The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, finally launched its campaign this week for Zimbabwe's March 31 parliamentary elections — but it faces an uphill task to convince a cowed electorate that it offers a viable alternative to President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party.
The launch, at a rally attended by about 5000 people in the central Zimbabwe town of Masvingo, came after months of dithering about participation in what is already a ballot rigged heavily in favour of the government.
"We are damned if we do take part, and damned if we don't," MDC leaders lamented, as their provincial organisations debated at interminable length whether to boycott the election.
Having decided to contest, the MDC's first hurdle is now time. With just five weeks to go before polling day, the news of the party's participation is still only trickling through to rural folk, the crucial section of the electorate who, among the majority Shona ethnic group, are the bedrock of ZANU PF's continuing political success.
In Zimbabwe, it takes months for important opposition news to filter into the countryside, large swathes of which have anyway been declared "no-go" areas by Mugabe's equivalent of the Nazi Germany-era Brownshirts, the thuggish youth militias, known as the Green Bombers after their bottle green uniforms and also a particularly unpleasant blowfly.
The militias, supported by aggressive local ZANU PF committees and the police, also prevent Zimbabwe's last two independent newspapers, the Financial Gazette and The Independent, both weeklies, from circulating in ZANU PF traditional rural strongholds.
Because of the late decision to participate, the MDC manifesto was also late, and to some extent it reads like ZANU PF's, promising similar manna from heaven — economic revival, jobs for a populace experiencing an unemployment rate approaching 80 per cent, boosted agricultural production and the restoration of such essential but rapidly deteriorating public services as health.
The MDC's tactical shortcomings are nothing new. Strategically also, it has failed to develop effectively from being a vigorous protest movement into a strong political party with a clear ideology and carefully worked out ideas.
Formed in 1999, around the leadership of Morgan Tsvangirai, the unassuming secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions, the MDC was a loose coalition of workers sinking into poverty because of Mugabe's disastrous economic policies; an urban middle class whose quality of life had been eroded; employers whose business faced various threats; white farmers who were losing their land and Ndebele peasants who bore the brunt of massacres by Mugabe's North Korea-trained Fifth Brigade in 1983-84.
The party won 57 out of 120 directly elected seats in the last 2000 parliamentary elections. Two years later, despite massive voter intimidation, Tsvangirai lost a presidential election only narrowly to Mugabe.
But after 2000 and 2002, Tsvangirai and the MDC failed to consolidate their dramatic gains. Infighting has seen it lose in by-elections six of the seats to ZANU PF it had won in 2000.
Although it has been handicapped by heavy government oppression, it failed to develop beyond its early anti-Mugabe appeal. Its MPs also made some critical mistakes — for example, when one of its MPs told the BBC that an MDC government would return properties to white farmers that had been taken in Mugabe's land grab campaign.
That caused uproar. Mugabe and his ministers pounced on the statement and called MDC leaders traitors who had sold out to rich whites and British prime minister Tony Blair. "The people gradually began to doubt the party," said Margaret Dongo, a former ZANU PF MP who staged a revolt and became a celebrated independent. "Its land policy was unclear and the MPs spent little time in their constituencies. Half the time they are either in their town houses or out of the country."
The MDC rightly claims it has faced terrible harassment under the infamously repressive AIPPA (Access to Information and Privacy Act) and POSA (Public Order and Security Act) legislation. POSA requires the MDC to apply to the police, now completely loyal to Mugabe, for permission to hold meetings, while AIPPA has effectively muzzled the independent press.
However, these are near-universal problems faced by opposition parties in Africa. Opposition on this continent is a thankless and often dangerous task. No ruling party concedes easy victory to its opponents without a tough and dirty fight first. The MDC dismally and naively failed to realise and plan for that.
Tsvangirai thought the walk into State House, given the deep unpopularity of Mugabe in 2000, would be straightforward. It was never going to be that way, and in the meantime the MDC has failed to establish a formidable think-tank tasked to design workable strategies to unseat ZANU PF.
Denford Magora, a columnist with the Financial Gazette, commented, "The opposition party has deceived itself into thinking that keeping attention focused on ZANU PF is a strategy. The thinking in the MDC is that all it needs to get into power is for ZANU PF to misgovern the country.
"Democracy's lessons are very easy to learn. Whenever your opponent puts a foot wrong, you must be immediately there — not only pointing out that your opponent has lost the plot, but convincing people that you would have done a better job because you have real ideas anchored in a passion for developing the lives of people you seek to lead. When ZANU PF bungles, the MDC rarely succeeds in capitalising on the situation."
In Zimbabwe's harsh political landscape, some of the criticisms targeted at Tsvangirai — that he lacks charisma, power-broking skills and political sophistication — are looking increasingly true.
It is a picture denied by his loyalists. Eddie Cross, the MDC's justice spokesman, said, "You cannot buy integrity, humility or wisdom. Morgan has all these characteristics. He has survived several assassination attacks, has a brutal work schedule and has worked under intense pressure for years — yet he remains a pillar of strength to those who work with and for him."
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02/27/2005
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Violence and massive intimidation are wreaking havoc in Zimbabwe's rural areas as the ruling party's and opposition's campaigns gather momentum ahead of Zimbabwe's fifth parliamentary election on March 31.
ZANU PF youth militias, President Robert Mugabe's much feared stormtroopers, known among the population as the Green Bombers, are currently behaving with such menace in the Makoni West constituency that many villagers have fled their homes.
Makoni West is a marginal constituency on the outskirts of Rusape, 135 kilometres southeast of Harare. The sitting ZANU PF MP has been replaced by Zimbabwe's highly unpopular Minister of Agriculture Joseph Made, who is opposed by Remus Makuwaza, for the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, and Tendai Chekera of the small regional party ZANU-Ndonga.
Villagers also allege they have been threatened with eviction from their recently acquired farms - taken over in Mugabe's move against white commercial farmer - if they do not vote for ruling party.
Matthew Ngoroma, 38, told IWPR that he fled his home after "some people told me I would pay the price for supporting MDC". He said four men in Zanu PF campaign shirts visited him three weeks ago and threatened to burn down his house. "They said they would torch my house if I continued selling MDC cards," said Ngoroma, who has moved his family to a place near Rusape town. "I am not alone. There are others who have been beaten, threatened and intimidated. It's a terror campaign."
Other villagers perceived to be MDC supporters have been denied food aid, fertiliser and maize seed being distributed by government officials loyal to ZANU PF.
"You have to be a Zanu PF supporter to get fertiliser, seed and food," said another villager, Susan Rugoyi. "We have to show Zanu PF cards in order to get a pack of maize meal being distributed by Zanu PF officials as food aid."
The chiefs and village heads have also been roped into Zanu PF campaign teams. Villagers said the chiefs are forcing their subjects to attend Zanu PF rallies. Meanwhile, the chiefs are banning opposition rallies in their areas while threatening to evict opposition supporters.
"We do have several cases of political violence that we are investigating," said a senior police officer who declined to be named. "But it would be unfair to say categorically say that these violent incidents are being perpetrated by Zanu PF. What if they are just rogue elements abusing Zanu PF regalia?"
The violence is not just isolated incidents. It is on a national scale. Fifty soldiers assaulted three MDC candidates returning from the launch of the party's election campaign in Masvingo in the southeast on February 20. MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said, "The soldiers first assaulted Gabriel Chiwara, our candidate for Makoni West, and his election candidate, Josphat Munhumumwe, accusing them of selling the country to the British.
"They were kicked and punched and sustained injuries all over their bodies. They were taken to hospital for treatment and later released. The assault was reported to the police, but no arrests have been made."
Nyathi said the MDC was particularly concerned about this assault because it repeated a pattern of army violence against the opposition in places many hundreds of kilometres apart. MDC candidate for Mutare West, Gabriel Chiwara, who is trying to topple Transport Minister Christopher Mushohwe in a constituency 250 km southeast of Harare, was assaulted by soldiers together with his campaign manager.
Reports are also coming in of violence by soldiers, Green Bombers and ZANU PF activists against MDC candidates in the south of the country in Gwanda and Beitbridge constituencies.
In Norton, 40 km west of Harare, a stronghold of ZANU PF MP Sabina Mugabe, the president's sister, ruling party supporters waylaid and severely beat an eleven-strong MDC campaign team who were putting up party posters. The posters and party regalia the MDC activists were wearing were confiscated and burned.
Hilda Mafudze, the MDC candidate for Manyame constituency, neighbouring Norton, said, "This cannot be a free and fair election. How can the whole process be fair when one's campaign team is beaten up and their regalia burnt by these thugs who belong to a party which claims it supports a free and fair election?"
Wellington Chibebe, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, said, "We want to state very clearly that as much as the politicians are saying the elections will be violence-free, the reality on the ground is that ordinary men, women and children are going to be subject to untold violence."
Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, ZESN, a group of 40 civic organisations supporting democratic elections, said, "For many opposition supporters, fear of violence means they would rather not go to vote than vote and face the recriminations.
"The penalty for voting for the opposition can be expulsion from the village, physical violence, withdrawal from the local food aid registers, or all of them combined. Past experience has taught them that such threats are eventually carried out, and they fear a repeat of 2000 and 2002 [legislative and presidential elections marred by widespread violence and intimidation]."
Rural areas in Zimbabwe's majority ethnic Shona regions have traditionally voted ZANU PF, with the chiefs, who maintain government food registers, beneficiaries and loyal supporters of the ruling party. According to southern Africa's Famine Early Warning System Network, five million Zimbabweans, nearly half the population, are in need of food aid.
President Mugabe, in an interview on ZANU PF-controlled state television, said he wanted this election campaign to be peaceful. His interior minister, Kembo Mohadi, said organisations alleging violence and human rights abuses were "subversives who are western-funded".
Responding to the allegations that chiefs are forcing their people to attend ZANU PF rallies and vote for Mugabe's party, Mohadi said, "Ours is a peaceful party. Our people hold their chiefs in high regard and, naturally, get worried when such accusations are made against them. We cannot deny our people the right to choose their own leaders when we fought so hard [in the 1970s liberation war] to bring them human rights, freedom and social justice."
Inspector Wayne Bvudzijena, Zimbabwe's national police spokesman, said the national force had not received any reports of violence or intimidation by political parties. "I am surprised to hear these reports," he said. "But I can assure you that the campaign remains peaceful."
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02/27/2005
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PROTESTS SWEEP THE COUNTRY
Thousands of people across Kyrgyzstan have taken to the streets to back election candidates disqualified from running in the parliamentary poll.
The protests are widespread, spanning four regions of Kyrgyzstan — Issykkul, Talas, Naryn and Jalalabad.
Many of the candidates involved are not associated with the opposition, and are either pro-government or not aligned with either side. They allege these individuals have been barred from running on spurious grounds, to allow the regime to insert its current favourites into local constituencies and ensure there are no strong rivals to prevent them being elected to parliament.
The wave of discontent began February 21 in Talas where 2,000 supporters of parliamentary hopeful Ravshan Jeenbekov demonstrated outside a local court house to protest the revoking of his registration. The decision was eventually reversed so that Jeenbekov was able to stand. Also in Talas, 800 followers of candidate Bolotbek Sherniyazov gathered to protest interference by the local electricity company, which promised to wipe out unpaid electricity bills for voters who backed Sherniyazov's rival, ex-speaker of parliament Altai Borubaev.
Demonstrators in the Issykkul region scored a notable victory after they blocked roads in Tyup and forced officials to lift their disqualification of a local candidate, Sadyr Japarov. Elsewhere in the region, protesters occupied a local government building but as of February 25, their candidate Arslan Maliev remained disqualified.
The interior ministry on February 24 placed Kyrgyz security forces on high alert for an indefinite period of time. Police officers will guard polling stations around the clock.
Labour migrants in Russia will take legal action against the Kyrgyz government for denying citizens working abroad the right to vote, the AKIpress news agency reported on February 21. They plan to file a civil rights case with the International Court of Justice.
Central Election Committee, CEC, chairman Sulaiman Imanbaev has spoken out against informal exit polls which non-government organisations plan to conduct. He said such polls would violate ballot secrecy, they would be inaccurate, and that they would be used to manipulate election results. Separately, Imanbaev announced election results will be available live on the internet and on state television, using a computerised election-tally system.
On February 23, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, IHF, issued a press release saying the Kyrgyz authorities were violating their OSCE commitments by interfering in the election. IHF executive director Aaron Rhodes accused the government of "attempting to prevent a free and fair election".
The embassy of Kazakstan announced that the country will have more than 60 monitors observing the election. A total of 15,000 local and 600 international observers will be on hand, according to the CEC. On February 24, state regulators closed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Kyrgyz service, Azattyk, for an undisclosed period. The authorities recently announced they would be auctioning off the local frequencies which Azattyk now uses to broadcast, under the pretext of raising money to modernise the radio network. Electricity to the United States-funded Independent Printing House in Bishkek, where most opposition newspapers are printed, was cut on February 22. Observers suspect a power outage so soon before the election was a deliberate attempt to prevent the printing of more than 40 newspapers and other publications, some but not all of which are critical of the regime. However, plant officials used a generator to continue printing, and plan to sue the electricity company.
President Akaev said on February 18 that he intends to sue the opposition newspaper Moya Stolitsa Novosti, MSN, for libelling him. The following day, more than 200 protestors gathered in Bishkek in support of MSN. The international Reporters Without Borders group warned President Askar Akaev that a diversity of media outlets is essential for a fair electoral process to take place.
The independent media commissioner, Shamaral Maichiev, has accused certain journalists of breaching the electoral legislation in their reporting, for example by giving preferential treatment to certain candidates and publishing campaign material sooner than they were entitled to.
On February 22, the independent Mass Media Association, a local journalists' organisation, unveiled a handbook for Kyrgyz journalists containing guidelines on how the media should conduct itself during elections.
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
02/27/2005
9:37:00 AM ||
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#1
Just looked at the map and Kyrgyzstan just happens to be in the middle of the 'Stans.
President Hosni Mubarak has ordered that Egypt's constitution be changed to allow more than one candidate to run in presidential elections. But restrictions remain on who can be a candidate.
THE CURRENT SYSTEM:
- Under the constitution, a presidential candidate must have approval by a third of the People's Assembly, or parliament, to be nominated. Parliament then must approve by two-thirds majority. The public then votes on the single candidate in a "yes" or "no" referendum.
In the four elections since he came to power in 1981, Mubarak has been the sole nominee approved by parliament and the sole candidate passed by lawmakers for a popular referendum. He has won every referendum with more than 90 percent of the vote.
THE CHANGES:
- Mubarak gave guidelines to parliament for amending the constitution to eliminate the referendum and allow "direct, secret elections" for president with "guarantees to allow more than one candidate."
- A certain number of parliament members or members of provincial and municipal councils must approve any candidate to be eligible to run. The exact number is still to be determined.
- For the first elections held after the reform - the upcoming vote in September - each registered political party will be able to nominate one leader to run without the required support from parliament, which is currently dominated by Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party. In future presidential votes, all candidates will have to get parliamentary support.
- A commission will be created "with full independence and neutrality" to oversee the presidential vote. Currently, there is no election commission for presidential or parliament votes.
THE TIMETABLE:
Parliament is to propose the amendment within two weeks, and then a national referendum will be held to approve it, most likely in May.
Case Adds to Outrage for Muslims in Northern Virginia
FALLS CHURCH, Va., Feb. 25 - When the Saudi police burst into a classroom at the Islamic University of Medina during final exams two years ago and whisked away an American exchange student named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, his imprisonment swiftly reverberated among Muslims in this Washington suburb.
Mr. Abu Ali was never charged, and he spent 20 months in a Saudi prison where his family says he was whipped, tortured and starved. This week, he was finally returned to Virginia - only to face an accusation by American prosecutors that he had plotted with members of Al Qaeda to assassinate President Bush.
The charge has outraged members of Northern Virginia's growing Muslim population and escalated a conflict with federal law enforcement authorities over terrorism investigations into religious leaders, mosques, businesses and private Islamic schools in the region. "Our whole community is under siege," said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, a spokesman for the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, where Mr. Abu Ali and his family worshiped. "They don't see this as a case of criminality. They see it as a civil rights case. As a frontal attack on their community."
"The feeling I get here on a daily basis must be what it was like to be a member of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church following the case of Rosa Parks," said Imam Abdul-Malik. "People always ask, 'What is the latest from the courthouse?' "
This article starring:
AHMED OMAR ABU ALI
al-Qaeda
Dar Al-Hijrah mosque
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005
8:25:03 PM ||
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#1
"They don't see this as a case of criminality. They see it as a civil rights case. As a frontal attack on their community."
So, they want criminals who are like them to be set free because they are special?
#3
When did Rosa train in Afghanistan with the declared enemies of our country? I missed that in her bio? These Islamodirtbags and their media enablers need to feel the wrath of real Americans
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 21:04
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Dean screams roars into town
Democrats welcome new DNC leader
Democrats, he said, must reframe the values debate, claiming the high ground on Social Security, health care and protecting American security.
"Those are Kansas values," he said.But the Hiebert crowd got a little more red meat than the Liberty Hall attendees.
On abortion specifically, he said, the party must commit to making abortions "safe, legal and rare" while maintaining women's rights to choose.
"The issue is not abortion," Dean told the closed-door fund-raiser. "The issue is whether women can make up their own mind instead of some right-wing pastor, some right-wing politician telling them what to do."
And Dean told the Hiebert fund-raiser that gay marriage was a Republican diversion from discussions of ballooning deficits and lost American jobs. That presents an opportunity to attract moderate Republicans, he said.
"Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said, adding: "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."
And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."
When told of Dean's remarks, Derrick Sontag -- executive director of the Kansas Republican Party -- said he was "shocked."
"My immediate reaction to that whole dialogue is, it's full of hatred," Sontag said. "The Democratic Party has elected a leader that's full of hatred."
Sure, they are even tolerant of hatred, especially hatred of eviiil Republicans who demonize the opposition and generalize too much.
#1
Kitten provided by Karl Rove Vetinarians for Fur.
Posted by: Charles ||
02/27/2005 21:10
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#2
"And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: "This is a struggle of good and evil. And weâre the good.""
What'd Howlin' Howie do, manage to escape his handlers? I was reading just this past week that his advisors were keeping him on a short leash to minimize his contact with the public.
Something tells me the Dems don't have things quite figured out yet...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
02/27/2005 21:29
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#3
I can hardly wait for the 2008 primaries. This is going to be more fun than any Republicans should have.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 21:37
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#4
Red meat for the Deaniacs? Oops!
"Hey, you can't print that!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 21:38
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#5
Lawrence, KS? Good idea, Howie - go to the bright blue dot in the middle of the reddest state in the union, and get all excited about the false positive you receive. Got self-delusion?
BUSHEHR, Iran — Iran and Russia signed a nuclear fuel agreement Sunday, paving the way for Iran to get its first reactor up and running. Let's hope it doesn't run very long.
Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh (search) and Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (search), signed the agreement at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The signing, which was delayed by a day, came after the two senior officials toured the $800 million complex.
Russia, which helped build the plant, has agreed to provide the fuel needed to run it — but only if Iran returns the spent fuel to prevent any possibility Tehran would extract plutonium from it to make an atomic bomb. Tehran (search) has agreed, but the two sides had disagreed on who should pay for its return.
The signing came a few days after a summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia, which touched on American concerns over Russian support for Iran's nuclear program.
Washington accuses Tehran of covertly trying to build a nuclear bomb, which Iran denies. Putin has said he is sure Iran's intentions are merely to generate energy, not create weapons, and that Russian cooperation with Tehran would continue.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Thursday's Bush-Putin summit had delayed the signing, which had been expected Saturday, but Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said "the Bush-Putin talks did not have an effect on the agreement. Our talks (with the Russians) have been successful."
Just ahead of the signing, Aghazadeh showed Rumyantsev Bushehr's nuclear fuel storage house and the reactor core, expected to be operational by late 2005 or early 2006.
"What I saw was much better and more than I had expected. Assembling operations in the past three to four months have been expedited," Rumyantsev said. Referring to the process to complete the plant, he added: "I can't say the situation is excellent, but it's very good."
Aghazadeh said the fuel storage area was built to international standards. "This storage house is ready to receive nuclear fuel," he said.
Iranian efforts to produce its own fuel rather than importing it have been a bigger concern in the international community than the deal with Russia. That's because the enrichment process can be carried further to produce material for nuclear weapons.
France, Britain and Germany are trying to secure an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Iran has suspended enrichment-related activities during the talks with the Europeans, which both sides have said were difficult, but insists the freeze will be brief.
Bush has expressed support for the European efforts. But documents being circulated among International Atomic Energy Agency board members in Vienna ahead of a board meeting Monday, and seen by The Associated Press there, indicated Washington would try to increase pressure on Tehran by the next agency board meeting in June should the European talks fail.
Everyone knew Putty would do this, so now there is absolutely no point in even going through the motions with that abortion on Turtle Bay.
Interesting times indeed.
Posted by: JerseyMike ||
02/27/2005
8:01:17 AM ||
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BUSHEHR, Iran — Iran and Russia signed a nuclear fuel agreement Sunday, paving the way for Iran to get its first reactor up and running.
Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh (search) and Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (search), signed the agreement at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The signing, which was delayed by a day, came after the two senior officials toured the $800 million complex.
Russia, which helped build the plant, has agreed to provide the fuel needed to run it — but only if Iran returns the spent fuel to prevent any possibility Tehran would extract plutonium from it to make an atomic bomb. Tehran (search) has agreed, but the two sides had disagreed on who should pay for its return.
It is certain that the Russians will get the fuel back . . . but will it be in the rods, or in a terminally ballistic arc?
The signing came a few days after a summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia, which touched on American concerns over Russian support for Iran's nuclear program.
Washington accuses Tehran of covertly trying to build a nuclear bomb, which Iran denies. Putin has said he is sure Iran's intentions are merely to generate energy, not create weapons, and that Russian cooperation with Tehran would continue.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Thursday's Bush-Putin summit had delayed the signing, which had been expected Saturday, but Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said "the Bush-Putin talks did not have an effect on the agreement. Our talks (with the Russians) have been successful."
Just ahead of the signing, Aghazadeh showed Rumyantsev Bushehr's nuclear fuel storage house and the reactor core, expected to be operational by late 2005 or early 2006.
"What I saw was much better and more than I had expected. Assembling operations in the past three to four months have been expedited," Rumyantsev said. Referring to the process to complete the plant, he added: "I can't say the situation is excellent, but it's very good."
Aghazadeh said the fuel storage area was built to international standards. "This storage house is ready to receive nuclear fuel," he said.
Iranian efforts to produce its own fuel rather than importing it have been a bigger concern in the international community than the deal with Russia. That's because the enrichment process can be carried further to produce material for nuclear weapons.
France, Britain and Germany are trying to secure an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Iran has suspended enrichment-related activities during the talks with the Europeans, which both sides have said were difficult, but insists the freeze will be brief.
Bush has expressed support for the European efforts. But documents being circulated among International Atomic Energy Agency board members in Vienna ahead of a board meeting Monday, and seen by The Associated Press there, indicated Washington would try to increase pressure on Tehran by the next agency board meeting in June should the European talks fail.
Maybe, just maybe, the talks will work and we can all breathe easy. But we felt the same way about NKor, who gave Billy almost as good a head job as Monica did, while they were busy fumbling around build nukes in the dark. In Islam, lying to a Kufir is not a sin . . . just one more way to get the job of killing him done. It is much more likely we will end up turning the Persian sands a nice shde of BLAAAAM!!!! before too long.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005
7:43:42 AM ||
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#1
The Euros proposing giving economic aid to a major oil exporting nation in this age of record oil prices is insane. Of course if they want to bankrupt their taxpayers (remember them?) that is their thing.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 23:32
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TIKRIT, Iraq ââ¬" Iraqi Police and Task Force Liberty Soldiers detained four Iraqis after responding to a report of an explosion from the Tikrit Joint Coordination Center at about 8:30 p.m. Feb. 25. One insurgent died of his wounds and one was hospitalized due to the explosion, which the police investigation determined to be an improvised explosive device that detonated inside an abandoned house. Both men were wanted by police as suspects in previous attacks on Coalition Forces. Another IED was found in the building. Two other men associated with the incident are currently in police custody.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005
7:14:55 PM ||
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Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, a half brother of Saddam Hussein who was the former dictator's intelligence chief before becoming a presidential adviser, has been captured, officials in the prime minister's office said Sunday. Hasan is No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis released by U.S. authorities after troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, and one of only 12 remaining at large. He is also suspected of financing insurgents in the post-Saddam era, and Washington had put a $1 million bounty on his head. According to the U.S. Central Command, Hasan is among the 29 most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in post-Saddam Iraq.
Officials in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Hasan's capture but gave no details on where it took place or when. It was also not immediately known whether Iraqi forces or U.S. troops had detained Hasan. Under Saddam, Hasan served as head of intelligence and security before taking up his last post of presidential adviser in the former regime. He is also known as Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, aka Thafir Alsemak.
This article starring:
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi
SABAWI IBRAHIM AL HASAN AL TIKRITI
Iraqi Insurgency
SABAWI IBRAHIM HASAN
Iraqi Insurgency
THAFIR ALSEMAK
Iraqi Insurgency
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
4:40:52 AM ||
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#4
Whoa, looks like the Syrians turned him and a bunch of others over to the Iraqis. An Iraq that looks now to be a runaway success and a lebanon screaming for freedom have put the fear of Allen into em.
#8
Associated Press now saying that 29 others were also handed over!
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20050227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 15:12
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#9
From #8 link - A third Iraqi official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syrian security forces expelled al-Hassan from Syria into Iraq after he and his supporters had been turned back in an earlier attempt to cross the Syrian border into Lebanon and Jordan.
#13
Pressuring Syria appears to be getting easier. We (and many Lebanese) just pinned the Hariri boom on them and Israel just implicated them in the most recent car bombing. Even if they did not do these things, we ratchet up the pressure. Sucks to be them. We can do this now that W is reelected and has 4 more years to squeeze. That must seem like a decade to Assad.
#14
JAB
Actually we are not the only ones, not even the most important ones, pressuring Syria. The Syrians are now have pissed off Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, France, the US and the PA.
Turkey is neutral here. Iran is friendly but undependable.
#17
MHW, I agree that we're not the only ones on Syria's case but am pleased that seem to be exploiting the situation effectively. This is not always the case.
#18
One has to wonder how this relates to the sacking of the former head of the Syrian Secret Police or what ever he was after Hariri assassination? I also wonder how mush the Assad clan didn't know about support for Iraqi Baath Party members and just how many of them are in Syria and what they are up to? It's true they have to have some knowledge but how much?
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT This is a 3 part report. Links to the other 2 are found at the bottom.
China's development dwarfs Latin America's
ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@herald.com BEIJING -- I came to the People's Republic of China for a 10-day visit to find out how Latin America could best compete with this economically booming country. It took me about 30 seconds to know the answer: Unless it undertakes dramatic reforms, it can't. From the minute one lands in Beijing, even before one has a chance to be stunned by the capitalist fever that is gripping this country, the monumental dimensions of Beijing's newly remodeled, 38-million-passengers-a-year airport shocks even the most skeptical visitor.
My plane pulled in at Gate 305 -- an eye-opener for someone used to arriving at Gate B-7 of Miami International Airport, which has only 107 gates. But that was only the first surprise. On the way to my hotel, I saw more high-rise construction cranes than I've ever seen anywhere, let alone in Latin America. There are 5,000 high-rise construction sites in the Chinese capital today -- so many, that the latest joke making the rounds here says you should never blink while in this city, because you could miss a new building's inauguration.
PRESTIGIOUS NAMES
At street level of some of the ultra-modern skyscrapers, there are dealerships of Rolls Royce, Maseratti, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, next to Rolex, Armani and Louis Vuitton stores. I asked my taxi driver to stop in front of some of these car dealerships, convinced that they were representative offices to sell jet engines or tractors to the Chinese government. But no: They were selling luxury cars to rich Chinese. Last year, Mercedes-Benz sold 12,000 cars in China, BMW 16,000 and Audi about 70,000, the government-run China Daily reported recently, with obvious pride.
Continued on Page 49
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, were released at the First Mars Express Science Conference this week. They show the areas of focused research - water, ice, glaciers and volcanism.
Need more evidence that Mohammad was a creepy wack-job with major personality issues? No, me neither, but I found this anyway. It's a short excerpt from the January 2002 issue of "Bathroom Today."
Posted by: Rex Rufus ||
02/27/2005
3:39:46 PM ||
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After using the toilet, one should performs the Istinjaa (cleansing with water). In Istinjaa, water is preferred for the purpose of cleaning oneself. However, when water is not available, a material that does not have a smooth surface, such as stone or wood can be used. Tissue paper can be used as long as it does not absorb the feces or urine and cause the hand to come into contact with it.
Qurâan forbids the use of the right hand in order to clean oneself from the impurities of urine and feces. The Prophet said, âNone of you should touch his privates with his right hand whilst urinating nor should he wipe off feces with his rightâ.
great - how about a piece of schist? or petrified wood? or a branch from a rose bush? F*&king Idiots
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 17:39
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Why am I getting persistent images from Life of Brian after reading this?
#8
Now I understand the importance of having one of those new Saudi cell phones with a built-in direction indicator to Mecca. Lets you know how to sit on the throne.
A blogger's scrapbook of Hafez and Bashar Assad photos looming over the people. I liked this one the best. On preview, I'd like to recommend this blog for updates on the Syria situation.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
02/27/2005
2:02:03 AM ||
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Iran, through the black market network, had accumulated all the knowledge it needed by the late 1980s to set up technology that can be used to make atomic weapons, diplomats familiar with the work of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday.
The diplomats, who are familiar with the work of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke to The Associated Press two days before the IAEA board meets on Iran and other potential world nuclear concerns.
An agency investigation during the past two years previously established that Iran ran a clandestine nuclear program for nearly two decades, including working on uranium enrichment - which can be used to make weapons.
The diplomats, who requested anonymity, suggested that the new revelations were significant because they indicated Iran had full possession of enrichment know-how from the black market network run by Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan earlier than previously believed.
The revelations came as last-minute disputes forced Iran and Russia to postpone the signing of an agreement to supply Iran with fuel for its first nuclear reactor, a deal strongly opposed by the United States.
Under the agreement, Russia will provide Iran with fuel and take back the spent fuel, a safeguard meant to banish fears Iran would misuse it to build nuclear weapons. U.N. nuclear experts also would monitor the facility.
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, attributed the sudden delay to differences over the delivery time of the first shipment of fuel and the launch of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Saeedi said the deal may be signed Sunday in Bushehr, the southern town where Iran's first reactor was built, using Russian help.
Nuclear concerns about Iran focus on its enrichment program because it can be used to process uranium for two purposes - as fuel for power generation or as the core of warheads. Iran insists its nuclear aims are peaceful, while the United States and its key allies say Tehran is interested in making weapons.
Britain, France and Germany are trying to secure an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Iran has suspended enrichment-related activities during talks with the Europeans but insists the freeze will be brief.
Both sides have described the talks as difficult - most recently, Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, accused the Europeans in a French newspaper interview published Friday of being "incapable of keeping their promises."
President Bush has expressed support for the European efforts. Also, nonproliferation officials with the U.S. State Department have grudgingly accepted a decision by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei not to publish a written report on the investigation of Iran's nuclear activities for the first time in two years of board meetings because of lack of major new findings.
Still, there was evidence ahead of Monday's IAEA board meeting of an American effort to ratchet up pressure on Tehran should the European talks fail.
A confidential position paper being circulated by the Americans to the other board members and shared in part with the AP called for a new written report on Iran by the board's June meeting. Furthermore, it urged that meeting to "take further action if needed" against Iran - in effect a demand that Tehran be hauled before the U.N. Security Council if there is any indication it was defying the agency board on nuclear matters.
A separate U.S. document outlined the need for a "Special Committee" to deal with nations violating the Nonproliferation Treaty - which Washington says Iran has done. That committee could "make recommendations to the board" to report suspect nations to the Security Council, said the document seen by the AP.
European diplomats representing IAEA board members said U.S. efforts were hurting the three-nation negotiations with Iran.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:28:35 AM ||
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That committee could "make recommendations to the board" to report suspect nations to the Security Council, said the document seen by the AP.
Reported to the SC, yeah, that'd be one helluva threat all right.
#2
...Hassan Rowhani, Iranâs chief nuclear negotiator, accused the Europeans in a French newspaper interview published Friday of being "incapable of keeping their promises."
Well, that about covers both sides. LOL!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/28/2005 0:20
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A senior Hezbollah operative told two top Palestinian militants in the West Bank that he recruited the suicide bomber who blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv nightclub in an attack that killed four Israelis, the militants said Saturday.
The militants, local leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, said the operative, Kais Obeid, called them after the bombing and asked them to claim responsibility for the attack.
The two militants, one speaking from Ramallah and the other from the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, said they turned down the request because they feared they would be targeted by Israeli or Palestinian security forces.
Obeid told the Al Aqsa leaders he had recruited Palestinians from the West Bank town of Tulkarem to carry out the bombing, the two militant leaders said on condition of anonymity. Obeid said he paid money to the Tulkarem cell but would not say how much. Obeid was vague about whether the bomber and his local handlers had ties to Palestinian militant groups, the two Al Aqsa leaders said.
In Tulkarem, Palestinian security forces on Saturday arrested two men in connection with the suicide bombing. Security forces said the two had ties to the militant Islamic Jihad group.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to derail a Feb. 8 truce declared by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Hezbollah has hundreds of West Bank gunmen on its payroll, most from Al Aqsa, a violent group with ties to Abbas' ruling Fatah Party.
This article starring:
KAIS OBEID
Hezbollah
Hezbollah
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:27:08 AM ||
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Hokay, we can blame them too. Hezbollah, Syria, Fatah, al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, you're all on the hook.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 18:16
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The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility on Saturday evening, from Damascus, for the deadly attack in Tel Aviv on Friday night. "The period of calm was set for one month, and that month is over," said Abu Tark, a senior member of the Jihad movement. "Israel did not obey the agreement, and that's what led to our action."
The announcement confirms the security establishment's earlier suspicions, which also estimated that the Hizbulla was not involved. Defense officials estimated that the Islamic Jihad in Damascus had operated via one of its cells in the Tulkarm area. However, earlier on Saturday, two top Palestinian insurgents said that a senior Hizbullah operative told them that he had recruited the suicide bomber who blew himself up outside the Tel Aviv club. The combatants, local leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said the operative, Kais Obeid, called them after the bombing and asked them to claim responsibility for the attack.
Obeid, an Israeli Arab from the town of Taiba, was the man accused of setting the trap that delivered Elhanan Tannenbaum into the hands of Hizbullah.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU TARK
Islamic Jihad
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat
CIVIL AFAIRS MINISTER MOHAMED DAHLAN
Palestinian Authority
Elhanan Tannenbaum
GEN. NASER YUSEF
Palestinian Authority
KAIS OBEID
Hizbulla
MOHAMED AL HINDI
Islamic Jihad
SHEIK KASEM
Hizbullah
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
Hizbulla
Islamic Jihad
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:26:00 AM ||
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Computer screen splutter warning The following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Abd Al-Baset Al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Center. Al-Majd TV aired this interview on January 16, 2005
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: The centrality [of Mecca] has been proven scientifically. How? When they traveled to outer space and took pictures of the earth, they saw that it is a dark, hanging sphere. The man said, "Earth is a dark hanging sphere — who hung it?"
Interviewer: Who said that?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: [Neil] Armstrong. Armstrong was basically trying to say: Allah is the one who hung it. They discovered that Earth emits radiation, and they wrote about this on the web. They left the item there for 21 days, and then they made it disappear.
Interviewer: Why did they make it disappear?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: There was intent thereâŠ
Interviewer: So it may be said that this suppression of information was significant.
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: It was very significant, sinceâŠthe Ka'ba [in Mecca]⊠They said it emits radiation. This radiation is short-wave.
When they discovered this radiation, they started to zoom in, and they found that it emanates from Mecca — and, to be precise, from the Ka'ba.
Interviewer: My God!!
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: It was saidâŠ
Interviewer: Does this radiation have an effect?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: They found that this radiation is infinite. When they reached Mars and began to take pictures, they found that the radiation continues beyond. They said that the wavelength known to us⊠or rather the shortness of the wavelength known to us⊠This radiation had a special characteristic: It is infinite, and I believe that the reason is that this radiation connects the [earthly] Ka'ba with the celestial Ka'ba.
Imagine that you are the North Pole and I am the South Pole — in the middle there's what is called the magnetic equilibrium zone. If you place a compass there, the needle won't move.
Interviewer: You mean that the pull is equal from both sides?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: Yes, and that's why it's called zero-magnetism zone, since the magnetic force has no effect there. That's why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier, and is less affected by Earth's gravity. That's why when you circle the Ka'ba, you get charged with energy.
Interviewer: Allah be praised.
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: Yes, this is a fact.
This is a scientific factâŠ
Interviewer: Because you are distant fromâŠ
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: Earth's magnetic fields have no effect on you in this case.
There's a study that proves that the black basalt rocks in Mecca are the oldest rocks in the world. This is the truth.
Interviewer: The oldest rocks? Yes. Has this been proved scientifically?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: It's been scientifically proven, and the study has been published.
Interviewer: They took basalt rocks from MeccaâŠ
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: âŠBasalt rocks from Mecca, and investigated the places where they were formed.
In the British Museum there are three pieces of the black stone [from the Ka'ba] âŠand they said that this rock didn't come from our solar system.
Posted by: tipper ||
02/27/2005
12:59:09 AM ||
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"Islamic science"
Isn't that an oxymoron?
With the emphasis on the MORON.
Wotta maroon.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 1:16
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I think there's something to this Ka'aba thing... they just missed the 1x4x9 ratio thingy. I guess this image sums up things today up rather well.
#5
Poor Allan! It must really suck to be an omnipotent deity and have your followers be such idiots. And after such a promising start a millennium ago! Not surprising he is tormenting them with earthquakes, tidal waves, UFOs and JOOS!
#6
Armstrong was basically trying to say: Allah is the one who hung it. They discovered that Earth emits radiation, and they wrote about this on the web. They left the item there for 21 days, and then they made it disappear.
hmmmm - did Algore know his web was around in '69?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 11:43
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LOL - good catch, Frank.
Posted by: Matt ||
02/27/2005 12:40
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heh, musta been some secretive arpanet thing using pml (primative markerup language)
{maker big type} HI World! Give me a Quarter!
{maker end big type)
#9
I love Rantburg, because it is truly the only place where these buffoons and their idiotic comments get coverage that isn't fawning or protective. One can see that they never let facts get in the way of their evangelical zeal to convert the world, bring a universal caliphate, and destroy the West. I hope Frodo and Sam are out there somewhere with the damn ring, because the great battle with the forces of Sauron is fast approaching, and the list of players on our side is down to us, the Australians, and maybe the Brits for a little while longer ....
#10
If Bush's space plan works out we will be able to treat certain areas of the world with all the sacred black rocks they want. They just might not like the effects of the sudden stop.
Posted by: bruce ||
02/27/2005 19:49
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Armstrong was basically trying to say: Allah is the one who hung it.
"Praise unto Allah, the hanger, the hanging, and the well-hung..."
Posted by: Rex Rufus ||
02/27/2005 22:30
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Since he liked 9 year olds... not that well-hung..
U.S. forces have arrested an Iraqi father and son accused of participating in a 1982 massacre in the predominantly Shiite Muslim village of Dujail in retaliation for an assassination attempt on then-President Saddam Hussein.
Senior U.S. officials said in interviews that Abdulla Rwayid and Muzhir Abdulla Rwayid were arrested Monday and charged with crimes against humanity for their alleged role in the killing of hundreds of people associated with the Dawa party, a Shiite group that carried out the attempt on Hussein's life on July 8, 1982. Charges against the two detained men were referred to the Iraqi Special Tribunal, the entity responsible for trying those accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in Iraq between 1968 and 2003, when Hussein's Baath Party ruled the country.
The camouflage-clad militiamen marched down from the mountains in four columns of hundreds each, stomping their boots in unison.
"Keep looking forward!" an officer yelled.
"Kurdistan or death!" the soldiers shouted at once, their words thundering over the sound of heels striking the ground.
Here at a training camp in the eastern hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, there is little doubt about to whom these soldiers owe their allegiance.
Many say their first loyalty lies with a major Kurdish political party. Then they offer it to Kurdistan, the rugged autonomous region in northern Iraq the size of Switzerland. There is little mention of the nation of Iraq or the Iraqi Army.
"All of the pesh merga of Kurdistan, we're fighting for Kurdistan," one of the soldiers, Fermen Ibrahim, 25, told a visitor, calling the militia by its Kurdish name, which means "those who face death."
As political jockeying rages in Baghdad to determine the shape of the new government - how Islamic it will be, whether it has strong or weak central powers - one of the most troublesome issues emerging is whether political parties, especially those of the Kurds and Shiites, can keep their private armies. Kurdish leaders say they intend to write into the new constitution a system granting considerable powers to individual regions, one that will legitimize their use of the pesh merga.
If the Kurds succeed, they will achieve the right of regional powers to set up their own armies, possibly leading to warlord-style fiefs across Iraq. Until their strong showing in the recent national elections, Kurdish leaders appeared to agree, at least in public, with the American goal of dismantling militias. Now they stand in open defiance of it.
The pesh merga, with recruits from two Kurdish parties, total about 100,000 soldiers. A source of ethnic pride, they fought tenaciously against Saddam Hussein and are now relied upon by American commanders to battle the Arab-led insurgency in the north. Perhaps most important in the current power vacuum, they provide Kurdish leaders with armed backing in their demands for broad autonomy.
"We want to keep our pesh merga because they are a symbol of resistance," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the son of Mustafa Barzani, a revered Kurdish leader who founded the pesh merga in the 1960's. "It's not a matter to be discussed or negotiated."
If the Kurds get the constitution they want, the pesh merga would nominally fall under the oversight of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad, Kurdish officials say, but in reality would be controlled by regional commanders. The two Kurdish parties each have a ministry of pesh merga, which they say they intend to keep.
The Kurds also say the pesh merga will maintain all the trappings of a conventional army, with an officers' college, training camps and armor and artillery units all operating independently of the rest of the Iraqi security forces.
The major Shiite parties, who have the largest share of seats in the constitutional assembly, may try to block the Kurds on the militia issue to limit the autonomy of the Kurds. But those parties have significant militias that they may seek to keep, or to at least incorporate into the Iraqi security forces as intact units. Their armies generally stay hidden on the streets of Baghdad but have been active in the Shiite heartland of the south, operating checkpoints and patrols and, in some cases, enforcing strict Islamic law, like cracking down on alcohol vendors.
The leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party, have repeatedly said that the party's Iranian-trained armed wing, the Badr Organization, at least 15,000 strong, can help provide security in the new Iraq.
The former governing Sunni Arabs, a minority now feeling threatened by the other groups, will probably oppose any move by the Kurds and Shiites to legitimize their militias.
American commanders publicly say that all armed groups in Iraq must be state sponsored and that militarized units should not be organized by ethnicity or sect. But they privately acknowledge the extreme difficulties of breaking up the militias. Lt. Col. Eric Durr, the head of civil affairs for the 42nd Infantry Division, charged with overseeing eastern Kurdistan, said it was now up to the new Iraqi government to figure out what to do with the militias.
"It's really a political issue for the Iraqi government to work out," he said.
The Americans are relying on the pesh merga to fight insurgents. Across the north, particularly in the besieged city of Mosul, American commanders have supported Iraqi officials in deploying large units of armed Kurds into the streets.
But the pesh merga also exemplify the pitfalls of private armies - in the mid-1990's, the militias of the two Kurdish parties turned their guns on each other in a civil war that left at least 3,000 dead.
"What I see happening now in Iraq is the potential drift toward warlordism," said Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which tried but failed to disband militias before handing sovereignty to the Iraqis last June.
"If things go bad," he added, "if the center does not hold, if ethnic and regional divisions are not well and carefully managed by the country's political leaders, particularly at the center, then the existence of all these militias - both those preceding the handover of power and those that have arisen in recent months - could facilitate the descent of the country into some kind of Lebanon-style civil war."
The presence of the pesh merga "is bound to strengthen the resolve of Kurdish political leaders not to yield on their demands for far-reaching autonomy," said Mr. Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
The pesh merga are everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan - along the highways, atop government buildings, riding in convoys. They wear a hodgepodge of uniforms, from traditional baggy outfits to desert camouflage hand-me-downs from the United States Army. There is one thing that appears to be consistent, though: they think of themselves as Kurds first and Iraqis second.
"If I work hard to protect my people and my cities, indirectly I'll serve Iraq," Col. Mehdi Dosky, 44, the commander of the training camp here, said as he sat behind his desk in a dark green Iraqi Army uniform. Two officers on a couch pored over evaluation forms of the trainees. A map on one wall showed the theoretical pan-Kurdish nation that Kurds in the Middle East hope to carve out one day - a huge territory stretching from the Mediterranean to western Iran and taking in large parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
"We don't think it's a good idea to disband our army," said Colonel Dosky, whose father served as a pesh merga from the militia's first days. "We want to keep our forces and have them protect our region. The Kurds will protect their area, and other people will use their forces to protect their own areas. There are too many ethnic and religious problems right now in Iraq."
The American dependence on such proxy armies is clearest in Mosul, where Kurds make up nearly a quarter of the population. In November, Sunni Arab rebels overran police stations and forced thousands of officers to quit, and the Arab governor requested the aid of two Kurdish battalions of the Iraqi National Guard.
Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of Task Force Olympia, the American force which until last week was charged with controlling Mosul, used Kurds to guard his headquarters.
But the presence of an ethnic or sect-based militia in a diverse city can quickly inflame tensions.
Such is the case in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen uneasily live side by side. At the request of Arabs and Turkmen, the American military asked pesh merga to leave the city after Mr. Hussein fell. Last summer, Kurdish officials said, the Americans allowed 300 pesh merga to return temporarily to fight insurgents.
"Always, it's a sensitive issue," said Suphi Sabir, a senior official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the most prominent Turkmen party in Kirkuk. "But we won't start a fight over it because the result would be very bad."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:24:15 AM ||
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They get it. They will fight. If the PC fools / State wankers would get out of the equation, their mere presence would deter terr activity. They must stay. They should be allowed to actively patrol - until the Police measure up. Everyone who does not like their presence is free to get the fuck out of Kurdistan, er, Northern Iraq, heh.
There are CIA paramilitary officers and other US personnel in Pakistan dedicated to look for Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, says a congressional report. The Congressional Research Service, which advises Congress and writes policy briefs for US lawmakers, says in a recent report that some of these agents are based in Pakistan as "civilian contractors." The report points out that both Osama bin Laden and Al Zawahiri escaped the December 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and, "according to most assessments, fled into Pakistan, where they have continued to elude capture by Pakistani forces and agents."
The report notes that a March 2004 Pakistan forces' offensive against suspected terrorist hideouts in the South Waziristan region, failed to find these two or other major Al Qaeda figures. In December 2004, the report says, President Pervez Musharraf also acknowledged that the "trail has gone cold," a characterization generally backed by US observers. Although Osama and Zawahiri remain at large, US officials say that much progress has been made against Al Qaeda, but that more remains to be done.
The CRS report quotes former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet as telling a congressional hearing last year that "the Al Qaeda leadership structure we charted after Sept 11 is seriously damaged, but the group remains as committed as ever to attacking the US homeland... But do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting Al Qaeda is defeated. It is not."
Of the top 37 top Al Qaeda operatives identified by US agencies after Sept. 11, 2001, 15 have been killed or captured.
The CRS says that the Bush administration points to the capture or killing of senior Al Qaeda leaders as evidence of progress against Al Qaeda, adding that some key Al Qaeda operatives were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani law-enforcement agencies. Of the top 37 top Al Qaeda operatives identified by US agencies after Sept. 11, 2001, 15 have been killed or captured. The most notable among them include: number three leader Mohammad Atef (killed in Afghanistan by US Predator); Sept 11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (arrested by Pakistan); key recruiter and planner Abu Zubaydah (arrested by Pakistan); Southeast Asian affiliate operational leader Hanbali (Riduan Isammudin), a key operative of Jemaah Islamiyah (arrested in Thailand); Sept 11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh (arrested by Pakistan); and Abdul Ali al-Harithi, key plotter in Yemen (killed by US Predator in Yemen).
In the aggregate, since the Sept 11th attacks, about 3,000 suspected Al Qaeda members have been detained or arrested by about 90 countries, of which 650 are under US control. According to the CRS, US officials have repeatedly denied that during the Afghan war the United States directly supported those volunteers who came to Afghanistan for fighting the Soviets but the report notes that the United States did covertly finance these Mujahideen factions.
The Mujahideen factions we supported were Afghan parties.
From 1981 to 1991, the United States provided about $3 billion to them to facilitate their jihad in Afghanistan. During this period, neither Osama nor his associates were known to have openly advocated, undertaken, or planned any direct attacks against the United States, although they all were critical of US support for Israel in the Middle East.
The report quotes US officials as saying that Al Qaeda cells and associates have been located in over 70 countries. Among the groups identified as members of the Al Qaeda coalition after the 9/11, virtually all are still active today.
Two Louisiana men are in federal custody after they allegedly tried to provide fake documents, including Mississippi driver's licenses, to terrorists.
Lamont Ranson, 32, and Cedric Carpenter, 33, both of New Orleans, are the first to be charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to defraud the United States and an attempt to provide material support to terrorists, U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton said.
Both men thought they were setting up a deal to provide members of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf with fake birth certificates, Social Security cards and other documents, Lampton said. In exchange, the men were asking for $500,000 in cash and $500,000 in heroine, according to court papers.
But the people they were meeting with were government informants for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lampton said.
"These (suspects) are not charged with being terrorists," Lampton said. "They are people willing to assist persons they thought to be terrorists."
Abu Sayyaf is a radical Islamic group based in the Philippines whose goal is to establish a separate Islamic state for the minority Muslim population in the Philippines, according to court records. It is designated by the federal government as a foreign terrorist organization, papers show.
Ranson and Carpenter, who were arrested Thursday, are being held without bond at the Madison County Detention Center.
Carpenter also is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute, according to court papers.
Each is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Jackson on Monday morning.
If convicted, Ranson faces up to 85 years in prison and a $3 million fine, and Carpenter faces up to 35 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.
The men approached an informant in April 2004 on board a cruise ship during a trip from New Orleans to the Western Caribbean and inquired about producing the false documents, according to court papers. In June, Ranson showed the informant a laptop computer that included a program for the production of driver's license, the court papers said.
The men claimed to have "insiders" at the state Department of Public Safety who could assist them in obtaining false Mississippi documents, Lampton said.
DPS Commissioner Rusty Fortenberry and state Highway Patrol Chief Col. Marvin Curtis were immediately notified of the men's claims and investigated them, Lampton said.
DPS spokesman Warren Strain said the men actually came to DPS headquarters and propositioned a female inmate to help them get materials needed to make the licenses. The inmate turned them down and notified officials, Strain said.
"They never had access to anything that would help them obtain false documents," Strain said.
In July, though, Carpenter had a complete set of fraudulent documents, including a birth certificate, Social Security card and a Mississippi driver's license, records show. Some documents showed his photo but listed another identity, Lampton said.
"We were very concerned about that," Lampton said. "He did have the ability to produce some documents."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:34:27 AM ||
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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is sending Armed Forces Chief of Staff Efren Abu to Mindanao on Tuesday to determine if she should declare a ceasefire with Moro rebels fighting government troops in Sulu. The President's decision came after persistent calls for a ceasefire between government troops and followers of jailed Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) leader Nur Misuari and the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).
Arroyo, in a media interaction in Iloilo, said she will give the orders to Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz Jr. on Thursday based on Lieutenant General Abu's report. "I am sending General Abu to the area on Tuesday, and (on) Wednesday or Thursday, he will probably give a report to me. So, on Thursday, I will probably be ready to give an instruction to the Secretary of National Defense," she said.
The leaders of the mainstream Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and some officials of Sulu have offered to negotiate in behalf of the rebels. It has been more than two weeks since government launched offensives in Sulu, following the attacks against military outposts by renegades who are demanding the return of former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm) governor Nur Misuari to Sulu for his trial. Press secretary and presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said "the earlier we are able to bring peace to Mindanao, the better for the development of the area." Bunye said there are foreign institutions that are willing to pour development funds into Mindanao but the insurgency situation must be solved first.
The MILF leadership calls for a ceasefire in the ongoing clash between the government forces and the MNLF-breakaway group in Sulu. MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said ceasefire should be declared first and talk out their concerns but apparently the government is unwilling. Close to a hundred government forces and rebel groups died in the ongoing clashes while thousands of civilians have also been displaced because of the skirmishes. Kabalu said it has been a long while since government has investigated Misuari's case. If he is guilty then a hearing should have been conducted by now and due process be served, he added. Kabalu said old guards and supporters of the MNLF recently held several secret meetings that could lead to more clashes in Mindanao. Kabalu said they have monitored how several MNLF old leaders have been conducting secret meetings in Lanao, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and General Santos areas these last weeks of February. Though these combatants were out of commission for several years since the peace accord with the government, Kabalu warned that these MNLF cells still possess high-powered firearms and ammunitions. He said the government should not underestimate these groups who might just be regrouping and might sympathize the breakaway group in Sulu.
Soldiers fighting in Sulu scored anew as they captured a major camp of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group Friday. The mountain stronghold of the Muslim extremist group outside Indanan town on southern Jolo island was overrun Thursday by about 400 soldiers from the Army's 53rd Infantry Battalion, said Jolo military chief Brigadier General Agustin Dema-ala. About 100 Abu Sayyaf defenders broke up into small groups as troops, backed by helicopter gun ships firing rockets, assaulted the camp on top of the Budkaha mountain, about 940 kilometers south of Manila, Dema-ala said. He said there were no government casualties. Civilians fleeing the fighting reported seeing some wounded gunmen. The camp "is the symbol of power of the Abu Sayyaf group, which provided sanctuary to lawless elements on Jolo," Dema-ala said. The capture of the base "shows the will of the government to assert itself in imposing the laws of the law and the determination of the government to go after violators of the law," he said. The camp is also a sanctuary for local Abu Sayyaf commander Albader Parad, whose gunmen killed three soldiers on security patrol in Indanan on February 19.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:33:11 AM ||
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There are no more than 1500 armed militants in Chechnya, the republic's State Council Chairman Taus Dzhabrailov said on Friday. "As far as I know, the militants have a numerical strength limit of 1,500 men. This number is fully financed and supported from the East and from other countries," Dzhabrailov told a news conference at Interfax on Friday.
Separatist emissaries are operating in villages inside and outside Chechnya to recruit fighters to maintain their strength at the 1,500 limit, he said. "Tentatively, it can be said that about 1,000 militants are permanently in camps in the mountainous parts of the Chechen Republic. Their hard core consists of groups under the control of [Shamil] Basayev and Arab mercenaries, of whom there are about 300 to 400 men," Dzhabrailov said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:31:08 AM ||
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Ten years after Boris Yeltsin first sent Russian troops into Chechnya to put down an attempt at independence, violence has seeped across a tier of adjoining republics creating a band of instability in the northern Caucasus. Some recent examples of the trouble:
Dagestan
Jan. 15, 2005: Security forces beseige a house in Makhachkala where several gunmen are located. Five of them and a police officer are killed. Officials find guns, grenades and other explosives in a safe house.
Feb. 2, 2005: A deputy interior minister and three of his bodyguards are gunned down in an ambush on the main street of Makhachkala.
North Ossetia
Sept. 1, 2004: Hundreds of children and adults are taken hostage at a school in Beslan in an operation believed planned by Chechens. After a three-day ordeal, 331 are left dead.
Ingushetia
June 22, 2004: In well-organized night raids, gunmen set up false checkpoints in Nazran and stage attacks across the city, mostly against police and government officials; about 90 people are killed.
Kabardino-Balkaria
Jan. 27, 2005: Police kill seven suspected pro-Chechnyan Islamic insurgents after a two-day siege in the capital city of Nalchik.
Karachayevo-Cherkessia
Oct. 18, 2004: Deputy prime minister shot and killed as he drives to work in Cherkessk, the republic's capital.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:29:54 AM ||
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It was a little after 6 a.m. when the "bandits," as they are officially known, burst into the house with police hot on their heels.
Amid shouts, screams and the occasional burst of small-arms fire, 16 sleepy families in three adjoining houses tumbled into their bathrobes and slippers and out into the snow. The bandits holed up in the cluttered apartments. Police laid siege outside.
By the time it was over 16 hours later, the row of houses was little more than a pile of rubble, still licked by fire from flamethrowers and rocket-propelled grenades. The mangled and charred bodies of five bandits and one police officer lay among the ruins. Shortly after 10 p.m., a 44-ton T-72 battle tank rumbled over the wreckage and delivered the coup de grace, crushing any trace of life and the families' remaining possessions.
Here in Dagestan, a southern Russian region wedged between the troubled republic of Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, they call what happened Jan. 15 near the end of quiet Magistralnaya Street the One-Day War. The name is misleading in one respect, many agree: It was but one day of many.
The Chechen conflict has seeped beyond its borders into the northern Caucasus region, and Dagestan is one of the new fronts. The bandits, as the Russian authorities call them, are Muslim insurgents who have crossed over from Chechnya or launched battles on their home turf. The police, like those in many areas of Russia now, wear full camouflage and arrive at their house calls in armored vehicles equipped with battle gear.
Eleven Dagestani police officers have been killed since Jan. 1. Last year, 37 policemen died, including the chief of the Russian Federal Security Service's Dagestan bureau and the Interior Ministry's operations chief. The minister of information and national policy was assassinated in August 2003.
The region's worst outbreak of violence was September's seizure by militants from throughout the region of an entire school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. The assault led to the deaths of 331 hostages. Battles between Russian forces and insurgents also have occurred in Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria republics, most recently on Sunday, when 100 police in armored personnel carriers brought a fiery end to a three-day siege at an apartment building in the town of Nalchik, killing up to three militants inside and arresting five in sweeps throughout the city.
A separate conflict broke out in Karachayevo-Cherkessia, leading the Kremlin to abruptly replace the local government this month.
Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev has long declared his intention to ignite war in the northern Caucasus and establish an Islamic state across the steep mountains and verdant plains that stretch between the Black and Caspian seas.
Increasingly, his army appears to be made up not only of Chechens, but recruits from the republics surrounding it — along with fighters from other Muslim lands. Few of these places are well-known. But if the recent incidents are pinpointed on a map, they trace a line of instability across the entire north Caucasus region — in some ways, Russia's nightmare scenario.
"It is becoming clearer and clearer that the Chechnya conflict is no longer an isolated one, confined to the borders of Chechnya, and it could even be said that the conflict has already lost its original ethnic and geographical localization," said Nikolai Silayev, a Caucasus analyst with the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. "The conflict is metastasizing."
Police in Dagestan, the mountainous republic that shares a 335-mile border with Chechnya, are mindful that they are a crucial line of defense. Russia's southern perimeter, the mutinous edge of the empire through much of modern history, is deeply vulnerable.
"We're walking on the edge of a razor here," Col. Abdul Musayev, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Interior police forces in Dagestan, confided recently. "We are the southern foundation, we are the bottom of Russia. If the disintegration of Russia happens, it will start in Dagestan."
Yet the kind of large-scale, military-style response displayed in Makhachkala has repercussions of its own. Critics of the Kremlin's policy in the Caucasus say Russia's focus on shootouts and abducting suspected collaborators, as well as the ongoing misery of civilians across the region, ensures the continual creation of new militants.
In Makhachkala, an estimated 60 residents whose homes were destroyed spent three weeks in a seedy downtown hotel with no heat, no food deliveries and no change of clothes. Only after they protested in the streets this month did officials repair the heat and begin delivering small aid packages.
"There is literally nothing left of our house. No walls, nothing. As of today, we have nothing," said Tigran Magomedov, 33. "We were put up in these absolutely cold rooms. People waited and waited, and finally, they ran out of patience."
His sister, Berliant Magomedova, 35, said citizens did not support the insurgents but were fed up with the police.
"Who can say the situation is getting better?" she asked. "The cops get killed by the dozen on a regular basis. If they had been doing their jobs, they wouldn't have allowed those terrorists to enter our house."
Jasmina Dzamalova's 6-year-old daughter was inadvertently left inside the building with the militants until her husband went back in during the standoff and won the girl's release.
"It is a war going on, I can tell you that," the 28-year-old literature teacher said. "It is dangerous to live here. We're afraid all the time. You send your kids to school, and you wonder, are they going to come back? You go to the market, and you're afraid, because you don't know which market they're going to use as a target next.
"God forbid," she added, "that any mother should have to go through what I went through that day."
But it was just one of many violent confrontations in the region. On the same day as the siege on Magistralnaya Street, several special forces officers were dispatched to a house in a suburban town just outside of Makhachkala. But before they could burst through the front door, the suspected militant, 51-year-old Magomedzagir Akaev, opened fire.
The commander of the unit and two officers died along with Akaev.
Twelve days later, there was a six-hour battle between police and militants in Nalchik. It left seven insurgents dead and nearly 20 apartments destroyed or damaged. Authorities quickly brought in repair crews, getting most families back into their homes within three weeks.
Then, back in Dagestan on Feb. 2, the republic's deputy interior minister and three of his bodyguards were killed on the main street of Makhachkala by unknown gunmen who blocked the path of their car and opened fire.
On the same day, the administrator of Dagestan's Khasav-Yurt district was saved from a roadside bomb by the armor plating in his Mercedes limo.
Chechen officials are as capable of spreading mayhem as the insurgents. This was illustrated Jan. 10, when police in Dagestan stopped the car of a Chechen woman, Zulai Kadyrova, and two of her bodyguards. The car and its occupants had no proper documents, police said, but it turned out that Kadyrova was the sister of Chechnya's deputy prime minister and presidential security force leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Kadyrov drove to her rescue with 150 men, about eight of whom forced their way into the police station. There, they aimed their guns at several officers, shoving them and punching them in the stomachs with their rifle butts, before departing with Kadyrova. Dagestan prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the case.
Dagestan's interior minister, Adilgerey Magomedtagirov, has survived two assassination attempts and on Dec. 30 buried one of his senior lieutenants, Col. Gadzhiramazan Ramazanov, chief of the operational department.
Yet he enthusiastically endorses Moscow's line that the insurgents are mere bandits who can be rounded up and put out of business with enough good police work. The same official line has held that the number of Chechen insurgents has remained constant at about 1,500 for the last several years, though dozens are reported killed every month.
"It's only a matter of time before they are all apprehended," Magomedtagirov said in an interview. "Of course, as long as these people continue to run into the woods, these conflicts are bound to continue. Because as a rule, they don't surrender. But I can tell you that, sooner or later, we'll get to every single one of them and hold them to account."
Critics doubt it.
"This process of new people running to the mountains is quite explicable. People do this because they do not know how to protect themselves from the arbitrary rule of the current authorities," said Tatyana Kasatkina, executive director of Memorial, a human rights center in Moscow.
"People get summarily rounded up in mop-up operations, they are tortured, and very often their dead bodies are discovered, or they simply vanish without a trace," she said. "And no appeals to the prosecutor bodies or other law-enforcement bodies yield any results. It is all too obvious why some people prefer to hide in the mountains and correct the wrong the best way they know how — with weapons in their hands."
The incident on Magistralnaya Street started when police got word that several insurgents were operating a safe house just down the street, purportedly under the direction of the "emir" of the Jennet (Paradise) Islamic cell in Dagestan, Ruslan Makasharipov.
Makasharipov, 33, is a former translator for Basayev and Saudi-born militant Khattab, who operated training camps for extremists in Chechnya before dying of poisoning in 2002 — allegedly after receiving a letter from Russian agents.
Since then, he is believed to have overseen many operations in Dagestan. Authorities say his group has been responsible for most of the major assassinations in the republic since 1999.
Surveillance cameras outside the safe house allowed the inhabitants to flee before police closed in, and in the ensuing chase they ended up barricaded in the complex down the street.
After the shootout, police searched the safe house and found what they believed were signs that the insurgents were planning a "Beslan-type" operation. One of the militants — identified as Makasharipov's cousin — was wearing an explosive belt. Police found hand grenades, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, guns and 330 pounds of explosives in the house and a nearby car.
Authorities first announced that Makasharipov had been killed in the operation. But the only bodies they have been able to identify are of three young Dagestanis. They are analyzing the DNA of the other two bodies, one of which is so maimed that, in Col. Musayev's words, "it fit into a plastic grocery bag."
"Right now, there's exactly the same probability that he's alive as that he's dead," Musayev said.
Last week, militants struck again. On Feb. 13, a highway patrol car was blown up by a roadside bomb in the Dagestani town of Stepnoy, killing one police officer and injuring three. On Wednesday, a car bomb exploded near the regional administration building in the town of Kizlyar, just as three senior government officials were driving by. A woman passing by was killed and six other people were wounded.
"It's premature to talk about victory. But we know the situation in the battlefield like the back of our hand," said Zagir Arukhov, Dagestan's minister of national policy and information. Arukhov, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the concept of Islamic jihad, or holy war, succeeded the assassinated official.
"Today, when these clashes occur, it is the law-enforcement bodies who are on the front lines," he said. "They are really like a safety net, which the terrorists aspire to remove so they can intimidate the entire society and impregnate it with their teachings.
"We will never allow anything like this to happen," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:28:38 AM ||
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#1
God the Russian police are so inept. If it wasn't so serious it would be comical.
2 religions that need to face a universal and world wide ban Islam and Scientology.
Ten members of illegal armed groups have been killed in Chechen mountainous districts in an ongoing large- scale operation that was launched there several days ago, Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax on Saturday. "The examination of the bodies shows that they are Dagestanis, Chechens, and foreigners," Kadyrov said. "The guerilla unit currently numbers over 60 people, taking into account the losses it has suffered," Kadyrov said. "It is international by its composition and includes Arabs, Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis, and Chechens," he said. The operation against the guerilla unit led by prominent Dagestani- born terrorist Rappani Khalilov and Aslan Maskhadov's chief of staff Akhmed Advorkhanov was resumed on Saturday morning, Kadyrov said.
This article starring:
AKHMED ADVORKHANOV
Chechnya
ASLAN MASKHADOV
Chechnya
RAPPANI KHALILOV
Chechnya
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:25:48 AM ||
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#1
They were cowardly Islamoscum before, now they're hardening.
Interpol says the threat from Al Qaida has not eased since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Interpol director Ronald Noble said Al Qaida continues to plan major attacks on the West. Noble said that despite its losses Al Qaida has been planning strikes with chemical and biological weapons.
"The terrorist threat is as real today as in 2001 when Sept. 11 occurred," Noble said. "The number of terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world and the evidence that has been seized revealing the kind of planning that Al Qaida has done in the area of biological weapons or chemical weapons is enough evidence for me to be concerned about it."
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. on Feb. 22, Noble said Interpol has urged its members to plan a defense for an Al Qaida biological attack. In March, the agency has scheduled a conference of police and health officials in Lyons, France.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:23:29 AM ||
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#1
The "Threat" never drops, but quality and quantity of execution does.
A spacecraft that flies on sunbeams is about to begin its travels across the solar system. A group of American and Russian scientists are preparing to launch a probe with giant, wafer-thin plastic sails that can catch sunlight just as a yacht's sails fill with wind.
Cosmos-1 has been designed to tack across space without using rockets and could form the forerunner of a network of solar observatories that would hover over the sun to provide early warnings of disruptive magnetic storms, or deliver instruments to remote space stations and planetary exploration teams.
The probe, to be launched from a Russian nuclear missile submarine, is made up of a fan of eight 15-metre sails, each thinner than a dustbin bag but stiffened and coated with mirror material.
The technology is the product of years of collaboration by the US Planetary Society, a group of private space enthusiasts; the Russian Academy of Sciences; and Moscow space industry designers Lavochkin. 'Cosmos-1 will be blasted into space by conventional rocket technology but once in orbit above earth, solar sail technology will take over,' said Susan Lendroth of the Planetary Society. 'We will be able to move each one of Cosmos-1's sails individually and so direct the craft in whatever direction we wish. The aim will be to get it to higher and higher orbits.'
Solar sail technology exploits the fact that photons have momentum and apply pressure to surfaces. A comet's tail is the result of solar photons battering its surface, for example. But this pressure is still relatively meagre and only recently - with the development of micro-electronic circuits that allow tiny spacecraft to be constructed - has it become possible to consider powering craft with solar sails.
The mission has cost a mere $4 million, raised by the Planetary Society. Cosmos-1 weighs only 50kg and contains only sails and electronic systems for guiding its panels. 'It is a technology test, no more than that,' said Lendroth. 'Once we have shown what can be done with solar sails, we hope all sorts of other agencies will follow.'
Both Nasa and the European Space Agency say they are interested. One mission they are eyeing is for a full solar sail mission to place a probe in Mercury's orbit. Mercury whirls round the sun every 88 days, and a traditionally powered spacecraft would need to gain enormous energy to manoeuvre above the planet. A solar sail ship could spiral in towards Mercury and slip into orbit without any fuel.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:22:39 AM ||
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#1
Cool.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 1:17
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#2
Amen, Barbara. Private enterprise, again, leads the way - reawakening the imaginations of those who look beyond their navels.
NASA, like State, the CIA, etc, needs a long hot bath to clean out the visionless self-serving 'tards installed during and since the rainbow purge of the Clinton years. During that time, Dan Golden's tenure, real and highly experienced engineers were forced into retirement - the engineers that made NASA - in favor of MBA-types. They turned a hardcore think-tank and competency atmosphere into a MacNamara-ish Edsel nightmare of chart shows and career climbers. I knew some of these guys because they migrated to the oil business. I was amazed that I was more bitter about their treatment than they were.
similar problems plague the IRS, after the 'Be nice damnit!' legislature, the IRS was forced to restructure, the point of the shuffle was to get the bad out and the good in, problem is the bad had the upper hand and all they did was give their cronies promotions and get rid of the good ones because the guys that knew what they were doing always made them uncomfortable. Nothing can make a useless guy unhappy like being forced to recognize his own incompetence; anyway, end result is that most, if not all, of the high management of the IRS is a painful joke.
----
Ex:
For extra feel goodness, one of the above jokes decided to limit the length of audits, to ensure speedy results.
problem is there is no equal speedy compulsion for the companies to demonstrate their compliance with tax law and plenty of financial incentive to make sure itâs impossible to complete the audit in the allotted time.
(
not that there arenât enough ways for big businesses to avoid paying taxes as it is
ex:
there is a law, passed by our beloved congress, which states that a company that was started between the time of Date x and the same Date x, in the state of y, does not have to pay taxes. Entertainingly enough, only one company was started during that time frame (I would fill in the variables, but my memory fails me right now)
(as a side note, if you want to be happy. Donât follow where the money goes in the history this country, it will only depress you)
)
The wide variation in accounting systems and database structures makes it VERY easy for the companies to confuse the data to the point where it would take months to break down and analyze
(the computers the IRS uses are old machines, but even with new machines, the work can be time intensive)
----
an old guy I know who used to love his job at the IRS. 'public enemy' or not he was still doing valuable work for the country he had served all his life (military etc).. An x-IRS accountant can make a hell of a lot of money working in the private sector, much more than he/she ever made working for the government. Many of the folks stuck around because the atmosphere was good and many of their peers were high caliber folks. It was just a nice place to work and thatâs something you canât buy with any amount of money... most of those high caliber types have since jumped ship, but my friend stuck around out of nostalgia and the vain hope that things would improve (things always got worse)
hell..
he used to talk about never retiring, or maybe retiring in 2035 (I don't know why he picked that year )
A week ago I was talking to him, he told me with disgust that he no longer felt proud to be working for the Internal Revenue Service and planned to retire before this year ends. He never said it, but when I looked in his eyes, I could see he felt embarrassed to be associated with them any longer. There was a sadness in his eyes, the kind you only see when someone watches something good and personal go bad and turn into the unrecognizable.
damn. Iâm being talkative today. Ok Back into the lurker-mobile for me
#4
Don't let the Aussies know about this sails-in-space thing we got. They'll cheat.
Posted by: Dennis Connor ||
02/27/2005 8:38
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#5
Dr simple fix:
No deductions.
10% sales tax.
10% income tax.
Anyone under poverty line gets back a fixed amount for the sales tax paid as a tax credit (or refund), and 100% of the income tax.
No deductions. No mortage deduction, no charity deduction, none of that. Just take more of your paycheck home. (Social Security gets rolled into this, to treat it like what it truly is: a wealth transfer program).
Capital gains are taxed at the 10% income rate.
Tax return is a postcard:
What did you make?
Take 10% of that and send it in if you diudnt get it withheld.
Corporations charged the same taxes - and are required to pass through all profit to shareholders, with strict expense accounting to prevent jobbing the system. Stock options, etc, are *income* and taxed accordingly.
This plugs up the biggest leak in the economy (the underground and off books economy) by way of the sales tax. And promotes a very fair tax structure - everyone pays the same percentage.
Why it will not happen: It puts the IRS, laywers and accountants out of business, and it stops congress from being able to give pet projects and donators tax breaks.
Anyone under poverty line gets back a fixed amount for the sales tax paid as a tax credit (or refund), and 100% of the income tax.
No deductions. No mortage deduction, no charity deduction, none of that. Just take more of your paycheck home. (Social Security gets rolled into this, to treat it like what it truly is: a wealth transfer program).
Capital gains are taxed at the 10% income rate.
Tax return is a postcard:
What did you make?
Take 10% of that and send it in if you diudnt get it withheld.
Corporations charged the same taxes - and are required to pass through all profit to shareholders, with strict expense accounting to prevent jobbing the system. Stock options, etc, are *income* and taxed accordingly.
This plugs up the biggest leak in the economy (the underground and off books economy) by way of the sales tax. And promotes a very fair tax structure - everyone pays the same percentage.
Why it will not happen: It puts the IRS, laywers and accountants out of business, and it stops congress from being able to give pet projects and donators tax breaks.
Anyone under poverty line gets back a fixed amount for the sales tax paid as a tax credit (or refund), and 100% of the income tax.
No deductions. No mortage deduction, no charity deduction, none of that. Just take more of your paycheck home. (Social Security gets rolled into this, to treat it like what it truly is: a wealth transfer program).
Capital gains are taxed at the 10% income rate.
Tax return is a postcard:
What did you make?
Take 10% of that and send it in if you diudnt get it withheld.
Corporations charged the same taxes - and are required to pass through all profit to shareholders, with strict expense accounting to prevent jobbing the system. Stock options, etc, are *income* and taxed accordingly.
This plugs up the biggest leak in the economy (the underground and off books economy) by way of the sales tax. And promotes a very fair tax structure - everyone pays the same percentage.
Why it will not happen: It puts the IRS, laywers and accountants out of business, and it stops congress from being able to give pet projects and donators tax breaks.
Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating Islamist militants in Spain since 1991, warned that groups such as the Algerian Salafist movement and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group were particularly dangerous for Europe. "They are groups that have membership inside and outside Europe and in any case we have to keep close watch on the relationship these groups have with others like Ansar al-Islam," Garzon told Reuters in an interview late on Friday. "It's obvious that this type of terror groups are perfectly operative ⊠The threat from this type of terrorism is real, it's constant, it's current and it will continue to be."
Ansar al-Islam is one of the most active and best known groups attacking the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Garzon said the Iraq war had inspired the recruitment of new holy warriors "in general," but declined to characterize that recruitment in Europe. Garzon, who on Monday begins nine months' leave to teach at New York University, has conducted several investigations into suspect Islamist activity including one probe that led him to charge Osama bin Laden with mass murder. He had been following a suspected al Qaeda cell in Spain at the time of Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and then ordered the arrest of the suspects for fear they might also attack. The trial of some two dozen of them is due to begin within months.
Garzon said it was impossible to measure how serious the Islamist militant threat was. But ever since the early 1990s they have "set up bases in key points" of Europe, where they have fabricated false identity papers and raised money for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and now Iraq, Garzon said. A year ago, one group became the first to launch a serious attack in Western Europe with the Madrid train bombings, for which more than 70 people have been arrested, around half of whom are still in jail or under court supervision. In his just published book "A World Without Fear" Garzon notes that in January 2004 bin Laden ordered followers to attack occupation forces in Iraq, where Spain had 1,300 troops sent by the former conservative government, but said the Madrid train bomber did "not necessarily" take it as an order target Spain. "The idea of committing a major attack could have come from within the (Madrid train bombing) group itself or it could have come from abroad ⊠It's not important who the bosses are. There may not have been any, or there may have been an emir who acted as a catalyst and indoctrinated the others, but it doesn't even have to been an emir. The groups could have acted on their own or in coordination with others," Garzon said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:21:40 AM ||
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There is widening unease within the Central Intelligence Agency over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or otherwise punished for their conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects, according to current and former government officials.
Until now, only one C.I.A. employee, a contract worker from North Carolina, has been charged with a crime in connection with the treatment of prisoners, stemming from a death in Afghanistan in 2003. But the officials confirmed that the agency had asked the Justice Department to review at least one other case, from Iraq, to determine if a C.I.A. officer and interpreter should face prosecution.
In addition, the current and former government officials said the agency's inspector general was now reviewing at least a half-dozen other cases, and perhaps many more, in what they described as an expanding circle of inquiries to determine whether C.I.A. employees had been involved in any misconduct.
Previously, intelligence officials have acknowledged only that "several" cases were under review by the agency's inspector general. But one government official said, "There's a lot more out there than has generally been recognized, and people at the agency are worried."
Of particular concern, the officials said, is the possibility that C.I.A. officers using interrogation techniques that the government ruled as permissible after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might now be punished, or even prosecuted, for their actions in the line of duty.
The details of some of the inquiries have been reported, but the government officials said other cases under review have never been publicly disclosed. Officials declined to provide details of all the cases now under scrutiny. They would not say whether the reviews were limited to incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, where C.I.A. officers have been particularly active, or whether they might extend to cases from other countries, possibly including secret sites around the world where three dozen senior leaders of Al Qaeda are being held by the agency.
The officials said that the concern within the ranks had been growing since the agency's removal of its station chief in Baghdad, Iraq, in December 2003 in part because of concerns about the deaths of two Iraqis who had been questioned by C.I.A. employees.
The reason for the station chief's removal has not been previously disclosed. Former and current intelligence officials say the action occurred nearly four months before a wider pattern of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became publicly known. The removal was ordered by senior officials at C.I.A. headquarters in Washington within several weeks of their learning about the deaths of the Iraqi prisoners in separate incidents.
In response to the reviews, the C.I.A. has already made a number of significant changes to its rules on interrogation and detention as a new safeguard against problems, the officials said.
Asked about the inspector general's reviews, an intelligence official described them as a robust effort on the part of the C.I.A. to ensure that its conduct had been proper. "The inspector general is working collaboratively with counterparts in the military services in all investigations," the official said.
The agency has referred some cases to the Justice Department for a review of possible criminal charges under the federal torture law, which forbids extreme interrogation tactics, and under civil rights laws more commonly used in police brutality prosecutions. Justice Department officials said that prosecutors working in a special unit in Alexandria, Va., were conducting criminal inquiries into the possible mistreatment of detainees by nonmilitary personnel, but that they would not discuss what cases were being reviewing or whether they would charge anyone with crimes.
Justice Department officials would say only that several cases involving civilian employees of the government had been referred to the department. They would not discuss which cases were under scrutiny or what agencies had sought the department's review. But they said such reviews would seek to determine whether the facts in the cases warrant prosecution under several federal statutes, among them the civil rights laws, which bar government employees from using excessive force, and the federal torture law, which forbids the use of extreme interrogation techniques on detainees.
In one of the cases that contributed to the removal of the station chief, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi died under C.I.A. interrogation in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003. It is probable that he died of wounds inflicted by commandos of the Navy Seals who struck him in the head with rifle butts after they and C.I.A. officers captured him. But former intelligence officials said there were still questions about the role played by a C.I.A. officer and contract interrogator who had taken custody of Mr. Jamadi and were questioning him at Abu Ghraib at the time of his death.
Mr. Jamadi had not been examined by a physician at the time he was brought to Abu Ghraib, because the C.I.A. officers had circumvented procedures in which he was to have been registered with the military.
The death was among the most notorious to emerge from the incidents at Abu Ghraib that became public last spring, in part because the man's body was photographed wrapped in plastic and packed in ice.
In another widely publicized incident, an Iraqi commander, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died after he was shoved head-first into a sleeping bag by Army interrogators, after several days of questioning that also involved at least one C.I.A. officer. An autopsy showed that General Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression" showing "evidence of blunt force trauma to the chest and legs," according to Army officials.
In both those cases, American military personnel are facing disciplinary proceedings, including hearings in Colorado in which several Army soldiers are being tried on murder charges. The death at Abu Ghraib is still being investigated by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, and has been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the current and former intelligence officials said.
None of the reviews at the C.I.A. have been completed, but they include a broad assessment of detention and interrogation procedures in Iraq, the officials said. Already, they said, senior officials at the C.I.A. have ordered broad changes as a result of the review, including some that would impose strict limits on the use of coercive techniques used to extract information from suspected terrorists, the officials said.
Intelligence officials had previously described the shakeup of the C.I.A.'s Baghdad operations as related to concerns about the officer's capacity to manage the agency's large and fast-growing station in Iraq. But in recent interviews, current and former intelligence officials said that while those accounts were partly accurate, the action was also prompted by concerns that the Baghdad station chief had not paid enough attention to issues surrounding the detention and interrogation of prisoners.
There is no indication that the former station chief, who has since left the C.I.A., is under any kind of criminal scrutiny, the officials said.
To date, the C.I.A. has publicly acknowledged possible wrongdoing in a case of prisoner abuse in only one case, involving David Passaro, a civilian who had been working under contract for the C.I.A in Iraq. Mr. Passaro is awaiting trial in federal court in North Carolina in connection with the June 21, 2003, death of a prisoner in Afghanistan a day after being beaten during an interrogation.
The reviews come after the Justice Department's repudiation of an August 2002 legal opinion that had served as the foundation for rules that guided the C.I.A. in how far its officers and contractors could go in using coercive techniques to extract information for prisoners during interrogations. Some current and former intelligence officials have expressed concern that the repudiation undermined some of the legal authority that the Bush administration had provided for the agency's role in detention and interrogation.
In public testimony last week, Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, declined to say how many C.I.A. reviews of possible misconduct involving prisoners were under way or when they might be completed. But he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that while the North Carolina case was the only one to have been made public, "a bunch of other cases" were now under review by the inspector general.
"What I can't tell you is how many more might come in the door," Mr. Goss added. Mr. Goss, who took over in September, said that a report ordered by one of his predecessors had produced "10 recommendations or so" involving interrogation and detention, and that "about, I think, eight of those have been done."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:15:43 AM ||
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#1
Rule #1: No Witnesses.
Rule #2: This Does NOT Mean "Kill Witnesses".
Rule #3: If the military won't do it, it could probably get you in trouble.
Rule #4: Trouble is NOT your business. Your business is mission accomplishment.
Rule #5: "The bomb" will either go off or it won't. Your watching it won't help, either way.
Rule #6: Letting someone go often gets you more results than any other means.
Rule #7: The most effective interrogators provide coffee and cigarettes.
Rule #8: "Nobody ever looks for a body in a cemetery."
Rule #9: "Never bring a knife to a gunfight."
Rule #10: When in doubt, go. It was there before you arrived, it will probably be there after you leave.
#3
This is the crux of the problem for Ops and it always has been:
How do we take the bad guys out without becoming the bad guys ourselves?
Sometimes the "bad guy" methods are the only ones that work due to cultural issues - but after the first break, the others fall in line.
Sometimes urgency demands expedient methods. Problem is EVERYTHING becomes urgent to people up the food chain, if you use "field expedients" and they seem effective.
WHat most people seem to never know or figure out is that the effectiveness of the "expedient" methods drops rapidly, and you are stuck with no real recourse. That is, "bad-cop:bad-cop" only works for a while, and only if there was a "good-cop" somewhere along the way as a contrast.
Put more simply:
All stick and no carrot will eventually cause Ivan/Abdul/Pedro/Chiang to callous up and go silent in resignation, or else just start talking his head off telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
Either way you've blown a source because absent corroboration, you have no idea if anything he says is worth knowing.
I don't envy Porter Goss his job - hell its tough enough just carrying out policy, much less formulating it, in this kind of a flip-flop black-white world.
#4
This is the crux of the problem for Ops and it always has been:
How do we take the bad guys out without becoming the bad guys ourselves?
Sometimes the "bad guy" methods are the only ones that work due to cultural issues - but after the first break, the others fall in line.
Sometimes urgency demands expedient methods. Problem is EVERYTHING becomes urgent to people up the food chain, if you use "field expedients" and they seem effective.
WHat most people seem to never know or figure out is that the effectiveness of the "expedient" methods drops rapidly, and you are stuck with no real recourse. That is, "bad-cop:bad-cop" only works for a while, and only if there was a "good-cop" somewhere along the way as a contrast.
Put more simply:
All stick and no carrot will eventually cause Ivan/Abdul/Pedro/Chiang to callous up and go silent in resignation, or else just start talking his head off telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
Either way you've blown a source because absent corroboration, you have no idea if anything he says is worth knowing.
I don't envy Porter Goss his job - hell its tough enough just carrying out policy, much less formulating it, in this kind of a flip-flop black-white world.
#5
This is the crux of the problem for Ops and it always has been:
How do we take the bad guys out without becoming the bad guys ourselves?
Sometimes the "bad guy" methods are the only ones that work due to cultural issues - but after the first break, the others fall in line.
Sometimes urgency demands expedient methods. Problem is EVERYTHING becomes urgent to people up the food chain, if you use "field expedients" and they seem effective.
WHat most people seem to never know or figure out is that the effectiveness of the "expedient" methods drops rapidly, and you are stuck with no real recourse. That is, "bad-cop:bad-cop" only works for a while, and only if there was a "good-cop" somewhere along the way as a contrast.
Put more simply:
All stick and no carrot will eventually cause Ivan/Abdul/Pedro/Chiang to callous up and go silent in resignation, or else just start talking his head off telling you whatever he thinks you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
Either way you've blown a source because absent corroboration, you have no idea if anything he says is worth knowing.
I don't envy Porter Goss his job - hell its tough enough just carrying out policy, much less formulating it, in this kind of a flip-flop black-white world.
LONDON - Queen Elizabeth II has distanced herself from the wedding of Prince Charles because she believes her son is putting "personal gratification before duty," a newspaper reported on Sunday.
He's not the first Crown Prince to do this.
Royal courtiers, quoted by The Sunday Telegraph, also said privately that the queen is "lukewarm" about the marriage and worried it could tarnish the monarchy itself.
Royal watchers in the British media called her planned absence a monumental snub even though the queen and other family members planned to attend the service of dedication afterwards at St George's Chapel in Windsor. The queen's private secretary Sir Robin Janvrin had tried to protect her from becoming involved in a "town hall marriage," which demeaned her own status, a courtier was quoted as saying.
The courtier said Janvrin's intervention was symptomatic of the queen's persistent concerns over Charles's relationship with Parker Bowles. "The queen believes that the Prince of Wales has put his own gratification and interests before duty by pursuing his relationship with Camilla and she can never forgive that," the courtier was quoted as saying.
She wasn't too happy with Diana either. Oh, the miseries of a meddling mother.
Meanwhile, The Sunday Times said the wedding may be the first in modern times not to be televised. While it had been agreed the town hall ceremony would not be broadcast, chances were only 50-50 that the church service would be shown because of objections from ArchDruid bishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:15:39 AM ||
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#1
What's with the odd cap? Is he a mooselimb? The ...whatever he wears looks vaguely druidic.
I would offer a guess that he ie one marble short of the full set.
#2
Many, many years ago Charles couldn't marry Camilla because she was, Ethel bring my salts, a Catholic. So he was pressured into marring that greedy bitch Diana. Result has been scandal, cheating, divorce and a severe blow to Maonarchy's prestige. So the best the Queen could do is shut up.
#3
Charlie is a gone coon. The best thing Prince Harry could do is to start cultivating a large flock of SAS as his personal entourage. Only by "militarizing" the crown can he save it, protecting both it and Britain from the Eurocrats and enemies of Britain who seek the downfall of both. Privately, he should create his own (offshore) army, paid for by the royal estate, which is perhaps in the dozens or more billion dollars (the tight-fisted dear old Queenie's money), then if Britain is disarmed, they can rise to Britain's defense if attacked, as they most certainly WILL be. It would be the British version of the Foreign Legion. The final result would be about three regiments, led by loyal SAS officers. And while the fools in the "EU Army" and the UN are futzing about, his regiments can appear instantly and start murdering the enemy before London is in flames.
#5
"Queen thinks Charles puts personal life before duty: report"
Tell me again what these inbred elitest loosers "duty" is? Do they go to work in the morning? If so, at what? Would that work that they do perform better go undone? Moreover, what sort of an example do they set, whether morally, ethically, politically, economically, socially, systemically, or any other way? But they are a great tourist attraction? Weak.
State monarchy is so last millennium. Evict 'em. Lucky for them we're so enlightened; these sorts of things used to be settled differently.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
02/27/2005 11:32
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#6
Wait DB! Sounds like the start of a damn fine screen play or perhaps a novel! I like it!
#8
Re: Camilla being a Catholic in the old days - what happened with that?
Did she convert out or something? I know they haven't changed the law.
And even if she was, and did convert, once Charles becomes (God help the Brits) King, what's to prevent her converting back?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 13:43
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#9
IIRC Camilla was married to some other mook - didn't know she was Catholic though....so the divorce thing would cause some tongue-wagging as well
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 14:08
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#10
Why would the divorce thing cause some tongue-wagging? Didn't this family (or an earlier version thereof) split off the English church from Rome simply so Old Henry could more easily divorce his wives? (Not to mention that he usually subsequently executed some of them...)
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/27/2005 14:57
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#11
wagging about her, not him so much
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 15:05
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#12
If the same behavior that is acceptable for him (and for Henry VIII) is unacceptable for her then the British have a massive double-standard going on for men and women.
(And I don't see the point! Are they concerned about whether or not the issue of their relationship will be perceived of as legitimate or not? Everyone but the dog breeders already know enough molecular genetics to realize that that's bunk... and besides, both Charles and Camilla are in their sixties anyway, so there isn't going to be any issue to begin with.)
Bah, this whole topic is just more Stupid Europe Tricks.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/27/2005 15:31
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#14
Hey , Chuck ! Let your eldest son be King someday ! You're feeling the, The British Public , has shown ", No Compassion For You" , too ! Then step aside , Sir ! You can enjoy the life with your lady being married to you ! Congratulations ! On you getting married to Camilla !
#16
# 8 Barbara Skolaut~ Canon law is complicated.
I thought being a Catholic and divorced- you could NOT marry again in a Catholic Church.
Do you know of the arrangment's? I don't understand why Charles is get married to Camilla?
If it isn't broke DON'T fix it seems to apply
Or why buy the cow when you get the milk for free? (Barbara, I'm glad you are back).
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/27/2005 20:53
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#17
I don't understand why Charles is get married to Camilla?
He's wanted to be her tampon for 40 years. Seems like a pretty good reason to me. If you're a tampon.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 20:56
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#18
that cap must be flushable?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 21:05
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US and Iraqi troops swept into towns along the Euphrates river valley on Saturday in a push to flush out insurgents, and the government said it was closing in on al Qaeda's leader in Iraq , Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
As politicians haggled in Baghdad over who will get which posts in the new government, US Marines and Iraqi soldiers fought militants in the towns of Haditha and Ramadi, capital of the vast and often lawless western province of Anbar. Some intelligence reports have suggested Jordanian militant Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks in the country who has a $25 million US bounty on his head, has been hiding in the Haditha area. The Iraqi government said on Friday it had captured one of his senior aides, Abu Qutaybah, close to the border with Syria, and has vowed to get Zarqawi himself. "We are at the closest point to Zarqawi," Iraq's minister of state for national security, Kassim Daoud, said on Saturday. Iraq's government has said several times it was close to capturing Zarqawi.
Troops in tanks and armored cars stormed Haditha in the middle of the night, blowing up a weapons cache and exchanging small arms fire with guerrillas. But if militants were holed up there, they appeared to have fled and resistance was light. In Ramadi, witnesses reported fierce gun battles between US troops and insurgents. One said a US armored Humvee was destroyed, although this could not be confirmed. A hospital official said at least three people were killed and 17 injured.
Anbar province, which accounts for nearly a third of Iraq's area and stretches from Baghdad to the western borders with Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, has long been a thorn in the side of troops trying to stamp out the insurgency. Militants have effective control of some towns and villages, and the US military acknowledged this week the security situation in the province had deteriorated too far. Since they launched the River Blitz offensive six days ago, US and Iraqi troops have arrested around 150 suspected insurgents and seized bomb-making equipment and weapons including machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
The extent to which Anbar lies beyond the pale of Iraqi authority was shown by last month's election, when only two percent of the province's mostly Sunni Muslim population voted. Some Sunni Arabs boycotted the ballot, others said the violence made voting simply too dangerous. As a result, Sunni Arabs fared badly in the polls and Iraq's long-oppressed Shi'ite majority prospered at their expense.
But neither the main Shi'ite coalition which topped the polls, nor the other Shi'ite party of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to form a government and will have to cut deals to get what they want. The beneficiaries could be the Kurds, whose main coalition won 25 percent of the vote and will have 75 seats.
Since the election, the number of insurgent attacks in Iraq has fallen, although the country is still plagued by violence. Gunmen opened fire on two Ministry of Trade trucks between the southeastern city of Kut and Baghdad, killing two drivers, police said. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and nine wounded when a suicide bomber attacked their checkpoint near Musayyib, south of Baghdad, police sources said. Three cars were set ablaze. A car bomb killed two civilians and injured three in western Baghdad on Saturday. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bomb, saying its suicide bomber had attacked two US tanks. Another car bomb went off in the restive northern city of Mosul, close to a US convoy, witnesses said. The US military had no immediate word on casualties.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:13:52 AM ||
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LONDON — A former Libyan intelligence agent, jailed for the December 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie in southwest Scotland, has been moved out of solitary confinement into another prison. Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi is serving a minimum 27-year prison term for his part in the downing of New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people. Placed in solitary confinement at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow since his conviction in January 2001, the 52-year-old was moved to Greenock Prison in Inverclyde where he will be allowed to mix with fellow prisoners, a Scottish Prison Service official said on Thursday.
Don't start reading War and Peace, don't buy whole life insurance, and don't get manuevered into the shower where the security cams can't see.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:12:50 AM ||
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#1
How hard would it be to get put in the same cell with this bloke? I wonder how many of the survivors of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing would be will to do 'just enough' to get put near him. I wonder if there is a courtyard in the prison that is over looked by a nice tall building?
I wonder how long his funeral will take?
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 7:51
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#2
I lost a co-worker on Pan Am 103. He was returning from a business trip. He was a good guy who loved and supported a wife and two pre-teen kids. He was a hard worker with a lot of potential. The church was packed for his funeral and the line for the reception afterwards extended around the block. For almost a decade after he died, I passed by a little memorial to him every morning on the way into my office. I also passed by it every time I left the office to go on a business trip. I hope Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi's future is extremely painful.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 21:16
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At least 10 people have been killed and 11 kidnapped in Iraq as the interim government claimed that the noose was tightening on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man blamed for much of the violence.
Three Iraqis died and 15 were wounded in clashes between gunmen and US marines in the rebel bastion of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Hospital doctor said the casualties occurred during fighting that lasted several hours in the town centre, around 17 July Street.
In a catologue of other violence, witnesses and security sources said two people died in a bomb blast on Saturday near the headquarters of Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim religious organisation. Three Iraqi women died when mortar rounds struck homes near Dhuluiyah and a Turkish driver burnt to death in the cab of his lorry hit by an anti-tank rocket. In another attack, carried out with a car bomb, an Iraqi soldier died and five were wounded at Mussaieb, south of Baghdad.
Near Hilla, also south of the capital, a journalist with a US-funded Arabic language television station, Al-Hurra, was seriously wounded and his driver killed. "The Al-Hurra car was attacked by gunmen, the driver killed, and journalist Mohammed Sherif Ali was badly wounded," police Lieutenant Thamer Sultan said.
Meanwhile, police said 11 people, including four women, a policeman and two civil servants, have been kidnapped in a string of abductions since Friday in the area south of Baghdad known as the "triangle of death". Gunmen snatched the four women in four separate incidents in the towns of Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah on Friday. Two of them had been travelling back with their families from pilgrimage to the Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala when they were ambushed on the road.
Saturday's violence rumbled on a day after four US soldiers and 13 Iraqis were killed, with a group linked to Zarqawi claiming responsibility for the attack that killed three of the US soldiers.
A pamphlet handed out north of Baghdad, signed by the Omar al-Hadid Brigade, said "Tarmiya was the tomb of dozens of their soldiers who were given a lesson that they will never forget." It pledged yet more "painful strikes" against the US Army in the coming five days.
But in the Shiite Muslim pilgrimage city of Najaf, national security chief Kassem Daoud told reporters: "We are really close to Zarqawi." Twenty-four hours earlier, the government announced the latest arrest of a man it described as a top aide to Zarqawi—one of a series of recent arrests it said were of people close to the Al Qaeda frontman in the country. "Security forces in Iraq conducted a raid in Anah on February 20 resulting in the capture of Talib Mikhlif Arsan Walman al-Dulaimi, aka Abu Qutaybah, a trusted lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," a government statement said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:11:42 AM ||
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A senior Conservative Party politician wants an investigation into an Algerian-Canadian who served a prison term in France for extremist activities but who has now returned to Canada. "It's startling to think he has returned to Canada," Peter MacKay told CTV Newsnet on Saturday, referring to Fateh Kamel, 44.
On Saturday, the National Post reported that Kamel was convicted in France in 2001 of "participating in a criminal association for the purposes of preparing acts of terrorism" after being arrested in Jordan in December 1999. He had also supplied fake passports to militants. Kamel was sentenced to eight years, but was freed after four for good behaviour. He reportedly arrived in Montreal on Jan. 29. Kamel has a wife and son here. "Given the conviction in France and his previous involvement with terrorist activity, including close associations with a terrorist organization linked to al Qaeda and linked as well to Ahmed Rassam ... it's very, very disturbing to think Kamel is back in the country," says MacKay, the Tories' deputy leader and public safety critic. Ressam is better known as the Millennium Bomber. The former Montrealer was caught trying to smuggle a bomb into the United States in 1999 that was to be used to attack Los Angeles International Airport.
Kamel is associated with GIA, which is the French acronym for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. MacKay thinks Canada should be doing "everything we can" to send Kamel back to his native Algeria. While he didn't have any information on the matter, MacKay said he "hoped" that France had informed Canada about Kamel and that CSIS is monitoring the man's whereabouts. "This is the type of individual who should be of real concern to Canadian officials at Immigration and CSIS and poses a real threat to Canadians," he says.
A spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, who is also in charge of public security, wouldn't say much other than the federal government was aware of Kamel's return. "Certainly this gentleman is a Canadian citizen and we're aware of his arrest and conviction in France, but we don't comment on any individual or operational matters around persons of interest," Alex Swann told The Canadian Press. "He is a citizen and he has the right to return to Canada."
This article starring:
AHMED RASAM
al-Qaeda
Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan
FATEH KAMEL
Algerian Armed Islamic Group
Peter MacKay
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:10:17 AM ||
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BERLIN — German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in comments released yesterday that he was satisfied the US has no intention of attacking Iran in the standoff over the country's nuclear programme.
How would he know?
During a European tour this week that included a meeting in Germany with Schroeder, US President George W. Bush addressed worries in Europe and the Middle East about the US stance. Bush said it is "simply ridiculous" to say the US is preparing a strike on Iran. "He said the words 'Iran is not Iraq' deliberately — no one, and that includes the American government, is thinking of military action against Teheran," Schroeder said in an interview with the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
We've got other irons in the fire, not that we're telling you what they are.
However, the newspaper quoted Schroeder as saying he had made clear to Bush that Germany would not participate in any possible military action. Schroeder was one of the leading opponents of the US-led war in Iraq two years ago.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:10:12 AM ||
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#1
However, the newspaper quoted Schroeder as saying he had made clear to Bush that Germany would not participate in any possible military action.
I think he made it clear before and during the Iraq conflict. But whatever Bush told Schroeder about US mil intentions in Iran, S bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 1:01
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#2
However, the newspaper quoted Schroeder as saying he had made clear to Bush that Germany would not participate in any possible military action.
Glad that's settled.
We wouldn't want our buddies allies to get in the way do something they don't approve of, now would we?
Herr Schroeder, I know you don't care if the mullahs get nukes 'cause you think they're going after us. And you're right, of course.
They're going after us first. Then, if the various and sundry Euros don't capitulate to the Caliphate, guess where they're going next?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 1:14
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#3
If Schroeder actually believes this, then he should send those businessmen back into Iran. Y'know, the ones who took their cue from Halliburton and began leaving Iran about a month ago. Sounds like a plan.
#5
Heh isn't this sorta like when the French said the US had no plans to attack Afghanistan right after 9/11 because the French weren't told of any plans therefore no such action could even be contemplated. I remember how that turned out.
#6
We have to flatten Syria first, so we'll be a bit distracted for the moment. Meanwhile Iran can go calling on anyone else stupid enough to add to the target list.
#7
no one, and that includes the American government, is thinking of military action against Teheran,� Schroeder said
Fortunately, Berlin's relations with Israel are as close as those with the U. S. so the MMs will sleep the sleep of the innocent tonight.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 10:12
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#8
They've got pills that good?
Posted by: too true ||
02/27/2005 10:14
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#9
I really have to comment on the first five posting's are you really up at that hour
writing to Rantburg?? Barbara 1:14 a.m.,
.com 2:28 a.m., someone 2:46 a.m., Valentine 2:55 a.m. WHEN DO YOU SLEEP??
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/27/2005 21:07
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#11
As someone commented to me today, Cold. But funny.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 21:11
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#12
EST Andrea
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 21:11
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#13
Ha ha ha hahahahaa!
Dubya is getting even -- he's setting them all up for the big fall. Before Dubya lays his Royal Flush on the table, all of these Old Europe stooge politicians are going to think they've won. And then, when Dubya triumphs, they'll have to complain to Condi -- assuming they get past her office lobby. I'll bet Rummy will make the first press release after the bombs drop, too. Priceless!
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 21:34
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Cleric cripples 11-year old
According to Khabrain, a cleric named Qari Rauf in an Okara-Dipalpur seminary beat an 11-year-old boy so badly that his bones were broken. The boy was sent to the seminary to learn the Quran but on a small mistake Qari Rauf beat him so savagely that his arm and leg bones were broken. After that Qari Rauf threw him in a room and filled him full of sleeping pills and painkillers. After that the boy became unconscious. The Qari put him on a motorbike and threw him in front of his home.
Hajj is stay at Arafat
Writing in Jang Allama Tahirul Qadiri stated that only one act during Hajj was compulsory (farz) and that was stay (wuquf) at the plain of Arafat. Hajj was complete even if one did not even say one's prayers (nafal) at Arafat. He said there was mystery in the act of going around (tawaf) Kaaba with uncut nails and long hair and wild steps. Arafat meant getting to know and this plain was where Adam and Eve got to know each other again after being sent down from Heaven. The pilgrim, among other non-compulsory rituals, has to kill the ram at Mina to commemorate the tradition of Abraham. Abdul Qadir Sheikh wrote in Nawa-e-Waqt that even if a man just once ran across Arafat his Hajj was complete.
Killing the goat on Eid
According to Khabrain, the killing of a sacrificial animal was wajib (obligatory) and not farz (compulsory) during Hajj because the Prophet PBUH did so in light of the verses of the Quran. Allah would give sawab equal to the hair of the sacrificed animal who would be raised on the Day of Judgement. Daily Insaf reported that in France 1000 Muslims were fined for killing their goats in areas not allowed by the government. About 600 dead animals too were confiscated. France allows slaughter only in designated places. Insaf also reported that in Lahore one cow escaped the knife and climbed the roof of a house and from there jumped from one roof to another as if it knew it was about to be killed. Daily Nawa-e-Waqt reported that in Karachi hundreds of khalain (skins) were robbed under gun by two parties contending for them: Jamaat Islami and MQM.
Dr Israr goes soft on India
Writing in daily Insaf, Abdullah Muntazir stated that during his long visit in India, Dr Israr Ahmad of Tanzim-e-Islami had said that the Muslims of India were doing much better than the Muslims of Pakistan and that even the IG Police of Andhra Pradesh was a Muslim. Dr Israr said that in Pakistan the maximum number of people at his lecture were 1500 but in India they were 15000, including 5000 ladies. He then compared himself to the Holy Prophet PBUH and said that he was not valued in Mecca but was greatly prized in Madina where he migrated. (The writer asked him to migrate to India.) Dr Israr also said that the jihad in Kashmir was not fi-sabeel Allah (in the way of Allah) as allowed by the Quran because such a jihad had to be ordained by an Islamic state. He thought only the war of the Taliban against the Muslim Northern Alliance was jihad. Dr Israr's negation of Kashmir jihad must have offended the families of 10,000 Pakistanis martyred in Held Kashmir.
If innocent, walk on fire
Daily Khabrain reported that Captain Hammad who was accused of raping a lady doctor at Sui in Balochistan had offered to submit himself to a DNA test, but the people of Sui were not convinced. They said the only way he could be exonerated was if he walked on fire without screaming and without getting blisters on his feet. Many people proved their innocence in this manner among the Baloch.
How 'bakra' became 'bakri'
According to daily Insaf, a man of Muridke fainted when his sacrificial goat turned from bakra (male goat) to bakri (female goat). He had bought two goats for Rs 40,000 but was sure he had bought he-goats. But when he reached home and saw underneath the goats, he discovered them to be female goats. The seller had taped the udders in such a way that they looked like male genitals. When he removed the tape the two animals were bakri. He fainted from the insult.
Stoning the Satan at Mina
Daily Nawa-e-Waqt wrote that at Mina the hajis gather stones to throw at the jamaraat or the three devils, seven times each. Abraham was going to sacrifice his son when he was distracted by Satan. Allah asked the prophet to throw seven pebbles at him. The Satan appeared three times and was struck by seven stones each time. Now there are three pillars where the pilgrims throw stones as non-compulsory but obligatory sunnat. Jang reported that at least three hajis were killed and dozens injured while stoning the satans after Africans pilgrims brought in an ailing haji on their shoulders, which blocked the stream of hajis and caused them to stampede.
About intellectual pigmies
Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt, Irfan Siddiqi was offended with the fikri balishtiya (intellectual Lilliputians) who said that instead of trying to fight a war with the United States the Muslims should first prepare the muscles for war. Irfan Siddiqi stated that these blind men did not realise that while the Muslims prepared themselves, the United States would not sit still but will advance even further, thus negating the progress of the Muslims. Hence it was not preparation that the Muslims needed but ghairat (sense of honour) which can enable one for immediate war with rusted rifles and lathi (sticks).
Hameed Gul's daughter speaks out!
Writing in daily Pakistan magazine Tanvir Qaiser Shahid revealed that the buses run by ex-ISI chief General Hameed Gul's daughter Uzma Gul had killed 17 people in the past four years. The bus service called Varan was run on loans taken from Askari Bank. This year in January when a Varan bus killed a student, boys got out of hand and torched 10 Varan buses. Uzma Gul said after that that students should be disallowed motorbikes. According to daily Pakistan, Varan buses owned by the daughter of ex-ISI chief General Hameed Gul have caused a lot of unrest in Rawalpindi and Islamabad where they ply in great strength. After the students burnt ten buses in the wake of an accident, owner Uzma Gul got her service to strike, which led to great discomfort among the commuting citizens. SSP Rawalpindi said that he could not allow Varan to kill ten people in a year, especially as a sub-inspector Ismat Niazi that he had fired for drunkenness was now employed by Uzma as her adviser. Varan tours had 12 legal complaints (parcha) against it in Rawalpindi while Varan had 26 complaints against students.
Uzma Gul the transporter
Daily Pakistan wrote that ex-ISI chief General Hameed Gul's daughter was a brave transporter owning a fleet of buses that plied from Rawalpindi to Taxila. But she faced a lot of resistance from the administration and other vested interests in the business. Once she was also arrested and put behind bars by military police but her powerful father got her out. She began by running one bus in Sargodha in 1994. Then she became an exporter of medicines to Central Asia. Now she had a fleet in Rawalpindi but her facilities for passengers were minimal and sections set aside for women were too small. According to daily Pakistan, owner of Varan Tours, Uzma Gul got into trouble with corps commander Rawalpindi over the adda of her buses as the area belonged to the army which had acquired it. Not only was the corps commander against her and once shouted at her but DC Rawalpindi Major Ziaul Haq too began harassing her. According to the paper the area she used to park her buses was worth crores of rupees.
Hameed Gul's acquired land
According to daily Pakistan, although the daughter of the ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul claimed that he had only two squares of land, the paper referred to an investigative report which gave proof that he had acquired 15 squares of land along the Indian border at a time when he was serving as a major. He ousted a number of farmers from their land who then moved the High Court. When the court decided the matter in his favour by the year 1986 he had become corps commander and was well on his way to becoming the ISI chief and many plaintiffs had begun to stand down. The title of the investigative report was: General Hameed Gul nay sainkron aikar arazi kaisay banayi (How did General Hameed Gul acquire hundreds of acres of land). The land was in Shakargarh in three villages called Adha, Auliya and Bhopa.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005
12:09:05 AM ||
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#1
Many people proved their innocence in this manner (walking on hot coals - Ed.) among the Baloch.
As the harsh Afghan winter nears an end, attacks by Taliban guerrillas are expected to rise, a U.S. military official said on Saturday, two days after more than 22 rebels and Afghan troops died in a fresh surge of violence. But the military said it had no plan to increase the number of the 18,000 U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. "We can look at history and see that historically, attacks have increased as winter subsides," Major Steve Wollman, a spokesman for the U.S. military, told a press briefing. "I think we can expect more attacks... coalition forces remain vigilant and prepared to deal with these threats."
But rebel activity has eased over the winter, and U.S.-led forces operating in the south and southeast have kept up the pressure on Afghanistan's vanquished rulers following their failure to disrupt an historic presidential election in October. Taliban officials early this week said winter had limited their activity and said once the cold weather ended and snow in their mountains hideouts melted, they would step up their attacks. Taliban guerrillas on Thursday staged a series of attacks on government forces in several areas near the border with Pakistan, killing 10 Afghan troops, wounding eight others and also one U.S. soldier. Afghan and U.S. forces say they killed 13 Taliban members in those attacks, the bloodiest in months.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:09:03 AM ||
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BANGALORE — India will launch four satellites this year including two remote sensing satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on the Eastern coast. Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair told reporters here Cartosat-1 remote sensing satellite, with a 2.5 metre resolution camera to undertake mapping applications, would be launched by this April. The indigenous Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket will launch the Cartosat-1 into space, he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:08:47 AM ||
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#1
Polar Launch Vehicle? A southward launch? Way cool. India's in pretty good shape for all sorts of launches, I wonder if the Israelis will make use of their facilities someday.
NEW DELHI — India's indigenously built medium range surface-to-air missile Akash was test fired from a range in Orissa state yesterday. Three missiles were fired from mobile launchers at targets supported by pilotless target aircraft, defence sources said. Akash, part of India's Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, has a range of 27 kilometres and a ceiling of 15 kilometres. It weighs 650 kilos and is capable of carrying a 50 kilo payload. The missile was successfully test fired from mobile launchers on February 21 and 24. It was put through a successful trial in November 2004 carrying a live warhead for the first time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:07:30 AM ||
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A missile called Heavenly? Those Hindus... everything is a sheer poetry to 'em, even misiles.
More than four years since the launch of the campaign to catch Osama bin Laden "dead of alive", the US has initiated a new phase in the "war on terror" to counter perceived threats from al-Qaeda generated by a new breed of operatives spawned in the post-September 11 era. Unlike the pre-September 11 al-Qaeda, the structure, central command, depth and whereabouts of the latest incarnation remain largely a mystery.
An Asia Times Online investigation based on interviews with well-placed sources in Pakistan who have been in coordination with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at a very senior level attempts to shed some light on today's threat from al-Qaeda.
What is known is that the al-Qaeda network has been battered over the past few years, with curbs on its ability to access money and coordinate. Out of this, though, new groups have sprung up worldwide, strongly politically motivated, patient and with the broader perspective of toppling pro-US governments. This development has not gone unnoticed in Langley, Virginia - CIA headquarters - which has advised Washington to develop a counter-strategy to be on a "war footing" all over the world in the shape of alliances with Europe and a powerful North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) presence in South and Central Asia and the Middle East.
Almost as a publicity stunt to announce its newfound determination, the United States has launched a massive US$57 million campaign in Pakistan's press and electronic media (and in other countries), drawing attention to the world's most wanted man and reaffirming the $25 million bounty on bin Laden's head.
Though there have been claims in the media of a good response to the advertisements, the media blitz is just the first salvo in a broader battle.
The US campaign to catch bin Laden began in earnest in the last months of 1999, when the administration of president Bill Clinton started serious dialogue with Pakistan, offering an aid package in return for Islamabad allowing US forces to use its land and air space. Bin Laden was then in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Taliban, operating jihadi training camps, and had been linked to the 1998 bombings at US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in which more than 200 people died.
The US has subsequently spent untold millions of dollars trying to catch bin Laden. Indeed, his trail has gone completely cold since last September when a tip placed him in the Bush Mountains in Shawal, North Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. But he could not be found, despite a comprehensive search operation. Now all operations in Waziristan to root out him and his supporters have been suspended and it is strongly believed he is no longer in Pakistan. And he left no clues as to his next destination.
Well-placed people Asia Times Online spoke to maintain that the new phase of the "war on terror" has started across the world, but unlike the present campaign in Pakistan, the aim is not to trace bin Laden, but rather his "links".
After interrogations of several people arrested in the past few months in Balochistan - prominent among them being Sharifal Misri, an Egyptian said to be an important link to bin Laden - it has emerged that thousands of youths in many countries have taken inspiration from bin Laden's calls for jihad against the US. However, that was not the end of the matter. Many of these youths have managed to organize themselves into independent anti-US groups, and through interaction in various places in Europe and the Middle East with like-minded people have ultimately made contact with al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda itself has stopped all operations pending a new phase. In the meantime it is focusing on developing these new links - the very links that the US is now after.
"Most of al-Qaeda's cells have either been caught or exposed, and they just cannot operate. The present threat is the fast-growing network inspired by Osama bin Laden. This new network is loosely connected [to al-Qaeda] among the top brass, but for sure is associated with it, and the US and Pakistan are both looking forward to catching this new network and their links to reach bin Laden. The network is not in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone, but all across the world," explained a well-placed contact who has 35 years of experience in the counter-intelligence and internal-security business. He spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.
"There is no indication that they are from a specific community or ethnic group. They can be anyone, even blonds from the West. They are predominantly Western-educated, and not so much from Islamic seminaries," he added.
A case in point is that of a US citizen by the name of Ahmed Abu Ali, 23. He was indicted in the US Federal Court near Washington on Tuesday after being held in Saudi Arabia since June 2003. He faces six charges, including plotting to assassinate President George W Bush and supporting al-Qaeda's terrorist network.
This assassination charge might appear somewhat far-fetched, but investigations into his life substantiate a strong inspiration from al-Qaeda and its program, which he aimed to follow. Abu Ali, who grew up in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, did not enter a plea during his initial appearance, but said through his lawyer that he had been tortured while in Saudi custody.
His family and friends describe him as a mild-mannered boy active in northern Virginia's Muslim community, but the 16-page indictment accuses Abu Ali of conspiring to kill Bush either by getting "close enough to the president to shoot him on the street" or by "detonating a car bomb". Abu Ali "obtained a religious blessing ... to assassinate Mr Bush", the charges read. It is also alleged that Abu Ali wanted to "become a planner of terrorist operations like Mohammed Atta and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, well-known al-Qaeda terrorists associated with the attacks on September 11, 2001".
The indictment, however, insists that Abu Ali made contact with al-Qaeda members between September 2002 and June 2003 and received training in the use of weapons, including hand grenades and other explosives, as well as in document forgery. The indictment said he discussed an assassination attempt with at least two other conspirators, one of whom gave him the religious blessing. He also allegedly tried to make his way to Afghanistan to fight against Americans, but could not get there because he was denied the visa he needed to cross through Iran, the indictment said.
The indictment refers to 11 co-conspirators who were in Saudi Arabia with Abu Ali, but neither their names nor their nationalities were disclosed. The document says at least two of the 11 were on a public Saudi government list of 19 people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in the kingdom. The list came out days before a series of bombings in May 2003 in Riyadh killed 34 people, including nine Americans. Abu Ali was arrested by Saudi authorities on June 9, 2003, on suspicion of involvement in the bombings. He had been studying at the University of Medina.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation search of his home in Falls Church shortly after his June 2003 arrest turned up Arabic audio tapes promoting violent jihad and the killing of Jews; an undated, two-page document praising Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and the September 11 attacks; a book written by al-Qaeda chieftain Ayman al-Zawahiri that characterizes democracy as a new religion that must be destroyed by war; and a copy of Handguns magazine with a subscription label bearing the name Ahmed Ali.
Without pre-judging Abu Ali, US intelligence believes that he is a typical model of the new al-Qaeda-inspired generation and "links" in days when the traditional al-Qaeda has been curtailed.
Piecing together information obtained by Asia Times Online, there does not appear to be an al-Qaeda threat in the near future on the scale of the US embassies in Africa or small-scale bomb attacks. Instead, the focus will be pressure to topple pro-US governments in Muslim states and to kickstart the faltering resistance in Afghanistan. The aspiration is to once again make the country a hub for global mujahideen, as it was in the anti-Soviet years of the 1980s.
The US response can be expected to manifest itself in a stronger alliance with Europe, which will include intelligence sharing. Construction work has already begun on a new NATO base in Herat in west Afghanistan, and US officials have confirmed that they would like more military bases in the country, in addition to the use of bases in Pakistan. NATO bases in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East are also in the cards.
"Three years of active participation in the war on terror have got me to the realization that we only searched out and cut branches, only for them to be replaced with new ones, and this goes on and on. Now we enter a phase when we are standing in the complete dark with no mark of the enemy, yet he is around and is ready to strike at his time of choice, when, where and how nobody knows," said a senior field official involved in intelligence analysis. "After having a theoretical education in counter-intelligence at Langley and in London, and having done several joint ventures with Western agencies, the present threat has only one answer. And that is justice in the Middle East."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:07:13 AM ||
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PARIS - International police chiefs gather this week at the Interpol headquarters in Lyon to grapple with the threat of bio-terrorism. More than 400 delegates from at least 120 countries "will discuss the risk of bio-terror attacks, case studies, prevention of attacks, preparation and training of law enforcement personnel, and the related legal and political framework," Interpol said in a statement.
Interpol's role is to raise awareness and link the world's police and medical services in light of a lack of information and a tendency to underestimate the threat, said Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble. "After 9/11 and the investigations on Al Qaeda, we know now that the terrorists have investigated the possibility using nuclear materials to make weapons, how to use bio-agents and also the chemicals," Noble told AFP. "Now we have to let our imagination run wild and prepare for anything," he added.
"From the anthrax attacks (in the United States in 2001) we know that a small amount of a bio-agent can have an extraordinary global impact, beyond the target area. That's why Interpol believes it has a central role to play."
After opening speeches by French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin who is still regarded as a man and Noble, the delegates will take part in two days of debates, round tables and conferences. Topics include the threat of bio-agents and toxins; forensic challenges and the US anthrax attacks.
Police will discuss in particular the Malaysian approach to prevent, detect and combat bio-terrorism, the release of biological agents in three British mail centres, and the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, which killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000. Interpol's aim is to give police the information and contact with the global medical community to help them understand the complex menace.
The conference will be followed by training workshops, the first in South Africa at the end of 2005, the second in Chile in 2006 and the third in China the same year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005
12:04:57 AM ||
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Amazing. The U.S. has been working on this since, what, 9/12/01? I do realize that Interpol has been busy, but surely three and a half years is a bit excessive!
Pakistani forces have destroyed a network of al-Qaeda factories churning out powerful bombs and propaganda compact discs and videos, key US ally President Musharraf said Thursday. Musharraf said militants had been forced to run for the hills after a series of military operations in Pakistan's lawless northwestern areas bordering Afghanistan. "Everything was in place, even where they were manufacturing explosives - IEDs (improvised explosives devices) were being manufactured," General Musharraf told reporters at the launch of a new presidential website. "Their command structure was there, major communications structure, their psychological warfare, their computers, their CDs being produced to create psychological effects, their logistics bases," Musharraf said. "All that has been taken over. Now they are on the run in the mountains and we dominate the valleys."
Perv? That's what the Frenchies said at Dien Bien Phu...
The militants were unable to head for big cities like Lahore and Karachi because their transport infrastructure had also been destroyed, Musharraf added. But he gave no details on when the operations were carried out and what quantities of materials were seized. Musharraf said security forces had captured about 700 al-Qaeda suspects since late 2001 when Pakistan started its crackdown. Most are thought to have been handed over to the United States. "Their back has been broken, they are on the run," Musharraf said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
12:04:45 AM ||
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...I think the translation here is, "Yeah, Al-Q's al-gone, you guys can go home now. Nothin' to see, they left and went back to camel trading..."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/27/2005 7:10
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Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, has for the first time publicly criticised troops levels in Iraq and spoken of the rifts between himself and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, that undermined his role as architect of American foreign policy.
Mr Powell, in his first interview since resigning last November, also told The Telegraph of his "dismay" at the deterioration in relations between America and Europe and of his "disappointment" with France.
While holding back from blaming Mr Rumsfeld by name for the problems that eventually persuaded him to resign, Mr Powell showed that much of the innuendo and leaks surrounding his volatile relationship with the defence secretary had been well-founded.
Admitting that Mr Rumsfeld's controversial plan to fight the war with limited troop numbers had been an outstanding success, Mr Powell said the "nation building" that followed had been deeply flawed.
There had been "enough troops for war but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict."
Mr Powell said he had warned President George W Bush over dinner in August 2002 that the problem with Iraq was not going to be the invasion but what followed.
He told him: "This place will crack like a goblet and it will be a problem to pick up the bits. It was on this basis that he decided to let me see if we could find a United Nations solution to this."
Mr Powell told Charles Moore, the former editor of The Telegraph who conducted the interview outside Washington, that he regretted the fall-out with Europe over the Iraq war.
He also found Mr Rumsfeld's reference to "New Europe" and "Old Europe" unfortunate.
"I never used the phrase," he said. "It just wasn't a useful construct. I don't think the president ever used it.
"We've got a lot more work to do with European public opinion."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:20:06 AM ||
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He chooses to give an interview to the Telegraph?
#2
OT PD. Wasn't dissing the Hustler, I want to rent about 48 (from Davis-Monthian, Planes R Us) to the IDF for a weekend special. It would be ideal for a mid-range hi-lo-lo-hi 3 day getaway.
#3
Can't wait for Colin's next interview where he tells where he would have gotten the troops and how he would have gotten them into Iraq after his State Department botched Turkey. Colin should remove himself from politics, devote himself to good works and begin his memoirs.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 10:09
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#4
Read the whole interview, folks. Colin defends the prez, and the MSM is going to lay into him for that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 12:06
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#5
"Weâve got a lot more work to do with European public opinion."
Why? Their media is going to do what it can to counter anything we do, so why bother?
#6
Dr Steve - He still talked to the Telegraph, of all sources, and aired private squabbles - positively airheaded quotables. Pfeh. He has fallen far and he has joined the Shalikashvili ranks.
Ship - I love the Hustler. Saw it up close - my father (whose world I got to ogle every other weekend for a day at a pop) was part of the team which invented the clamshell escape pod. Later he was a GD VP. Most of the highlights of my otherwise totally-fucked childhood were when he took me and my brother to Carswell and to air shows. The Hustler ranks second only to the B-70 in pure unadulterated awesomeness - though it was only once with the B-70 - it crashed after leaving the Ft Worth air show enroute to California. The Hustler set 19 different records - and was the first delta-wing supersonic bomber. It just boggled at low altitude - saw it do a low altitude pass (under 500 ft) at Mach 1.6 - as it would do on a bombing mission inside enemy territory - and I damned-near wet my pants. I was 8 at the time.
There's even something for a swabbie to love: "Internally, the B-58 is framed like a Navy destroyer, with transverse duralumin spars, corrugated for strength, spaced only 11 to 15 inches apart running from one wing margin through the fuselage to the opposite wing."
And this: "An irresistible attention-getter, a voice warning system, has been developed for the Hustler: into the masculine chatter in the pilot's earphones a soft feminine voice (pre-recorded, unfortunately) breaks in with one of twenty announcements--'weapon unlocked,' 'hydraulic system failure,' 'check for engine fire,' 'nose too high.'"
This is the most powerful question in the world today: Why not here? People in Eastern Europe looked at people in Western Europe and asked, Why not here? People in Ukraine looked at people in Georgia and asked, Why not here? People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, Why not here?
Thomas Kuhn famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody's vantage point changes.
"Why not here?" is a Kuhnian question, and as you open the newspaper these days, you see it flitting around the world like a thought contagion. Wherever it is asked, people seem to feel that the rules have changed. New possibilities have opened up.
The question is being asked now in Lebanon. Walid Jumblatt made his much circulated observation to David Ignatius of The Washington Post: "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world."
So now we have mass demonstrations on the streets of Beirut. A tent city is rising up near the crater where Rafik Hariri was killed, and the inhabitants are refusing to leave until Syria withdraws. The crowds grow in the evenings; bathroom facilities are provided by a nearby Dunkin' Donuts and a Virgin Megastore.
The head of the Syrian Press Syndicate told The Times on Thursday: "There's a new world out there and a new reality. You can no longer have business as usual."
Meanwhile in Palestine, after days of intense pressure, many of the old Arafat cronies are out of the interim Palestinian cabinet. Fresh, more competent administrators have been put in. "What you witnessed is the real democracy of the Palestinian people," Saeb Erakat said to Alan Cowell of The Times. As Danny Rubinstein observed in the pages of Ha'aretz, the rules of the game have changed.
Then in Iraq, there is actual politics going on. The leaders of different factions are jostling. The tone of the coverage ebbs and flows as more or less secular leaders emerge and fall back, but the amazing thing is the politics itself. If we had any brains, we'd take up Reuel Marc Gerecht's suggestion and build an Iraqi C-Span so the whole Arab world could follow this process like a long political soap opera.
It's amazing in retrospect to think of how much psychological resistance there is to asking this breakthrough question: Why not here? We are all stuck in our traditions and have trouble imagining the world beyond. As Claus Christian Malzahn reminded us in Der Spiegel online this week, German politicians ridiculed Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech in 1987. They "couldn't imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany."
But if there is one soft-power gift America does possess, it is this tendency to imagine new worlds. As Malzahn goes on to note, "In a country of immigrants like the United States, one actually pushes for change. ... We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for the world of tomorrow."
Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote an important essay for this page a few weeks ago, arguing that American diplomacy is often most effective when it pursues not an incrementalist but a "maximalist" agenda, leaping over allies and making the crude, bold, vantage-shifting proposal - like pushing for the reunification of Germany when most everyone else was trying to preserve the so-called stability of the Warsaw Pact.
As Sestanovich notes, and as we've seen in spades over the past two years in Iraq, this rashness - this tendency to leap before we look - has its downside. Things don't come out wonderfully just because some fine person asks, Why not here?
But this is clearly the question the United States is destined to provoke. For the final thing that we've learned from the papers this week is how thoroughly the Bush agenda is dominating the globe. When Bush meets with Putin, democratization is the center of discussion. When politicians gather in Ramallah, democratization is a central theme. When there's an atrocity in Beirut, the possibility of freedom leaps to people's minds.
Not all weeks will be as happy as this one. Despite the suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq, the thought contagion is spreading. Why not here?
Posted by: tipper ||
02/27/2005
1:14:30 AM ||
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#1
I would consider congratulating the NYT for this glimmer of insight, but...
The hypocrisy turns it into a tasteless joke.
Without the Bush Doctrine, and Bush behind it doing when others have only talked, there would not be this moment, there would be no uplifting "question" nor soft power to bestow -- there would be no story. Fuck off, NYT, you're about 3 years late getting it, and you've only grasped one aspect.
You've fought this President from Day One, using your once considerable reputation to bear to undermine him at every turn - and been proven vacuous and disingenuous. Justly, your influence declines in tandem with your credibility. You have no place in this story - even reporting it is above your station - for everything good in this situation occurred in spite of you. You have no right to trumpet the numerous positives that will result from any of the Bush Administration's achievements, and they will be many - seeds have been planted that will bear fruit for decades. You deserve no association with their successes.
You deserve derision for partisanship, your anti-American poison, your deranged owner and editorial staff's terminal fascination with sociofascist multiculturalism, and your highly successful effort to permanently subvert and bring shame to journalism. That is your primary success - and will be your epitaph.
#9
Things must be going very well indeed. Even Hillary is talking about about the success in Iraq. Success has many fathers while failure is a orphan. We will continue to see rational liberals 'walking it back'. Unfortunately, the moonbats will never see the truth.
#12
Great rant, .com! What is really happening is that people like Hillary and some at the NYT are seeing the trend because they can play "follow the dots" and they have enough brains to see the trend curve. So they jump aboard the bandwagon that the rest of us have been powering with blood, sweat, and tears and think that they will get a free ride. They still consider that the public are a bunch of idiots. They still have the same agenda, but they realize that the Far Left is committing political suicide.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 23:47
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Sounds like they're looking for something here. 101st had truck drivers. Still does, in fact. So both statements could very well be true.
Regents, who may one day be called upon to vote on Churchill's job, are upset about the daily publicity over the controversial professor, saying it could cause long-term damage to CU's reputation. "The possible damage to the university this controversy has created will take years to recover from," said Regent Peter Steinhauer. "Holmes, how do you do it?"
Posted by: Raj ||
02/27/2005
11:19:19 AM ||
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LOL. Fred, you're gonna get sued by the Kickapoos for associating their tribe with Churchhill. Too bad Al Capp is not still around to weigh in on the 'Big Chief Spouting Bull' matter.
#5
It's not easy to revoke tenure unless you actually commit a crime or violate a hard-line university rule. For example, I know of a certain ex-faculty person at my institution who was canned -- in about an hour's time, tenure or not -- when an employee presented evidence, including (apparently) videotape, of said faculty person's inability to keep his hands to himself. But short of that sort of violation or breaking a law, tenure is difficult to break. It's supposed to be difficult, that's the whole idea.
The real problem for the University of Colorado is, how in hell did they give this guy tenure? Or, even better, how did he get a faculty appointment in the first place? It's clear from the news that Mr. Churchill was not vetted properly either at the time of his original appointment to the faculty (he was hired after working as a temp for some sort of remedial education program) or when he was tenured. Apparently the tenure committee didn't read his work as they were supposed to do, or the dean overruled the committee. Either way, they screwed up.
If I were a Colorado taxpayer (hi Old Spook!) I'd be angry at Churchill, but I'd be thoroughly pissed at the University for screwing this up. I think Churchill's lies should cost him his job.
But more importantly, the dean and the provost that let this happen need to lose their jobs.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2005 18:08
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eh, he'll just end up at Evergreen or Columbia or some other lame-ass "school".
Scrambling to save a battered truce, Palestinians arrested three West Bank suspects after a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic Jihad group on Saturday. Friday's bombing at a Tel Aviv nightclub killed four Israelis and dealt a heavy blow to peace hopes that had brightened since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to a ceasefire at a Feb. 8 summit. "We confirm that we carried out the operation," an official for Islamic Jihad in Lebanon, who declined to be named, told Reuters. The group's exiled leadership is primarily based in Damascus but also has a representative in Beirut.
Its Gaza-based leadership, who had earlier denied knowledge of the bombing and said it remained committed to a de facto truce called by Abbas, confirmed the claim. Israel and the United States said the bombing, the first suicide attack in the Jewish state since November, showed Abbas had to act more forcefully to salvage peace efforts. But Israeli officials said the Jewish state would show restraint for now. "We will not allow anyone to sabotage the goals and ambitions of our people ... We will bring them to justice," Abbas, elected last month, told reporters.
Palestinian officials said three suspected Palestinian militants were arrested in the bomber's village, Deir al-Ghoson, near Tulkarm. Israeli troops arrested five others there, including two brothers of the bomber, during a raid. A senior Palestinian security official said inquiries indicated the hand of the Hizbollah guerrilla group, which denied any role and called the accusations a provocation by "the Zionist entity" (Israel). A video left by the bomber, Abdullah Badran, 21, showed him flanked by Islamic Jihad flags calling Israelis "enemies of God" and vowing to avenge the killings of Palestinians.
He also accused the Palestinian Authority of "trading in the blood of the martyrs" by following U.S. dictates. The images of ambulances rushing to the popular Tel Aviv karaoke club and of the blood-stained pavement shook many Israelis, who had begun to believe they had put such scenes behind them. Israel demanded action instead of more talks, saying Abbas was wrong to think he could coax militants into a formal ceasefire from their de facto truce. "We must see arrests, collecting illegal weapons from those terrorist organizations," said Gideon Meir of the Foreign Ministry.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded Palestinian leaders "send a clear message that terror will not be tolerated." Washington has stepped up efforts to revive the peace process after Abbas was elected following the death of Arafat, whom Israel and the United States saw as an obstacle. Militants say they are still not satisfied with Israeli confidence-building gestures, such as the release of 500 out of 8,000 prisoners and an end to army raids and assassinations. They also want a more sweeping Israeli pullback from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, which is due to begin on July 20.
This article starring:
ABDULLAH BADRAN
Islamic Jihad
Gideon Meir
Islamic Jihad
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:08:45 AM ||
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California voters are in favor of another actor to face actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2006 election, according to a new statewide poll. Actor-director Rob Reiner leads a Democratic field that also includes Attorney General Bill Lockyer, state Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly, the Field Poll said Friday...
Oh, good idea. Run somebody named "Meathead" against somebody named "The Terminator."
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
02/27/2005
10:57:23 AM ||
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Oh please, oh please, oh please....
Methinks "Meathead" will shortly be "Ground Meat." :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 11:47
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Arnold will trounce anyone they put up - the Dems are in disarray against him eright now, and his four reform proposals will change the balance of power for a long time. A lot smarter man than he's given credit for.....hey! sounds familiar...
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 12:08
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#3
Every time I hear meathead say he's willing to pay more taxes, I want to ask him, what's preventing you?
#9
have the whole album - still like Let the Sky Fall
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 18:20
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#10
never try to guess at what a deadhead likes: Today I've got Led Zep (always); Green Day (newest) , and Allman Bros on my playlist, along with a Stevie Ray Vaughan DVD I'll be watching instead of the Oscars :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 18:32
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It defies belief. Ex-President Jimmy Carter, who crystallized a fraudulent recall referendum for Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez, now says his Carter Center will return to Caracas "to help consolidate peace and democracy." He also says he's got a final report on the Venezuelan recall referendum. (There've been some other final reports but somehow he's got to issue a final final final report) He's up to no good.
No one has demoralized Venezuela's democracy more than America's worst-ever president. The only legitimate reason he has to go to Caracas is to beg Venezuelans for forgiveness after that sorry show he put on last August, endorsing an election that was clearly stolen with his complicity. The Carter Center's shoddy election monitoring and mendacious spin control in the aftermath turned a profound exercise in democracy into a travesty, while Carter prepared to move on to the next election.
But something happened along the way to the next election: The State Department declined to endorse Carter's recall referendum observational results, as it had announced it would, and nobody important wanted the Carter Center's business anymore. Carter was conspicuously absent from the dead-serious elections in Ukraine and Iraq recently. Ever the vindictive little man, Carter "participated" in those by sniping at these great human events from the sidelines. For that, President Bush didn't care to call on him to lead tsunami relief either, as he did all other able-bodied former presidents.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon ||
02/27/2005
10:48:05 AM ||
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Carter's up to no good, PERIOD.
That sums up his entire life.
In fact, that should be carved on his tombstone:
Jimmuh Cahtah
Ex-president
Dictator's ass-
kissing loser
Spent his life
up to no good.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 13:31
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Barbara
There is an attack sheep ship named "Jimmy Carter"
#6
Wrong photo, Fred. Consider this one:
http://ap.grolier.com/images/cache/021/news0134.jpg
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 15:48
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That F***ing peanut farmer never met a dictator he did not like. I hope that one of my severely pissed off family members kidnaps him and forces him to work for one of Chavez's famous "missions" to help the poor.
LAHORE: In Sanda police station, Muhammad Azam — a man who has confessed to the murder of his sister — awaits his verdict with little repentance or remorse. His reasons for killing the divorced mother of four — to defend family honour. Azam, a milkman by tradition who is soon to be transferred to Camp Jail, slaughtered 32-year-old Shahnaz at her house in Abu Bakar Colony, Bund Road on February 23 after suspecting her of having illicit relations. After the murder, Azam did not flee, instead he waited out patiently for the police to reach the crime scene and arrest him. "Our society leaves men like me with few options. I had to kill her to get my peace of mind," Azam told Daily Times from behind lockup.
Shahnaz married Zafar Ali after divorcing husband Allah Dita, from whom she had four children — Khurram Shahzad 14, Muhammad Amir, 12, Shan, 9 and Muzamil Abbas, 6. Ali is currently serving a sentence in Sheikhupura Jail for attempted murder while the kids are in the custody of their grandfather Malik Ali. "Since her husband went to jail, she started going out with other men," said a teary-eyed Azam, adding, "For two years I kept asking her to mend ways. I literally begged her to stop her antics because the children were being neglected. Everyone laughed at me. I couldn't take it anymore."
When asked whether being sentenced to death was worth it, he said, "In our society, a poor man has little dignity, and he cannot bear to part with it. My friends used to humiliate me. I decided to end my ordeal and face what may come." Sanda station house officer Muhammad Ishtiaq said that every individual held different views. "Most people in Punjab would rather face death, than let female family members dishonour the family name by having illicit relations," he stated.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005
10:33:15 PM ||
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I would personally rather shoot all you misogynistic retards that think killing, maiming and mutilating you mother, sisters and daughters is some kind of God given right. I think your lack of honor and manhood is the problem. You are the persons who need to be offed. You are the problem. Your total lack of manhood is what is dishonorable. I am just hoping we can kill more of you before you breed and pass this evil on to another generation.
generally speaking, attacking a culture's practitioners for it's practices just creates a "us vs them" situation.. which of course increases the importance of their culture and re-affirms it's existence, reversing your intended effect
of course the run and gun method CAN work, but you have to kill damn near everybody before they get the hint, most westner cultures don't have will to do that sort of thing these days
but, even assuming the shoot'em method was used and it worked. What have you done? You've effected a hostile change in culture, which has it's own interesting side effects. But regardless, the effect is a change in culture.
This of course indicates that a change in culture is the true goal, it's hard to effectively argue that using threats of lethal force is most effective long term choice for changing their culture.
What needs to be done is improve freedom, create systems of equal rights, reduce corruption, and limit the ability of the present culture to spread.. more or less what is already being done now...
I do not agree with what he did. But it seems that his motivations were in line with what his upbringing taught him.
It does seem that he knows what he did was wrong and he is willing to face up to it, although he did not have the strength to change his internal motivations. That he knew it was wrong and he stayed to meet the police is a hopeful sign that those within such a culture have the realization tha this is wrong, even though they have not come up with the strength to change.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 8:07
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THE government has been conducting negotiations with north African countries to extradite terrorist suspects held without charge at Belmarsh prison. Talks have been held between Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office minister, and the governments of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to draw up a treaty to deport terrorist suspects to their home countries, where they are also wanted. One of the men is an Algerian accused of attending a terrorist "camp" in Dorset. Another is said to be spiritual head of the group behind the Casablanca bombs in 2003.
The deal being negotiated by Symons, who visited the three countries last month, would give the government a way out of the row over the detention without charge of foreign terrorist suspects. On Friday Tony Blair signalled he was prepared to offer concessions to opponents of home detention for terrorist suspects. They are expected to include giving judges a role in imposing the so-called "control orders". Foreign Office officials confirmed last weekend that the talks with the three countries had dealt with security co-operation and counterterrorism. Algerian diplomatic sources said Britain had agreed to draft an agreement for mutual extradition.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
1:03:26 AM ||
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Grab their asses in the middle of the night and put them on planes bound for their country of origin. Kick them out the door upon landing. What ever happens to them once that happens is not our problem.
This "league against cruel sports" thinking in the war against this moon cult will not work.
Federal authorities in Cincinnati charged 15 people Thursday with taking part in a conspiracy to illegally obtain Ohio driver's licenses for immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.
The accused ringleader, Mohammad I. Shalash, teamed with Tammy Black, an employee of the deputy registrar's office at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles' downtown office to produce the licenses and charged the immigrants up to $300 each, federal prosecutors said.
Shalash, a U.S. citizen originally from Jordan, paid Black with as many as 200 phone cards worth $10 each, prosecutors said. He took the immigrants to the registrar's office, located across the street from the Hamilton County Courthouse, one by one over the course of several months last year.
Fred Stratmann, spokesman for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, said the bureau has made several changes in recent years to improve security and training of personnel, including background checks on all employees. Black was hired before the checks began, but because she had no prior criminal record she likely would have been cleared anyway.
Nine of them, including Black, were arrested Thursday. Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were trying to track down the others, including Shalash, late Thursday.
Magistrate Judge Timothy Black - who is not related to Tammy Black - released her without bond after her lawyer indicated she had a husband and daughter in Cincinnati and no prior convictions. Eight of the immigrants accused of obtaining the licenses were held without bond because of immigration violations.
Shalash and Black each are charged with one count of conspiracy and 13 counts of illegal production of a driver's license. They face up to 15 years in prison on each charge. The others are charged with one count of conspiracy and one count each of illegal production of a driver's license.
The Gang:
Of the 15 people indicted Thursday, two are U.S. citizens, five were in the U.S. illegally and the other eight had entered the country legally but remained in the United States illegally.
Mohammed Shalash, 30, of Cincinnati, is a permanent resident. He is charged with 14 counts in the indictment.
Tammy Black, 40, of Cleves, is a U.S. citizen. She was charged with 14 counts in the indictment.
Ismail Shalash, 41, of Cincinnati, permanent residence is pending approval; faces six charges.
Ahlam Mustafa (aka Ahlam Abu-Saba), 37, of Cincinnati, overstayed visit in U.S.; faces six charges.
Karamba Tounkara, 34, of Cincinnati, illegal alien; faces 13 charges.
Fuad Shannak, 48, of Cincinnati, overstayed visit in U.S.; faces eight charges.
Belal An Owda (aka Blal An Owdi), 31, of Cincinnati, illegally in the U.S.; faces two charges.
Mohammed Qadah, 22, of Cincinnati, illegally in the U.S.; faces 11 charges.
Khaled Daqer, 38, of Cincinnati, illegally in the U.S.; faces seven charges.
Mazen Akkawi, 25, of Cincinnati, permanent residence in the U.S. is pending approval; faces four charges.
Ayed Alhasasneh, 41, of Centerville, illegally in the U.S.; faces three charges.
Mohammad Albararawi (aka Mohammad Al-Barbarawi), 24, of West Chester, conditional permanent residence; faces five charges.
Mohammad Khaddash, 22, permanent residence is pending approval; faces nine charges.
Abdulrahim Raya, 58, of Cincinnati, overstayed visit in U.S.; faces 10 charges.
Loay Shannak, 20, of Cincinnati, currently not in the United States.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/27/2005
10:32:19 AM ||
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hmmm - not a Manuel Labor among them
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 12:29
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Tammy Black, 40, of Cleves
Is this the one known has the Hair of Flanders?
#3
Law enforcement worthy of the name. Commendations to the Cincinnati police force and all who serve.
Posted by: Annie War ||
02/27/2005 15:09
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Mohammad Khaddash, 22, permanent residence is pending approval
May I suggest permanent residence at Ohio's super-max prison in Youngstown? (That would make a fitting home for the other 14 scumbags as well.)
A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush had seen the error of his unilateral cowboy ways and was setting off to Europe to mend fences with America's ''allies.''
I think not. Lester Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister, used to say that diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. All week long President Bush offered a hilariously parodic reductio of Pearson's bon mot, wandering from one European Union gabfest to another insisting how much he loves his good buddy Jacques and his good buddy Gerhard and how Europe and America share -- what's the standard formulation? -- ''common values.'' Care to pin down an actual specific value or two that we share? Well, you know, ''freedom,'' that sort of thing, abstract nouns mostly. Love to list a few more common values, but gotta run.
And at the end what's changed?
Will the United States sign on to Kyoto?
No.
Will the United States join the International Criminal Court?
No.
Will the United States agree to accept whatever deal the Anglo-Franco-German negotiators cook up with Iran?
No.
Even more remarkably, aside from sticking to his guns in the wider world, the president also found time to cast his eye upon Europe's internal affairs. As he told his audience in Brussels, in the first speech of his tour, ''We must reject anti-Semitism in all forms and we must condemn violence such as that seen in the Netherlands.''
The Euro-bigwigs shuffled their feet and stared coldly into their mistresses' decolletage. They knew Bush wasn't talking about anti-Semitism in Nebraska, but about France, where for three years there's been a sustained campaign of synagogue burning and cemetery desecration, and Germany, where the Berlin police advise Jewish residents not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith.
The ''violence in the Netherlands'' is a reference to Theo van Gogh, murdered by a Dutch Islamist for making a film critical of the Muslim treatment of women. Van Gogh's professional colleagues reacted to this assault on freedom of speech by canceling his movie from the Rotterdam Film Festival and scheduling some Islamist propaganda instead.
The president, in other words, understands that for Europe, unlike America, the war on terror is an internal affair, a matter of defusing large unassimilated radicalized Muslim immigrant populations before they provoke the inevitable resurgence of opportunist political movements feeding off old hatreds. Difficult trick to pull off, especially on a continent where the ruling elite feels it's in the people's best interest not to pay any attention to them.
The new EU ''constitution,'' for example, would be unrecognizable as such to any American. I had the opportunity to talk with former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing on a couple of occasions during his long labors as the self-declared and strictly single Founding Father. He called himself ''Europe's Jefferson,'' and I didn't like to quibble that, constitution-wise, Jefferson was Europe's Jefferson -- that's to say, at the time the U.S. Constitution was drawn up, Thomas Jefferson was living in France. Thus, for Giscard to be Europe's Jefferson, he'd have to be in Des Moines, where he'd be doing far less damage.
But, quibbles aside, President Giscard professed to be looking in the right direction. When I met him, he had an amiable riff on how he'd been in Washington and bought one of those compact copies of the U.S. Constitution on sale for a buck or two. Many Americans wander round with the constitution in their pocket so they can whip it out and chastise over-reaching congressmen and senators at a moment's notice. Try going round with the European Constitution in your pocket and you'll be walking with a limp after two hours: It's 511 pages, which is 500 longer than the U.S. version. It's full of stuff about European space policy, Slovakian nuclear plants, water resources, free expression for children, the right to housing assistance, preventive action on the environment, etc.
Most of the so-called constitution isn't in the least bit constitutional. That's to say, it's not content, as the U.S. Constitution is, to define the distribution and limitation of powers. Instead, it reads like a U.S. defense spending bill that's got porked up with a ton of miscellaneous expenditures for the ''mohair subsidy'' and other notorious Congressional boondoggles. President Ronald Reagan liked to say, ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.'' If you want to know what it looks like the other way round, read Monsieur Giscard's constitution.
But the fact is it's going to be ratified, and Washington is hardly in a position to prevent it. Plus there's something to be said for the theory that, as the EU constitution is a disaster waiting to happen, you might as well cut down the waiting and let it happen. CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I'd say, as predictions of doom go, that's a little on the cautious side.
But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.
For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.
Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.
Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.
Posted by: tipper ||
02/27/2005
10:27:21 AM ||
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The thing that amazed me about Bush's trip to Europe is that the press lapped up all those platitudes like Fido and the famous Dog's Breakfast. Bush appealed to their better natures, saying the right things, but the ball was placed squarely in Europe's court. If they want to join in helping to get Iraq on its feet, well, we could sure use the help. But if they don't, then we go on and do the mission.
Steyn is correct. It is not the job of the US to meddle in the EU constitution. It is not our business. However, it is our business when countries like France and Germany actively undermine our interests and have covert trade with a dictator like Saddam.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 16:00
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#2
The irony is Bush is saving Europe from it's destiny. Who makes better immigrants: the current fascist islamists fostered by the wahabbis, or the future democrats from Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and eventually Iran and Arabia (formerly know as Saudi)?
Posted by: john ||
02/27/2005 17:00
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#3
Yo, Aris. You'd better go set Mr Steyn straight. I think he just dissed the shit out of your beloved phonebook.
#4
If so many smart people hadn't assured me that Bush is a moronic chimpanzee, I would say that his trip to Europe was a piece of diplomatic genius. First, he seizes the moral high ground in his second inaugural address by talking about freedom from tyranny. Ten days later eight million Iraqis -- in whom Bush never seems to have lost faith-- validate Bush's right to hold the moral high ground. Then Bush goes to Europe and figuratively speaking asks Jacques, "Now, you oppose tryanny, don't you, Jacques?"
Jacques' honest answer is, "Well, George, as long as I'm the tyrant I really don't have a problem with tryanny. You think some truck driver in Cherbourg knows more about governing France than I do? Besides, the money's good." But Jacques can't say that publicly because doing so would blow the lid off the whole EU constitution thing: Jacques really doesn't want those troublesome English getting the idea that a vote for the EU constitution means giving up their rights. So Jacques just sort of mumbles his way through the visit.
The appearance, which Steyn seizes on, is a consensus of sorts on Bush's terms. And meanwhile Bush turns Mistress Condi, she-wolf of the State Department, loose on Mubarak...
Posted by: Matt ||
02/27/2005 17:19
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#5
"Mistress Condi, she-wolf of the State Department"
Posted by: Matt ||
02/27/2005 17:56
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#7
The future european austronaut is planning to carry the EU "contitution" into space. The over 800 pages (Mark Steyn has forgooten the annexes) of it. Weighing over 1 pound. Cost of sending one pound into space: probably in excess of a million dollars. Better to be an American: they have a much lighter constitution.
#9
Have either of you, JFM or .com, ever bothered to check the length of the NAFTA treaty?
It's about 1700 pages, including annexes and footnotes.
Try to carry *that* around in your pockets.
My "beloved phonebook" would be even more beloved by me if it was the much shorter definition of a supranational government, rather than the mammothical expression of the hybrid entity that the EU currently is, filled with the opt-outs and results of years of compromises happening every time a new member-state negotiated an accession treaty as it accedes into the Union.
And I may not be able to carry the whole constitution around, but no worries, I will be able to carry Parts I & II that are the truly constitutional bits and the Charter of fundamental rights. I'll leave out Part III and the various protocols and annexes; namely the bits which contain most of the treaty-ise.
And JFM, I googled about it and the cost is far far less than what you say. A kilo into space is nowadays less that 10000$, and may be less that 2000$. I can't be more specific not knowing what kind of propulsion they'll use.
#10
Anyway, the guy is making assumptions that I disagree with.
For example he seems to think that the European Constitution will be ratified for sure, and I happen to think that's the less probable scenario by far.
#11
The future european astronaut is planning to carry the EU "contitution" into space. If he doesn't hurry, it may be the Koran. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
Posted by: Tom ||
02/27/2005 21:22
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You what the fuck, .com. Focus? On topic? It's you people who first compared the length of the the EU constitutional treaty with the US constitution. If *that's* an apt comparison, then the NAFTA treaty is just as apt a one, like it or not.
#15
NAFTA ain't a constition I think is what .com is trying to point out. What Steyn and .com are also pointing out I think is that this "constitution" can't accurately be called a constitution if its as long as treaty papers, spending and defense bills, and legislation for new bills will all possible annexes combined. Call it a "Bible of Treaties" or the "Tome of Bills of Neverending Agony" or something, but it ain't a constitution by most defintions. (Unless of course you're planning on whipping out this 1700 page monstrosity and throwing it at one of your MPs just to get their attention...that might work as a way to make sure the people get some usage outta it).
But I gotta give it to you Aris you're claim awhile back that you much prefer this constitution because it pretty much guarantees "Europe will never go to war" (with one another or anyone else it seems), I can pretty much agree with. I dont think the EU will ever be much of a military threat to anyone once it passes.
#16
Valentine> "NAFTA ain't a constitution I think is"
No, the NAFTA treaty is a treaty between nations.
And the "Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe" is also a treaty between nations.
It says so there in the name.
What Steyn and .com are also pointing out I think is that this "constitution" can't accurately be called a constitution if its as long as treaty papers
There are several treaty papers which are much shorter than the US constitution.
"but it ain't a constitution by most defintions"
I'd say it holds most of the function of a constitution, so calling it one is quite accurate. Ofcourse it also holds most of the function of a treaty as well. So calling it one is also quite accurate.
You have a hybrid entity between a federation and international organization, you get a hybrid document describing its function.
And you get a hybrid name that includes both the words "treaty" and "constitution" in the title.
But I gotta give it to you Aris you're claim awhile back that you much prefer this constitution because it pretty much guarantees "Europe will never go to war"
I said that? I don't remember it. I believe that the EU itself already assures that its members nations won't go to war against theselves again. With or without Constitution.
But it's certainly possible I meant that the Constitution is required for the EU to expand further until it covers the whole of Europe.
I dont think the EU will ever be much of a military threat to anyone once it passes.
So, our eeeevil EU troops won't be invading Britain to overthrow democracy there? IIRC, Anonymouse will be pleased to hear it.
Anyway, what *I* think is that you don't know what the Constitution actually says or what changes it makes from the current treaties.
Paul Hiltemann had already noticed a darkening mood in the Netherlands. He runs an agency for people wanting to emigrate and his client list had surged.
But he was still taken aback in November when a Dutch filmmaker was shot and his throat was slit, execution style, on an Amsterdam street.
In the weeks that followed, Mr. Hiltemann was inundated by e-mail messages and telephone calls. "There was a big panic," he said, "a flood of people saying they wanted to leave the country."
Leave this stable and prosperous corner of Europe? Leave this land with its generous social benefits and ample salaries, a place of fine schools, museums, sports grounds and bicycle paths, all set in a lively democracy?
The answer, increasingly, is yes. This small nation is a magnet for immigrants, but statistics suggest there is a quickening flight of the white middle class. Dutch people pulling up roots said they felt a general pessimism about their small and crowded country and about the social tensions that had grown along with the waves of newcomers, most of them Muslims."The Dutch are living in a kind of pressure cooker atmosphere," Mr. Hiltemann said.
There is more than the concern about the rising complications of absorbing newcomers, now one-tenth of the population, many of them from largely Muslim countries. Many Dutch also seem bewildered that their country, run for decades on a cozy, political consensus, now seems so tense and prickly and bent on confrontation. Those leaving have been mostly lured by large English-speaking nations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where they say they hope to feel less constricted.
In interviews, emigrants rarely cited a fear of militant Islam as their main reason for packing their bags. But the killing of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a fierce critic of fundamentalist Muslims, seems to have been a catalyst.
"Our Web site got 13,000 hits in the weeks after the van Gogh killing," said Frans Buysse, who runs an agency that handles paperwork for departing Dutch. "That's four times the normal rate."
Mr. van Gogh's killing is the only one the police have attributed to an Islamic militant, but since then they have reported finding death lists by local Islamic militants with the names of six prominent politicians. The effects still reverberate. In a recent opinion poll, 35 percent of the native Dutch questioned had negative views about Islam.
There are no precise figures on the numbers now leaving. But Canadian, Australian and New Zealand diplomats here said that while immigration papers were processed in their home capitals, embassy officials here had been swamped by inquiries in recent months.
Many who settle abroad may not appear in migration statistics, like the growing contingent of retirees who flock to warmer places. But official statistics show a trend. In 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutch moved elsewhere, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. For 2004, the provisional figure is close to 40,000. "It's definitely been picking up in the past five years," said Cor Kooijmans, a demographer at the bureau.
Ruud Konings, an accountant, has just sold his comfortable home in the small town of Hilvarenbeek. In March, after a year's worth of paperwork, the family will leave for Australia. The couple said the main reason was their fear for the welfare and security of their two teenage children.
"When I grew up, this place was spontaneous and free, but my kids cannot safely cycle home at night," said Mr. Konings, 49. "My son just had his fifth bicycle stolen." At school, his children and their friends feel uneasy, he added. "They're afraid of being roughed up by the gangs of foreign kids."
Sandy Sangen has applied to move to Norway with her husband and two school-age children. They want to buy a farm in what she calls "a safer, more peaceful place."
Like the Sangens and Koningses, others who are moving speak of their yearning for the open spaces, the clean air, the easygoing civility they feel they have lost. Complaints include overcrowding, endless traffic jams, overregulation. Some cite a rise in antisocial behavior and a worrying new toughness and aggression both in political debates and on the streets.
Until the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a populist anti-immigration politician, in 2002 and the more recent slaying of a teacher by a student, this generation of Dutch people could not conceive of such violence in their peaceful country.
After Mr. van Gogh's killing, angry demonstrations and fire-bombings of mosques and Muslim schools took place. In revenge, some Christian churches were attacked. Mr. Konings said he and many of his friends sensed more confrontation in the making, perhaps more violence.
"I'm a great optimist, but we're now caught in a downward spiral, economically and socially," he said. "We feel we can give our children a better start somewhere else."
Marianne and Rene Aukens, from the rural town of Brunssum, had successful careers, he as director of a local bank, she as a personnel manager. But after much thought they have applied to go to New Zealand. "In my lifetime, all the villages around here have merged, almost all the green spaces have been paved over," said Mr. Aukens, 41. "Nature is finished. There's no more silence; you hear traffic everywhere."
The saying that the Netherlands is "full up" has become a national mantra. It was used cautiously at first, because it had an overtone of being anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim. But many of those interviewed now state it flatly, like Peter Bles. He makes a long commute to a banking job in Amsterdam, but he and his wife are preparing to move to Australia.
"We found people are more polite, less stressed, less aggressive there," Mr. Bles said. "Perhaps stress has a lot to do with the lack of living space. Here we are full up."
Space is indeed at a premium here in Europe's most densely populated nation, where 16.3 million people live in an area roughly the size of Maryland. Denmark, which is slightly larger, has 5.5 million people. Dutch demographers say their country has undergone one of Europe's fastest and most far-reaching demographic shifts, with about 10 percent of the population now foreign born, a majority of them Muslims.
Blaming immigrants for many ills has become commonplace. Conservative Moroccans and Turks from rural areas are accused of disdaining the liberal Dutch ways and of making little effort to adapt. Immigrant youths now make up half the prison population. More than 40 percent of immigrants receive some form of government assistance, a source of resentment among native Dutch. Immigrants say, though, that they are widely discriminated against.
Ms. Konings said the Dutch themselves brought on some of the social frictions. The Dutch "thought that we had to adapt to the immigrants and that we had to give them handouts," she said. "We've been too lenient; now it's difficult to turn the tide."
To Mr. Hiltemann, the emigration consultant, what is remarkable is not only the surge of interest among the Dutch in leaving, but also the type of people involved. "They are successful people, I mean, urban professionals, managers, physiotherapists, computer specialists," he said. Five years ago, he said, most of his clients were farmers looking for more land.
Mr. Buysse, who employs a staff of eight to process visas, concurred. He said farmers were still emigrating as Europe cut agricultural subsidies. '"What is new," he said, "is that Dutch people who are rich or at least very comfortable are now wanting to leave the country."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/27/2005
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#1
Uh....Frau Sangen, hate to break it to you, but Norway's got the same problem you're running away from.
Why don't you all stay home and force your politicians to do something about the homicidal bums your country has welcomed with open arms (and much holier-than-thou-ness).
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/27/2005 1:09
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Article: "What is new," he said, "is that Dutch people who are rich or at least very comfortable are now wanting to leave the country."
You gotta love it. European political parties are cynically encouraging Muslim immigration to compete with each other at the polls, thereby hastening the day that Muslim majorities, followed by Muslim strongmen, will rule Europe. What I find interesting is that democracy accompanied by mass immigration and the welfare state is leading to the end of Europe as the home of white Europeans.
#4
Yes Norway faces the Muslim hordes as well but this problem is facing all of western Europe. See The Weekly Standard issue # 22 for the scoop on Sweden. Malmo, second or third largest city in Sweden is now 25% Muslim, 90% of them are unemployed, living off the Swedish welfare system.
Posted by: Juan ||
02/27/2005 2:04
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#6
The title should say emigrate - as in outbound. Newsflash for the Dutch - you won't find sanctuary anywhere, except maybe Antarctica. You will find common cause, if you have the stones for the fight and the sacrifices required to make a stand, in those few places actively opposing Islam. Put up or shut up is the order of the day.
#7
This has been going on unremarked for years. Educated, skilled and succesful people leave to be replaced by poor unskilled people whose ambition is to live on welfare. Something has to give.
Sobiesky . . . this is not tapeworm. A tapeworm will live off the host, giving some bad side effects, but allowing the host ot live.
This is cancer of the heart and it will eat the heart out of the Europaean democracies and leave the hollow shells filled with Islamic hate.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 8:01
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#12
Even sadder to think is that when these lot get wherever they're running away to, they'll start trying to make the new place more like home. Same stupid mushy politics and unwillingness to confront the problems they created. They'll be like Typhoid Marys - bringing the ideological infection with them.
#13
Which is why the US is not on that list of English-speaking countries being mobbed with requests. Their model couldn't work in their own country once there was any diversity at all ... it would work even worse here.
Posted by: too true ||
02/27/2005 10:14
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#14
Even sadder to think is that when these lot get wherever they're running away to, they'll start trying to make the new place more like home
#15
Is anyone actually surprised by the 'Surrender and Run' tatic by Europeans? Contrast that with the Minuteman project in Arizona and see the the great divide in our cultures. If a Professor was shot and had his throat cut, I think the public (maybe not academic) response would be totally 180 from Europes. I notice they are not coming to the U.S., GOOD we don't like quiters either.
#19
Shipman, That assumes that they won't try to reconstruct the Europe that was so wonderful before the wogs came. But they will. With the consequences mhw sets out.
Good discussion about today's Steyn column at Austin Bay's. Steyn comments on Bay's attack on the column.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/27/2005 13:58
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#20
Damnit! I'm trying to be positive here Mrs. D! :)
#21
Unfortunately, Shipman, there's not a lot to be positive about. The good people have already left, driven out by the socialists and transies. Those people are productive and go-getters. There aren't a lot of them left over there, though.
Now comes the people who screwed up the place and want to not take responsibility for their actions. They then want to screw up their host country the same way, and presumably will flee again when they ruin it.
As Pappy noted, it's the same within the US. Some of us fled California because of the runaway leftist government and are more conservative or libertarian than the native Zonies. Others, though, want to make Arizona a drier version of California. Oh, well. I'll be dead in 30 years or so.
Will the last Christian leaving the Netherlands, breach the dykes?
The frontrunner to be Iraq's next prime minister has held talks with the top Shia cleric on ways to include all parties in politics as talks on forming a new government looked set to drag on. On Friday, Ibrahim al-Jafari leader of the Shia al-Dawa party met Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, who has been reported by Aljazeera to have given his blessing to the likely new prime minister. After the meeting al-Jafari said: "There is an important issue we discussed: the participation of our brothers who could not take part in the election. The next government requires consultation and consensus."
Al-Jafari, who is the interim vice-president and leader of the Shia Dawa Party, and other politicians are jockeying for the top positions in the next government after last month's election, negotiations complicated by ethnic and sectarian issues in a country troubled by violence. Leaders of Muslim Sunni Arabs who boycotted the election are not represented in the new government, after being Iraq's traditional leaders. The election result has raised concerns disaffected Sunnis will join fighters waging a campaign of violence. ButShia leaders have said Sunnis will play a role in Iraq's new political landscape despite their election turnout.
But the guys playing a role will be the guys the Shiites allow to take part, not people who were elected by the Sunnis to represent them. Hosed that, didn't they?
Whoever becomes prime minister is likely to make the country's security crisis the top priority. Al-Jafari, a soft-spoken man who thinks dialogue can ease Iraq's problems, was nominated to be prime minister by the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the 30 January election. The alliance will have a slim majority in the 275-seat National Assembly but must cut a deal to secure the two-thirds majority it needs to form a government. A Kurdish coalition is in a strong bargaining position after coming second in the ballot and securing 75 seats. The Kurds could give their backing to al-Jafari or the secular list led by Iyad Allawi, which clinched 40 seats after coming third and is determined to keep Allawi, a secular Shia, at the country's helm as prime minister.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005
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Palestinians expressed anger Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes.
Official condemnations and denials were followed by public anger toward the perpetrators as Israeli blamed Syria and the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the attack. The Palestinians pointed fingers at the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. Syria denied the allegations.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas convened his top security chiefs directly after the bombing and issued a strong statement pledging to track down and punish the culprits. The three main Palestinian militant groups — including Islamic Jihad — initially denied involvement. A branch of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the West Bank city of Nablus, even condemned the attack.
"We will not allow anyone to sabotage our national goals, aspirations and ambitions," Abbas said Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah. "All Palestinian factions, including the prisoners, were outraged by this operation. I emphasize that there is another party that wants to sabotage the peace process."
Palestinians, weary after four years of violence, welcomed an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire declaration at a Mideast summit in Egypt on Feb. 8, and many accused Hezbollah of intentionally trying to destroy the truce.
"If Hezbollah was behind this attack, I as a Palestinian tell them, 'Deal with your own problems and stay out of ours,'" said Akram Abu Sbaa, 38, of Jenin.
Another Jenin resident, Bashar Jalloudi, 40, said Hezbollah's alleged involvement in the Tel Aviv bombing would only hurt Palestinian interests at a time of relative calm.
"Where was Hezbollah when we were being killed and our homes were being demolished? They were standing on the sidelines watching with their hands tied," Jalloudi said.
Friday night's bombing, carried out by an attacker from the West Bank town of Tulkarem, killed four people and wounded about 50 others.
If a Palestinian group is found responsible, it could derail the cease-fire and put tremendous pressure on Abbas to crack down, as Israel has demanded. If an outside group was involved, Israel is likely to give him more leeway.
Israel blamed Syria and Islamic Jihad. Palestinian security officials said Hezbollah was to blame. Both Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah receive backing from Damascus.
In contrast to the dozens of previous suicide bombings, no celebrations were held in the West Bank on Saturday and militant groups didn't hang the customary posters of congratulations at the bomber's home.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
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#1
Ball is in the Paleos' court. If they start ratting out the terrorists and get them out of circulation or killed and the Paleos will have a good life, gahrrr-ohhnn-teeeeeed.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 1:05
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#3
Abu Mazin is speaking well, but only his actions against the terrorists, along with the rest of the Palestinians, will tell if he is serious about peace or has simply formed a deeper cover than Arafat.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/27/2005 7:54
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#4
They just don't have the same budget for celebrations, now that Saddam is out of the picture.
Posted by: Aleksander Boyd ||
02/27/2005
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#1
This is the second FARC terrorist that we know of being captured in Venezuela.
I wonder how many of them are operating with islamic terrorists setting up camp in the country: "Additional concern is generated by the fact that the IAC is linked to Colombian terrorist groups now said to be involved with Islamic terrorists. Terrorism experts cite the secretive tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, where Colombian and Islamic terrorists are said to be coordinating their activities. Other reports suggest the presence of Islamic terrorist groups in VENEZUELA, where the anti-American regime headed by Hugo Chavez is also said to be aiding and providing sanctuary for Colombian terrorists." http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.asp?HC=&D=1/20/2005&ID=54153
#2
Chavez can't be that stupid. If he wasn't really worried about The US killing him. Inviting and cooperating with Islamic terrorists should make him nervous and keep him looking over his shoulder all the time.
#1
Actually, it may be a good idea to paste the article here, despite that it does not require registration. Just for the sake of dissemination of good info. The more exposure, the better.
#2
Upon the Kyoto agreement coming into force for its signatories last week, Gregg Easterbrook noted in The New Republic that "The world's first international anti-global-warming agreement to take force is not the Kyoto treaty. It is a Bush Administration initiative, and you have not heard a peep regarding the initiative because the American press corps is pretending it does not exist."
Easterbrook's no friend of W, even though he does a good TMQ column at NFL.com, which makes this pleasantly surprising
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2005 16:23
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Contrast this eminently sensible program with the Kyoto inspired lunacy of capturing methane flaring it off hence creating CO2 to earn carbon credits which then can be sold so others can release more CO2. Link BTW, I have come across a number of approving refernces to this because it shows Kyoto 'is working.' FYI atmospheric methane naturally degrades in about 10 years whereas CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
#1
Only one development could upset this optimistic prognosis: an end to the technological dynamism, openness to trade, and flexibility that have powered the U.S. economy. The biggest threat to U.S. hegemony, accordingly, stems not from the sentiments of foreign investors, but from protectionism and isolationism at home.
An Associated Press report on Saturday said that "the police in northern Bangladesh have arrested 11 alleged Muslim militants after raiding homes and mosques as part of a crackdown on a recently outlawed radical Islamic group". Those arrested belonged to "Jumatul Mujahedin" and Jagrata Muslim Janata militant groups. A lot of arms and explosives were recovered from the hideouts (including mosques) of these organisations widely reported two weeks ago as practising violence in the name of Islam, enforcing hijab and namaz on pain of death. The report went on to say that "the investigators were trying to find out whether the two newly-outlawed groups were connected". Significantly, the police were "also looking for Jagrata Muslim Janata's leader, Siddiqul Islam, also known as Bangla Bhai".
He means whether they're officially connected, of course. They're both following the same path, toward the same ends.
After violence and coercion by Bangla Bhai were reported in the international press, a Bangladeshi journalist writing in a Karachi daily strongly condemned the "international conspiracy" to malign Bangladesh.
There's always an international conspiracy under way to malign whatever Islamic rathole is currently erupting. That's because it's never their fault...
He described the Bangla Bhai phenomenon like this: "What is going on in some parts of north-western Bangladesh does not bear any semblance of an Islamic revolution but looks like gang warfare for dominance and extortion, common in many unruly pockets in the Third World." One assumes that he would similarly describe the shenanigans of another violent gang run by one Jangi Bhai in south Bangladesh. The journalist did not deny violence and extortion and killing in the name of Islam but protested strongly against the labelling of this phenomenon as "Islamic revolution". In his mind there is a pristine image of 'Islamic revolution' which he wants to save against pollution of foreign comment.
That ignores reality, of course. The "Islamic revolution" is financed by bank robberies, drug dealings, and the occasional burglary to supplement the princely largesse coming from Arabia. There's no difference between the Lions of Islam and the thieves and footpads because they're usually the same people, especially at the cannon fodder and middle management levels. The upper levels, of course, are holy men. They have minions to take care of that sort of thing.
In his anger the Bangladeshi journalist addressed a warning to the 'secular' rulers masquerading as Islamic leaders against fascism on the lines of what happened in Europe before the World War II. It would have been appropriate to compare the "pseudo-Islamic" upheaval of Bangladesh with the one in Pakistan, especially as both Bangla Bhai and Jangi Bhai had trained in Afghanistan and lived in the seminaries of Karachi.
Oh, wotta surprise.
It is ironic that the same Bangladeshi journalist who is in denial about "Islamist" terrorism wrote a book some years ago recording the death sentences passed on women in the Bangladeshi countryside through fatwas. According to the book, the number of women subjected to cruel illegal fatwas began after 1994 and rose to over 3,000 annually. During the period from 1990 to 1995, over 10,000 victims of rape, murder, abduction, forcible marriage and arbitrary divorce, were poor rural women with no social support. In 1993 alone, 6,000 women committed suicide after being trapped in fatwa situations. The obsession with sharia law was always present in Bangladesh but received a fillip through the Islamisation processes unleashed by General Ziaur Rehman and General Ershad, reaching a new furore after the "Taslima Nasreen incident" in 1994.
Sorry I missed that one. I was washing my hair that year.
If Bangladeshis "in denial" should care to look at Pakistan more closely instead of hating it blindly, they will find that the disease of 'Islamist terrorism' was incubated in Karachi and Khost and then passed on to Dhaka.
If they'd care to glance at it casually they'd notice that.
A glace at the looking glass in Dhaka will discover Pakistani-jihadi footsteps all over the place. The Harkatul Mujahideen al-Islami (the one called HUJI in Bangladesh) is the outfit whose leader was a graduate of the Banuri Mosque seminary in Karachi and whose activists tried to kill our prime minister Shaukat Aziz recently. HUJI is the international face of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
As for the "pseudo-Islamic" nature of what is happening in Bangladesh, let us accept that that is the way of 'Islamic revolution' these days. This is what the Uzbek Islamist Tahir Yuldashev did in Osh before he came down to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan's Tribal Areas. The Hizb al-Tahrir, which Pakistan banned only after Yuldashev's discovery, worked in tandem with him in Central Asia and is now clearly working in tandem with HUJI in Bangladesh. As in Pakistan, seminaries also flourish in Bangladesh with foreign funding because of poverty and — and this few observers mention — profits to the organising clergy. Had the clergy been devoted to a higher cause they would have used the money to promote local Islam and not the hardline Wahhabi-Saudi one now associated with the Taliban. An increasing number of Bangladesh's madrassas are now following the pattern of study of the madrassas in Pakistan and have become Deobandi in their worldview. The Hindus have been targeted, aided by the widespread belief that they should be expelled from the country. The jihad in Afghanistan brought in Al Qaeda money, and the training camps in Bangladesh have since begun to turn out warriors for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The while, the government's been standing by watching and denying, and allying with the Islamists.
The phase Bangladesh is passing through can be taken in two parts. An aspect of it belongs to the early 1990s when the "Islamist" outfits in Pakistan did not offend the conservative Muslim League but were seen as a threat by a liberal PPP. These days the ruling BNP in Bangladesh is most reluctant to take action against the Islamists as they continue to attack Awami League cadres and communists; but when phase two opens up, the BNP will be equally threatened. The "purifying" dynamic of the Islamists will demand that the BNP bend to the kind of shariah the warriors favour in light of their training in Afghanistan and their "salafi" contact with Al Qaeda. Therefore, while the Bangladeshi journalist may be offended today that Bangla Bhai and Jangi Bhai are being hauled up under pressure from the United States and the European Union, a day will come soon enough when the state of Bangladesh will come under threat from the Islamic warriors it is now empowering through denial.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2005
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Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt slammed Prime Minister Omar Karami Friday for his comments the previous day regarding Lebanon's dependence on a Syrian presence in the country. Following Cabinet's weekly session on Thursday, the premier had bluntly said that the Lebanese Army was not yet ready to fill the "vacuum" if Syria withdrew its army and might collapse along the same sectarian lines that triggered off the Lebanese civil war.
It would seem the government should have to answer for the poor state of the Lebanese army. My guess is that too many resources have been going into maintaining Hezbollah.
During a radio talk show on Friday, Jumblatt said: "Karami should be brought to justice and tried for his statement." Following his meeting with the Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, Beirut MP Nabil de Freij also had harsh criticism for Karami, and said that the premier's remarks were an "insult" to the Lebanese Army. De Friej said: "What Karami said was first of all an insult to President Emile Lahoud, because he built the army following the end of the war."
So he's saying the army is up to the task of defending the country without having to salute the Syrian hegemons?
The Tripoli Gathering also issued a statement Friday criticizing Karami's statement, saying: "The government has crossed all the red lines, to the limits that Karami is threatening to divide the army and create instability in case Syria withdrew its forces from Beirut." Meanwhile, Metn MP Ghassan Mokheiber said he wished that Karami could be more responsible in his statements. Mokheiber said: "I wonder how he sees a possible civil war at a time that is witnessing such high levels of national unity."
Perhaps because that's what was supposed to come of it?
However, Lahoud said that the government would not allow any security breaches to take place. Lahoud said: "The passing away of Hariri was a great loss to Lebanon, and his assassination aimed at getting the country into a serious crisis." He added that whatever the result of Monday's Parliamentary session, all political parties in Lebanon would have to discuss the situation. Lahoud said: "Following the extension, I called for a dialogue to take place between all political parties in Lebanon, but unfortunately the opposition did not respond to this gesture."
Maybe they're afraid somebody's going to try and bump them off?
He added: "But our differences should not lead to the destruction of Lebanon." The president also asserted that investigations into Hariri's murder would continue until those behind it were known.
And what're you gonna do if it's pinned on the Syrians?
He said: "The government will cooperate with the investigators, because it is in Lebanon's best interest that the truth is revealed." Lahoud's remarks come amid a high state of tension in the country, with a public strike called for by the opposition expected to take place Monday when Parliament will discuss Hariri's killing and consider withdrawing confidence in the Cabinet.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A marine has been killed as US and Iraqi forces continue their offensive against fighters in western Iraq, the US military said. On Saturday, the military said the soldier was killed in action on Friday in Iraq's vast Anbar province, one of the country's most troubled areas. Four marines have died and more than 100 suspected Iraqi fighters have been arrested since operations began on Sunday.
That's the part al-Jizzles wants to dwell on, of course...
US marines hit the Iraqi town of Haditha as they continued to search for fighters in the province. Sweeping through the town in tanks and armoured cars at 2.30am, they said they blew up a cache of weapons and explosives and briefly exchanged small arms fire with fighters. But resistance was lighter than expected.
"O Lions of Islam! Run away! Quick!"
Haditha, 240km west of Baghdad, had been regarded as a prime holdout for fighters because of its location on the Euphrates River. Yet the raid failed to net a big payoff in suspects. "The fact is that there was nothing here," Lieutenant Colonel Greg Stevens said. The marines are pushing hard to stabilise the Euphrates corridor and bring Anbar to heel in a campaign, named Operation River Blitz, launched last weekend. Fighters who fled Falluja before it was taken back by US forces in November are thought to have infiltrated the area, waging a war of roadside bombs and mortar attacks and then melting back into the predominantly Sunni local population. Just how much at odds Anbar is with the US-backed government in Baghdad was shown by the tiny turnout in the country's historic election on 30 January when only 2% voted, either through fear of reprisals or antipathy to the new Iraqi order.
My guess is through fear of reprisals. What's yours?
This may have been one of the triggers for River Blitz, and the marines admit the situation in Anbar has deteriorated too far. On Wednesday they fought their way into the neighbouring town of Haqlaniya, a few kilometres to the south, and there had been some talk that fighters might have left there for Haditha. But Stevens was not discouraged that the fighters had failed to appear and take on his tanks. "The fact that we are just sitting here is a good thing. It means that they don't have the free rein of the place."
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The 1/23 Marines are at Haditha dam. This is a reserve battalion comprised of Texas and Louisiana men scheduled to rotate home in about 6 weeks. Information about the Haditha dam and the 1/23 can be found at http://www.politics1.com/usmc.htm, a website that "adopted" the battalion and publishes regular dispatches from a lieutenant in the H&S company.
The Philippines military has reached an informal truce with a southern rebel group, allowing troops to concentrate on pursuing another separatist group, an official said.
Bad idea. They all do the same thing.
Ben Loong, the governor of southern Jolo island, told government officials he helped broker the agreement with Habir Malik, who led Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) forces in an uprising on Jolo earlier this month. Fighting broke out between MNLF forces and government troops on the island in what rebels say was retaliation for previous operations by the military which killed local civilians, including children. The wife and two children of an MNLF leader were among the civilians killed, but a military spokesman said they were caught in crossfire during a clash on 1 February that also left two soldiers dead. "We cannot say it's a ceasefire, but we call it a gentleman's talk between the armed forces and the MNLF," Loong said. Malik, a follower of jailed MNLF leader Nur Misuari, led about 300 MNLF fighters supported by the Abu Sayyaf in attacks on military outposts in Jolo earlier in February, triggering fighting that claimed the lives of 25 soldiers and 70 rebels.
This article starring:
HABIR MALIK
Moro National Liberation Front
Moro National Liberation Front
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Fathi Hammad, one of the Hamas Movement leaders in the Gaza Strip, Friday threatened that the Movement would kidnap Israeli soldiers in the event the occupation authorities didn't free all Palestinian inmates especially those with higher prison terms during the calming down currently observed with the Zionist regime. Speaking at a massive rally staged Friday afternoon in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners, Hammad addressed occupation soldiers saying, "We warn you that if your government didn't release all Palestinian captives during the calming down, you would be subject to abduction at any moment."
The Qassam Brigades, military wing of Hamas, were planning to take Israeli soldiers hostages to force the Israeli government set free all Palestinian internees, he elaborated maintaining that the question of Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails remained the Movement's topmost priority. The Hamas' leader pledged that the Movement would strenuously work toward releasing all Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails. The Palestinian masses reasserted their solidarity with the Palestinian captives, and vowed they would fully support resistance against the Israeli occupation troops in case the Zionist regime didn't free all those captives.
This article starring:
FATHI HAMAD
Hamas
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threatened that the Movement would kidnap Israeli soldiers
Israel has ordered the resumption of military operations against the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad following Friday's blast in Tel Aviv, that killed four people and wounded many more. At a meeting of security chiefs, Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel now considered that Islamic Jihad had broken the informal truce that it had been observing along with other armed groups and that Israeli military operations against its leaders would therefore resume. The minister's statement came after a Palestinian - said to be a member of the Islamic Jihad - in a videotape claimed to have triggered the blast. Mofaz also accused that Syria had a hand in the blast - a charge that Damascus vehemently denied.
Islamic Jihad's head cheese, Ramadan Shallah, lives in Damascus.
"Syria has no connection with this operation and the Damascus office of Islamic Jihad is closed," a Syrian foreign ministry official said.
"There's a sign on the door and everything!"
"We think that the Israeli defence minister's comments show that he knows the identity of the real perpetrator and that he is to be found inside Israel," he said. "Israel is known around the world for sabotaging any peace process," the official added.
"Yeah! They prob'ly dunnit themselves!"
The Israeli defence minister, however, insisted there was a Syrian-hand behind the blast. "We have proof directly linking Syria to this attack," Mofaz said.
That'd be pretty clumsy of them...
Syria's doing pretty well in the Axis-of-Almost-As-Evil department...
Babyface has already pegged his personal 'Worry' meter.
Mofaz also announced the Israeli decision to freeze plans to transfer security control of West Bank towns to the Palestinian Authority until there is a crack down on Islamic Jihad. "The defence minister said that at this point the process of transferring Palestinian cities to Palestinian control is frozen until IsraelâŠevaluates whether Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's government is indeed taking the necessary steps against Islamic Jihad and other terror groups," an Israeli defence ministry spokeswoman said.
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"real perpetrator and that he is to be found inside Israel"
Deep thoughts by Allan: Anti-Semite Semites killing Semites.
PESHAWAR: Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said on Saturday that religious groups banned by the government for fanning sectarianism and religious extremism would not be permitted to re-operate from new platforms, Online and APP reported. However, if they (the groups) were willing to cooperate with the government against terrorism and fanaticism, it (the government) could think of permitting them to operate.
If their purpose in life is terrorism and fanaticism, what're the chances of that happening?
Talking to reporters after attending a Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry function, the interior minister said 16 religious groups had been banned while two were on the government's watch list and leaders of the banned groups were also under surveillance.
Lashkar e-Taiba represents the ISI's undercover arm.
He said the Anti Terrorist Act was complete in all respects and an Urdu version had been provided to all police stations to stop them (banned groups) from regrouping with other organisations. He also denied that Al Qaeda was reorganising its network in Pakistan, saying the terror network had been destroyed and there was no chance of its activists regrouping in the country. He said Pakistan's anti-terrorist operations were successful and most Al Qaeda-linked terrorists had been killed, arrested or made to leave the country. The interior minister said the government's writ had been restored in South and North Waziristan Agencies and military action against terrorists and political dialogue with tribesmen had been going on simultaneously. Sherpao said bank robberies and other such incidents in Swat, Quetta, Islamabad and Karachi were meant to raise funds by terrorists for their groups. These outfits were frustrated due to a lack of funds and could not carry out any subversive activity in the country, he added. Several important criminals had also been arrested by security agencies, he added.
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A controversial deal between Russia and Iran on supplying the Islamic republic with nuclear fuel and launching its first atomic power plant hit an unexpected last-minute snag on Saturday. Russia's top atomic energy official Alexander Rumyantsev and his Iranian counterpart Gholamreza Aghazadeh had been due to sign the contract in the morning and then hold a joint conference.
But the spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Yaghoub Jabarian, was forced to send reporters home, telling them "the negotiations are dragging on. We do not know when they will conclude," he said, adding a press conference will "maybe" take place on Sunday but giving no further explanation. It was the latest and most spectacular hitch to a contract that the United States -- which accuses Iran of using an atomic energy drive as a cover for weapons development -- has been trying to convince Russia not to sign. The deal would cap an 800 million dollar (606-million-euro) contract to build and bring on line the Bushehr reactor in southern Iran, and Russia has so far refused to back down to US demands. But Moscow had refused to go ahead with the fuel supply contract unless Iran agreed to return spent fuel, which potentially could be reprocessed and upgraded to weapons use. The signing of the fuel deal was declared to be imminent after Tehran evetually agreed to the condition.
The Russian-built plant at Bushehr -- whose construction had been launched by Germany in the 1970s -- was initially due to go on line last year, but had been held up by the fuel issue. Bushehr was raised during a summit between US President Goerge W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava on Thursday, where both publicly agreed agreed that Iran should not develop nuclear weapons. According to Russian diplomats, the United States has been lobbying against Moscow's involvement in Iran's nuclear programme "on a daily basis" -- and right up until the Bratislava meeting. The delay to the signing also threw into doubt the remainder of Rumyantsev's itinerary. He was due to visit Bushehr on Sunday and hold further talks with his Iranian counterpart on future contracts.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
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"the negotiations are dragging on. We do not know when they will conclude,"
Nothing to see here, just the Iranians moving the goalposts yet again. The EU could've told you that, Vlad. Word up.
DHAKA: Leading clerics at mosques across Bangladesh backed Saturday a government crackdown on suspected Muslim hardliners, saying those engaging in terrorist acts in the name of religion should be punished. "Islam does not support any act of terrorism. Those who are engaged in terrorism using Islam's name are nothing but terrorists. They should be punished for their crimes," a statement by the country's 101 head clerics, or imam, said Saturday. The statement followed the recent arrests of suspected Islamic hardliners throughout the Muslim-majority country.
Bangla hasn't historically been a fundamentalist country. It's a recent import...
Took me by surprise. The gummint coalition includes the Islamists...
In the statement, the imams expressed their concerns at the recent spate of killings and bomb attacks across the country and said, "No group has the right to take law into its own hands".
The crackdown came as the country's donors met in Washington to express concern at "deteriorating governance situation, political violence and climate of impunity" in Bangladesh. The government alleged that the two groups were involved in a wave of bombings of non-governmental groups, holy shrines and other targets. In the statement, the imams expressed their concerns at the recent spate of killings and bomb attacks across the country and said, "No group has the right to take law into its own hands".
That's why you have a government. Stable countries don't have bands of fascisti running around bumping people off or bullying them.
"The imams who know anything about Islamic Shariah (law) do not support terrorist acts. We detest all criminal activities and urge the government to take legal action against those involved in these crimes," it said.
This article starring:
ASADULLAH GHALIB
Jamaatul Mujaheedin
Jamaatul Mujaheedin
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Higher Shiite Council Vice President Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan stressed during his Friday sermon the necessity of holding dialogue, and highlighted Syria's positive role in Lebanon. Qabalan said: "Syria gave so much to Lebanon; it maintained the stability during the country's ordeal and was a thorn in the eye of the Zionists."
"And that's the important thing. The fact that we're a colony is just a side issue. Ignore it..."
Qabalan added that the Lebanese people should thank Syria for its contribution to the development of the country, and should also not throw random accusations at its leaders. Qabalan refused calls for the disarmament of Hizbullah.
"Certainly not! It's not like we have a government, or our own army or anything. Who's gonna keep the wolf from our door if not Hezbollah?"
Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani urged the Lebanese to wait for the results of investigations into the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. In a statement issued Friday, Qabbani said only serious investigations will unveil the identity of Hariri's killers, adding that the people should not hold any party responsible before the investigations yield results.
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MULTAN: President Pervez Musharraf urged Pakistanis on Saturday to combat Islamic extremists and stop them misusing mosques and religious schools. Speaking to thousands of people at a rally in Multan, Musharraf said eliminating extremism was vital to turn Pakistan into a prosperous and progressive country. "Those who are using our sacred places like mosques and madrassas to spread extremism and hatred should be stopped," he said. "Don't support them. Stand against them and speak against them. Pakistan needs enlightened moderation to be spread among the people at this time. Whoever is trying to take us to extremism, is in fact leading us to disaster," he said.
I think he should kill them, myself, but he so seldom listens to me...
The president urged people not to vote for extremist parties in the upcoming local government elections this year, or in the next general elections, and vote for moderates instead.
Assuming they can find any...
He said foreign investors were coming to Pakistan to set up new factories and create jobs, and it was essential that extremists not be allowed to disrupt this process. He said Pakistan now had a more genuine democracy. Other developing countries were copying Pakistan's local government system, which was free from the influence of powerful people. The provinces had been given more autonomy and their governments were spending billions of rupees on development.
In an interview on CNN on Saturday, Musharraf said the international community should not begrudge him his dual role as president and army chief, as it was that which had allowed him to effect Pakistan's turnaround since his takeover in 1999, NNI reported. "The constitution of Pakistan allows me to hold these two offices and the world should not grudge that," Musharraf told CNN in an interview.
"I know it does. I wrote that part myself."
"I think it is this uniform which allowed me to change the realities in Pakistan. We were almost going to be declared a failed state, a defaulted state, a terrorist state in 99. We have a totally different image now. And that is the uniform, together with my having run this government and run this country." Musharraf said he had done a lot for democracy in Pakistan and his uniform was the only issue remaining. "One should not nullify all the acts that have been done already." He said he was aware of the views of world leaders regarding his uniform and his charge of Pakistan, but he was most concerned about what is best for the country.
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The Saudis fund the Madarassas, and impose the Wahabbi Curriculum of Death. Free money from the Saudis is not free. There is a price to pay.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
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The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, today denounced the Tunisian invitation to certified war criminal Ariel Sharon to visit Tunis. A responsible source in the Hamas Movement said in a press release that the Israeli premier's visit to Tunisia would harm the Palestinian people's national interests and would contribute to breaking the Zionist regime's isolation on the world arena.
That's going to happen naturally, unless IJ and Hamas can manage to reignite the festivities...
He said that Hamas took note of the regretful news carried by the Hebrew media on Tunisian president's Zein Al-Abideen Ben Ali's invitation to Sharon to attend the international data technology conference scheduled next November in Tunis. The source said that his Movement condemned the Tunisian decision, and affirmed that such measures only harmed Palestinian national interest. He said that his Movement refused the Tunisian pretext that the conference was an international one and Tunis had nothing to do with the invitation and that it was merely a host country. The source charged that such an excuse was an attempt to cover up for the normalization process under way with the "Zionist entity" under different slogans.
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Khaled Mishaal, political bureau chairman of the Hamas Movement, told a press conference in Doha a couple of days ago that pressures on Syria might negatively affect his Movement. Mishaal described pressures on Syria as "worrisome" and added that the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Al-Hariri also raised concern and carried negative repercussions on Hamas. Asked whether Hamas would get out of Syria, he said that his Movement maintained presence in various countries whether announced or otherwise.
Which doesn't answer the question of whether they're going to get out of Syria...
He affirmed that Hamas' relations with the Arab countries were good and added, "Our presence was no burden on anyone but it only attracted the oppressive American pressures".
"But that's not a burden..."
Over a year ago Palestinian officials based in Damascus maintained a low key following the USA's pressures on Syria to restrict what it called the presence of "extremist" Palestinian organizations on its territory. Mishaal further said that his Movement would not give up the resistance weapons, and said that if the PA security forces used arms against the people then their weapons would be illegitimate. The Hamas leader described as a "wrong step" the return of the Jordanian and Egyptian ambassadors to Tel Aviv and criticized the visit of rabbi Mikhail Melchior to Qatar. He urged the Arab countries not to resume relations or establish new ties with the "Zionist entity".
Posted by: Fred ||
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Two Iranian border guards have been shot dead and three others injured in an ambush along the country's south-western border with Iraq carried out by a group of "bandits", press reports said Saturday. According to the official IRNA news agency, the shooting took place early Friday near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that flows into the Gulf. It said the patrol were fired on from the opposite bank. The waterway is heavily guarded by both sides and rife with smugglers. Both Iranian and Iraqi officials have in the past complained about cross-border intrusions.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
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The official story is probably right,but...wonder if "somebody" in Iraq shot them up thinking they were infiltrators.
Posted by: Stephen ||
02/27/2005 1:25
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Lebanon's Muslim clerics stressed the importance of national unity in facing the challenges ahead on Friday, and the necessity for dialogue as a way to avoid conflicts. Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah urged the Lebanese to ignore the statements of foreign countries regarding the situation in Lebanon, and asked them to hold discussions between parties, despite all the conflicts. Fadlallah said: "We are afraid that the international game aims at reintroducing the country to the vicious circle of war, which we could overcome in the past thanks to communication and dialogue."
Interesting bit of reasoning there. Hariri gets boomed, and the most likely suspects are the Syrians and/or the Lebanese, followed by al-Qaeda. The attempt to blame it on the Mossad hasn't stuck, not even in Nutland. So Mullah Fudlullah's idea now is to just ignore what the neighbors are saying and move on...
The remarks came during his Friday sermon, delivered at Al-Imamayn al-Hassanay Mosque in Haret Hreik. According to Fadlallah, the United States is not concerned about Lebanon's sovereignty and independence, but only cares about Israel's security.
I can remember when we were about equally concerned with Lebanon, but that was a long time ago, before people like Mullah Fudlullah achieved prominence.
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The Islamic Group in Lebanon, the nation's largest Sunni group, has said it will not attend a gathering at Ain al-Tina of political forces that support the Syrian-backed Lebanese government. The group on Friday demanded at a news conference in Beirut the resignation of President Emile Lahoud and the dismissal of all security officials in Lebanon, in the wake of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The Islamic Group added that it wanted Lahud to resign only after parliamentary elections and the restoration of stability. For his part, Lahoud cautioned that the country's political crisis could affect economic institutions. At a meeting with top executives of major Lebanese economic institutions, Lahud reiterated his call for dialogue with the opposition, which he accused of exploiting foreign pressure.
I still can't tell who dunnit. If Karami steps down, that leaves Lahoud much more exposed. I think he'll try and tough it out, but at this point it's looking like he's not going to be able to. That could turn around, I suppose, but Wally Jumblatt seems like he's on a roll.
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UN officials fear the sex-abuse scandal among peacekeepers in Africa is more widespread and appears to be a problem in each of the global body's 16 missions around the world. As the world body seeks to crack down on the abuse, it could bar countries from participating in missions if they fail to prosecute offenders, even though the UN is hard pressed to find contributing nations, the officials said on Friday. Rocked by widespread abuse of women and girls, including gang rape, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations also has found sexual exploitation cases in at least four other missions - in Burundi, Liberia, Ivory Coast - as well as more recently in Haiti, they added. "We think this will look worse before it begins to look better," Jane Holl Lute, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said. "We expect that more information will come from every mission on allegations. We are prepared for that."
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At least the UN doesn't dissappoint, just when you think they can't possibly be more inept, corrupt, & disgusting they prove you wrong.
I'd love to see this disgraceful episode blasted all over tv but I guess there is no point in holding my breath.
#2
Perhaps the UN HR dept. should remove "Sexually abusing underage girls in third world countries" from the Benefits brochure. Along with "Bribes from tin-pot dictators.".
RIYADH: Saudi security forces arrested two wanted militants in the capital on Saturday, a security source told AFP. The two suspects were detained following a raid on a house in the Al-Aqeeq neighbourhood of north Riyadh, the source said, asking not to be named. They surrendered without putting up any resistance. Hundreds of suspects have been rounded up since Saudi Arabia began battling a wave of unrest blamed on Al Qaeda in May 2003.
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PESHAWAR: Maulana Amanullah Haqqani, provincial minister for auqaf and religious affairs, has said that the registration of seminaries in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has begun. Haqqani told a private TV channel on Saturday that every seminary would submit a memorandum along with other necessary documents to the government. He said that the registration of new seminaries was banned in 1994 but the ban was lifted in 2004. He said that procedural problems which delayed the registration, had been removed now. He said that the NWFP Industries Department would register seminaries under the Registration Act of 1860. He said that seminary boards would also be registered. He said that 1,500 seminaries would also have to register afresh. Haqqani appealed to the seminaries not to hide any information. He clarified that no change would be made in the curriculum of seminaries.
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1500 seminaries....They will crank out a lot of Jihadis. Another lost generation into the meat grinder.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/27/2005 0:57
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Indian troops shot dead four militants overnight in Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Saturday. Troops killed the militants in raids on two hideouts in the state's southern snowbound district of Udhampur late on Friday, a spokesman said. The militant violence has continued as authorities grappled to cope with one of the heaviest snowfalls in two decades in Kashmir that has brought life to a standstill in several areas and claimed 249 lives. On Thursday seven people were killed when militants stormed the divisional administrative headquarters in Srinagar.
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Nepal's Maoist rebels have called off a 14-day nationwide transport blockade, staged to protest King Gyanendra's seizure of power, a statement signed by guerrilla leader Prachanda said. "To show our greater responsibility towards the general public, we have decided to call off the ongoing nationwide indefinite transport blockade as of Saturday," the statement said on Saturday.
To show your greater responsibility toward the public, you might consider knocking off with the periodic slaughters and kidnappings.
The blockade, which began on 12 February, had slowed to a trickle the movement of traffic in and out of the ancient capital Kathmandu and sent market prices of vegetables, fruit and other foods soaring. Prachanda, also known as the Fierce One, warned of a nationwide general strike next month unless the king gave up his power grab. "We will be watching political developments in the country," Prachanda said in the statement. "If there are no changes, our party will be obliged to observe an indefinite nationwide general strike from next month (starting on 14 March)."
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...That and the fact that there were a couple of stories last week about these nutcases being torn limb from limb by the people they were supposedly 'liberating'. It's no fun when the proletariat hates you more than the Government...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/27/2005 7:16
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Yeah it really slows down conscious raising that way.
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admitted to hospital in Monaco on Saturday after suffering heart problems, the principalityâs press service said. Boutros-Ghali, 82, was taken ill while lunching at one of the territoryâs grand hotels
QUETTA: Three explosions jolted Quetta on Saturday, but no casualty was reported, a police officer said. A homemade explosive device detonated in front of the Frontier Corps headquarters near the PTV residential colony early on Saturday. Two bombs exploded late on Friday. Police officials were unable to identify where the explosions took place but later the DIG of police said that a bomb exploded in front of the IG prison's office. Police sources said that another bomb exploded near the assembly building. Both bombs caused no damage. Unidentified people hurled a grenade at the Radio Pakistan building, damaging a car.
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Posted by: Fred ||
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Well, considering the fact that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono graduuated from US Army Airborne, Ranger, Infantry Officer Advanced Course, and Command and General Staff College - on at lesat three separate postings to USA - and he also spent some time with the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, and obtained a Masters degree at Webster University in St. Louis - this does sound reasonable.
MULTAN: Six people were killed and 22 were injured in a clash between the Khetran and Marri tribes in the border area of Dera Ghazi Khan district on Friday evening. Abdul Rehman Khan Khetran, the chief of the Khetran tribe and former provincial minister said, "We have decided to take revenge on the Marri tribe because law enforcement agencies had failed to take any action against them after they created trouble by hitting electricity poles with rockets and missiles in Barkhan and Kohlu districts." He said that the Marri tribe retaliated when it was attacked, resulting in the death of 6 people from both sides. "The injured have been taken to a hospital in Dera Ghazi Khan," he added.
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ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf will chair the fourth meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at its secretariat in Islamabad tomorrow (Monday). Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, provincial chief ministers, Senate chairman Mohammadmian Soomro, National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, opposition leader in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the services chiefs have been invited to attend the meeting. However, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani have rejected the invitation, saying the NSC meeting should be presided over by the PM instead of the president. Official sources said the council was likely to discuss the situation in Balochistan, proposed large dams, country's energy needs, ordinance for the registration of religious seminaries, changes in syllabi, law and order and ongoing Pakistan-India talks. Sources said Javed Ashraf Qazi, Ejazul Haq and Akram Sheikh would also attend the meeting.
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LAHORE: Defence Secretary Lt Gen (r) Hamid Nawaz said on Saturday that Al Qaeda was reorganising and spreading, Geo news channel reported. Talking to reporters in Karachi, he said the US and Pakistan were continuing cooperating against terrorism and that there was no information of Osama. He said it was necessary to control Al Qaeda in Pakistan to stop it from getting access to nuclear weapons, the report said. He said Pakistan had rejected India's proposal of signing a ceasefire agreement on the Line of Control (LoC) and Siachen, the report said.
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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.
BEIJING -- I came to the People's Republic of China for a 10-day visit to find out how Latin America could best compete with this economically booming country. It took me about 30 seconds to know the answer: Unless it undertakes dramatic reforms, it can't. From the minute one lands in Beijing, even before one has a chance to be stunned by the capitalist fever that is gripping this country, the monumental dimensions of Beijing's newly remodeled, 38-million-passengers-a-year airport shocks even the most skeptical visitor.
The following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Abd Al-Baset Al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Center. Al-Majd TV aired this interview on January 16, 2005
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is sending Armed Forces Chief of Staff Efren Abu to Mindanao on Tuesday to determine if she should declare a ceasefire with Moro rebels fighting government troops in Sulu. The President's decision came after persistent calls for a ceasefire between government troops and followers of jailed 
Ten years after Boris Yeltsin first sent Russian troops into Chechnya to put down an attempt at independence, violence has seeped across a tier of adjoining republics creating a band of instability in the northern Caucasus. Some recent examples of the trouble:
Ten members of illegal armed groups have been killed in Chechen mountainous districts in an ongoing large- scale operation that was launched there several days ago, Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax on Saturday. "The examination of the bodies shows that they are Dagestanis, Chechens, and foreigners," Kadyrov said. "The guerilla unit currently numbers over 60 people, taking into account the losses it has suffered," Kadyrov said. "It is international by its composition and includes Arabs, Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis, and Chechens," he said. The operation against the guerilla unit led by prominent Dagestani- born terrorist 
Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge 
LONDON - Queen Elizabeth II has distanced herself from the wedding of Prince Charles because she believes her son is putting "personal gratification before duty," a newspaper reported on Sunday.
US and Iraqi troops swept into towns along the Euphrates river valley on Saturday in a push to flush out insurgents, and the government said it was closing in on al Qaeda's leader in Iraq , Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
LONDON — A former Libyan intelligence agent, jailed for the December 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie in southwest Scotland, has been moved out of solitary confinement into another prison. Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi is serving a minimum 27-year prison term for his part in the downing of New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people. Placed in solitary confinement at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow since his conviction in January 2001, the 52-year-old was moved to Greenock Prison in Inverclyde where he will be allowed to mix with fellow prisoners, a Scottish Prison Service official said on Thursday.
At least 10 people have been killed and 11 kidnapped in Iraq as the interim government claimed that the noose was tightening on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man blamed for much of the violence.
A senior Conservative Party politician wants an investigation into an Algerian-Canadian who served a prison term in France for extremist activities but who has now returned to Canada. "It's startling to think he has returned to Canada," 
BERLIN — German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in comments released yesterday that he was satisfied the US has no intention of attacking Iran in the standoff over the country's nuclear programme.
Cleric cripples 11-year old
As the harsh Afghan winter nears an end, attacks by Taliban guerrillas are expected to rise, a U.S. military official said on Saturday, two days after more than 22 rebels and Afghan troops died in a fresh surge of violence. But the military said it had no plan to increase the number of the 18,000 U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. "We can look at history and see that historically, attacks have increased as winter subsides," Major Steve Wollman, a spokesman for the U.S. military, told a press briefing. "I think we can expect more attacks... coalition forces remain vigilant and prepared to deal with these threats."
Pakistani forces have destroyed a network of al-Qaeda factories churning out powerful bombs and propaganda compact discs and videos, key US ally President Musharraf said Thursday. Musharraf said militants had been forced to run for the hills after a series of military operations in Pakistan's lawless northwestern areas bordering Afghanistan. "Everything was in place, even where they were manufacturing explosives - IEDs (improvised explosives devices) were being manufactured," General Musharraf told reporters at the launch of a new presidential website. "Their command structure was there, major communications structure, their psychological warfare, their computers, their CDs being produced to create psychological effects, their logistics bases," Musharraf said. "All that has been taken over. Now they are on the run in the mountains and we dominate the valleys."
Scrambling to save a battered truce, Palestinians arrested three West Bank suspects after a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic Jihad group on Saturday. Friday's bombing at a Tel Aviv nightclub killed four Israelis and dealt a heavy blow to peace hopes that had brightened since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to a ceasefire at a Feb. 8 summit. "We confirm that we carried out the operation," an official for 
It defies belief. Ex-President Jimmy Carter, who crystallized a fraudulent recall referendum for Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez, now 
LAHORE: In Sanda police station, Muhammad Azam — a man who has confessed to the murder of his sister — awaits his verdict with little repentance or remorse. His reasons for killing the divorced mother of four — to defend family honour. Azam, a milkman by tradition who is soon to be transferred to Camp Jail, slaughtered 32-year-old Shahnaz at her house in Abu Bakar Colony, Bund Road on February 23 after suspecting her of having illicit relations. After the murder, Azam did not flee, instead he waited out patiently for the police to reach the crime scene and arrest him. "Our society leaves men like me with few options. I had to kill her to get my peace of mind," Azam told Daily Times from behind lockup. 
THE government has been conducting negotiations with north African countries to extradite terrorist suspects held without charge at Belmarsh prison. Talks have been held between Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office minister, and the governments of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to draw up a treaty to deport terrorist suspects to their home countries, where they are also wanted. One of the men is an Algerian accused of attending a terrorist "camp" in Dorset. Another is said to be spiritual head of the group behind the Casablanca bombs in 2003.
The frontrunner to be Iraq's next prime minister has held talks with the top Shia cleric on ways to include all parties in politics as talks on forming a new government looked set to drag on. On Friday, 
An Associated Press report on Saturday said that "the police in northern Bangladesh have arrested 11 alleged Muslim militants after raiding homes and mosques as part of a crackdown on a recently outlawed radical Islamic group". Those arrested belonged to "
Chouf MP 
A marine has been killed as US and Iraqi forces continue their offensive against fighters in western Iraq, the US military said. On Saturday, the military said the soldier was killed in action on Friday in Iraq's vast Anbar province, one of the country's most troubled areas. Four marines have died and more than 100 suspected Iraqi fighters have been arrested since operations began on Sunday.
Israel has ordered the resumption of military operations against the Palestinian resistance group 
MULTAN: President Pervez Musharraf urged Pakistanis on Saturday to combat Islamic extremists and stop them misusing mosques and religious schools. Speaking to thousands of people at a rally in Multan, Musharraf said eliminating extremism was vital to turn Pakistan into a prosperous and progressive country. "Those who are using our sacred places like mosques and madrassas to spread extremism and hatred should be stopped," he said. "Don't support them. Stand against them and speak against them. Pakistan needs enlightened moderation to be spread among the people at this time. Whoever is trying to take us to extremism, is in fact leading us to disaster," he said. 
The Islamic Resistance Movement, 
Lebanon's Muslim clerics stressed the importance of national unity in facing the challenges ahead on Friday, and the necessity for dialogue as a way to avoid conflicts. Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed 
The Islamic Group in Lebanon, the nation's largest Sunni group, has said it will not attend a gathering at Ain al-Tina of political forces that support the Syrian-backed Lebanese government. The group on Friday demanded at a news conference in Beirut the resignation of President 
UN officials fear the sex-abuse scandal among peacekeepers in Africa is more widespread and appears to be a problem in each of the global body's 16 missions around the world. As the world body seeks to crack down on the abuse, it could bar countries from participating in missions if they fail to prosecute offenders, even though the UN is hard pressed to find contributing nations, the officials said on Friday. Rocked by widespread abuse of women and girls, including gang rape, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations also has found sexual exploitation cases in at least four other missions - in Burundi, Liberia, Ivory Coast - as well as more recently in Haiti, they added. "We think this will look worse before it begins to look better," Jane Holl Lute, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, said. "We expect that more information will come from every mission on allegations. We are prepared for that."
Nepal's Maoist rebels have called off a 14-day nationwide transport blockade, staged to protest 
QUETTA: Three explosions jolted Quetta on Saturday, but no casualty was reported, a police officer said. A homemade explosive device detonated in front of the Frontier Corps headquarters near the PTV residential colony early on Saturday. Two bombs exploded late on Friday. Police officials were unable to identify where the explosions took place but later the DIG of police said that a bomb exploded in front of the IG prison's office. Police sources said that another bomb exploded near the assembly building. Both bombs caused no damage. Unidentified people hurled a grenade at the Radio Pakistan building, damaging a car.
MULTAN: Six people were killed and 22 were injured in a clash between the Khetran and Marri tribes in the border area of Dera Ghazi Khan district on Friday evening. 
ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf will chair the fourth meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at its secretariat in Islamabad tomorrow (Monday). Prime Minister 
LAHORE: Defence Secretary Lt Gen (r) Hamid Nawaz said on Saturday that Al Qaeda was reorganising and spreading, Geo news channel reported. Talking to reporters in Karachi, he said the US and Pakistan were continuing cooperating against terrorism and that there was no information of Osama. He said it was necessary to control Al Qaeda in Pakistan to stop it from getting access to nuclear weapons, the report said. He said Pakistan had rejected India's proposal of signing a ceasefire agreement on the Line of Control (LoC) and Siachen, the report said.
