written by Georgetown University law professor Neal K. Katyal, puts it, they would try suspects "for crimes defined by the President alone, under procedures lacking basic protections, before 'judges' who are his chosen subordinates."
After lengthy internal debates, the administration modified the commissions, requiring that trials be public and that defendants be presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
But that did not persuade critics who pointed out that the executive branch would still be the only one deciding who is an "unlawful enemy combatant" eligible for trial in the first place.
Critics also argue that the Geneva Conventions require that each detainee should be given an individual hearing, with access to the federal courts through habeas corpus.
Historically, the courts have been reluctant to take on presidents during wartime. As a result, Lazarus said, Hamdan's supporters "need to make it clear there is a reason not to trust" Bush with unchecked power. That reason, Lazarus noted, may come from the allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay and at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which surfaced in 2004 and are discussed extensively in briefs on Hamdan's side.
Several members of the court are especially sensitive to international opinion, which has generally seen Guantanamo as a symbol of U.S. excesses in the war against al-Qaeda. The court has been bombarded by friend-of-the-court briefs urging it to think about the impact of the Hamdan case on the image of the United States abroad.
Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that federal law gave U.S. courts the power to hear the prisoners' challenges to their detention at Guantanamo Bay. In a separate case involving an American citizen held there, a plurality of justices noted that the court would not give the president "a blank check" on national security matters.
That triggered a flood of habeas corpus petitions, including Hamdan's, from lawyers representing hundreds of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
Hamdan's attorneys say that neither the broadly worded Sept. 14, 2001, House-Senate resolution that endorsed the use of force against al-Qaeda nor older statutes give Bush the clear legislative approval he needs to set up the commissions. They also contend that the commissions violate the Geneva Conventions, which, they say, are enforceable by U.S. courts and entitle Hamdan to the same kind of trial a U.S. soldier would get from a court-martial.
The rules of the tribunals, which allow evidence that "would . . . have probative value to a reasonable person," provide no guarantee against the use of evidence gathered through torture, Hamdan's supporters say.
In response, the Bush administration notes that military commissions have a long history in war and were contemplated by the Sept. 14, 2001, resolution.
But the administration's brief, written by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, also says that "even if Congress's support for the President's Military Order were not so clear, the President has the inherent authority to convene military commissions to try and punish captured enemy combatants in wartime -- even in the absence of any statutory authorization."
As for the Geneva Conventions, they are not enforceable by U.S. courts and do not apply to Hamdan because al-Qaeda is a terrorist network that has not signed the conventions and regularly violates them, the administration says.
So far, the administration has prevailed. Last year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one of whose members was Roberts, upheld the administration's position, overruling a decision in Hamdan's favor by the U.S. District Court in Washington.
After the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hamdan's appeal of the D.C. Circuit's ruling, Congress stepped in.
The Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), enacted in December, reinforces the president's authority under the Sept. 14 resolution, the administration says. By modifying the rules related to the commissions, the measure implicitly accepts their legitimacy, the administration says.
The DTA stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions from the Guantanamo Bay detainees "pending on or after" the date of its enactment -- and it provides an alternative military process for reviewing their enemy combatant status, to be followed by appeals to the D.C. Circuit court. Under the law, that court is the exclusive venue for appeals of military commission verdicts.
On Jan. 12, the administration asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the Hamdan case, arguing that it is covered by the "pending on or after" phrase. The proper time for his constitutional challenge is after his trial, the administration argued.
But Hamdan's attorneys contend that the DTA was a compromise intended to apply only to new cases, not to those that had already been filed. At a minimum, it does not provide a clear enough statement of congressional intent to deny Hamdan and others a day in court, they say.
The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , No. 05-184. A decision is expected by July.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:41 ||
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I'm tired of this crap. Take them all back to where they were apprehended and dump them. Preferably from 30,000 feet.
Hot weather. Crowded communities. Weak public health systems. The vulnerability of much of Southeast Asia to infectious diseases such as SARS and bird flu suggests that a bioterror attack could be devastating, experts say.
While the likelihood of an attack is considered low, the alleged interest of some regional Islamic militants in acquiring disease-causing agents or toxins means it cannot be ruled out. Any nation allied with the US is a potential target, intelligence analysts believe.
This coming week, Interpol hosts a workshop in Singapore on the threat of bioterrorism for senior police and government officials from 37 countries around Asia. A similar conference was held in South Africa in November, and another is to be held in Chile later this year.
Starting on Monday, the delegates in Singapore will discuss lab security, forensic work and laws designed to prevent bioterrorism, as well assess how to respond to a simulated bioterrorist attack.
The US, which adopted a Bioterrorism Act in 2002 after anthrax sent through the mail killed five people, wants Asian nations to craft similar laws that mandate tighter controls on access to biological agents and toxins.
So far, militants in Southeast Asia have used conventional terror weapons. Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to al-Qaeda, is accused of deadly bombings, including blasts on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2002 and 2005.
The Abu Sayyaf group also carries out bomb attacks and kidnappings in the Philippines.
But detained suspects include Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain and a US-trained biochemist linked to al-Qaeda's attempts to produce chemical and biological arms. Yazid was arrested in late 2001 as he returned to Malaysia from Afghanistan.
A Jemaah Islamiyah manual discovered in the Philippines in 2003 indicates interest in acquiring chemical and biological agents for use in a terrorist attack, said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert based in Singapore.
"It demonstrates serious intent, but not capability," Gunaratna said.
Terrorists need expertise to acquire pathogens from nature, and transform them into a potent weapon. Japan's Aum Shinrikyo group, whose homemade sarin chemical agent killed 12 people in 1995, was unable to isolate a virulent strain of anthrax.
But more Asian countries are pursuing biomedical research, which can lead to new treatments, and concern is growing that laboratory materials could fall into the wrong hands.
"The central problem of preventing bioterrorism is, how do police do what they have to do without getting in the way of legitimate bioscience? If somebody's working with anthrax, are they a good guy or a bad guy?" said Barry Kellman, a weapons control expert at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago.
Kellman said Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam are among countries that need to reinforce laws to cope with the threat of bioterrorism.
A weak regulatory environment in China has raised US concerns about proliferation of technologies that could be used to make biological weapons. Washington says North Korea has a biological weapons program, though concern about proliferation by the communist country has focused on nuclear activities.
Southeast Asia would be vulnerable to an attack because many countries are prone to the fast spread of infections and epidemics, according to health officials. Anthrax is not contagious, but smallpox is. Agents can be spread by food contamination, or by infected mosquitoes and rats.
Singapore, a close US ally, views its 2003 fight against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, as preparation for a bioterrorist attack. Experts used computers to track people who might have had contact with patients of the disease, which spread from Asia across the world, killing nearly 800 people.
Last year, Singapore passed a law that imposes life in prison on anyone who uses biological agents and toxins for a "non-peaceful purpose."
But placing controls on "dual use" technology makes it hard to prevent terrorists from seeking equipment to make biological weapons, said Manjunath K.S. of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, India. For example, he said, a machine that ferments molasses to produce beer could also be used to make deadly toxins.
"You can have industries that unintentionally give it out to customers, who may have other designs," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:39 ||
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Nigeria announced yesterday it is ready to hand over Liberian warlord Charles Taylor to be the first former African head of state tried for crimes against humanity. A U.N. tribunal accuses Mr. Taylor of instigating horrific wars that destroyed two West African nations, killed 1.2 million people and left millions homeless and maimed. He also is thought to have harbored al Qaeda suicide bombers who attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Mr. Taylor has been living in exile in the southern Nigerian city of Calabar since being forced from power under a 2003 accord that ended a rebel assault on Liberia's capital, Monrovia. But Nigeria had resisted extraditing him, arguing he was given refuge under the internationally brokered peace deal.
Many African leaders are leery of trying former presidents or dictators, apparently worrying they could be the next to be accused of human rights abuses or other crimes. Others fear a push to try toppled leaders would encourage those in power to more fiercely resist democratic change.
But in a statement, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said he had informed Liberia's president that "the government of Liberia is free to take former President Charles Taylor into its custody."
After her inauguration in January, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said a trial for Mr. Taylor wasn't a priority. But she made a formal request to Nigeria after an official visit to Washington, which is the source of aid needed to rebuild Liberia, Africa's first republic founded by freed American slaves in 1847.
There was speculation Mr. Taylor would be sent directly to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone rather than be taken to Liberia, where there are worries his presence could destabilize the country trying to recover from 14 years of war.
Liberia's government had no immediate comment, and neither Mr. Taylor nor his spokesman could be reached for comment.
In Liberia, security agents said they arrested at least two Taylor loyalists yesterday after getting reports that the former leader's supporters were engaged in "secret meetings" to ensure he does not stand trial.
David M. Crane, the American prosecutor who drew up Mr. Taylor's indictment, said his extradition would send a powerful message.
"Certainly African leaders, members of the good old boy network, are under notice that you cannot destroy your own citizens for your own personal gain and you don't go after women and children -- don't rape women, don't turn children into monsters," Mr. Crane said.
He said a trial for Mr. Taylor would "crack the wall against impunity."
Mr. Taylor started a civil war in his homeland that brutalized tens of thousands of young boys and girls drafted as rebel fighters. He is blamed for a savage war in neighboring Sierra Leone where rebels terrorized victims by chopping off arms, legs, ears and lips.
The indictment says Mr. Taylor is criminally responsible for the destruction of Liberia and Sierra Leone and for the murder, rape, maiming and mutilation of more a half-million Sierra Leoneans. An additional 2.5 million people were forced from their homes.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
02:36 ||
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#1
Look at the followup , members of his party have been arrested in Liberia. (At the bottom of the story) No doubt they richly deserve trial and punishment, but I hope Ellen isn't overreaching.
Posted by: James ||
03/26/2006 9:03
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An Australian woman charged at the weekend with plotting to bomb Sydney was a convert to Islam who planned the attack at the behest of a jailed murderer angered over anti-Muslim race riots here late last year, newspapers reported on Sunday.
Jill Courtney, 26, was arrested at her suburban Sydney home on Friday in a swoop by federal and local police operating under anti-terrorism laws.
She was charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosives to be placed in or near a public place.
The court granted a request by Courtney's lawyer that the woman be assessed by a psychiatrist.
Police were not required to detail the allegations against Courtney during a brief court hearing on Saturday, but Sunday newspapers quoted police sources saying they believed she was acting out of love for a jailed murderer, Hassan Kalache.
Kalache, 28, is serving a 22-year sentence for killing a rival drug dealer in 2002 and allegedly told Courtney he was angry over race riots in Sydney last December and that he would marry her if she carried out a retaliatory bombing, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
A police detective told the Sun Herald newspaper Courtney converted to Islam after becoming "besotted" with Kalache. "It's a pretty sad case, she's a bit of a candle in the wind," he was quoted as saying.
Courtney was due to appear in court again on Monday.
Last year's riots began when a white mob shouting racist chants assaulted people of Middle Eastern appearance in the blue collar beachside suburb of Cronulla.
The riot prompted a wave of retaliatory attacks, mainly by ethnic-Lebanese men, in which churches, shops and cars were trashed.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/26/2006
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Australian scientists hope they've moved the world closer to a future where supersonic air travel is the norm and a Sydney to London flight takes only two hours.
An international team, led by aviation scientists from the University of Queensland, launched a rocket carrying a scramjet - an air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet engine.
A rocket took the scramjet to an altitude of 314 kilometres about 1.45pm (CDT) above Woomera, in the South Australian outback, a spokeswoman for the Hyshot program said.
Travelling at 8,000kph - or 10 times the speed of a conventional jet - the rocket turned and powered back to Earth.
The scientists are hoping the scramjet kicked into action during a tiny six-second window shortly before impact.
HyShot program leader Professor Allan Paull said it was too soon to tell if the $2 million experiment had been a success.
"It looks good. We got data all the way," he said.
The team would be in a better position to make a statement about the success of the experiment later, possibly Sunday, he said.
Saturday's mission, Hyshot III, follows the historic Hyshot II launch at Woomera in 2002.
During that flight, the team made history by becoming the first to achieve combustion in a scramjet engine in flight, following the failure of Hyshot I in 2001.
Prof Paull said scramjet-powered passenger jets were still a long way off, but it might be possible to have a scramjet-powered vehicle within the next 10 years.
HyShot team member Michael Smart said the flight followed the nominal trajectory and impacted 400km from its launch pad.
An emotional Dr Smart said it appeared from radar tracking of the experiment that everything had gone to plan.
The project also involves British company QinetiQ.
QinetiQ researcher Rachel Owen said it was "very exciting" and she was very proud to have seen the scramjet fly.
#1
Australian scientists hope they've moved the world closer to a future where supersonic air travel is the norm and a Sydney to London flight takes only two hours.
...
The scientists are hoping the scramjet kicked into action during a tiny six-second window shortly before impact.
Russia's foreign spy agency yesterday denied that Moscow gave Saddam Hussein information on U.S. troop movements and plans during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Nope, not us, say Boris Jerkinoff
A Pentagon report Friday cited two seized Iraqi documents as saying Russia obtained information from sources "inside the American Central Command" in Qatar and passed battlefield intelligence to Saddam through the former Russian ambassador in Baghdad, Vladimir Titorenko.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service dismissed the claims. "Similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia's intelligence have been made more than once," agency spokesman Boris Labusov said. "We don't consider it necessary to comment on such fabrications."
Ah, the good ole Cold war denials. Such memories
Yevgenia Albats, a Moscow-based journalist who specializes in intelligence matters, said she suspected there was "at least a certain truth reflected in the Pentagon report," considering Russia's close relationship with the ousted Iraqi leader.
But she cautioned that didn't necessarily mean the Kremlin
was involved.
"It is sometimes difficult to figure out whether certain steps were undertaken with the knowledge of top Russian authorities or whether those were steps undertaken by certain intelligence officers on their own," Miss Albats told the Associated Press.
Sergei Oznobishchev, head of the Institute of Strategic Evaluations and Analysis, suggested that the public release of the report reflected increasing U.S. distrust for Russia.
"They are irritated by Russia's strengthening position in the international arena and its foreign policy course," Mr. Oznobishchev was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Suffering from a spat of penis envy Mr. Oznobishchev?
The Iraqi documents also left unknown who may have been the sources at Central Command's war-fighting headquarters, which is at Camp As Sayliyah just outside Doha, the capital of Qatar. No Russians were authorized to be at the closely guarded base.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006
01:04 ||
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No Russians were authorized to be at the closely guarded base.
Last Saturday morning, needing help to move several heavy cartons of books from my apartment in central Paris to a storage room, I hired two movers and a van from the want ads. Students were in the streets protesting the Contrat de Premier Embauche (CPE) -- a law proposed to combat unemployment by giving employers more flexibility to fire young employees -- and the barricades and traffic diversions made our four-block drive into a half-hour ordeal. As we turned down one obstructed street after another, the movers -- both Arab immigrants -- became more and more incensed."They're idiots," said the driver, gesturing toward the ecstatic protesters. "Puppets for the socialists and the communists." He pantomimed pulling the strings of a marionette.
"It's us they hurt," added the second man. By this he meant immigrants and their children, particularly the residents of France's suburban ghettos, where unemployment runs as high as 50 percent. And, of course, he was right, as everyone with even a rudimentary grasp of economics appreciates: If employers are unable to fire workers, they will be less likely to hire them. It is now almost impossible to fire an employee in France, a circumstance that disproportionately penalizes groups seen by employers as risky: minorities, inexperienced workers and those without elite educations, like the outraged man sitting beside me.
This is the second time in four months that France has been seized with violent protests. And in an important sense, these are counter-riots, since the goals of the privileged students conflict with those of the suburban rioters who took to the streets last November. The message of the suburban rioters: Things must change. The message of the students: Things must stay the same. In other words: Screw the immigrants.
The issue at stake is not, of course, the CPE, which in addition to being unknown in its effects would apply only to a two-year trial period, after which employees would still, effectively, be guaranteed jobs for life. The issue is fear of a real overhaul of France's economically stifling labor laws. While some of the suburban hoodlums have joined in these protests -- after all, a riot is a riot -- it is clear that unless this overhaul proceeds, the immigrants are doomed. If so, last year's violence will seem a lark compared with what is coming.
Curiously, however, no French politician will say this openly. They will not even say these obvious words: France is a representative democracy; if you don't like what your elected leaders are doing, you can vote against them. Some more words you will never hear in France: Students who continue to disrupt civil and academic life will be expelled. Strikers will be fired. We are calling in the troops.
Instead, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is nightly seen on television, earnestly proposing one compromise after the other, even as his supporters scuttle for cover. The powerful barons of the labor unions, on the other hand -- the puppet masters of that golden flock of imbeciles now on the streets -- can scarcely be bothered to give interviews. Compromise? Only when the law is repealed. By then, of course, compromise would be unnecessary. Instead of negotiations, they call for a general strike.
That's because France is still in the grip of precisely the political mentality that has prevailed here since the Middle Ages. As the protesters themselves cheerfully declare: It's the street that rules. Today's mobs, like their predecessors, are notable for their poor grasp of economic principles and their hostility to the free market. Only wardrobe distinguishes these demonstrations from those that led to the invasion of the national convention in 1795, when first the mob protested that commodity prices were too high; when the government responded with price controls, it protested with equal vigor that goods had disappeared and black market prices had risen. Similarly, the students on the streets today espouse economic views entirely unpolluted by reality. If the CPE is enacted, said one young woman, "You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked."
Imagine that.
As a legacy of this long tradition, the choice in France now is between popular legislation -- that is, useless legislation -- and the street. Thus the paradox at the heart of the protests: Those who want power exploit the mobs to maneuver themselves into position, but having gained power cannot use it to achieve anything worthwhile, lest the same tactics be used against them. The fear of the mob has created a cadre of politicians in France who are unable to speak the truth and thereby prepare French citizens for the inevitable. No one in France -- not one single politician, nor anyone in the media -- is willing to say it: France's labor laws are an absurdity, and if they are not reformed at once, France will go under. "What do they think?" said my driver, who was not, he told me, a mover by trade but an unemployed radio journalist forced to moonlight. "Do they think that jobs just fall from the sky?"
Apparently, they think just that.
In this regard, France, like every European country, remains blackmailed by its history. French rulers, seemingly unable to appeal to the legitimacy they possess as elected leaders, instead behave as popular kings, or as leaders of some faction -- like a king's ministers. They cannot seem to forget what happens when a king loses his popularity. There are thus two choices for the French ruling elite, as they see it: toady or go under.
When Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, an urgent question hung in the air: In Britain, who rules? It was a question to which Britain's powerful unions had a ready answer: We do. Men such as Arthur Scargill, the head of the miner's union, were convinced that although they would never lead Britain, it was within their power to run it and to run it for their benefit through labor laws that anyone beyond the union halls could see would destroy the nation as a competitive economic power. Thatcher so thoroughly crushed both Scargill and his union that neither recovered. For a brief moment, power politics stood revealed. The unions had made a bid for power. They lost.
The same question is now being raised in France: Who rules? This is the second time in 11 years that a popularly elected government here faces dismissal not from the voters, but from the streets. If this does not represent a direct challenge to the government's power, it is hard to know what would. Should the government fall, the question will have been answered.
President Mugabe, under heavy local and international pressure to step down, has called for a constitutional amendment that will allow an interim President to be appointed by his Zanu PF party and pave the way for fresh elections for a new government. Official sources said this was the message that had been communicated to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who is seen as a key player in delicate manoeuvres towards a transition from a dictatorship to democratic rule in Zimbabwe.
We've heard these stories before and nothing's happened. My guess is that he'll stay until there's nothing left to loot — which, I suppose, could be now — or he dies of old age, which could be any time.
It is understood that Mugabe wants his hand picked successor Joice Mujuru to be the interim President, although this could not be confirmed. Mbeki, who recently met UN secretary general Kofi Annan over the issue, is scheduled to lead a three-member, high-powered team to Harare within the next two months to iron out Mugabe's proposed exit plan, according to the sources. Zimdaily heard that Annan told Mbeki to keep the momentum going following Mugabe's positive signals in a birthday interview on ZTV last month. In the interview, Mugabe hinted that he was considering stepping down as land redistribution that he had so much wanted to see implemented had been addressed.
Everybody's got land but the owners.
Mbeki is expected to work out a safe exit plan for Mugabe that will make him immune from prosecution for human rights abuses committed during his 26-year rule.
I'll bet they're keeping a close eye on the Chuck Taylor case, above...
Mugabe is particularly worried about the Matabeleland and Midlands massacres of the mid-1980s after he unleashed the Korean-trained 5 Brigade, led by the now Air Force of Zimbabwe boss, Perence Shiri, on the people of those provinces in suppressing an armed dissident uprising. Official sources told Zimdaily that Mugabe is concerned about "the future of his family and property, his party's simmering succession problems, a possible power vacuum after his departure and subsequent infighting within Zanu PF".
The MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, a key player in any power transition, is on record as saying that Mugabe's security after he steps down will only be guaranteed in the context of a negotiated settlement of the current Zimbabwe crisis. Mugabe has stated that he is prepared to talk to the opposition leader if he drops his election results court challenge and recognises him as the legitimate President of Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai has flatly refused to agree to those conditions. Mugabe won the presidential election in 2002 in controversial circumstances. The poll was condemned internationally as being fraught with irregularities and glaring rigging.
"To the barricades!" is the cry heard again on the streets of France, as they ring to the sound of student chants.
The crisp early springtime air on the Left Bank is filled once more with the heady scent of revolution, black coffee and Gauloises.
A delicious sense of people power has gripped the French and most of all, the students I mingled with a few days ago as they marched arm in arm through the boulevards of Paris, shouting their anger with the government.
To the barricades, they went, these revolutionaries, to fight for their rights - to pensions, mortgages and a steady job.
Such odd revolutionaries. No heartfelt cry to change the world, but a plea for everything to stay the same.
For France to remain in its glorious past: a time of full employment and jobs for life - a paternalistic state to take care of them from cradle to grave.
Cause and effect
So what brought this on? On the surface, a new youth employment contract, aimed at helping young people get their first job - no easy task in a country with 10% unemployment, but almost one in four out of work among the young.
It's a contract that would allow employers to take a chance, to hire a youngster in the knowledge that the trial period could be up to two years long, and the normal French restrictions on firing would not apply.
But scratch the surface and it is a far wider issue. The trouble with France has been brewing for decades.
In an echoing stone courtyard at Paris University, Marion and other students are making banners to carry on their march.
"Mr Villepin, you are not the king", they read, a reminder of what happened to France's aristocracy after people power won out in times gone by.
"I haven't studied hard to get nothing at the end of it," says Marion, with indignation. "I've earned the right to a secure job."
A secure job like the one her parents and grandparents enjoyed.
A recent survey suggested that for most of the young in France, the real dream is to become a civil servant - a fonctionnaire. To work in government offices with regular hours, long holidays, and a 35 hour working week.
Revolt
One teacher looks on with an indulgent smile. English professor Jenny Lowe took to the barricades herself in May 1968.
She remembers the romance of it all, the joy as the workers joined in the revolt the students had begun against an ageing right-wing president and a government they despised.
"We thought anything was possible then," she says, "but these days, it's rather different," she gestures at her students.
And Jenny Lowe is right. As the world around them changes at a baffling rate, her students want the old certainties back - but these are certainties France can no longer guarantee.
No country and no government could. Yet the belief in an all-powerful government is a very French creation, an attachment that goes deep.
"The government must create jobs," Victor, an economics student tells me as he prepares to march again.
He will walk alongside his parents at the next protest, the first time the family has demonstrated together since 1995.
That is when the young Victor was taken for his first taste of people power - then the French got rid of Prime Minister Alain Juppe and his plans for economic reform.
Mr Juppe's latest successor Dominique de Villepin is receiving conflicting advice from his own MPs on what to do next to avoid the same fate.
Hold firm, say some. We need a French Margaret Thatcher right now. Give in, others advise, listen to the streets because in France you cannot govern without them.
And it is true that politically, a war has begun for the very soul of France, to decide how it faces the future.
The left here senses a weakened president, and a prime minister perhaps mortally wounded by his battle with cabinet rival Nicholas Sarkozy for the ultimate prize - the nomination for the presidency next year.
De Villepin, say his foes, is ready to drag down France to achieve his ambition: gaining the Elysee Palace.
Existential anxiety
And France today does feel like a tinder box, a nation dancing on a volcano - just as it did in the troubled suburbs last year.
The employment law is Dominique de Villepin's pet project
As the students march, the "casseurs" or hooligans are gathering again, but this time in the heart of the city.
Last week they indulged in an orgy of violence near the Sorbonne on the Left Bank, the intellectual heart of Paris.
All it could take is one careless spark for this howl of existential anxiety to explode.
And yet, Paris still feels like the Paris of old. The front page of Paris Match carried an iconic photograph.
Shot on a slow exposure, as if smudged by moonlight, a couple dance near the River Seine.
Behind them is a row of riot police, shields aloft, like a guard of honour.
The girl's long hair fans out in the evening air as she is twirled around in a late-night last waltz, by a young Frenchman with a smile and his arm around her waist.
And just faintly, comes the echo of May 1968 and a reminder that in France, even revolution for a mortgage and a pension has its own mysterious allure.
Failure looks so beautiful through rose-colored glasses!
A few days before the resumption of the national dialogue in Parliament, politicians seemed to agree on the need to resolve the presidential crisis, but tension mounted in discussions about the president's successor.
So the question's no longer what's going to happen to Emile, but who's going to replace him...
Well-placed sources said the success of the dialogue is "strongly linked to the outcome of the discussions taking place in Egypt and Saudi Arabia."
Meaning they need approval of their Arab puppet masters...
Another issue, the identity of Shebaa Farms, was also the center of political talks in the local arena, following the statements made by Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa in Egypt, where he reiterated his country's affirmation that the farms were Lebanese. Several Lebanese politicians said such a declaration was not enough and asked Syria to submit official documents to the UN.
I wouldn't just take them at their word, either.
Meanwhile, March 14 politicians continued to call for the resignation of President Emile Lahoud and expressed their concerns about his participation in the Arab Summit. The president of the Lebanese Forces executive committee, Samir Geagea, said President Emile Lahoud "should not remain in office and fulfill the interests of Syria," noting that the presidency crisis was "behind the participants in the national dialogue."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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The JMB suicide bomber killed in the November 29 bombing on Gazipur Bar Association office premises has been identified by Criminal Investigation Department (CID) as Asadul Islam, 19, of Gaibandha. Seven persons including lawyers Amjad Hossain and Golam Faruk were killed on the spot 60 people were injured in the bombing.
Gaibandha police confirmed Asadul's identity yesterday, about four months after the carnage. Asadul who used four nicknames as Zafar, Nasir, Jahid and Ziaur hailed from Tindaha village in Ramchandrapur union in Gaibandha Sadar Upazila. His identity has been confirmed after interrogating some JMB (Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh) cadres and his parents, police said.
During investigation, Asadul's father bicycle mechanic Abdur Rahim and mother Ayatunessa and relatives identified his photograph. Police also recovered copies of JMB monthly journal Al-Magazi, other papers and Jihadi (militancy) books from the house of Asadul. Quoting family sources, police said Asadul read up to class eight at Trimohoni High School and later went to Bogra for studying in a madrasa. Since than, he did not keep any contact with the family. CID investigation officer Shamol Kumar during investigation quizzed Adnan alias Abbas, arrested 'regional commander' of JMB for Bogra and Joypurhat districts. Adnan unidentified that the Gazipur suicide bomber was Asadul Islam. Asadul was assigned to do the suicide bombing by JMB chief Shahikh Abdur Rahman through two 'regional commanders' Adnan and Reaz, both now in custody, police said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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#1
Suicide boomer's final comment: That's me all over.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 0:07
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"Adnan unidentified that the Gazipur suicide bomber was Asadul Islam."
That's pretty certain that one of the four alias' was him.
Pakistani Police Saturday arrested nearly 60 tribesmen suspected of involvement in attacks on security forces and government installations in Balochistan, police said. The police detained some 57 suspects including 24 arrested in a raid on a camp run by rebels from the Marri tribe near the provincial capital Quetta, city police officer Mujibur Rehman said. The 33 other men were picked up during raids at different neighbourhoods just outside Quetta, Rehman said. On Friday two people were killed when their motorbike struck a landmine, which authorities said was planted by insurgents near the town of Sui, 280 kilometres southeast of Quetta. Also on Friday rebels fired several rockets at security forces deployed in the town of Loti near Dera Bugti, without causing any casualties.
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The key witness in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Syrian Mohammed Zuheir Siddiq, said on Thursday that he "never retracted his testimony," which he delivered before the international investigation committee looking into the crime. In a statement issued by his attorney in France, Siddiq said: "I didn't go back on my testimony at any time and any information that contradicts my statement is false or stems from bad intentions." He also said he is "at the disposal of the international investigation committee to contribute to the uncovering of the complete truth."
The statement was issued following rumors spread since Tuesday that Siddiq had crucial information to deliver to the media. Between Tuesday and Thursday, a man declaring that he was Siddiq made several phone calls to French journalists, asking them to meet him in a Lebanese restaurant in the fifth arrondissement in Paris. He never showed up. However, Siddiq's attorney told the Lebanese daily L'Orient Le Jour that his client "has nothing to do with this unknown man." Commenting on Siddiq's statements, former Minister Naji Boustani said: "We know that Siddiq is accused of giving false statements and participating in actions linked to the crime."
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NYT registration, so posted in nauseating detail. How does one put most of an article on page 49, or is that a power denied to mere jackals?
The has-been actor Danny Glover has come. Harry Belafonte has also been here before daylight come and he wan' go home. So has the antiwar activist Mother Cindy Sheehan, the prominent white-hater African-American writer Cornel West and Bolivia's new president-For-Life, Evo Morales. A student from an American university photographed residents of a Caracas neighborhood during a visit to Venezuela, a new leftist mecca. They say they want a revolution.
But most visitors are like Cameron Durnsford, a 24-year-old student from Australia who decided to study at a new government-financed university in Caracas. Mr. Durnsford was, admittedly, put off some by the cult of celebrity around President Hugo Chávez, which he says "seems a little bit Maoist." And if you go carrying pictures of Chariman Mao,...
But Venezuela's revolution, he quickly added, was not to be missed. "You've got a nation and a leader trying to prove an alternative to neo-liberalism and the policies that have ravaged Latin America for 20 years," he said. "That's why people are coming here. There's a sense that it's a moment in history." A moment like 1919 in Russia, 1949 in China. Before the reality of Communism kills millions of people and spoils the fun. Continued on Page 49
#3
C'mon, they'll never go to Zimbabwe. No beaches, plus his plan to put fat white people to work on the farms as a form of "diet camp" isn't what these pampered, precious little people really want.
As for North Korea....it's just too damn cold, and all that fiber in the kimchee would just aggravate their delicate digestive tracts. Plus, the music sucks. You can't dance to "I Will Burn America in a Sea of Everlasting Fire". Believe me, they've tried, they just don't have the juche to make it work.
Nah, Venezuela's better. Maybe if they get to one of the beaches, they might get to see the locals nekkid and might be able to score for once! Viva el dollar! truly see the liberation of the peasant class for higher ideals
Median Family Income: $120,404
Average Home Price: $671,113
Not in Labor Force: 33%
Not in labor force does not mean "on welfare" in this case.
There's time for lots of dilletante hobbies. Like "traveling to Venezuela to suck up to dictators". Like "Pat" does..
#6
But Mr. Boudin, one of the authors of a book favorable to Venezuela's government, said many people who had been dismayed by the advance of globalization saw the possibility of a better world in Venezuela. "The fact that we have a country that's trying to create an alternative model is bold and ambitious and unique, and that's why people are wondering, 'Is this possible?' " said Mr. Boudin, whose parents, Katherine Boudin and David Gilbert, were members of the 1970's radical group the Weathermen. "The intellectual in me is curious."
Here's a blast from the past describing what Chesa's mumsy and popsy went away for. The Times somehow forgets to mention it.
The highlights: On Oct. 20, 1981, Sgt. Edward O'Grady, Patrolman Waverly Brown and Brinks guard Peter Paige were gunned down in Rockland County, N.Y. by heavily armed terrorists. The half dozen gunmen all Americans were members of the Weather Underground, a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Liberation Army, formed from members of the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Afrika.
This month (10/2002), two Weather Underground terrorists jailed for murder have catapulted back into the news. David Gilbert, those days sporting bushy hair and a full beard, and Katherine Boudin, back then the image of a suburban soccer mom, are headlining through their son, known as Chesa Boudin. Chesa, 14 months old at the time of the robbery and now 22, has been awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, England. He was given celebrity status in a New York Times article this month, telling writer Jodi Wilgoren, "When I was younger I was angry. Now, I'm sad that my parents have to suffer what they have to suffer."
His parents married on the day Gilbert was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 25 years each for felony murder. Kathy Boudin's former "Weatherbureau" colleagues, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, now luminaries of Chicago's academic life, have been responsible for little Chesa since his mummy and daddy were locked up.
Guardian Mom Dohrn, described by former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as "La Pasionara of the lunatic left," now pretends that her widely publicized support for the Manson Family killings in the '70s was a joke. "We were mocking violence in America," she has said. Yet she does not deny her leadership of the terrorist cult, and none of her comrades thought the lovely Bernardine was joking.
Guardian Dad, the distinguished Professor Ayers, not only hides his some 17 tattoos under his smart suits, but these days he is writing books about his exploits as a revolutionary and his bombing activities. However, in describing a bomb he placed in the Pentagon, Ayers brags a bit too much. "It turns out that we blew up a bathroom and, quite by accident, water plunged below and knocked out their computers for a time, disrupting the air war and sending me into deepening shades of delight."
Chesa Boudin has said of the activities of his four parents, "We have a different name for the war we're fighting now. Now we call it the war on terrorism; then they called it the war on communism. My parents were all dedicated to fighting U.S. imperialism around the world. I'm dedicated to the same thing."
Wonder how the Times managed to miss this background on young Chesa? Could it've been... deliberate?
At least 1,500 people of the Raija, Kalpar and Masuri Bugti clans reached Dera Bugti Area amid strict security on Saturday. Around 4,000 people had left the area after tribal feuds erupted in 1997. Mir Hamdan Bugti, the former chairman of Marri Bugti Zila Council, led the convoy from Dera Ghazi Khan Police Lines. The convoy consisted of wagons, buses and trucks with the government taking strict security measures to protect the convoy.
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SHABQADAR (Rantburg News Service): Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao on Saturday denied the presence of Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as four Khasadar force personnel were wounded in an ambush. There are no Taliban in the tribal areas. Really. It is only propaganda. Trust me on this, he told reporters at Shabqadar Fort in Charsadda district, after inaugurating the Frontier Constabulary Foundation School.
But he conceded that whatever was happening in the tribal areas was due to the involvement of external hands who wanted to disturb peace along Pakistans western border. Foreign elements are involved, he said. "We have had reports of large men, wearing lava-lavas, running around our beloved countryside, terrorizing honest tribesmen. We suspect there is a conspiracy afoot, and we have summoned the Samoan ambassador for an explanation."
The interior minister also said that the Pakistan Army was not playing a direct role in the ongoing operation against terrorists. The army is just assisting the paramilitary and Khasadar force and there is no proposal to deploy regular soldiers in the tribal region, he said. "All is well. There is nothing to see here. Move along. We are committed to flushing out foreign terrorists from the tribal areas and the government will not hesitate from any action to meet that goal. But neither do we want any trouble... Yes. Those are my lips. May I have them back, please?"
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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I seem to remember a stock photo of pancakes and syrup. Can't find it, though.
Try this one...
The parents of a 23-year-old who was killed trying to prevent the demolition of an occupied Palestinian bomb factory used to murder children days before home have appealed a judge's decision to dismiss their lawsuit against Caterpiller Inc., the company that made the bulldozer that ran over her. "He applied the wrong legal standard and ignored the facts," said Maria LaHood, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
Rachel Corrie was killed three years ago by an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer. She was trying to stop him from demolishing a Gaza Strip home while the family was inside; though witnesses said she was clearly visible, the army claimed he didn't see her.
Her parents sued Caterpiller on the grounds that for years, the company has provided bulldozers to the Israeli army, knowing they would be used to destroy civilian homes in violation of international law. They were joined in the lawsuit by five Palestinians who say their relatives were killed or injured by Israeli-driven bulldozers. "This has been a challenging time for our family, since we just marked the three-year anniversary of Rachel's death without justice," said her mother, Cindy Corrie. "Caterpillar chooses to support these illegal activities with continuing sales and service of its equipment. It must be held accountable for its role in human rights violations, both past and present."
Continued on Page 49
#3
Watch this moonbattery make its way to the Supremes.
Typical gun abuse meme. But guns and Cats don't kill people, people kill people.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 0:51
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"He applied the wrong legal standard and ignored the facts," said Maria LaHood, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
I don't know specifically about New York's Code of Professional Conduct, but that statement would probably be a (borderline) ethics violation in many states. You don't get to publicly badmouth the judge and question his/her competency, though you may say you disagree with his/her decision.
Ethics questions asides, Maria better hope she doesn't appear before that judge again. Or any of his friends.
The fact that she's attempting to try this in the news tells me she probably doesn't have a very good case to try in the courts. (As evidenced by the dismissal.)
Now where'd I leave that nano-violin....?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 0:51
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#5
The Supremes will take this only to reverse the 9th Circus if it screws up.
#8
An Oregon train engineer whose vehicle ran over the leg of a participant of an illegal tree-hugger protest, sued the protester for trauma. Personally, I would not want that unpleasant memory on my mind, without some closure. The only victim in the Corrie incident is the bulldozer operator. Her parents have already admitted to financially supporting their warped daughter, in her pro-terror enterprises. Who knows a good civil tort lawyer?
#10
Listen's point suggests that we sue Rachel Corrie's parents for being party to a terrorist organization. We can start by freezing their financial assets.
#11
What amazes me is that the whole case against CAT relies on the following tenuous arguments and that it has gotten this far, namely:
1. The structure being demolished was only a home and not a terrorist smuggling point.
2. The operator clearly saw St. Wallboard and chose to crush her.
3. CAT clearly knew that their product was being used for demolishing homes. ("Mind if we use 'em for destroying homes of peace-loving Palestinians?"... "Um, sure, go right ahead!")
If they can charge CAT with the death of their daughter. Can criminal 1st degree murder charges be filed against the parents for spawning a terrorist enabler?
And, yes, I *am* serious! If the 9th circus reverses this then Israel should immediately post capital murder charges against the parents - multiple counts!. Is there an extradition treaty?
The Palestinian Authority will tell an Arab summit it needs at least $130 million a month to cover Suha Arafat's shopping sprees its budget if the West cuts off aid when the Islamist group Hamas takes office, Economy Minister Mazen Sonnoqrot said. But Algerian Minister of State Abdelaziz Belkhadem said the Arabs had not yet agreed to go above their previous commitment to give the Palestinian Authority $50 million a month. "There's no increase now but we are hearing about the situation in Palestine," he told Reuters on Friday night.
Arab foreign ministers, who start a two-day meeting in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Saturday, will discuss a draft resolution confirming their old commitment, he added. "We're eager to make sure that there is at least the minimum (of Arab aid) but there's no increase," Belkhadem said. In practice many Arab governments have not met their commitments to the Palestinians and donors such as the European Union have covered most of the budget shortfall.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#4
DMFD - Don't forget the kittens and fluffy baby ducks. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/26/2006 0:54
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Guess, The world pays every stupid palistanians about 1000 US dollers per Year. Folks in India dont make evnen 500 dollers per year and are conributing to the World ecdonomy. In a very simple terms, all it means that the west is paying a ransom to the palistanians. Stop paying the ransom to the Palistanions and they will learn the economy and proper behavier.
On my flight to New York a Jew must have been in the bathroom the entire time because a sign on the door said, "occupied."
What do you say to a Muslim woman with two black eyes? Nothing! You told her twice already!
How many Palestinians does it take to change a light bulb? None! They sit in the dark forever and blame the Jews for it!
Did you hear about the Broadway play, "The Palestinians"? It bombed!
What do you call a first-time offender in Saudi Arabia? Lefty!
Did you hear about the Muslim strip club? It features full facial nudity!
That's it; give me a hand. And I mean: GIVE ME A HAND. But if I made just one person happy...it wasn't worth it because the Muttawa will use my head for football. Put on a surly face, because a happy jihadi is a dead kaffir. Think about it. And a parting thought: never give a dhimmi an even break (apologies to WC Fields).
Posted by: john ||
03/26/2006 9:42
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Oh, boy! Looks like a bidding war! As of 2 hours ago the inflation rate must've really kicked in...
Hamas seeks $170 million per month from Arabs
KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Hamas has asked Arab countries to donate 170 million dollars per month to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority in order to counter Western threats to slash aid.
"The needed monthly spending is 170 million dollars, including 115 million dollars for wages," Hamas' political supremo Khaled Meshaal told a press conference on Sunday.
The extra forty must be for "administrative costs"... The amount is three times the 55 million dollars pledged at last year's Arab summit in Algeria and is practically double the 100 million dollars demanded by a Palestinian delegation at a preparatory meeting for Tuesday's Arab summit in Khartoum.
Meshaal has been on a regional tour hoping to raise funds to fill the gap left by an anticipated cutting of funds from the United States and the European Union, once the Hamas-led government takes office.
"We hope that our Arab brothers will take the initiative to provide this aid as soon as possible... because the February salaries of many employees have not been paid yet," Meshaal said.
Ah, yes. Our "arab brothers". Let's scam them for awhile...
#9
OK... You guys need 130 million.... I have this cashier's check for 225 million. How about I sign it over to you, and you give me the 95 million difference. Mail it to my address in Nigeria. Oh, and I'll need your bank account and pin numbers...
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/26/2006 14:55
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@ LTd : the site boss and owner had a very funny take on this muslim stand up comedian thingie quite a while back (2003?) in a comment, and it was a riot! Yours is pretty darn good too... cheers!
Up to 450 relatives of the 16 Pakistani tribesmen killed by Afghan security forces held a protest rally outside the Afghan Consulate in Quetta on Saturday, police said. Condemning the killings and demanding that those responsible be punished, the protestors threw stones at the Consulate and tore down and burned a picture of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, displayed at the gate of the building. The crowd chanted "Down with Karzai and Death to Afghanistan", before being baton-charged by police, according to witnesses.
Local area police chief Zahid Afaq said that no one had been injured during the protest. Islamabad has already registered a complaint with Kabul over last Tuesday's killings. Pakistan rejected claims made last week by Afghan army Abdul Razzak that the group were Taliban members, insisting that the men had been on their way to celebrate the Afghan New Year.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Death to (insert something that has upset you a little today) , praise be to allah !
For Example ..
Death to the clocks for being put forward, when the country switches to British Summer Time ! Praise be to allah !
RAIPUR: Eleven people were killed and four wounded when Maoists detonated a landmine under a vehicle in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, police said on Saturday. The incident took place late on Friday in the Bastar region, about 250 km (150 miles) south of the state capital Raipur, senior police officer Pradeep Gupta told Reuters.
He said the Maoists probably mistook the vehicle for a police jeep. "The Maoists exploded a jeep carrying 15 people around 9 pm (1530 GMT Friday)," Gupta said. "Six died on the spot while five succumbed to their injuries on Saturday morning in a hospital."
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NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman has neither denied nor confirmed a claim by the family of missing tribal journalist Hayatullah Khan that he has been given into US custody for his alleged links with Al Qaeda, the Tribal Union of Journalists president said on Saturday. During our meeting, we asked the governor to comment on Khans familys allegation that he has been handed over to the US. The governor neither denied nor did he confirm the allegation. He just said that he had checked with all security agencies and Hayatullah is not with the government, TUJ President Sailab Mehsud said, referring to a meeting between the governor and a TUJ delegation in Peshawar on March 22.
Khan has been missing since December 5 when five masked men kidnapped him outside Mir Ali town in North Waziristan days after he contradicted the government version about the killing of an Al Qaeda leader on December 1. Military spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan said he didnt know Khans whereabouts. If he is in the US custody, the Interior Ministry may know it, he told Daily Times.
Brig (r) Javed Iqbal Cheema, the director general of the Interior Ministrys Crisis Management Cell, also denied the report that Pakistan had handed over Hayatullah to the US. Neither we have handed over any Pakistani into US custody nor it is our policy to hand over our nationals to the US. We have never handed over any Pakistani to the US, he said. Some intelligence officials told us that Hayatullah is no more in Pakistan, his brother Ehsanullah Khan told Daily Times. Ehsanullah said that the intelligence sources said Hayatullah was last seen in Pakistan on January 17 when he was shifted from Islamabad to somewhere else.
Mehsud said the familys allegation could be true. It is possible that Hayatullah has been handed over to the US, the TUJ president told Daily Times by phone from Dera Ismail Khan. Ehsanullah said intelligence sources had earlier told him that Hayatullah was fine and the family should not worry about him. And now the same intelligence people are saying that he is no more with them.
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Yasin Malik, chief of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) said on Saturday that Muslims were equally responsible for cruelty meted out against them because a majority of them do not believe in democracy.
Be careful starting your car for the next few years, Yasin. And watch for bearded men riding motorcycles...
When democracy heralds upon a Muslim country, the opposition tends to launch a movement to dislodge it, Malik said while speaking at a gathering during the World Social Forum proceedings on Saturday.
Democracies bring the promise though not always the realization of freedom. Freedom includes freedom of thought, which encompasses freedom of religion. Islam is doctrinally against freedom of religion; you can be killed for leaving its bloodstained embrace. Without freedom of thought there is no other freedom.
He pointed out that talks were going on between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir dispute and they also believed in the process. He said that if the talks failed, it wouldnt affect the ongoing struggle for the freedom of Kashmir. He declared that the people of India and Pakistan would force the governments of both countries to resolve the conflict through negotiations. Better relations between the two countries are possible only through the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, he said.
It's been 60 years, and the people of India and Pakland haven't gotten around to forcing the governments of both countries to resolve the problem. In Pakistan it's an end all and be all, the first difficult step in a grandiose plan that's supposed to result in the dismemberment of India and Pakistan's aggrandizement.
Malik claimed that Kashmiriat was purely a spiritual thing. He said 15,000 pundits were living in Indian-held Kashmir and he urged them to return to the valley.
They don't want to. They're not happy with the idea of gunfire.
Malik claimed that as many as 85 percent of Kashmiris wanted freedom while only 15 percent wanted to live with Pakistan. Our history is full of struggle and it will continue till we achieve full freedom, he said.
Yeah, yeah. Whoopdy doo. Without Armed Struggle you got nuttin'. There's no purpose to your life. You'll dry up and blow away, and it'll be like you've never been. You and your like are such tiresome little men.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Anybody recommend a good insurance broker for this lad?
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 0:23
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Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah advised the government not to wait for "some signal from foreign countries trying to reorganize Lebanon's domestic affairs in a way that serves the interests of the Zionist enemy and its U.S. ally."
During Friday's sermon from the Imamein Hassanein Mosque in Haret Hreik, Fadlallah said Lebanon is still facing Israeli threats through regular land, water and air violations. "This is at a time when some of the country's leaders are discussing the arms of the resistance and Hizbullah's disarmament as demanded by Resolution 1559, which everyone knows is an Israeli-U.S. resolution imposed on the Security Council to serve the enemy's interests."
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This bearded blood sucker is an Iranian beast of burden. So much for "non-lebanese" solutions.
President Hamid Karzai has personally intervened in the case of an Afghan man facing execution for converting to Christianity, a top official said Saturday, amid fierce criticism in the West.
Not that we've burned any embassies down, of course. We're not Islamic.
Karzai was consulting with various government organisations to resolve the matter as soon as possible, the senior government official said on condition of anonymity. The president is personally working to resolve it peacefully. There is a way out of it, he said. I believe itll take one or two days.
"Our country already looks stoopid enough. He's trying to limit the damage."
Rahman was arrested under Islamic Sharia law about two weeks ago after his parents went to the authorities, reportedly following a family dispute. Sharia law, on which the Afghan constitution is partly based, rules that a Muslim who converts from Islam should be put to death.
... which pretty well negates the concept of freedom of religion.
Posted by: Fred ||
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I sure hope it's not Karzai's head in exchange for this apostate. Afghanistan is a really poor country - you've got to figure that for many of them, the highlight of their week is a visit to the mosque on Friday. If Afghans as a whole start to think we're trying to subvert their religion, we might need a few more divisions in-country.
#2
ZF: Where are you going to get the divisions to make the US troops that get rotated through Afghanistan re-enlist in the future if the government they're supporting is killing people for sharing the religion of most of them?
Posted by: Phil ||
03/26/2006 0:51
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Karzai may realize that if a judiciary can kill someone for becoming Christian, it is only a small step to killing someone for going from Shia to Sunni or from Sunni salafist to sunni sufi or for having a koran with an image or for all kinds of things.
On the other hand the 'death to apostates' is, essentially the Berlin Wall of Islam that keeps muslims trapped. If this wall goes down, Islam becomes a shadow.
#4
Globe and Mail article: Almost always, perched on the rocks and mounds just outside the gate, is a clutch of Afghan men, squatting comfortably for hours on end in the hot sun, and a gaggle of shy youngsters -- watching as the soldiers in the observation posts watch them. Visible not far away at any given time are farmers working the dry soil with bare hands or primitive instruments and lone figures slowly leading donkeys or goats through the fields.
And as is common in rural Afghanistan, and this is a country where 80 per cent of the people live not in towns but on the land, burqa-clad women are almost never to be seen. They scurry away, hands pulling voluminous cloth even tighter, if there's a Western man within miles. The mice back at the Green Beans café are bolder.
Before the Gombad base was overrun with soldiers for the big Sola Kowal operation, the place belonged utterly to the men of 1 Platoon. Cpl. Sinclair remembers those quiet early days with fondness, particularly the pleasure of hearing, just before dawn, the muezzin making the first of five daily calls to prayer for the faithful.
First, Cpl. Sinclair said, there was the distinct click of the muezzin -- like many now, he uses a loudspeaker -- flipping on the power switch. Then came the raspy cough as he flicked a finger once or twice on his microphone, to see that it was working. And then the sound of the muezzin's sing-song voice, echoing as the sun rose in pinks and yellows over the Gombad Valley.
Most Afghans don't have much. They eke out a living on marginal land. But they have their faith. If you tell them that they cannot practice their faith as they see fit in their own land - that they cannot kill a native apostate when (in David Warren's words) Islam holds it is wrong not to kill him, there could be trouble. I hope I am wrong. But if trouble breaks out, and the body count starts piling up, we will see that this case was closer to the Sepoy Revolt than Sir Napier's banning of widow-burning. Note that Afghanistan, unlike the British Raj, is a nation of riflemen. It was a nation of riflemen when Afghan troops mauled the British and when Afghan irregulars mauled the Soviets and it is a nation of riflemen today. It is also a landlocked nation surrounded by Muslim countries (and China) whose airspace we must pass through to resupply our people.
#5
ZF, I think you're zoomed in way to tightly. The issue is whether Islam can be allowed to exist in the world. If they want to execute this guy, a lot of people in the west are going to conclude that it's them or us. And they aren't going to win that one in the end. Thin of this as the cartoons with a life at stake. They're cruisin' for a bruisin'.
#6
"The issue is whether Islam can be allowed to exist in the world." If this issue is forced in Afghanistan, what little has been gained there will be lost for many years to come. Has anyone reading Rantburg also read "Kara Kush"?
sadly we are in a two megafront war -- one against the military jihadi (call them islamofascists) and one against the islamic outreach and apologist (call it islamo subversion).
We are killing lots of jihadi in Iraq (many killed by Iraqi, some by other jihadi) and in Afghanistan and in other nations, it works in many different ways.
However, the war of subversion needs to be fought also. We have great allies in the apostates (ibn warraq, ali sina, wafa sultan, etc.) and we have great allies in some of the kafr scholars (Spenser, Bostom, etc.).
The key battleground is for the 'enlightened' western moslem mind (the rural afghans can keep their piety for several generations -- it doesn't matter that much). When the moderate muslims give up trying to reform Islam and publically repudiate it, it will hit the Islamic body like a strong right hook. Another path is if the Iranians overthrow the mularky and a huge part of the population renounces Islam. This would be more of a puch in the gut.
Tens of thousands of Thais rallied in Bangkok yesterday, begging their king to intervene in a last-ditch effort to force Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from office. "Thaksin, get out!" the protesters chanted as a band played protest songs and nearly 5,000 police officers stood guard. Police said they feared "troublemakers" would try to hijack the event.
Three hours into the rally, a crowd of about 30,000 had gathered near Thaksin's office in Government House. Many wore yellow headbands that said "Save The Nation." Organisers anticipated the protest would exceed several others that have drawn up to 100,000 people. Thaksin's foes have been demonstrating almost daily for two weeks. They say he is corrupt and has abused his powers.
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Mmm! Thaksin called an election and its what happens at the ballot box that matters. All these protest smack of people who know they will loose at the ballot box and Thaksin will win.
He said the party took the action because the expelled members didnt vote for their partys candidates in the Senate election. He said another Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal provincial leader, Mufti Kifaitullah, was also suspended for three years on his irresponsible behaviour in the Senate election. The NWFP Assembly speaker has accepted the resignations and issued a notification in this regard.
Posted by: Fred ||
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I tried to resign when I was MPA. It didn't work.
Posted by: Former O-Ganger ||
03/26/2006 22:46
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Extremists know extremism will hurt
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in Jang that Muslim extremists all over the Islamic world were aware that if they succeeded, then religious extremists will come to power in many Muslim states and will soon begin to damage the country they are ruling while damaging the economic and social fibre of their societies with their extremist programmes. While the religious parties hurt their own populations, the West will still get away with achieving its objectives. The Islamist governments will provide the West with a new enemy and will promote the idea of the clash of civilisations. But they will clash with themselves on the question of doctrine and buy weapons from the West to fight with one another, thus squandering their scarce resources.
This Nazeer Naji should get a blog. He should also get out of Pakistan. He can see clearly and isn't afraid to write what he sees.
Why army got rid of Bhutto
Ex-speaker of the National Assembly and PPP leader Sahibzada Farooq Ali Khan wrote in the daily Pakistan that the army generals got rid of Bhutto because he kept repeating his resolve publicly to settle old scores with India and avenge the defeat of 1970. He said it on coming to power in a public meeting in Rawalpindi. In his last address to the National Assembly, Bhutto once again said that he wanted to do two things before going: to make the atom bomb and seek revenge against India. The generals were upset that he might start another war with India and toppled him.
Taliban in Tank
As reported in Naya Zamana (March 2006), the city Tank in DI Khan was half in control of the Taliban because of its close proximity to South Waziristan where the army was playing a dubious role. Foreigners and local Taliban have made the Christian missionaries run away and closed down all the music shops. Beardless men are stopped and warned and women are not allowed out without veil. Men of free thinking are being murdered. Qari Khaleel Ahmad is preparing more Taliban in his madrassa and teaching the population that Islam without jihad is not sustainable. He had put a price on the head of General Musharraf but was let off after he came on TV and praised him. The Taliban of Tank attacked a meeting singing mystical poetry. The intellectual of the area Jamshed Nayab was target-killed on 30 January, 2006, after he was told that an Islamic court of Tank had sentenced him to death. Jamshed was the author of 16 books.
The thoughtful pigeons of Kaaba
Columnist Irfan Siddiqi wrote in the Nawa-e-Waqt that when he went to Makka just after hajj, he saw a strange spectacle. During hajj, the pigeons of Kaaba had simply vanished as if to spare all the space for devoted Muslims. But after the season of hajj was over, the pigeons were back in Makkah. This was indeed a miracle!
Quranising the sciences!
Writing in Jang Khursheed Nadeem stated that the Higher Education Commission in its latest budget had set aside half a billion rupees for a project to Quranise the science courses at the level of MSc. He asserted that such a project was meaningless as trying to insert religion into neutral subjects like chemistry was meaningless. It was beyond ones comprehension how the MSc courses could be Quranised!
Cartoons and trade
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in Jang that the insulting cartoons had been published in 66 countries by 143 newspapers; and the offending countries included Algeria, Bosnia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Morocco. The demand in Pakistan was that Pakistan break diplomatic relations with all these countries. The country was poised to speak to President Bush about giving it a better trade deal and it was possible this could happen but not if Islamabad were to snap relations with Washington.
Edhi refuses money for mosque
Reported in Khabrain, Pakistans foremost philanthropist Abdus Sattar Edhi refused to accept Rs 2.10 crore for the building of a mosque inside Edhi centre in Karachi. The money was offered by a gentleman from Islamabad. Edhi told him that he was not in favour of building mosques with public welfare money as mosques inclined people to fight on the basis of quarrels started by the clergy. The donor from Islamabad agreed, on which Edhi gave him the account number of his Foundation.
Imam Taqi and Imam Askari tombs destroyed by America!
Reported in Jang, the Imamia Student Organisation took out a rally in Islampura, Lahore, protesting the destruction of the mausoleums of Imam Askari and Imam Taqi in Iraq. Leader Mubarak Ali Musawi said that the desecration in Samarra was not a result of Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq but was the plot of America and its agents. In a conference the same day, a group of Shia leaders made speeches that the tombs were actually destroyed by America and Israel, as stated by Iranian president Ahmadinejad earlier.
Asad Yuldashev killed in South Waziristan
According to Khabrain, Pakistans military attack on Sadgai Danday accounted for Uzbek terrorist commander Asad Yuldashev who also happened to be a relative of Tahir Yuldashev who is heading the Al Qaeda in the region. Also killed was an unnamed Chechen commander along with his guards. Al Qaeda hit back by attacking the headquarters in Miranshah.
India Today insults Kaaba
According to the daily Pakistan riots broke out all over Held Kashmir when India Today magazine allegedly printed photographs of the Holy Kaaba which the Kashmiri Muslims found insulting. In Srinagar and Baramula, shops were closed and some buildings were set on fire; the police was beaten up and rioters too were wounded. Copies of the magazine were also burned in large numbers.
Bush the Muslim-Kush
Sarerahe wrote in the Nawa-e-Waqt that President Bush had brought 65 specially trained dogs to India and Pakistan to keep himself safe. The dogs were obviously protectors of Bush the Muslim Kush (Muslim-killer) and were all thirsty for Muslim blood and were sniffing around for Muslims to kill. But when the people of the Islamic world came to power no dogs would be able to save Bush.
If Dubya ever decides he needs one of those swanky sashes all the other beauty queens wear at state dinners, "Bush the Muslim-Kush" would be a swell slogan.
Abdali and Ghauri spread Islams fear
Daily Pakistan editorialised that Afghanistans objection to Pakistan naming its missiles with Afghan names was absurd. Abdali and Ghauri were war Islamic warriors and they did not belong to Afghanistan. They were heroes of Islam who spread the fear (dhaak) of Islam in India. Pakistans nuclear delivery system was therefore correctly named.
Cursed Danish tubewells break down
According to the Nawa-e-Waqt, a curse fell on Denmark when its tubewells, bought by WASA, Lahore, broke down within one year of their operation. Costing Rs 2.25 crores, 22 high-speed tubewells were to last more than two years but lasted only weeks.
Lahores processionists turned out to be criminals
According to the daily Din, many youths captured during the 14 February rally in Lahore turned out to be criminals with records in many police stations of Lahore. They were either under trial or on bail or had been convicted earlier. Many of them were former members of jihadi militias too.
Gilgit belongs to whom?
Writing in the Jang magazine, Akbar Shah stated that in 1993, the Azad Kashmir high court ruled that the Northern Areas belonged to Azad Kashmir but the supreme court in AJ&K said that it was not a part of Kashmir; but when the case went in appeal to another bench it was decided that Northern Areas were indeed a part of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Today, the Northern Areas are run by the federal government, not AJK.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The dogs were obviously protectors of Bush the Muslim Kush.. The Arabic term, "kush" is frequently used to mean: slaughter. For example, a mountain range across Afghanistan and Pakistan was named "Hindu Kush" (Slaughter of Hindus) in memory of the genocidal aggressors who murdered 100,000,000 Hindus during the Muslim invasions of greater India. If the Brits hadn't deliberately used mostly Muslim officers during the Raj, it is doubtful that Muslims would ever have had the numbers to form their own state. The Reconquista like mass reversion to Hinduism in the 18th and 19th centuries, would have smothered the Arabist' slaves-of-allah.
Pardon the tangent, but similarly, post independence, Nigerians suffered 60% Muslim participation in the armed forces, while they formed less than 40% of the population. They used that majority to engineer 350,000 forced conversions of Christians from independence to 1965. The Christian reaction led to the Biafran (Christian) Secession War. The UK supported the Muslim dominated central state, while the US favored the Christians. Now both slavishly jump hoops for the mortal Muslim enemy.
#2
But after the season of hajj was over, the pigeons were back in Makkah. This was indeed a miracle!
No big deal, pigeons are noted for sensitive noses.
President General Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday his government has introduced "real democracy" in Pakistan by empowering people politically and economically.
I'm a really slender young guy, with a head full of wavy blond hair. I can touch my toes without anything breaking, too...
"Democracy essentially means empowerment of people, progress of the county and freedom of expression... What else does democracy mean?" the president said at public gathering after he inaugurated a one-kilometre bridge linking the tehsils of Jhelum and Pind Dadan Khan.
Individual liberty? Freedom from being bossed around by any holy man who decides you're not hairy enough? The freedom to become a Unitarian?
or even (gasp) an unveiled femalian????
When was the last time anybody in Pakland saw a titty?
It was Monday last, when Mahmoud and Chaudry sneaked into a Bollywood double-feature in Lahore's low rent district. The movie was barely into the first big dance number when Mahmoud and Chaudry were set upon by djinns, and had to leave to go make wudu. By the time both of them completed ghusl, the djinns had gone, but when they went back to their seats, the djinns were waiting for them again.
"The local government system has taken root with the completion of the first term, the Senate elections have taken place and the next general elections will be held in 2007 on completion of the assemblies' five-year term," he said, adding that this would be the first time that the assemblies have completed their five-year term. Having achieved economic stability, Musharraf said, the government is now focusing on reducing reduction, creating employment and controlling inflation.
Posted by: Fred ||
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In your dreams Pakman
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 0:10
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There is any thing but the democracy in Pakistan. Any rational reasoning that favored support of Pakistan could be attributed to the false concept that Pakistan is fighting against the terrorism. Pakistan will be the damn stupid to give up the state sponsored terrorism in Kashmir and in Afghanistan. I do not understand why our own US government is too eager to kiss the ass of Pakistan when the majority of the Pakistanies in USA were too happy to see the destruction of USA on 9-11. If you can think straight, Pakistan has to be a target of the nuclear inhalation by US and the West. Folks I am too old but my USA citizenship allows me to bear arms. I will waste no time to come out with my bare chest and blazing guns to protect my grand daughter from the stupid Islamic laws. I hope you do the same. I trust that the love to your grand daughters could never be less than mine.
#4
The Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal, which holds or shares power in 2 Paki provinces, participates in democratic elections with the caveat: only the Muslim deity ("allah") has sovereign power to make laws. The constitution of the Islamic Republic contains a provision which obliges non-god, law makers to conform legislation to the "injunctions of allah." Mushy couldn't outlaw jihad or implement true popular sovereignty even if he wanted to.
What about Paki support for counter-terror in Afghanistan? That's the punchline of a sick joke. Post 9-11, I would have given the Russians a free hand in Chechnya including support for hot-pursuit cross-border raids, with the quid pro quo being: Russian support for US Air Force basing in at least one of the former Soviet republics. Then I would have hit Pashto sections of the Taliban/al-Qaeda terror entity with heavy bombers, 24-7. By then region-oriented Norther Alliance forces would have established semi-sovereign warlord areas, and given anti-Taliban elements freedom of exercise against the terrorists. Mined no go zones would have been established along the border with the Pakistan terrorist entity, backed by napalm armed fighters. As for Pakistan, which was under US sanctions on 9-11 and under crippling debt, it would have collapsed under Sindh separation forces. Seculars would blame those fat Jamaat-i-Islami pigs for the partition, and a secular republic would have been established in the Punjab. By that time US would have turkey-shoot privileges in Peshawar and in Waziristan. A pro-west regime would have soon formed in the remnants of Pakistan. What have we got now? A US welfare dependency that takes US aid as a jihad subsidy, and delivers zero security to Americans. Even the occasional Paki arrest of a nominal senior terrorists, begs the argument that al-Qaeda has no command structure, and was always little more than an ideological "base" of Salifist terror.
Why the Monday morning quarter-backing? A second look at what we have, might cause us to end the farcical perma-war in Afghanistan. It has been repeatedly proven that Muslim terrorists will get and receive popular support, except where retalation against same is disproportionate. A neighborhood whose residents did nothing to prevent planting of IEDs should be punished by 500 pounder drops on the terror spot. That can't happen until the reason dictates that Muslims do not - and cannot want - the same freedoms that Westerners want. Their Koran labels them "slaves of allah" and that is all they can be. And if allah's clerics wants nuclear-jihad, then that is exactly what our subsidized Muslim enemy will deliver if the current madness continues.
People, you need to get hostile when you hear 20 year No-Win predictions. On 9-11, we were delivered a pretext to win a victory over the terrorists; post 9-11 we snatched defeat from the arms of that essential victory. Some of you think you are defending the fighters, by defending this mis-handled war. You are not. You are endorsing unnecessary holes in family trees.
#5
Pakistan may not be a democracy and may not be free, but when one considers who Musharraf's main opponents are one tends to conclude that what the Pakis have right now is as close as they are likely to get to freedom and democracy for the forseeable future.
#7
Why does anyone give press to this man's ravings anymore? 1/3 of his country isn't even under his rule. The "lawless frontiers". The country's a joke. And Perv's an ass.
#8
Thinemp Whimble2412:
Only the Punjabi majority accept a Pakistan identity. Otherwise there are: Pashtos, Sindhis (2nd largest group; Sindh is an MQM - pro-US - hotbed), Balochis, Waziris, and a couple of other groups. Afghanistan's President is a Pashto, which makes him a one of the worst Arab wannabes in the world. Taliban was the wannabe wing of Arab supremacist Al-Qaeda. Balochis and Sindhis deserve our sympathy and support; the rest can go to hell.
Re. my pessimistic post above, remember: there are 140,000 US troops near the Iran border (plus 8000 UK troops). That is a cause for optimism that I should have mentioned.
Check out this Hindu nationalist post, on the Balochi Partition movement. Biased? Hell yes!
#9
his government has introduced "real democracy" in Pakistan by empowering people politically and economically.
I'm confused. Didn't Ghadaffi just inform us that Lybia was "the only true democracy in the world" since "everything [in Lybia] is open to discussion"?
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is prepared to bring down Hamas' incoming government if its militant policies harm Palestinian interests, a senior aide hinted on Saturday. In a letter to Hamas' designated prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, Abbas said that if the new government, which is to be sworn in Thursday, "adopts positions that would be detrimental to Palestinian interests, then the president will use his authority according to the Basic Law," the aide, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, told reporters.
Abdel Rahim did not elaborate, but the Basic Law, which is the Palestinians' de facto constitution, empowers the president to disband the government.
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Ten thousand quatloos on Fatah at the end of round six.
Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa told reporters Thursday that Syrian authorities "had never pretended" that the occupied Shebaa Farms belonged to Syria, following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh. Lebanon has repeatedly asked Syria to provide the UN with written evidence to Lebanon's sovereignty over the Farms presently occupied by Israel.
Sharaa also denied his country was trying to impede the Lebanese dialogue, which he described as "a Lebanese matter," and reiterated that Syria had already implemented the relevant clauses of UN Security Council Resolution 1559.
Asked whether there would be meetings on the sidelines of the Arab Summit between Syria and Lebanon, Sharaa said: "It would depend on who will head Lebanon's delegation since the Syrian president only meets with a president." In his meeting with the Egyptian president, Sharaa handed Mubarak a letter from Syrian President Bashar Assad "regarding the latest developments in the region." The meeting was "completely not linked to Siniora's talks with the Egyptian president," the official Syrian news agency reported. Sharaa was expected to travel on to Riyadh for talks with Saudi officials.
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ISLAMABAD: Security was tightened around a five-star hotel on Saturday after the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) threatened to attack it in retaliation to the ongoing "military operation" in Balochistan. Police sources said an unidentified person called the Marriott Hotel management, threatening that the BLA would attack the hotel. The hotel management informed the police of the threat. SHO Secretariat police confirmed that the hotel security had been beefed up.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Five-star hotel in PakiWakiLand? Must have running water and a pot to shit in.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 0:12
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Nope. No running water. But two pots and complimentary "DaisyFresh" Pot-pourris.
Six suspected Tamil Tigers were killed and eight Sri Lankan sailors were missing after rebels blew themselves up Saturday and sank a navy gunboat that had approached their trawler, the military said. A search was under way for the eight sailors missing in the incident off the coast of Mannar in the northwest of the island, a defence official here said, adding that 11 sailors had been rescued by local fishermen. The navy suspected that the trawler was involved in gun running and got near it to carry out a search, a defence official told AFP. As the FAC (Fast Attack Craft) got near, the six people aboard the trawler blew themselves up.
In January, suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up a similar gunboat, killing 15 sailors, in a suicide attack outside the northeastern port of Trincomalee. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) deployed a woman cadre to ram an explosives-laden vessel into an Israeli-built gunboat, the navy said at the time.
The navy this week detained a fishing trawler operated by suspected Tamil rebels off the islands troubled northern waters while troops and guerrillas exchanged fire in the Jaffna peninsula. The crew of the trawler are still being held by security forces after they were arrested while operating in a restricted zone off the islands north. Sri Lanka has repeatedly accused the Tigers of using the cover of fishermen to launch attacks against the navy.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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A US soldier was killed and another was wounded in a clash with militants which left seven Taliban fighters dead in southern Afghanistan, the American-led coalition said. US and Afghan forces exchanged fire with 20 militants in Helmand province, before calling in aerial support that resulted in the dropping of 11 guided-bombs, the coalition said in a statement.
An Afghan soldier was also wounded. A purported spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, said by telephone that the movement's fighters had been involved in the battle in Sangin district, confirming that one of its men had been wounded in the clash. Authorities in Sangin, a hotbed for Taliban activities, confirmed details of the clash.
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03/26/2006
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#1
God bless him and his family.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/26/2006 8:23
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Seven Taliban isn't a bad escort to take to Heaven. That six hundred the Mullah claims is already shrinking, thanks to Soldiers like him. Thank you, sir.
A new study from the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, paints quite a different picture. According to captured documents cited in the study and first reported in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in January, the former Iraqi regime was training non-Iraqi Arabs in terrorist techniques.
Beginning in 1994, the Fedayeen Saddam opened its own paramilitary training camps for volunteers, graduating more than 7,200 "good men racing full with courage and enthusiasm" in the first year. Beginning in 1998, these camps began hosting "Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, 'the Gulf,' and Syria." It is not clear from available evidence where all of these non-Iraqi volunteers who were "sacrificing for the cause" went to ply their newfound skills. Before the summer of 2002, most volunteers went home upon the completion of training.
But these camps were humming with frenzied activity in the months immediately prior to the war. As late as January 2003, the volunteers participated in a special training event called the "Heroes Attack." This training event was designed in part to prepare regional Fedayeen Saddam commands to "obstruct the enemy from achieving his goal and to support keeping peace and stability in the province."
Some of this training came under the auspices of the Iraqi Intelligence Service's "Division 27," which, according to the study, "supplied the Fedayeen Saddam with silencers, equipment for booby-trapping vehicles, [and] special training on the use of certain explosive timers. The only apparent use for all of this Division 27 equipment was to conduct commando or terrorist operations."
The publication of the Joint Forces Command study, called the "Iraqi Perspectives Project," coincides with the release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of several hundred documents captured in postwar Iraq. There are many more to come. Some of the documents used to complete the study have been made public as part of the ODNI effort; others have not.
More at link
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006
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Warring factions clashed for the fourth day Saturday in the north of Somali capital Mogadishu as heavy gunbattles claimed five more lives, bringing the death toll to 52 and more than 200 injured, medical and militia sources said. Warring militamen in the capital are fighting heavily for the fourth day and there is no sign of calm, said Ahmed Mohamed Jumale, a resident in Galagalato, a neighbourhood of Karan district in northern Mogadishu where the rival fighters are engaged in battle. Jumale said that the gunmen intensified fighting in order to inflict more casualties on either side before darkness. The serious fighting erupted at noon, Jumale said.
A nurse at Kaisaney Surgical Hospital said that the main medical facility near the battle ground had received 139 casualties since Wednesday when the fighting began, some of whom were treated and discharged. Five died in our hospital of the injuries they sustained. The rest were treated and left, while some stayed for further treatment, said the nurse, who asked not to be named. Kaisaney is the largest war hospital in Somalia, funded by the International Committee of the Red Cross and run by the Somali Red Crescent Society.
The fighting was sparked by a row over land ownership in which one militia leader, Abukar Omar Adan, a staunch supporter of the Islamic courts, attempted to grab the piece of land attached to the Aisaley airport north of the capital and which is controlled by rival warlord Bashir Raghe Shirar. The two men belong to the Warsangale sub-clan of Abgal within the larger Hawiye which is dominant in Mogadishu and its surroundings, but they have different political affiliations. Adan is allied to the Islamic courts of Mogadishu, which control pockets of the lawless capital, while Shirar is a co-founder of the newly formed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) which is opposed to the growing influence of the Islamic courts.
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03/26/2006
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Sudan on Saturday rejected the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur until a peace deal is reached with rebels in the violence-ravaged western region. The Sudanese government categorically rejects foreign presence or interference in any form. Sudan is a sovereign state and any decision to allow foreign troops into the country has to be approved by the government, Sudanese Minister of Information and Telecommunications Al Zahawi Ibrahim Malik told reporters at a preparatory meeting of his Arab counterparts ahead of the Arab summit.
"We reject the presence of any force of even minimal competence. As a sovreign state, Sudan rejects any attempt to control its violent impulses. Oppression and slaughter of Sudanese citizens is an internal matter, not subject to review by the civilized world."
The UN Security Council on Friday asked Secretary General Kofi Annan to report back within a month with options for a possible UN deployment to relieve a 7,000-strong underfunded and underequipped African Union (AU) force currently monitoring a widely ignored ceasefire in Darfur. Officials said Sudan did not reject a UN force outright, but had to decide when or if it was necessary for UN troops to take over from the Africans already deployed. They added that time could be after a peace deal was agreed in the Nigerian capital Abuja, where faltering talks continue. Rebels have demanded UN troops be deployed in Darfur and the government feels the UN takeover would encourage intransigence from the armed groups.
In earlier statements Sudanese President Omar Bashir blamed the Darfur crisis on foreign intervention. Speaking to a gathering of Arab finance ministers ahead of the Tuesday Arab summit in Khartoum, Bashir said his government could resolve the three-year conflict in Darfur if foreign intervention ceases and Darfur rebels end their intransigence.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa backed Sudan's decision, saying foreign troops should not be sent to Darfur without the Sudanese government's consent. Darfur is a very important and sensitive case that should be dealt with in full coordination with the African Union, Musa said.
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03/26/2006
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US ambassador urged Iraq's divided leaders to rein in militias on Saturday as political blocs failed again to break a deadlock on forming a unity government that they hope can avert civil war. Zalmay Khalilzad, who is pressing hard for a government more than three months after elections, issued a tough warning about the militias, many of which have ties to powerful Shiite leaders and are entrenched in Iraqi security forces and police. "More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists," he told reporters during a visit to a Baghdad youth centre newly renovated with US funds. "The militias need to be under control." Iraq's Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders held another round of talks aimed at resolving differences holding up formation of post-war Iraq's first full-term government. But there was no sign of a breakthrough.
Sunni politician Tareq Hashemi said talks focused on ways of building a solid political foundation for the new government. The destruction of a Shiite shrine a month ago sparked a wave of reprisals that raised the prospect of pro-government Shiite militias pushing Iraq into civil war. The crisis has increased pressure to form a Cabinet that can avert an all-out sectarian conflict.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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MINSK: More than 1,000 protesters chanting "Shame!" and "Long live Belarus!" defied a ban and confronted police on Saturday as they tried to stage a rally in Minsk against President Alexander Lukashenko's re-election.
Riot police, clad in black and equipped with batons, drafted in reinforcements to handle crowds who surged out of side streets towards Minsk's central October Square. Some scuffling ensued as some demonstrators pushed their way through a police cordon. But police generally prevented the protesters from getting onto the square, site of a tent camp cleared away by police on Friday.
Defeated opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich told protesters to go to the nearby Yanka Kupala park to continue their rally. In line with the pattern earlier in the week, police showed tolerance unusual for the tightly-controlled ex-Soviet state and refrained from using force to break up the demonstration. Earlier Milinkevich, credited with only 6 percent of the vote to Lukashenko's 83 in the March 19 election, had urged supporters to mass "no matter what" in October Square.
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Outlawed Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP-Janajuddho) has allegedly threatened to blow up the police headquarters in retaliation for the recent 'crossfire.'
"Aaaar! Ventilate our guy, will they? We'll show them!"
On Thursday midnight, a caller identifying himself as a PBCP operative threatened to blow up the Khulna Metropolitan Police (KMP) Headquarters over cellphone to take revenge for the recent killings of the PBCP men by DB police on the pretext of crossfire incidents.
The DB police arrested Shafiqul Islam, 25, from Morolpara under Phultala upazila of Khulna on Friday afternoon in this connection and seized from his possession the cellphone from which the threat call was made.
During interrogation, Shafiqul told the police that he had given the cellphone to a man named Shohag to sell off the set, but Shohag returned the cellphone a few days ago saying that he could not find a buyer.
"Yeah, really! It ain't mine! Well, it's mine, but I give it to somebody else. It musta been him! Yeah! Dat's it! I been framed!"
Police suspect Shohag to be another cadre of PBCP and a close associate of Mukul Bhuiyan, who was killed in 'crossfire' on March 18 in the city. The seized cellphone contains contact numbers of many other outlaws, police said.
"Well, Shafiqul! What have we here?"
"Ummm... Gee, officer! I dunno none o' them guyz!"
Police could not arrest Shohag up to 4:30pm yesterday.
That's assuming Shohag exists, of course...
Following the threat, KMP police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) have been asked to remain on high alert. The law enforcers are also raiding different areas in the city to nab the criminals.
New sign at the entrance to town: "Welcome to Khulna! Duck!"
Posted by: Fred ||
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The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency on Saturday called for the reform and expansion of the UN Security Council, saying its engagement in maintaining world peace and security is often inadequate, selective or after the fact.
... and it was originally designed to be that way...
Mohamed ElBaradei said the Security Councils efforts to control arms have not been systematic or successful in the case of Iraq, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. When dealing with threats of nuclear proliferation and arms control, the Security Council has too often fallen short. It has made little effort to address nuclear proliferation in context, said ElBaradei, head of the Vienna, Austria-based International Agency for Atomic Energy. It has not responded or followed up effectively to the emergence of new countries with nuclear weapons. It is clearly time for the Security Council to be reformed, expanded and strengthened, he said in a speech.
The UNSC is rendered ineffective because of the veto power retained by the major powers. None is going to give it up, because they don't want their interests threatened, which would happen regularly given a simple majority rule. Adding numbers does nothing to make the council more effective. All the non-veto members are mere window dressing, for one thing. For another thing, adding members to a committe has the net effect of lowering its effectiveness. See Parkinson, C. Northcote, just about anything he ever wrote. The man was a saint.
He also said: the case of Darfur ... continues to suffer from the inability of the Security Council to muster sufficient peacekeeping troops. ElBaradei noted that in the civil war in Rwanda in 1994, the Security Council was unable to move much beyond hand-wringing, with the result that 800,000 people lost their lives in the span of a few months.
In virtually every crisis the League of Nations UN as a whole has been unable to move much beyond hand-wringing. That's why it should be abolished and replaced with a series of regional alliances.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006
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Given the Kofi succession plan, El Baradei must be the next incompetent in line for the job.
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/26/2006 0:18
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When I was Manager of a completely dysfunctional Department, known mainly as a serious drain on the company, I always found it effective to lecture the Board, too.
#3
Great observation about Parkenson's Law, Fred. I learned about it when I was a kid. It's a fundamental law of the Universe. And when committees get to 21 members, the committee is doomed, doomed, I tell ya, doomed!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/26/2006 1:31
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Paul, No that's the Peter Principle, i.e. rising to the level of one's incompetence.
Parkinson's Law says that the capacity of a system (think computer memory or hard drive capacity, for example) will be overloaded by growing demand which was enabled by the increased capcity and that the capcity will need increasing which leads to a new cycle of overloading, etc.
#5
Mohamed ElBaradei said the Security Councils efforts to control arms have not been systematic or successful in the case of Iraq, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of those aren't signatories to the NPT.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/26/2006 12:00
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Was Parkinsons Law first applied to office opace, closet space or static memory?
#7
Actually, it was to the British Colonial Office, which had a small number of people and many colonies in 1850, and a large number of employees for a much smaller number of colonies in 1950.
Parkinson pointed out the tendency of organizations to grow at a rate that's totally divorced from the actual amount of work done.
One of his corollaries was that small committees are more effective than large ones (take the total IQ of a committee, divide by membership, and the average IQ drifts closer and closer to average or even subnormal, a kind of reversal of synergy -- Pruitt's corollary to Parkinson's corollary. I believe you can also subtract a set number of IQ points for each member over a dozen to get the exact figure...) These committees, including the cabinet, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the UN, and the boards of major corporations, tend naturally to become larger, both through the addition of members and through the expansion of member's staffs, which gets them prestige points whether productivity increases or not.
The Peter Principle (people rise to their level of incompetence) came several years after Parkinson.
I love management theory. If you can pick up a copy of In Search of Excellence, do so, and read it from cover to cover. Virtually all the examples of effective companies used in the middle 80s (Fluor, People Express, Delta) are now out of business or also-rans, with the single exception of IBM, which ain't what it used to be.
What would we do without experts?
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2006 19:45
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El Baradei has gone FAR BEYOND THE SCOPE of the Peter Principle. We need some kind of equivalent of the Unified Field Theory to explain the UN and the IAEA.
Maybe I will contact the Rantburg RAND Corporation tomorrow morning and we can slap a study on it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/26/2006 23:23
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MIRANSHAH: Suspected militants ambushed vehicles carrying police officers in a remote northwestern region of Pakistan near the Afghan border on Saturday, injuring four of them, a security official said. The attack happened on a road between Mir Ali and Miran Shah in the North Waziristan tribal region, a day after the military said it had killed between 15 to 20 militants. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the injured officers had been transported to a hospital, where two of them were in critical condition.
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03/26/2006
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The intelligence officials enquiring into militancy and bomb attacks suspect that militant groups other than Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) might have been behind some major bomb attacks since 1999. JMB top brass Abdur Rahman, Bangla Bhai, Ataur Rahman Sunny and others have admitted to carrying out all the blasts since August 17 last year, attacks on writer Humayun Azad and Prof Yunus in Rajshahi, blasts at cinemas in Mymensingh, circus and cinema in Satkhira and Failya Paglar Majar in Tangail, said sources.
But the investigators have yet to extract information from them about the groups and persons responsible for the other major attacks that include the blasts in 1999 at Udichi conference in Jessore, Ahmadiyya mosque in Khulna, and in 2001, Pahela Boishakh celebration at Ramna Batamul, CPB conference at Paltan, Awami League (AL) leader Shamim Osman's meeting in Narayanganj, AL leader Sheikh Helal's meeting in Mollahat upazila of Bagerhat and Baniachang church in Gopalganj. They have not got clues also to Sylhet cinema blast in 2004, and the poisoning of fish at a Sylhet shrine in 2003 and at a Chittagong shrine in 2004. No groups have claimed responsibility for any of those attacks.
Other militant groups including now banned Harkatul Jihad al Islami (HuJi) that were active in the late 90s might have had hands in the attacks and their role needs to be investigated, an intelligence official told The Daily Star, seeking anonymity. Mufti Hannan, the detained operations commander of HuJi, has only admitted planting the 86kg bomb at the meeting venue of the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina at Kotalipara in Gopalganj. Another investigator said the HuJi might also have had roles in some other bomb attacks and stressed the need for taking Hannan into further remand for interrogation in this regard. "He may hold some significant clues to those incidents even if he maintains that his group did not make those attacks," said a well-placed source.
Sources, meantime, yesterday said the JMB kingpins have admitted in last two days to their involvement in slaughtering five people at the shrine of Khwaja Abdul Gafur Chisti at Begungram village in Kalai upazila of Joypurhat on January 20, 2003 and the attempt on life of AL leader Tarapada Poddar at Mollahat in Bagerhat on August 16, 2002. Earlier some investigators had told the media that they would be able to unravel all the mystery behind the blasts and other militant attacks since 1999 once JMB chief Abdur Rahman and his deputy Bangla Bhai are rounded up. But the JMB heavyweights are yet to provide information about their links with the other attacks. "It seems likely other militant groups might be responsible for the attacks that took place before August 17 last year," said an intelligence official.
The source, however, said different groups were behind the attacks made with grenades. "The bomber groups and the grenade attackers are not the same," he added. Grenades were used in attacks on British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury at Shahjalal Shrine in Sylhet, Sheikh Hasina's rally at Bangabandhu Avenue, Sylhet Mayor Badruddin Ahmed Kamran and Urs again at the Shahjalal Shrine.
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one moment, please, while I try to stop laughing ....
The Prince of Wales urged Saudi Arabia - the world's greatest oil producer - to place less prominence on the car. He used his visit to the Middle East to air his environmental views and also to deliver a message on religious tolerance. Charles highlighted the cause of the pedestrian as his wife the Duchess of Cornwall saw the hidden side of life in the deeply conservative Islamic country.
because I mean, everything's so close to everything else in the Kingdom, just think of the health benefits of a good brisk walk in the Highlands the desert ... you can take your favorite dog or two, a good stout walking stick, put on a good tweed kilt robe ... it's just the thing, ol' boy
Behind closed doors, Camilla met some of the Kingdom's many Princesses and local women, minus their black Abayas, on a solo engagement.
On her first trip to Saudi, the Duchess was given a beautiful hand embroidered thaub dress of deep purple and pink velvet, which would have cost £3,500 to buy, as a present as she toured a charity set up to empower and support women within the teachings of Islamic Shariaa.
As he received an award in Riyadh for his lifetime commitment for his work with architectural heritage, Charles stressed the importance of "looking at the predominance of the car".
"What I've been trying to do for 20 years is just gently place the pedestrian at the centre of the design process rather than the car to automatically create more liveable communities," he said.
And in a small, compact country like the Saudis', that just makes so much SENSE, Charles. Amazing, the insight you bring.
Plus, think of the many benefits of weaning the Saudi economy off of petroleum dependency! (snort)
Saudi has no public transport system
gosh, I can't IMAGINE why not!
and is heavily dependent on its vehicles. Women are forbidden from driving and often face harassment when they walk in the streets.
By coincidence, the Saudi Gazette newspaper highlighted a campaign to get them to walk more to keep fit, suggesting they could "fire the maid and do more house work"
now, I just KNOW that will start a trend. Charles, how do you DO it??
or "walk up and down the stairs" if they could not find somewhere safe to do so.
Earlier the heir to the throne delivered an unprecedented speech at Saudi Arabia's most senior Islamic University - seen as being at the heart of the country's religious conservatism.
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Assrag Hizbullah's Al-Manar vowed with a shrug
"so what! so what so youse froze what! it dont mean nothin! it dont mean shit, dont change nothin, and we gonna broadcast anywhere like we standing on our head, so up yours America"
By Ahmad Faruqui For the seventh year in a row, the nation observed Pakistan Day under military rule. Pervez Musharraf showed up at the Minar-e-Pakistan dressed in muftis and spoke at what was in every sense of the term a pre-election political rally. And theres the rub. While talking of democracy, the army continues to be sovereign.
On March 18, Air Chief Marshal Kaleem Sadaat symbolically handed over the command of the PAF by giving his sword to his successor, marking the completion of his tenure. On the same day, the army chief whose tenure had run out in October 2001, showed no sign of handing over his sword to his successor. While speaking to the troops in Bahawalpur, General Musharraf promised to give them state-of-the-art weaponry so that they would acquire a qualitative edge over the non-existent external enemy.
At the Corps Headquarters, he was greeted by generals who appeared over-burdened with medals and ribbons. The corps commander pinned honorary badges on Musharraf, who had shown exceptional courage in visiting the town that had taken the life of the last army chief-turned-president. To prevent any recurrence, police and security personnel had sealed off the entire city.
This sombre military ceremony was in sharp contrast to a joyous meeting that had taken place in Lahore 66 years ago. The All India Muslim League had passed a resolution calling for the creation of a sovereign Muslim state. Seven years later, Pakistan appeared on the map. Its very name exuded the purity of Iqbals ideology. In its birth, there was not a hint that it was destined to become a garrison state.
Continued on Page 49
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul Rahman, a move that risked angering Muslim clerics who have called for him to be killed.
As I was preparing for this article, I asked a friend who is Jewish if it was appropriate to use the term "holocaust" to portray the worldwide violence against women. He was startled. But when I read him the figures in a 2004 policy paper published by the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, he said yes, without hesitation.
Nigeria announced yesterday it is ready to hand over Liberian warlord Charles Taylor to be the first former African head of state tried for crimes against humanity. A U.N. tribunal accuses Mr. Taylor of instigating horrific wars that destroyed two West African nations, killed 1.2 million people and left millions homeless and maimed. He also is thought to have harbored al Qaeda suicide bombers who attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
President Mugabe, under heavy local and international pressure to step down, has called for a constitutional amendment that will allow an interim President to be appointed by his Zanu PF party and pave the way for fresh elections for a new government. Official sources said this was the message that had been communicated to President 
In the interview, Mugabe hinted that he was considering stepping down as land redistribution that he had so much wanted to see implemented had been addressed. 
The MDC leader, 
A few days before the resumption of the national dialogue in Parliament, politicians seemed to agree on the need to resolve the presidential crisis, but tension mounted in discussions about the president's successor.
The JMB suicide bomber killed in the November 29 bombing on Gazipur Bar Association office premises has been identified by Criminal Investigation Department (CID) as Asadul Islam, 19, of Gaibandha. Seven persons including lawyers Amjad Hossain and Golam Faruk were killed on the spot 60 people were injured in the bombing.
Pakistani Police Saturday arrested nearly 60 tribesmen suspected of involvement in attacks on security forces and government installations in Balochistan, police said. The police detained some 57 suspects including 24 arrested in a raid on a camp run by rebels from the Marri tribe near the provincial capital Quetta, city police officer Mujibur Rehman said. The 33 other men were picked up during raids at different neighbourhoods just outside Quetta, Rehman said. On Friday two people were killed when their motorbike struck a landmine, which authorities said was planted by insurgents near the town of Sui, 280 kilometres southeast of Quetta. Also on Friday rebels fired several rockets at security forces deployed in the town of Loti near Dera Bugti, without causing any casualties.
At least 1,500 people of the Raija, Kalpar and Masuri Bugti clans reached Dera Bugti Area amid strict security on Saturday. Around 4,000 people had left the area after tribal feuds erupted in 1997. Mir Hamdan Bugti, the former chairman of Marri Bugti Zila Council, led the convoy from Dera Ghazi Khan Police Lines. The convoy consisted of wagons, buses and trucks with the government taking strict security measures to protect the convoy.
Interior Minister 
The Palestinian Authority will tell an Arab summit it needs at least $130 million a month to cover 
Up to 450 relatives of the 16 Pakistani tribesmen killed by Afghan security forces held a protest rally outside the Afghan Consulate in Quetta on Saturday, police said. Condemning the killings and demanding that those responsible be punished, the protestors threw stones at the Consulate and tore down and burned a picture of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, displayed at the gate of the building. The crowd chanted "Down with Karzai and Death to Afghanistan", before being baton-charged by police, according to witnesses. 
RAIPUR: Eleven people were killed and four wounded when Maoists detonated a landmine under a vehicle in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, police said on Saturday. The incident took place late on Friday in the Bastar region, about 250 km (150 miles) south of the state capital Raipur, senior police officer Pradeep Gupta told Reuters. 
NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman has neither denied nor confirmed a claim by the family of missing tribal journalist Hayatullah Khan that he has been given into US custody for his alleged links with Al Qaeda, the Tribal Union of Journalists president said on Saturday. During our meeting, we asked the governor to comment on Khans familys allegation that he has been handed over to the US. The governor neither denied nor did he confirm the allegation. He just said that he had checked with all security agencies and Hayatullah is not with the government, TUJ President Sailab Mehsud said, referring to a meeting between the governor and a TUJ delegation in Peshawar on March 22.
Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah advised the government not to wait for "some signal from foreign countries trying to reorganize Lebanon's domestic affairs in a way that serves the interests of the Zionist enemy and its U.S. ally."
President Hamid Karzai has personally intervened in the case of an Afghan man facing execution for converting to Christianity, a top official said Saturday, amid fierce criticism in the West. 
Tens of thousands of Thais rallied in Bangkok yesterday, begging their king to intervene in a last-ditch effort to force Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from office. "Thaksin, get out!" the protesters chanted as a band played protest songs and nearly 5,000 police officers stood guard. Police said they feared "troublemakers" would try to hijack the event.
Four members of the 
Extremists know extremism will hurt
President General Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday his government has introduced "real democracy" in Pakistan by empowering people politically and economically.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is prepared to bring down Hamas' incoming government if its militant policies harm Palestinian interests, a senior aide hinted on Saturday. In a letter to Hamas' designated prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, Abbas said that if the new government, which is to be sworn in Thursday, "adopts positions that would be detrimental to Palestinian interests, then the president will use his authority according to the Basic Law," the aide, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, told reporters. 
Syrian Vice President 
ISLAMABAD: Security was tightened around a five-star hotel on Saturday after the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) threatened to attack it in retaliation to the ongoing "military operation" in Balochistan. Police sources said an unidentified person called the Marriott Hotel management, threatening that the BLA would attack the hotel. The hotel management informed the police of the threat. SHO Secretariat police confirmed that the hotel security had been beefed up.
Six suspected Tamil Tigers were killed and eight Sri Lankan sailors were missing after rebels blew themselves up Saturday and sank a navy gunboat that had approached their trawler, the military said. A search was under way for the eight sailors missing in the incident off the coast of Mannar in the northwest of the island, a defence official here said, adding that 11 sailors had been rescued by local fishermen. The navy suspected that the trawler was involved in gun running and got near it to carry out a search, a defence official told AFP. As the FAC (Fast Attack Craft) got near, the six people aboard the trawler blew themselves up.
A US soldier was killed and another was wounded in a clash with militants which left seven Taliban fighters dead in southern Afghanistan, the American-led coalition said. US and Afghan forces exchanged fire with 20 militants in Helmand province, before calling in aerial support that resulted in the dropping of 11 guided-bombs, the coalition said in a statement.
Warring factions clashed for the fourth day Saturday in the north of Somali capital Mogadishu as heavy gunbattles claimed five more lives, bringing the death toll to 52 and more than 200 injured, medical and militia sources said. Warring militamen in the capital are fighting heavily for the fourth day and there is no sign of calm, said Ahmed Mohamed Jumale, a resident in Galagalato, a neighbourhood of Karan district in northern Mogadishu where the rival fighters are engaged in battle. Jumale said that the gunmen intensified fighting in order to inflict more casualties on either side before darkness. The serious fighting erupted at noon, Jumale said. 
Sudan on Saturday rejected the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur until a peace deal is reached with rebels in the violence-ravaged western region. The Sudanese government categorically rejects foreign presence or interference in any form. Sudan is a sovereign state and any decision to allow foreign troops into the country has to be approved by the government, Sudanese Minister of Information and Telecommunications 
US ambassador urged Iraq's divided leaders to rein in militias on Saturday as political blocs failed again to break a deadlock on forming a unity government that they hope can avert civil war. 
MINSK: More than 1,000 protesters chanting "Shame!" and "Long live Belarus!" defied a ban and confronted police on Saturday as they tried to stage a rally in Minsk against President Alexander Lukashenko's re-election. 
Outlawed 
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency on Saturday called for the reform and expansion of the UN Security Council, saying its engagement in maintaining world peace and security is often inadequate, selective or after the fact. 
MIRANSHAH: Suspected militants ambushed vehicles carrying police officers in a remote northwestern region of Pakistan near the Afghan border on Saturday, injuring four of them, a security official said. The attack happened on a road between Mir Ali and Miran Shah in the North Waziristan tribal region, a day after the military said it had killed between 15 to 20 militants. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the injured officers had been transported to a hospital, where two of them were in critical condition.
The intelligence officials enquiring into militancy and bomb attacks suspect that militant groups other than 
For the seventh year in a row, the nation observed Pakistan Day under military rule. Pervez Musharraf showed up at the Minar-e-Pakistan dressed in muftis and spoke at what was in every sense of the term a pre-election political rally. And theres the rub. While talking of democracy, the army continues to be sovereign.
