LAHORE: British Home Secretary Charles Clarke is studying proposals to combat Islamic terrorist groups by treating them as religious cults, the Sunday Telegraph reported. Sources told the newspaper that Clarke believes that anti-brainwashing techniques used to âdeprogrammeâ cult members could represent a useful weapon in the war against extremism, especially in the wake of the London bombings.
If you're not going to simply blow their brains out when you catch them, I suppose this is the next best thing. If they were to put me in charge of designing the program, I'd work real hard to convert them to agnosticism.
I think .com can get us the necessary equipment at wholesale prices.
Sources close to the Home Secretary told the Sunday Telegraph that he thinks it misguided to categorise Islamist extremists in the âclassicâ mould of revolutionaries fighting for a political cause. Instead, a closer parallel should be drawn with recruits to cults, who often come from educated backgrounds and are âbrainwashedâ into renouncing society. One example, Clarke said, was Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, who was an architect graduate. Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the London bombers, was a classroom assistant in Leeds and was married with a baby daughter.
Except that professional revolutionaries are usually drawn from the ranks of the upper middle classes. But loosening their turbans might help, and will probably be more effective than having the local holy men chat with them, like they do in Soddy Arabia and Yemen. But I'd still overfeed them, just in case.
The Home Secretary made special reference to work of Inform, an organisation specialising in cults, which emphasises the need to perceive how victims of brainwashing see their circumstances, the paper reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Nearly right. The best option would be to section them under mental health legislation. There's little point sticking them in prison, where they can radicalise others. Put them in secure hospitals, and treat them as you'd treat anyone else suffering from a dangerous psychosis. This might be expensive, but it's the most humane option, IMO.
#2
They are psychopaths, social cancers. Deport them if you can. Get them out of circulation any way one can. They have sworn to destroy the British system of government. Treat them as enemies. Action===>consequences. Drive them out of town, make life unbearable for them. They are the enemy and this is war. They do respect power, though, so show some power over them. Sheesh. Brits are going to lose their country. We will to, if we keep up this social PC crap.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/03/2005 1:26 Comments ||
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#3
Wouldn't it be safer to treat them as rabid dogs? They are, after all, dangerous to others and can infect others with their madness.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
10/03/2005 7:31 Comments ||
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#4
The idea that you can deprogram them is dangerous. This religious group isn't your standard cult. Expulsion and detention are the only options if you don't outright terminate them.
#5
I think it's pretty spiffy that they've finally achieved "victimhood". After eons of whining and killing and seething and banging their heads on the floor 5xday, they've made it.
I recommend the 20" 500KV Stun baton for Muzzy wranglin' - you don't hafta get so close. For youze guys I can let 'em go for, oh, $35 a pop. But don't forget, you're gonna need a shitload of 9V batteries, too. I'll give ya those at cost. Of course that's another reason to go for the baton - you always have the option of thumping 'em all the way to Paradise if the battery dies at an inconvenient moment or one of those mood swings takes you by surprise. Muzzy crowd control and behavior mod for fun and profit. My kinda hobby.
#13
Can I just use this rock hard maple "stick" I got and bypass the electric stunning? I am out of practice and I migfht get winded and hit some place that your are not supposed to though. Stuff happens.
SYDNEY - Australia has warned its citizens that further bomb attacks in Bali are possible in a travel advisory that reiterates a long-standing official warning against visiting Indonesia. The travel advisory issued late Sunday restates Australiaâs position â initially adopted after the October 2002 Bali bombings â that citizens should defer non-essential travel to Indonesia.
âThe possibility of further explosions cannot be ruled out,â the travel advisory warned. âAustralians in Bali should exercise extreme caution, remain in their hotels wherever possible and consider departing if concerned for their safety.â
Australia has warned since earlier this year that it was receiving âa stream of credible reporting suggesting that terrorists are in the advanced stages of planning attacks against Western interests in Indonesiaâ.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the advisory was designed to allow Australians to make an informed choice before travelling to Indonesia. âIn the end itâs a free world, theyâve got to make up their mind whether they want to make the trip of whether they donât and make their own assessments of what the risks are,â he told public radio. âThese are not mandatory orders. What I would say to Australians is read the travel advisory.â
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Poor planning for Afghanistan, Iraq, everyting in general, and Katrina, and most of the Louisiana Guard was away in Iraq. The headline at Yahoo would make you think it was 'official', not just some "former-professor-and-advisor" bozo. Go to link, Yahoo crashed my computer when I tried to copy-and-paste.
An official U.S. report says that failure to plan and train properly has plagued U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently relief work to combat Hurricane Katrina, The Independent newspaper said on Monday. The British daily said the report by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor and adviser to the Pentagon, concluded that the poor response to Katrina mirrored earlier shortcomings in U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Failure to plan, and train properly has plagued U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now that failure has come home to roost in the United States," the confidential report said.
The report was commissioned by the Pentagon to provide an "independent and critical review" of what went wrong after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore in September. "The one thing that this disaster has demonstrated (is) the lack of co-ordinated, in-depth planning and training on all levels of government, for any/all types of emergency contingencies," the report said. "Another major factor in the delayed response to the hurricane aftermath was that the bulk of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was deployed in Iraq," it said. The report also blamed corruption and mismanagement by local government in New Orleans for diverting cash earmarked for flood prevention schemes to projects more likely to win votes.
Henthorne is a former professor of the U.S. Army's War College and was a deputy director in the Louisiana relief efforts, the paper said. He was a professor of Civil-Military Relations at the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute, U.S. Army War College Center for Strategic Leadership. His big thing is civilian - military relationships, he doesn't think the military plays well with NGOs.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/03/2005 11:59 ||
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Thank you, mods. I tried twice; two crashes.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/03/2005 14:50 Comments ||
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If just hate Yahoo and their front page headlines. Whoever is making those is an America-hating commie asshole. Of course they could just be a member of the mainstream media. Same thing.
Choking back tears, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF star Donald Sutherland warned this week: President Bush "will destroy our lives!"
The star of the new ABC Hillary for President commercial drama, which follows the first woman President of the United States, lashed out at the real White House during a dramatic sit down interview with the BBC.
Typical Hollywood Liberal, goes overseas to rip the president.
Sutherland ripped Bush and his administration for the war and Hurricane Katrina fallout.
"They were inept. The were inadequate to the task, and they lied," Sutherland charged. "And they were insulting, and they were vindictive. And they were heartless. They did not care. They do not care. They do not care about Iraqi people. They do not care about the families of dead soldiers. They only care about profit."
At one point during the session, Sutherland started crying: "We stolen our children's future... We have children. We have children. How dare we take their legacy from them. How dare we. It's shameful. What we are doing to our world."
Sutherland went on rip Karl Rove's "methods and means" against people like Cindy Sheehan. "We're back to burning books in Germany," Sutherland said of NBC's editing out of Kanye West's comment on Bush during a hurricane relief telethon.
As if I needed another reason not to watch this show.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 12:28 ||
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#1
Two things could explain this:
1. Canadian
2. Flashbacks
#6
I met Donald Sutherland while filming the TV movie "The Hunley". He is the most arrogant, self absorbed, Pompass Ass I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. His attitude was, "I am the STAR! Bow down and kiss my feet! You are nothing more than pawns hired to support MY Great Acting Moment." Nuff said. I didn't like him.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/03/2005 13:16 Comments ||
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Whatâs interesting is that the MSM sees this and acts like Donald actually IS an elected official instead of an ACTOR. Are we next going to hear from the pretend President? Maybe one of her Cabinet members can opine about the goings on in Washington and offer some helpful hints? I found the show mildly entertaining, but now I can free up my Tuesday nights with something else.
#9
I would not be surprised if in the deep recesses of the Hollywood subconscious, they would think that "Condoleeza Rice can't be the first woman president! Geena Davis was the first REAL woman president! Just like the greatest of our presidents: George Kennedy!"
#10
What's sad is that he's going to be just as bad on the Lifetime movie Human Trafficking, which beyond the usual errors is not only derivative and cliched but narrow without being focused; acting like it's only women (presumably adult) are trafficked for prostitution. It's not. Sudan, anyone?
'Course, one must wonder why ANY male shows up in a Lifetime flick...
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
10/03/2005 13:43 Comments ||
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#11
he was more credible as Oddball
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/03/2005 13:56 Comments ||
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Choking back tears, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF star Donald Sutherland warned this week: President Bush "will destroy our lives!"
Would have been more effective had he merely pointed and screeched like he did at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
#13
"They did not care.
They do not care.
They do not care about Iraqi people."
They care only for the sheeple.
They do not think.
They do not Stink (oh, wait, the protesting ones DO stink...).
They're loves in the gutter.
They're sperms in the sink...
Hey, whadda ya know? Gibberish is pretty easy to spew after all!
And here I thought these leftie stooges were intelligent - there I go again mistaking monosyllabism for smarts...
#18
We're back to burning books in Germany," Sutherland said of NBC's editing out of Kanye West's comment on Bush during a hurricane relief telethon.
Let's see...hmmmm.
Nazi Brown Shirts burning books = NBC deleting the inflamatory, racist lies against the President of the United States on national TV by a filthy mouthed, sexist piece of human excrement.
#19
Sounds like he does a pretty good Senator Voinovich impersonation. Tears rolling, rending garments, gnashing teeth, lamenting OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE.
Posted by: John in Tokyo ||
10/03/2005 22:12 Comments ||
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Though Imam Intikab Habib expressed anguish and regret for comments he made about 9/11 that resulted in his stepping down Friday before being sworn in as chaplain of the Fire Department, some members of the local Muslim community reacted with slightly less dismal emotions. "Fifty years from now, we will think this is all a step forward," said Dr. Abdul Jamil Khan, of Muttontown. The semi-retired chairman of pediatrics at Brooklyn's Interfaith Medical Center said Habib should have been more diplomatic. "He is backing off because he made a boo-boo," Khan said. "You can make many theories, but as a person who was going to be sworn into that sensitive position, he should have been very careful not to hurt others' feelings."
Perhaps it is a step forward, since up until this point we've been the ones who're supposed to be ultra-sensitive of Islamic feelings. And I'd not call an ignorant diatribe that insults the people he purports to serve a "boo boo."
Habib, 30, a Guyana native who teaches junior high students in Ozone Park, was in line to be the second Muslim chaplain in fire department history. He studied Islam in Saudi Arabia and immigrated to New York in July 2000. In a Thursday interview with Newsday, Habib stated doubts about who was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying conflicting reports left him wondering if it was 19 hijackers or some larger conspiracy that brought the towers down.
He thereby demonstrated either abject ignorance or the fact that he's on the other side. In either case, he's got no business being associated with FDNY, and probably no business being in this country.
On Friday, after his views appeared in the newspaper, he stepped down a few hours before he was to be installed as chaplain. Habib and fire department officials agreed it was the right thing to do, as did some in the Muslim community. "I think the resolution was appropriate," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Islamic civil rights group. "People are people and they sometimes say things they shouldn't," he said, citing famous foot-in-mouth examples such as William Bennett and Pat Robertson.
Pat Robertson's an oily preacher who likewise would have no business being associated with FDNY. William Bennett's not a preacher, and his remarks were intentionally distorted by people who don't like him. He has no known associated with FDNY.
Habib's comments, unseemly as they may have been to some, should not be completely dismissed, said Ghazi Khankan, an Islamic affairs consultant from Westbury. "What happened to freedom of speech?" said Khankan, adding that Habib's comments should not have rendered him jobless.
He's got the freedom to say any stoopid thing he wants as a private citizen. As a public employee, he's doesn't. As a public employee he's got a responsibility to get his facts straight or keep his mouth shut. He's also got a responsibility not to spout enemy propaganda and disinformation in his official capacity.
"If he has a political opinion, it should not effect his work or his position. Before we condemn, we must investigate ... question the Imam further as to why does he believe this to be so."
My guess is that it's what they told him in Soddy Arabia and he's not bright enough to disprove it even though it's fallacious on its face. How about if the local Moose limbs question the Imam further, while the rest of us, with the possible exception of the immigration courts, forget about him?
Khankan said there are many other people, in the Middle East and in America, who question the conclusions of 9/11. "I hope this will create a movement to call for further investigation into the tragedy of 9/11 ... people can fume," Khankan said, "but opinions are good because they can bring solutions if they are aired and discussed."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 10:05 ||
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Ghazi Khankan, NY Chapter head of CAIR and the Interfaith Director of the Islamic Center of Long Island, Westbury, NY stated this shortly after September 11: "Anyone over 18 is automatically inducted into the service and they are all reserves. Therefore, Hamas, in my opinion, looks at them as part of the military." Driving home the point that it's OK to blow up any Israeli adult, Mr. Khankan added, "Those who are below 18 should not be attacked." (When asked about this speech â but not being told who gave it â Mr. Hooper said, "I condemn it.")
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040316-085118-1135r.htm
#3
Why is anyone involved with CAIR still walking the streets?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
10/03/2005 12:06 Comments ||
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I hate how newsweek skirts around the issue. why not ask, point blank, what he really believes? I honestly think most americans don't know that these a$$wipes think it's a mossad/bush plot.
This business about "fifty years from now" is a way of saying, but not saying, how the "plot" will become known, how islam will rule, etc, etc.
expose these fukkers for what they are. CAIR and the rest of them.
#5
'I weep for you,' the Walrus said:
'I deeply sympathize.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
The surest sign we are winning. RatsNGO's deserting a sinking ship, and sidling up to the US. Personally, I don't like ratsNGO's. This article found at Mudville Gazette, pointed to by Glenn Reynolds.
The group also said the disregard for the lives of civilians in the mostly Muslim country was backfiring in terms of popular support for the insurgency elsewhere in the Arab world.
Actually, if you read very closely, you'll see the reason WHY HRW made this finding: If The Z and other terrorists are caught, WHO WILL JUDGE THEM? Normally, the Iraqui Government would, being the representative of the people, be judging them. By declaring these men guilty of war crimes, THEY WANT TO INTERNATIONALIZE THE TRIALS.
Its another way to deny the legitimacy of the new Iraqui government, by denying it the ability to enforce laws against crimes committed against their own people.
Back on May 9, 2005, DID noted that several new forms of smart artillery shells would begin to give US artillery relevance again in urban battles fought under restrictive rules of engagement. On June 28, 2005, DID profiled the multi-national Guided MLRS system in more detail. Now that GPS/INS guided system has been used in combat by the 3rd Battalion, 13th Field Artillery Regiment in Iraq. DID has details regarding these specific uses - along with overviews of the larger campaigns of which they are a part.
The U.S. Army news service reports that unitary-warhead GMLRS rockets were fired in Tal Afar west of Mosul, destroying two separate buildings from over 50 kilometers away with zero advance warning and less collateral damage than a precision bomb. The targets were two housing complexes that had been fortified and were known to house many insurgents, based on intelligence from units in the field that have been engaged from the structure or who had made contact with the terrorists around the structure. The rockets were fired on Sept. 9 and 10, killing 48 insurgents, said Maj. Jeremy McGuire, deputy of operations, Force Field Artillery, Multi-National Corps - Iraq.
Damage to surrounding buildings was described as "almost non-existent," while the target's destruction was described as "absolute."
Col. H. R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the senior American officer for the US-Iraqi offensive in Tal Afar, has said that the physical and psychological effect the GMLRS had on the enemy was extremely valuable. The lack of any visual or audible clues made defense impossible, while its precision meant that enemy structures could be taken out without destroying large portions of the city as the Islamist paramilitary death squads were hoping.
A related battery of the 3-13th fired another six GMLRS rockets on Sept. 11, destroying the Mish'al Bridge and preventing its use for insurgent forces in the Al Anbar province in Western Iraq. This operation is described as Operation Sayaid (Hunter), and the purpose of the rocket attacks was to safely destroy the bridges so U.S. forces could force incoming and outgoing traffic through pre-set bottlenecks with checkpoints. As to the larger purpose and aims of Operation Hunter, see this post.
Other benefits of the 227mm M30 GMLRS, aside from those already demonstrated, include the fact that it cannot be grounded due to weather or communications issues; meanwhile, its guidance systems allow troops to call in effective anti-personnel "steel rain" or 196-pound unitary-warhead strikes from much closer distances, thus maintaining a better visual of their targets and allowing for needed support in closer quarters situations.
Britain has also purchased the GMLRS, though DID cvannot establish whether these have arrived in Britain or been deployed to Iraq; we do not believe so at this time. For even longer-range strikes, the M270 MLRS system can switch out 6 MLRS rockets in the launcher for an ATACMS missile round.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 09:01 ||
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"destroying two separate buildings from over 50 kilometers away with zero advance warning and less collateral damage than a precision bomb"
Heh, heh. Meet Mr GMLRS. God says he can get me outta this mess, but you're fucked.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
10/03/2005 15:58 Comments ||
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Think what 30 of those could do, mounted on a WWII battleship hull, with targeting provided by a UAV. "Take that beach? Sure thing! Let's just soften it up a bit."
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/03/2005 20:51 Comments ||
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#6
why can't we get audio/video from those bldgs - put that up on Al-Jizz.....Lion of Islam indeed
"WTF? Alla....(silence)"
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/03/2005 21:00 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD - The number of Iraqis killed in attacks in the country in September rose to 702 from 526 in August, most of them civilians, according to government statistics obtained by AFP on Sunday. The number of those wounded was also up at 848, compared to 647 for August, statistics from the health, interior and defence ministries showed.
Those killed fell victim to one motorbike and 32 car bombs, 50 shootings, two walk-in suicide bombers and several mortar attacks.
Health ministry figures said 559 civilians were killed, compared with 384 the month before while the interior ministry said 100 policemen and other ministry employees were killed, down from 105 in August. The defence ministry put the number of soldiers killed at 43, up from 37 in August.
Official figures put the number of rebels killed last month at 194, compared to 58 in August, with 907 arrested.
Since the start of the year, 4,373 Iraqis, 3,015 civilians, 970 policemen and 388 soldiers have been killed.
Cindy Sheehan doesn't care about them, of course. Not even the children.
Over the same period, security forces have killed 1,107 rebels, statistics showed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Russia plans to return to Iraq's oil sector. Russia's Soyuzneftegaz plans to begin development of Al Rafidayn oil field in Iraq by the end of 2005. Soyuzneftegaz chairman Yury Shafranik said the company's effort has been supported by the government in Moscow as part of its drive to restore relations between the two countries. "The company is making contacts with foreign partners about the project, in particular, with U.S. and UK partners," Shafranik told Itar-Tass in an interview. "This type of cooperation will allow the country to be quickly brought out of crisis." Shafranik said other Russian companies would also return to Iraq. He cited LukOil, which has sought to restore operation at Western Qurnah-2. LukOil was said to have formed an alliance with the U.S. firm ConocoPhillips.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Five judges have been chosen for the much-anticipated trial this month of toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein over the massacre of Shiite villagers in 1982, a source close to the court said. "Five magistrates will try Saddam Hussein," the Iraqi Special Tribunal source said without identifying the judges. Saddam and seven of his former henchmen are due to go on trial on October 19 for killing 143 Shiites in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad in 1982, following an attempt on his life. The eight face the death penalty if found guilty.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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"In the matter of The People of Iraq v. Saddam Hussein, Judge Bob Newhart, presiding. All rise."
High turnout is expected at Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, a senior election official said on Sunday, although insurgents will likely attack on the day and voting will be difficult in several areas. More than 14 million Iraqis are registered for the Oct. 15 vote, which will determine whether a draft constitution, drawn up over the past four months and meant to unite the country's increasingly divided society, is approved by the people. If the referendum passes, then the constitution will come into force ahead of a general election in December.
"There is an enthusiasm to vote. Even in the last month we have registered one million more people," Farid Ayar, one of Iraq's seven electoral commissioners, said in an interview. "There will be attacks on the day, but I don't think it will be worse than we saw in the January elections," he told Reuters at his fortified office in Baghdad. "What can the insurgents do that's worse? There are already car bombs every day."
In the run-up to the first post-Saddam Hussein election held in January, insurgents carried out hundreds of attacks. Turnout in one province was barely 2 percent as voters stayed home either because of a boycott by Sunni Arabs or out of fear of violence. There is no breakdown of the religion of those registered to vote, but registration has grown in Iraq's three predominantly Sunni Arab provinces since January's election, figures show. Those provinces are key for those opposed to the constitution.
Ayar said there would again be challenges for some voters, particularly in Anbar, a predominantly Sunni province west of Baghdad where several towns and cities are essentially in the hands of guerrillas. "It is going to be difficult to open polling sites in some Anbar towns, like Hit and Haditha, really difficult," he said. "The people there want to vote but the insurgents are going to prevent them. We will perhaps find ways to have them vote in other towns nearby, which we can do, we have the ability."
U.S. forces are currently engaged in a new offensive in several towns in the far west of Anbar, near the Syrian border, trying to rid them of guerrillas before the referendum. Over the past two weeks, the United Nations, which has a team of advisers helping the Electoral Commission plan the plebiscite, has printed 5 million copies of the draft constitution and distributed them around the country. The final text of the document may change in the coming days, however, if Iraq's parliament agrees to some additional clauses designed to appease the Sunni Arab minority, which believes the current wording favours the Shi'ites and Kurds, who dominate the government and largely drew up the constitution. Ayar said there would not be enough time before Oct. 15 to reprint and redistribute any modified text, but announcements would be made on television -- the medium by which most Iraqis get their information -- informing people of any changes. "It's not perfect, but this is Iraq," Ayar said.
The ballot papers for the referendum, 20 million of them, printed on special paper in Austria, have been delivered and electoral workers are ready to set up 6,000 polling sites across Iraq's 18 provinces. The ballot asks voters in Arabic and Kurdish: "Do you agree to Iraq's draft constitution?" and has two boxes at the bottom, "Laa" (No) on the left and "Na'am" (Yes) on the right. According to the rules, if two thirds of voters in three or more of the 18 provinces vote "No", then the constitution is defeated, even if the majority of voters say "Yes".
It has still not been determined whether the benchmark is two thirds of those who vote, or of registered voters, a higher threshold. Ayar said a decision would be made soon, and it would likely make the benchmark two thirds of those who vote. While many Sunni Arab politicians oppose the constitution and are encouraging followers to vote "No", it is expected that the referendum will pass. An opinion poll published this week showed nearly 80 percent of voters would say "Yes". Already politicians of all stripes are turning their attention to the elections in December, when Sunni Arabs hope to improve on their poor showing in January, when the boycott left them with barely any seats in parliament. "The referendum is important, but already everyone is talking about December, and that is what we are preparing for," said Ayar. "That will be the real true test."
Iraq's interior minister lashed out angrily at Saudi Arabia, rejecting its accusations that Iran now dominates his country, and accusing the Saudis of discriminating against their own Shiites. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr went as far as saying Iraq will not accept "a Bedouin on a camel teaching us about human rights and democracy. In Iraq, we are proud of our civilization."
Man! That's some smooth diplomacy!
The scathing attack - the latest in a series of squabbles between Shiite-controlled Iraq and its Sunni Arab neighbors - were certain to increase tensions as foreign ministers of eight Arab countries met in the Saudi port city of Jeddah to discuss plans to help Iraq restore its security. Last week, the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said U.S. policy had deepened sectarian tensions in Iraq to the extent that the country was effectively being handed over to Iran. Jabr rejected the Saudi claim during a visit to Jordan, saying: "Saudi Arabia has other motives to launch such accusations."
Now, why would he say that?
"Saudi Arabia has its own problems. There are four million Shiites who are treated as third-class citizens," he said. "Let them give the right to their women to at least drive cars. Their women are deprived of their rights while the women in our country are equal to men." He also called the Saudis "tyrants who think they are king and God, and they name their countries after their families."
Makes silk look rough and abrasive, doesn't he?
Iran has also rejected the Saudi charges, accusing the Saudi foreign minister of "meddling" in Iraqi affairs.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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"a Bedouin on a camel" ouch! that has to hurt.
They guy has a smooth way of talking doesn't he.
Amman - King Abdullah II met Sunday with European Union ambassadors to Jordan and especially urged EU countries to help Israel and the Palestinians to restore the truce that was shattered during the last week, according to an official statement. "The monarch urged the world community, particularly the European Union countries and the Middle East Quartet, to step in to put some heat on the Zionists help Israel and the Palestinians to take measures to restore calmness and build up mutual confidence so as the peace process achieves its goals," the statement from the Royal court said.
"It is important for both the Israeli and Palestinian sides to come to know that the future will be better than the current situation," the statement quoted Abdullah as telling the European envoys.
King Abdullah called it "imperative" for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to be followed by "similar withdrawals from the West Bank, in compliance with the provisions of the road kill map".
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2005 00:32 ||
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Hassemate dynasty had two smart kings in a row.
The political leader of the radical Palestinian Hamas group said Sunday that calls by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for his group to disarm were "rude" interference in internal Palestinian affairs.
"Marvin!"
"Yes, Madame Secretary?"
"Are we interfering with Paleo internal affairs again?"
"Well, um, yes, Madame Secretary."
"Good. Keep at it."
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Khaled Mashal also accused the United States of conspiring with Israel against the interests and rights of the Palestinian people.
Rice said last week that Hamas cannot participate in Palestinian politics if it remains armed. "You cannot simultaneously keep an option on politics and an option on violence," she said in a speech at Princeton University.
Rice stopped short of calling for a ban on Hamas' participation in parliamentary elections to be held in January. "We do, I think need to give the Palestinians some space to try and reconcile their national politics, but they're going to eventually have to disarm these groups," she said.
And we'll be making popcorn.
Mashal said her comments showed "complete bias to Israel in its campaign to limit Hamas' role in Palestinian political life." "Such [U.S.] statements confirm America's rude position and insistence on interfering in Palestinian internal affairs," Mashal told The Associated Press.
He said Palestinian policies were not subject to U.S. or Israeli dictation. "No one has the right to make the group choose between resistance and political life."
Not about rights, sonny, it's about power.
Mashal said American and Israeli attempts to prevent Hamas from taking part in the elections contradicted with their claims of promoting democracy. "Israel fights democracy in daylight with a U.S. green light," he said. Mashal, however, said Hamas is committed to the truce with Israel and had "no plans for escalation" despite the latest Israeli assassination and arrest campaigns against members of the group in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"So please don't kill us!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2005 00:25 ||
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Sec. of State Rice needs to issue a statement saying that the US has an interest in Palestinian affairs because we have put millions of our taxpayer dollars down that rathole into the PA, and we will insist on having those dollars go to building up Palestinian infrastructure as it was intended. On the Issue of Hamas, the US considers this a terrorist organization and it will be treated as such.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/03/2005 1:12 Comments ||
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Who the hell do you think you are? Governor of Louisiana? Mayor of New Orleans? Damn the next thing you know they're going to send a bill for 250 billion dollars. Sorry out of petty cash at the moment.
#5
This being the Jewish New Year, its costumary to make wishes of behalf of those that we care about. I've one for Palestinians: "May your worst enemies die."
The European Union plans to establish a security presence in the Gaza Strip. Egyptian officials said EU security forces would help impose control and prevent smuggling between the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. They said EU inspectors would also man the Palestinian Authority airport in the southern Gaza Strip as well as the sea port near Gaza City. On Sept. 29, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy discussed the EU presence with Egyptian leaders. Later, Douste-Blazy and his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Abu Al Gheit, said he expected Israel to approve the EU deployment. "We talked today with our French counterpart about the idea of getting help for security through a European presence on the ground," Abu Al Gheit said.
These guys are going to be shields for the Paleos. Only question is whether they're willing or unwilling -- if the French are involved, they're willing shields. And they'll make it difficult for the Israelis to thump Hamas, without ever managing to stop Hamas themselves.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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I suggest the EU might want to discuss this with Israel. Egypt and the PA can't assure anyones saftey. Israel can and will simply kill them is they become Hamas enablers. Israel could care less.
#2
Israel needs to make it clear to these EUniks that they go into Gaza at their own peril. Attacks on Israel through Gaza will be met with counterbattery fire and the EUniks will be in the line of fire if they hang around the wrong places.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/03/2005 1:31 Comments ||
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Sheesh. This is so stupid it requires the Cosmic Cockup setting just to measure it. Stuck on Stupid on a global scale. The EUniks are truly an amazing bunch of fuckwits. Easily the most dogged determined inane impediment to any constructive act ever conceived and convened.
Where they might be needed, they never go. Where they can fuck shit up, Jacquie on the spot.
If it were the EU leaders themselves, going on patrol, it would be comic. Since it's regular people, being ordered in, it's tragic. Ah, well, ain't no fixin' stupid. Go in, get in the way, you die, fools. Fuck it. What're they gonna do, pass more pointless UN resolutions and spout anti-Israeli rhetoric?
#4
Easy guys, this is an EU plan...ya gotta figure at least 4 - 5 years before they agree on what cologne to wear to the festivities, no less pack and leave.
#5
One day I read a posting of a French (1) reader of the MSM telling: "The EU should expel Israel from the occupied territories by force". By force. If that would have been a blog instead of printed paper I would have answered something in the line that all the military might the EU would be able to project (2) would come back covered in tar and feathers.
(1) one of those French moma-boys who used one of the multiple way-outs for moma-boys in order to not go to the army and could not tell which is the "right" end of a rifle
(2) I have tears in my eyes thinking in
our Aris Katzaris, only soldier the mighty EU would be able to send, dying in a foreign land with neither a comrade or a Rantburger to hold his hand.
#8
if the EU guys are at the airport, and the border crossing to Egypt, this shouldnt present a problem. Those are not typically places where Hamas figures hide out and got shot by Israelis.
#9
LH, well you're probably right. I don't expect them to do anything useful there, like stop arms smuggling or AQ insertion, but, they probably beat a pink flamingo or a lawn ornament.
BALI, Indonesia (AP) - The two Malaysians suspected of masterminding the latest suicide attacks in Bali are notorious for separate but complementary skills: One is a bomb-making expert and the other is a smooth-talker adept at raising money and recruiting bombers. Azahari bin Husin - known as the "Demolition Man" for his knowledge of explosives - and "Moneyman" Noordin Mohamed Top are believed to be key figures in the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group blamed for Saturday's bombings that killed at least 22 people.
The two became Southeast Asia's most-wanted fugitives after allegedly masterminding the 2002 nightclub Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, and suicide attacks in Jakarta in 2003 and 2004 that killed 23. A top Indonesian anti-terror official, Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, has identified the two as the alleged masterminds of the latest bombings.
Indonesian police say the two suspects have eluded capture for years by renting cheap houses in densely populated areas, with nearby back alleys for quick escapes.
Azahari, an Australian-trained engineer, and Noordin were close associates of Jemaah Islamiyah's former operational chief, Riduan Isamuddin. Isamuddin, an Indonesian better known as Hambali, was captured in Thailand in 2003 and is now in U.S. custody. The two Malaysians are believed to have taken his mantle.
Azahari, a 48-year-old native of the southern Malaysian state of Johor, studied mechanical engineering at Adelaide University in Australia before getting a doctorate in property valuation from Reading University in Britain in 1990. He taught at a Johor university before getting involved with Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to establish an Islamic state across Southeast Asia. Azahari is known to have received bomb-making training in Mindanao in the southern Philippines in 1999 and advanced training in Afghanistan in 2000. He fled Malaysia, leaving behind his wife and two children, after police uncovered his Jemaah Islamiyah role during a crackdown after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Noordin, also from Johor, fled at the same time, and both arrived in Indonesia. Dubbed the "Demolition Man" by Malaysian media, Azahari is believed to have become a militant firebrand after meeting Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Bashir in the 1980s.
Noordin, 35, is a recruiting whiz who purportedly excels at collecting money for the group's deadly missions. He reportedly was the chief strategist in the J.W. Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta in August 2003 and the attack on the Australian Embassy there in September 2004. Noordin is suspected of talking militants into becoming suicide bombers, using skills he picked up during stints in the southern Philippines, Indonesian police say.
In July 2004, Azahari and Noordin narrowly escaped a police raid on a rented house west of Jakarta, where forensic experts later found traces of explosives used in the Australian Embassy bombing. Neighbors described both as reclusive men who left the property only to pray at a nearby mosque. Area residents said that before the embassy blast they saw the pair load heavy boxes into a white delivery van - the same type used in that attack.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 15:23 ||
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Jeez. A regular friggin "Odd Couple" aren't they?
October 3, 2005: Police believe that two Malaysians, Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top, were responsible for the October 1 attack. The two men are known members of Islamic terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, and were believed hiding in Indonesia. In the last three years, the government came down hard on Jemaah Islamiyah, arresting nearly a hundred and prosecuting, convicting and jailing most of them. But the government did not try to wipe out Jemaah Islamiyah, fearing that this might trigger a civil war with Islamic conservatives. That may change. Islam in this part of the world is rather milder than what is found in the Middle East. But over the past decade, the more militant form of Islam found in the Middle East has become more popular in urban areas of Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines. Because of that, the government was able to defeat Jemaah Islamiyah, both in terms of finding and arresting Islamic terrorists, and defeating Islamic militias that were attacking non-Moslems in the country. Bali, for example, is largely Hindu, which is one reason it has been the target of Islamic terrorists.
The government got a lot of public support after the 2002 attacks, which had emotional, and economic (by hurting the tourist trade) impact on most Indonesians. The police received enough tips to track down and capture most members of Jemaah Islamiyah. Another surge of public support for the police is helping in the search for those responsible for the October 1 attack. This is likely to result in more serious damage to Jemaah Islamiyah. After the October 12, 2002 attack in Bali, there was another in December, 2002 that killed three. There were three attacks in 2003, that killed twelve. In 2004, there was only one attack, that killed tem. Earlier this year, there were two attacks, killing 19. Since that first bombing in 2002, most of the dead and wounded have been Indonesian, even though Jemaah Islamiyah says that it is making war on foreigners and infidels (non-Moslems.) Most Indonesians don't believe this, and see Jemaah Islamiyah as a bunch of homicidal maniacs. Jemaah Islamiyah was never a very large organization, with no more than a few hundred core members. Fewer than a hundred are still at large, and most are expected to be rounded up in the next few months. Islamic terrorism has proved to be very unpopular in Islamic nations, turning more and more Moslems, including conservative ones, against the terrorists. Jemaah Islamiyah would like to attack non-Moslem targets, but they have not been able to, and in desperation have made attacks that kill mostly Moslems. .
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 09:15 ||
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Interesting historical tidbit - they were originally formed as the Indonesian Hezbollah to support the Japanese occupation of Indonesia during WW2 and helped to run part of the country on the part of their Co-Prosperity Sphere.
BEFORE he was sentenced to death last year for orchestrating the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, Mukhlas Imron boasted of his friendship with Osama bin Laden but fiercely denied that al-Qaeda had played any role in the attacks.
From the dock of an Indonesian court, the 43-year-old religious teacher insisted this was a homegrown operation by Jemaah Islamiyah which, he said, was capable of staging more atrocities.
The baby-faced Mukhlas ranted at the judges about JIâs ambition to create a single, fundamentalist Islamic state in South-East Asia which would embrace Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines and have a population of more than 400 million.
The leadership of JI has long argued that its campaign began more than 50 years ago, long before the world had heard of bin Laden. The leaders claim that al-Qaeda copied their blueprint for a terror network, pointing out that bin Laden picked the brains of some JI veterans, who in the early 1990s fought Soviet occupation in Afghanistan and were persuaded to join his terror camps.
Close ties still exist, but while al-Qaeda concentrates its rhetoric and attacks on America and its Western allies, the focus for JI and its associates is targets closer to home. The weekendâs bombings were, experts say, JIâs way of proving it remains a danger to governments in its own region and that it does not need al-Qaedaâs money or its inspiration to operate.
Images of the bloodshed in Iraq fuel Muslim anger in Jakarta as much as it does elsewhere but investigators are sure this latest team of suicide bombers will prove to have been recruited, funded and organised locally by a group which cares more about damaging Indonesia than contributing to the notion of global jihad.
Rohan Gunaratna, of the Singapore-based Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said: âThey chose Bali again to humiliate Indonesia, who claimed to have dismantled JI. This shows they are still in business and it will encourage more to join them.â
Islam was first a rallying cry for resistance in Indonesia against Dutch colonisation in the early 17th century, though the modern roots of JI go back to the end of the Second World War when the Darul Islam movement incited a rebellion to end European rule and establish an independent Muslim state.
In about 1969 two clerics, Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, JIâs present spiritual leader, revived the Darul Islam movement and its conservative strain of Islam. They began modestly enough with a pirate radio station preaching to the poor and a boarding school set up in Java by the charismatic Bashir. He chose as a school motto, âDeath in the way of Allah is our highest aspirationâ.
Teenagers in Indonesia hostile to the religious repression of President Suhartoâs regime in the 1970s began supporting the efforts of local Muslim groups, who became collectively known as Jemaah Islamiyah, which literally means âIslamic communityâ. These small groups agreed to live by Islamic law and were blamed for arson attacks on churches, nightclubs and cinemas.
Bashir and other ringleaders were rounded up by Suhartoâs forces as part of a crackdown on militants, though in 1982 the cleric escaped prison and fled to Malaysia.
From there Bashir began recruiting followers for his organisation. Among the most enthusiastic volunteers was another young teenage exile to Malaysia, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as âHambaliâ. Dubbed by the CIA as âThe bin Laden of South- East Asiaâ, Hambali would become the groupâs main link to al-Qaeda.
In 1988, aged 22, he travelled to Afghanistan with Bashirâs blessing to fight the Soviet Red Army where he met radical Muslims from around the world who, he discovered, shared his passion for a global jihad. Two years later, in 1990, he slipped back to Malaysia. There he became frustrated by JIâs leadership, who argued for a violent uprising but did little more than distribute pamphlets and set up religious schools.
Hambali claims credit for giving JI its local muscle. He would also put in practice lessons he learnt from al-Qaeda, including the formation of bogus companies to launder money for terror operations. Hambali was so trusted by al-Qaeda that he attended a terror summit in 1995 where the plan was first devised to turn hijacked planes into flying bombs.
After Suhartoâs downfall in 1998, the leading figures in JI returned to Indonesia. Hambali went underground to plot terror operations, while the frail, white-haired Bashir toured mosques and schools preaching jihad in his own country.
The group produced a bomb manual for affiliates in the region and sent emissaries to Thailand, Singapore and as far as Australia to instruct local organisers how to set up their cell structures. They funded religious madrassas, which quickly became breeding grounds for radicals. Personal ties and local loyalties were the most successful way of recruiting supporters, not the speeches of bin Laden.
Some governments, like Thailandâs, have refused to acknowledge JIâs influence on their own local insurgency. The authorities blame âthugs and gangstersâ for the spate of bombings and murders of security forces in southern Thailand even though several JI figures have been arrested there.
Among them was Hambali who, when he was picked up 60 miles from Bangkok in August 2003, was named by the CIA as the operational commander of Jemaah Islamiyahâs military wing. The 42-year-old is among a handful of terror detainees regarded as so valuable to the CIA that the US Government refuses to say where he is held.
His alleged confessions led some security agencies to claim JI was beaten. The misery seen in Bali suggests otherwise.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/03/2005 00:24 ||
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The authorities blame âthugs and gangstersâ for the spate of bombings and murders of security forces in southern Thailand...
Which is what terrorist generally are when they don't have some pseudo-rationalized agenda to paper over their simple grasp for power.
The latest Bali bombings show that while the Indonesian authorities have cracked down on Islamic terrorism, they may have played into the hands of the terrorists by polarising Indonesia's Islamic community.
In what has been characterised by some as a struggle for Indonesia's Islamic soul, visitors to Bali and the Balinese are hapless pawns in a wider politico-religious game.
Since the first Bali bombings of October 12, 2002, dozens of members of the organisation held responsible, Jemaah Islamiah, have been arrested, and further arrests and convictions followed the September 9, 2004, attack against the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
Assessments of Jemaah Islamiah show the organisation has split, with some members in favour of militant struggle but opposed to indiscriminate bombings. A more hard-line faction within has chosen to continue the bombing campaign.
Jemaah Islamiah has been identified as being loosely linked to al-Qaeda, with some senior members having trained in Afghanistan. In this, Jemaah Islamiah shares al-Qaeda's global, if narrowly defined, jihadist philosophy, and hopes to establish Indonesia as part of a South-East Asian caliphate under Islamic law.
But it has also charted a path that is independent from, if parallel to, al-Qaeda. This derives from Indonesia's Darul Islam organisation, which through armed rebellion attempted to establish an Indonesian Islamic state in the 1950s.
The legacy of Darul Islam lives on in Jemaah Islamiah, as well as a number of other jihadist organisations in Indonesia. These are grouped together under the Islamist umbrella organisation Indonesian Mujahideen Council, established in 2000 by Abu Bakar Bashir, who also inherited the position of Jemaah Islamiah's amir (commander or leader).
It is the explicit intention of the Mujahideen Council to turn the country into an Islamic state. The distinction within this organisation is between those whose methods are more limited, and those who regard terrorism against non-believers as acceptable, or even desirable.
Terrorism is usually understood as having two purposes. The first is to compel the target of the attack to comply with the wishes of the attacker. In this, Jemaah Islamiah and its associates want to purge Indonesia of Western and other non-Islamic influences. Bali is a good place to start, being a haven for Western tourists, and having a Hindu population. A second purpose is to increase state repression, thereby forcing sympathisers into the arms of the terrorists and their more radical agenda. This is exacerbated within Islam by the requirement for Muslims to defend other Muslims in the face of what is claimed as religious persecution.
This second purpose appears to be the stronger reason for the continued attacks, as it has a deeper and longer lasting impact within Indonesia itself.
The split within Jemaah Islamiah over its bombing strategy, and the loss of members to arrest, means it has been unable to work alone. It has thus tapped in to the Mujahideen Council for practical support, in particular to members of the remnant Darul Islam movement, which provided the suicide bomber for the Australian embassy attack. In this, the intention of forcing sympathisers into the arms of Jemaah Islamiah's harder faction is succeeding.
The latest Bali attacks bear the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiah, but probably again included the assistance of Darul Islam or other Mujahideen Council members.
In response to the bombings, the Indonesian Government will again crack down on Islamic terrorists,
but this will also have the effect of sharpening the divide between those who favour an Islamic state and those who do not, pushing many Islamists further towards the terrorists.
In particular, longstanding calls for the Indonesian Government to declare Jemaah Islamiah a terrorist organisation and proscribe it will polarise many Muslims, probably increase its active support base and provide potential new recruits. Not acting against Jemaah Islamiah, however, will show that it is winning.
Either way, jihadist Islam in Indonesia will remain and may strengthen. That Balinese, Westerners generally and Australians in particular are victims of this militant agenda locates them as suitable collateral damage in a more focused Jemaah Islamiah strategy.
Dr Damien Kingsbury is senior lecturer in the School of Political and International Studies, Deakin University, and is author of The Politics of Indonesia (Oxford University Press).
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/03/2005 00:05 ||
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Article: A second purpose is to increase state repression, thereby forcing sympathisers into the arms of the terrorists and their more radical agenda.
Actually, I think they're hoping for a half-assed crackdown, given that Indonesia is now a democracy. The old-style Suharto-era crackdowns would have seen activists tortured and killed (i.e. vanished) by the thousands. That's not the kind of crackdown they want.
The latest wave of bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali shows that the al Qaeda-linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah is still active, despite the Indonesian government's attempts to put its key leaders behind bars, terrorism experts in the region said Sunday.
Powerful bombs ripped through three crowded restaurants in Bali on Saturday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100 -- the second time terrorists have brought carnage to the tropical paradise in three years.
No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but Australia's leading terrorism expert Clive Williams said it bore all the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI.
Since then, dozens of key members of the group have been convicted, including its alleged spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir -- now serving a two-year sentence for conspiracy in the 2002 attacks.
Williams, Director of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University, said the arrests had failed to cripple the group and the latest bombings showed it was still able to recruit new members.
"Clearly, they are still able to mount small-scale operations, or in this particular case, it seems they probably would have had half-a-dozen people involved," Williams told The Associated Press.
He said the most likely masterminds were fugitive Malaysians Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top, both implicated in a 2004 attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta which killed 10 people and injured more than 200.
Azahari, a former physics lecturer, is believed to be a skilled bomb maker and key organizer in the organization, while Noordin is believed to be the group's top recruiter, he said.
Williams said the two were believed to be hiding in Indonesia.
"I think they (Indonesian authorities) are actively looking for them, but they're obviously being protected by sympathizers or members of the organization and that's made it more difficult," he said.
Another likely mastermind of Saturday's bombing included Zulkarnaen, also known as Aris Sumarsono, who is believed to have taken over as Jemaah Islamiyah's operations chief in 2003 after Hambali, said to be the group's link to al Qaeda, was arrested.
Singapore-based terror expert Rohan Gunaratna of the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies said only JI had the ability to carry out coordinated attacks in Bali.
"The JI is the only group with the intention and capability to mount an attack on Bali on such a coordinated level," Gunaratna said. "There should be no doubt that they did it. No other groups can carry out multiple attacks like that."
Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan national and author of "Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror," added that the group chose to attack Bali to send a message that it was still active and plotting attacks despite a string of arrests.
"They chose Bali in order to embarrass and humiliate Indonesia," Gunaratna said. "Especially in light of reports that said JI has been dismantled, they're now proving that JI is still capable."
In fact, Saturday's blasts were likely to attract would-be terrorists to join regional JI cells or other extremist groups, Williams said.
"It's good for JI in the sense that it shows they're still in business," he said. "It also does encourage more people to join them."
"If they see that there's an ongoing level of activity, most people who are disposed to that point of view might be more prepared to support it," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/03/2005 00:04 ||
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Nuclear science may not be considered ideal subject matter for a popular song, but the musical boffins in Iran's state media apparatus think differently. In recent days, Iran's airwaves have been buzzing with two new tunes apparently designed to rally public support for the clerical regime's increasingly tense stand-off with the West over its nuclear ambitions.
The first song is entitled "Oriental Sun, Nuclear Science", and sung to a backdrop of military-style marching music by Ali Tafreshi. The second similarly catchy tune is "Nuclear Know-How" by Reza Shirazi. Both extol the wonders of a "great and powerful Iran" which has destroyed "the arrogance of the oppressors" and "defends its independence by using science".
Despite the heavyweight nationalist lyricism, Iran insists its nuclear programme it strictly peaceful. But the West in unconvinced, and the European Union and United States want Iran to abandon its works on the potentially dual use nuclear fuel cycle and are threatening UN Security Council action. The songs, produced by Iran's state television and radio apparatus, have therefore been getting good airplay -- and are also accompanying TV clips of atomic facilities used to praise the "young engineers who have succeeded, without the help of foreigners, to develop the Iranian nuclear programme".
Bomb, bomb, bomb! Bomb, bomb Iran!
(Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran...)
Go bomb Ira-a-an!
(Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran...)
Because I ca-a-an!
(Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran...)
Bomb Ira-a-an!
(Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran...)
With Shock and Awe, they will be reelin'.
More oil, we'll be stealin'.
Bomb, bomb, bomb! Bomb, bomb Iran!
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 09:05 ||
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Sounds like the KCNA playbook finally made it to Iran (probably sent it Library Rate). Needs more juiche. We need some more detailed articles and Iranian Rants so we can score them like the Good Olde Days with the Norks on Rantburg.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/03/2005 10:09 Comments ||
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The trouble with blatant propaganda is that it actually increases the effectiveness of blatant counter-propaganda.
And since the Iranian government can't block popular satellite signals from coming in, imagine how one of these music videos would look, re-edited with pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, quotes of threats to use nuclear weapons by Mullahs, footage of nuclear detonations and its destructive effects, etc. The entire "Atomic Cafe" thing in a nutshell. All while the singer is extolling how wonderful nuclear power will be once they have it.
Israel expects the findings of an international investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri to prove extremely embarrassing for Syria and put President Bashar Assad's regime in a difficult situation, government sources said Sunday.
The sources added that senior American officials, in recent conversations with their Israeli counterparts, have expressed interest in Israel's assessments of Assad's possible successors, asking who Israel thought could replace him and still maintain Syria's stability. American officials said that their impression from these conversations was that Israel would prefer to have a weakened Assad, vulnerable to international pressure, remain in power, and is unenthusiastic about the possibility of a regime change in Syria.
The Israelis' impression was that America's main concern is the flow of terrorists into Iraq via Syria, rather than the threat posed by the Syrian-backed Hezbollah organization in Lebanon. But Washington, like Jerusalem, is eagerly awaiting the results of the Hariri investigation, and will not decide what to do about Syria until the findings have been published.
The UN-appointed special investigator, Detlev Mehlis, is supposed to deliver his report to the Lebanese government and the UN Security Council on October 12, and the latter is slated to discuss the report on October 25. However, diplomatic sources predicted Sunday that Mehlis would ask for more time to complete his work.
He did.
They added that Mehlis is focusing on collecting legal evidence and identifying suspects; any political consequences of his findings, including the possibility of demanding the extradition of suspects from Syria, will be decided upon by the Security Council.
According to the Israeli sources, Jerusalem has yet to hold a serious discussion about the possible consequences of the Hariri investigation and the changes that could take place in Syria's government as a result. But under the current circumstances, they said, it is hard to see who could replace Assad other than another strongman of the current regime, and such a change would only push Syria into adopting more extremist policies.
How about sponsoring a revolution, and letting the people figure out what to do? Radical idea.
Jerusalem's assessment is that the investigation will increase Syria's isolation and that the UN will demand that Damascus extradite any suspects identified by Mehlis, just as happened with Libya following the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Syria has already begun preparing for the worst, and a few days ago, it launched a diplomatic campaign to soften the impact of any incriminating findings.
Suspicion has focused on Syria ever since Hariri was killed on February 14. Two weeks ago, Mehlis visited Damascus to question Syrian officials about the killing, and earlier, he had four former senior members of the Lebanese security services, which had close links to Syria, arrested on suspicion of involvement in the assassination.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Haaretz on Sunday that he is "definitely concerned" about the situation on the northern border. "[Security Council] Resolution 1559, which has not been fully implemented, must be implemented," he said, referring to the resolution's demand that Lebanon disarm all its militias. "Part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in Lebanon, and the Syrians have not yet despaired of controlling Lebanon; they are doing it via Hezbollah, along with the Iranians. The Syrians are also engaged in training terrorists who make their way to operations in Iraq."
Sharon reiterated that he opposes resuming diplomatic talks with Syria. "Israel should not take steps that would undermine the American effort to apply pressure on Syria," he said. Asked whether negotiations could resume if a new government took power in Damascus, he replied: "My position regarding the Golan is well known, and I have clarified it many times." Sharon wants the Golan Heights to remain in Israel's hands, whereas Syria says that peace is impossible without the return of the Golan.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Don't forget the DNA. Must have the DNA to identify body parts.
Ah, sir, it's the American ambassador inquiring about your interest in the Dictators-r-Us estates in American Samoa for you and your family. He said the offer was ending soon and the recently available Saddam model was about to be offered to some oil pumper from South America.
Ariel Sharon?
Angelina Jolie?
Geena Davis?
or, hey, wait. he's an opthamologist. just replace him with mine. he sucks too. but I'd bet he can run syria better.
#4
"How about sponsoring a revolution, and letting the people figure out what to do? Radical idea"
Israel may not be keen to take the chance on the MB coming to power. Which doesnt mean its not a worthwhile chance from the US POV. Also, if Israel DOES have a favorite successor, its probably not a good idea to let that info out.
yrian President Bashar Assad told the speaker of Iran's Parliament that the international pressure on Syria and Iran aims at intimidating the two countries, something that would never happen, an Iranian official said. Assad, during a meeting in Damascus with Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, said some international powers were seeking to isolate Iran and Syria, but those efforts would not be successful, according to the official, who is a member of the Iranian delegation.
Both Iran and Syria are under U.S. sanctions. The United States accuses them of supporting Palestinian resistance groups and the Lebanon's Hizbullah. It also accuses Iran of seeking to build nuclear bombs and Syria of allowing insurgents to cross into Iraq. Iran and Syria deny the charges. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, quoted Assad as saying that the campaigns against Syria and Iran by the United States and other Western countries aimed at "creating fear and permanent concern among those two countries."
Haddad Adel said his visit to Syria is aimed at sending off a joint Syrian-Iranian message, which is that "the two countries' relations would remain strong." Syria's official news agency SANA said Assad discussed with Haddad Adel "the relations of friendship and cooperation between the two countries." The Iranian official said Assad also raised the issue of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination, reiterating Syria's innocence. Assad, according to the official, said those who plotted for Hariri's assassination wanted to "create a rift between Syria and Lebanon and expand the circle of tension in the region."
Following an earlier meeting with his Syrian counterpart Mahmoud al-Abrash, Haddad Adel warned Israel against attacking his country's nuclear facilities. "If Israel does something stupid and attacks our nuclear facilities like it did in Iraq, we promise to teach it a lesson it will never forget," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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"crushed and beaten like red-headed step children, yes, but intimidated? That would assume we're smart enough to realize the ass-whupping is coming, so I would say, ...no"
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/03/2005 20:26 Comments ||
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The UN team investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will be seeking to extend its term until December 15, according to Lebanese Premier Fouad Siniora. "I think [Mehlis] will take all the necessary measures so his mission continues until December 15, which was the period originally assigned to him by the Security Council," Siniora said Sunday. The international team's mission had been extended by the UN Security Council in August for 40 days, which will end on October 24. German Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, the head of the UN investigation team, will be presenting his report on the outcome of his investigations to both the UN and the Lebanese government on October 21, as Lebanese Justice Minister Charles Rizk affirmed Sunday.
According to Rizk, "Mehlis has informed me that he will present his report on October 21." UN Security Council Resolution 1595 gave the UN team an initial three month period to crack the case, renewable for another three months ending in mid-December. Sources close to the Lebanese judiciary told The Daily Star that Mehlis, who left the Beirut early Sunday morning with his senior aides for France, "will meet with Beirut MP Saad Hariri," son of the slain premier. Mehlis will be heading to Vienna after meeting with Hariri, where he will be writing his report but "will be back in Lebanon for few days sometime before October 21," according to the same sources.
The report which Mehlis will present to the UN and Lebanese government this month was supposed to be his final report on the matter. Yet Rizk, who said that Mehlis "needs more time to work on the case," didn't see any problem with Mehlis presenting one report this month and a final one in December. Rizk called upon the press and the country not to speculate as to the contents of Mehlis' report, "which has not been written yet." Siniora also warned against speculation about the report, asserting "no one on planet earth" knows anything about its contents except for the investigating team. But according to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Saturday, "the investigations will not directly implicate Syria as the chief suspect. The newspaper quoted a source close to the UN in Beirut as saying that the report "will not lead to the expected earthquake" in relations between Lebanon and Syria.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Chouf MP Akram Chehayeb blamed Lebanon's security system for a general deterioration in the country and urged the dismantlement of the lingering Syrian-Lebanese security network. "We need a security system built around a national Lebanese policy, an activation of coordination between units, and for the networks of the Syrian-Lebanese security system to be dismantled." Chehayeb was speaking following a ceremony in Qornayel Sunday organized by the Progressive Socialist Party to commemorate the General Financial Inspector Malek Ali Hilal who died one year ago. "We are seeing day by day how responsible this system is for the political, economic, security and national deterioration," Chehayeb added. "We have to think of Lebanon's future and rebuild the country. This requires maintaining the Taif Accord. We also have to hold on to Lebanon's Arab identity on the basis of an open humanitarian Arabism far from oppression and tutelage in both words and action. In addition to that we have to maintain national dialogue between everyone."
They're real big on that "Arab identity" thing, but it doesn't look like they've got a good handle on what it is. "Open humanitarian Arabism far from oppression" is pretty much a rarity.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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The factions made their announcement during an extraordinary meeting they held on Sunday to discuss latest political developments in Palestine and the Arab region, especially the situation of Palestinian camps in Lebanon. Last week, the head of the PFLP-GC
... who is a Syrian ...
had instructed all his forces to be on alert and ready for mobilization. After the meeting, the factions asserted that "defending Lebanon's security and sovereignty is achieved by strengthening and safeguarding the resistance's weapons and not through targeting these weapons represented in Hizbullah's weapons."
Right. The way to defend Leb's security is to strengthen armed non-state actors with a history of disrupting the state. I've decided to lose some weight, so I think I'll go eat a cocoanut creme pie. A whole one.
They also demanded that the Lebanese government "open the door for political dialogue with the Palestinian factions." They also insisted that "dealing with the Palestinian issue from a security level will not lead to positive results or to reasonable solutions for all the common issues."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Does dealing with Paleos EVER "lead to positive results or to reasonable solutions for all the common issues"????
The President of the Iranian Shura Council, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, reiterated his country's support for Lebanon, and the Islamic resistance group Hizbullah, urging unity to confront American and Israeli ambitions in the country.
Of course they "support" Hezbollah. They own them.
Adel visited the graves of more than 100 people killed by Israeli artillery shells as he concluded Saturday a trip to express Iranian support for Lebanon and Hizbullah. Accompanied by Iranian Ambassador Masoud Idrisi and MPs Hassan Hubballah, Ali Bazzi, Abdel-Majid Saleh and Ali Khreis, Adel visited the village of Qana, 11 kilometers north of the Israeli border, where over a hundred Lebanese men, women and children were killed by Israeli shelling while taking refuge in a UN base during the "Grapes of Wrath" offensive in 1996. A United Nations report found that the shelling was "unlikely" to have been an accident, as Israel claimed. Addressing a crowd of Hizbullah supporters in Qana, Adel told them in Arabic: "We are here to express our support to Qana, its martyrs and citizens; you are not alone because the Iranian nation with its 70 million people is with you."
He also urged unity against what he called "the ambitions of America and Israel." Amid a heavy security presence, Adel headed to the village of Khiam, where he was welcomed by hundreds of people throwing roses and rice. Hizbullah's senior commander in the South Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said Adel's visit sent a message to the United States. "We tell the United States that despite all regional developments and U.S. interference in Lebanon, Iran will always back the resistance and its right to liberate the remaining Occupied Territories and free the detainees," Qaouk said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Iran's president has denied telling a newspaper that his government might curtail oil sales if Iran is referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear programme. A statement from the president's office on Saturday said, "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never had an interview, either oral or written, with the Khaleej Times."
Earlier, the Dubai-based newspaper had reported President Ahmadinejad as speaking about last month's resolution by the IAEA. "If Iran's case is sent to the Security Council, we will respond in many ways, for example, by holding back on oil sales or limiting inspections of our nuclear facilities," the newspaper had reported Ahmadinejad as saying. The president's office denied this, saying "Such a claim is nothing more than mere fabrication." The Khaleej Times could not be contacted about the denial.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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EFL:Bad Boeing! Bad Bell Helicopter! No cookies for you! Boeing and its joint-venture partner Bell Helicopter apologized yesterday for a magazine ad published a month ago â and again this week by mistake â depicting U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque."It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell," reads the ad, which ran this week in the National Journal and earlier in the Armed Forces Journal. The ad also stated: "Consider it a gift from above."
The ad appears at a time when the United States is trying to improve its image in the Muslim world and Boeing seeks to sell its airplanes to Islamic countries. Boeing and Bell officials agreed that the ad â touting the capabilities of the vertical-lift Osprey aircraft â was ill-conceived and should never have been published."We consider the ad offensive, regret its publication and apologize to those who, like us, are dismayed with its contents," said Mary Foerster, a vice president of communication's for Boeing's military side. Yes. "Dismayed"! That's it!
Mike Cox, a Bell vice president, said the ad was developed by TM Advertising of Irving, Texas, and then initially released for publication by his company. "The bottom line is that the [Bell] people who approved this didn't have authority to approve it," Cox said. Hey. Let's see how CAIR likes this one. HeeHeeHee... The company statements were released yesterday in response to an outcry from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Islamic civil-liberties group. The building depicted in the ad has an Arabic sign that translates as "Muhammad Mosque," according to the council. Have them rappelling down on CAIR headquarters from a V-22 next time.
The ad may deepen concern overseas that the war on extremists is a war on Islam, said Corey Saylor, the council's government-affairs director. "This can be used by the extremists to reinforce that â and we certainly don't want that," he said. Oh, I'll bet...
The ad image was spliced together by computer from various photographs. One picture was a shot of a Texas movie set, according to Cox. Another was a shot of Special Forces troops rappelling off a wall in California. "We didn't actually hover an Osprey over a mosque," Cox said. From what I've heard about the Osprey, they could've had it crashing into a mosque.
"We had received specific direction from the agency representing Boeing/Bell to not run the ad," said Elizabeth Baker Keffer, executive vice president of National Journal, in a statement released yesterday to the American-Islamic council. "While the mistake was a simple human one, we accept full responsibility for the error. Moreover, we regret any negative impact on your organization and its members." The prompt damage control should help contain the public-relations fallout for Boeing and Bell, said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation and military analyst for the Teal Group of Fairfax, Va. Still, it amounts to a black eye. "You can explain this," Aboulafia said. "But people see what they want to see." Next time we'll have it pulling pippies and kittens off of New Orleans rooftops...
#2
Fuck CAIR. If they don't want people to think that special opps troops might have to rappeling from a chopper or Osprey onto a mosque then make sure weapons are never stored there. Make sure no asshats ever promote violence and make sure on terrorists ever fire a weapon from a mosque.
#4
Wait till they see the spot with the Boeing B-2 dropping Boeing JDAMS on Iranian nuke plants......oh, wait, that's not scheduled to run until next year. My bad.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 14:33 Comments ||
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#5
Maybe they can do some sort of thing where they repell down onto the roof of an elementary school and commence killing professional rapist turban tops evil dooers holding children hostage in a gym. It would be a crowd pleaser. What? No? Oh ROP of course I forgets.
#6
Had the chance to do a walk-through of an Osprey at the 100th Anniversary of the Wright Brothers in NC a while back. Impressive airplane, and the Marines on duty there assisting with the crowd had big grins on their faces as they talked about it. They assured me that all the problems had been fixed, but I wouldn't expect them to say anything else.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/03/2005 15:54 Comments ||
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#7
Yeah, hell of a concept, but we need to ask BH6 if he'd get on one.
A ship carrying food aid is being towed to the Somali port of El-Maan after being released by pirates, the UN says. The MV Semlow ran out of fuel and is being towed by another ship carrying an Egyptian cargo which was also seized. The UN is concerned that some of the grain on board, intended for Somali victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, could be sold off once it docks. It believes the owners of the Semlow, which was hijacked in June, have done a deal to get the pirates off their ship. The World Food Programme has put adverts in the Somali press warning that dealing in stolen grain would be against international law.
Yeah, that'll do it.
More than a week ago, the MV Semlow sailed to El-Maan after an agreement had been reached. But as the port authorities prepared to unload the cargo of 850 tons of rice, the pirates made new demands. They then sailed away again, and used it to board the second boat, the Ibnu Batuta, which was carrying cement from Egypt. The pirates had initially demanded $500,000 in ransom, but the WFP says no money was paid. The crew comprises eight Kenyans, a Tanzanian and their Sri Lankan captain. The ship was captured off Haradere, north of Mogadishu, after sailing from Mombasa in Kenya.
Somalia has had no functioning national government since 1991 and the country has been divided into fiefdoms run by rival warlords. The International Maritime Board has warned of an alarming increase in piracy in Somali waters and has urged ships to avoid the area. Last month, three smaller fishing vessels were hijacked by gunman off the southern port town of Kismayo and some 40 crew members are being held hostage.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/03/2005 08:41 ||
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#2
The UN sure knows how to charter ships and get things done for-----------the tsunami (12-26-04). Grain probably has weevils in it. Hey, World Govt advocates, how come the UN didn't come to NO?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/03/2005 10:00 Comments ||
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Probably overhyped, especially this insistance on female conversions, less threatening, but it is still troubling.
I don't know for the USA, where I read sufism has some bit of popularity among well-educated converts, but in Europe many converts (about 75% male IIRC) actually get into salafism and/or wahabism, presented as "righteous" islam due to the very well-financed promotion enjoyed from the Gulf (hence certain items such as hijab or men's "traditional dress", who are actually alien to mostly north-african french muslims, but get increasingly popular).
In the global jihad, theses people are actually joining the most virulent ennemy. They truly go from one identity to an another.
Also, islam is said to gain an hold in south-America and Mexico (where many indians from the Chiapas, including sub-commandante Marcos?, are said to have converted, in true islamo-leftist fashion), partly due to immigration, partly due to the works of groups such as the spanish morabitouns, an org of leftists days converts who see islam as the ultimate kick-in-the-face to triumphant capitalism and globalization (and probably Uncle Sam).
By Carmen Sesin
NBC News
UNION CITY, N.J. â On a hot summer day, Stefani Perada took a break from her job in West New York, N.J., and stepped outside in her long jilbab, the flowing clothes clothes worn by many Muslim women. Meanwhile, other Latinas in the mostly Hispanic neighborhood were taking advantage of the warm day, walking around in shorts and midriff-exposing halter tops. Perada, 19, who converted to Islam just over a year ago, is still trying to become acclimated to certain customs, such as the jilbab and the hijab, which covers her head and hair.
"Mostly it's because of how your friends and family are going to look at you," she said. "They look at you like, âWhy is she wearing that, itâs so hot.ââ But, she said, âI am doing this for God, and one day I will be rewarded for what I am doing.â And there's an immediate benefit: She's not harassed as much by men when she walks down the street. âYou know how guys [say], âHey Mami, come over here?â I used to always hate that. I would cross the street just to get away. Now you still get some guys that are still curious, but itâs much less,â she explained. âThey are going to look at me for me, and not for my body.â
Growing number of converts?
Perada is not alone as a Hispanic women converting to Islam. The exact number of Latino Muslims is difficult to determine, because the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect information about religion. However, according to estimates conducted by national Islamic organizations such as the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) there are approximately 40,000 Latino Muslims in the United States.
Likewise, it is difficult to break-down the number of Latino converts to Islam into male versus female. But, according to anecdotal evidence and a survey conducted by the Latino American Dawah Organization (LADO), whose mission is to promote Islam within the Latino community in the United States, the number of Latinos converting to Islam tilts slightly in favor of women â with 60 percent women to 40 percent men.
Juan Galvan, the head of LADO in Texas and the co-author of a report "Latino Muslims: The Changing Face of Islam in America," explained that those numbers are unscientific, but based on the results of a voluntary survey that has been conducted on the LADO website since 2001. âFrom observation and experience those numbers are correct,â Galvan said. âFrom my personal experience, there are definitely more Latina Muslims than Latino men.â Galvan explained said that there âjust seem to be moreâ Latina Muslims at the various events he attends through his work with LADO. At the Islamic Education Center of North Hudson, 300 of the people who attend the mosque are converts, and 80 percent are Latino converts. In addition, out of the Latino converts, 60 percent are women, according to Nylka Vargas, who works at the mosque with the Educational Outreach Program.
Overall growth
Peter Awn, an Islamic studies professor at Columbia University, says there is no doubt that the number of Latinos converting to Islam is growing. Louis Cristillo, an anthropologist who focuses on Islamic education at Columbia University, points out there are several indicators that reflect the growing trend of Latinos converting to Islam. For example, there are a number of regional and national organizations that cater to Latino Muslims, and there are even support groups that can be found on-line specifically for Latino converts â in particular Hispanicmuslims.com, as well the LADO organization at latinodawah.org. In fact, last weekend, Latino Muslims in this country celebrated the third annual Hispanic Muslim Day with different activities throughout the day.
For women, particular challenges
Converting to Islam can be shocking for families who are largely Catholic and harbor stereotypes of Muslims, specifically concerning women. Perada says her mother, who is Colombian, accepted her decision to convert because she never really pushed her into Catholicism. However, her father, who is of Italian origin, has had a tough time dealing with it. âSometimes he says things about the way I dress,â said Perada. âHeâll say, âWhy do you have to dress that way. Iâm Christian. I donât walk around with a cross in my hand.' âHe always complains to my mom about it, but with me he just keeps it to himself. But I know for him it is very hard,â Perada added.
Vargas, 30, from the Islamic Education Center, is of Ecuadorian and Peruvian descent. She says her family is already accustomed to the idea of her being Muslim, since it has already been ten years since she converted. But she recalls the days in which her family was dealing with the initial shock of her new faith.âWhen I started being more visible, thatâs when things started getting weird. My sisters couldnât understand why I would cover myself. They thought I was being oppressed or brainwashed,â said Vargas. She admits it was difficult at first to adjust to certain customs, such as wearing the hijab or a headscarf and having to pray five times a day. âFirst it felt kind of weird to be covered, but after a while it [the headscarf] becomes your hair. I refer to my hijab as my hair.â
âA return to traditional valuesâ
Like other ethnic groups, Latinos convert for a variety of reasons.
Some, says Cristillo, grew up in inner-city areas ravaged by poverty, drugs and prostitution, and were attracted in part by the fact that some Islamic communities were very active in cleaning up the neighborhoods. Vargas, meanwhile, says she questioned many things about the Catholic faith in which she was raised and felt an emptiness in Christianity. Galvan, from LADO, pointed out that many people come to Islam through people that they know, "friends, co-workers, classmates, boyfriends or husbands.â Professor Awn said that many Latinas find there is a greater sense of economic and social stability in Islam and that it also represents âa return to traditional values.â
In that regard, Awn does not think Islam is any more patriarchal than other traditional religions, but recognized that âthe younger generation is looking for a more progressive form of Islam." And Perada does not feel that her adherence to the Muslim faith restricts her freedoms as a woman. âIf I get married, I know I am going to work, but I am going to be there for my kids, too,â said Perada, dismissing any notions that Islam would prevent her from living the life of any other modern woman. Carmen Sesin is an assignment editor on the NBC News Foreign Desk.
Dozens of big, green prisoner-transport vans lined the highway, rolling east from the Suez Canal into the desert dunes and crags of the Sinai Peninsula. In this land populated mostly by nomads and goats, police checkpoints dotted the roads.
The foray of troops and police forces into Sinai in September represented the Egyptian government's continuing response to the bombings of hotels, tourist camps, parking lots and marketplaces during the past year in Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh, two resort towns on Sinai's Red Sea coast.
Egyptian authorities, in a reversal of their earlier assessment, say the car bomb attacks, though nine months apart, were the work of a single organization with roots in Sinai and in extremist Islamic ideology -- but with no connections to worldwide terrorist networks. The so-far nameless group, the Egyptians say, combines lawless Bedouin bands and dedicated Muslim rebels from within Egypt. The findings, if accurate, suggest that the bombings represent a worrisome revival of homegrown political violence aimed at civilians, which has a long history in Egypt.
Officials say their investigation turned up no evidence of training in Afghanistan or Pakistan, no recruiting or logistics work in Muslim communities in Europe, no outside financing and no direct ties to al Qaeda or its leader, Osama bin Laden.
"The training was in Sinai, the vehicles used were stolen in Sinai, and the technology used is available in Sinai mines. We have not found any foreign involvement," said Gen. Ahmad Omar, spokesman for the Interior Ministry. Ministry officials said that all the names of known suspects were relayed to foreign intelligence allies and Interpol and that none showed up on anyone's lists.
Yet the bombings, which together killed more than 100 Egyptians and foreigners, shared key characteristics of al Qaeda actions. They hit high-profile targets that are important to the economy. The dates of the attacks contained political symbolism -- the bombings in Taba occurred on Oct. 6, the anniversary of Egypt's 1973 war with Israel, while those in Sharm el-Sheikh came on July 23, the date the Egyptian monarchy was overthrown by Gamal Abdel Nasser 53 years ago. The bombers were able to hatch plans freely in north and central Sinai, a remote and largely ignored section of the country.
"People speak of al Qaeda when they should be speaking of an al Qaeda model," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islam for the government-sponsored Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
The conclusion that the bombings were rooted in Sinai would seem to make things easier for the authorities, but Egypt's long history indicates otherwise. From the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Middle East's prototypical radical Islamic group, in the 1920s, violent groups have emerged seemingly out of nowhere. After two decades of intense crackdowns on radical Muslim groups, the emergence of a violent group in Sinai was a surprise, officials say. "It's extremely difficult to monitor a mountainous area. We need to develop control of the security situation," Omar said.
Next door, Israel has been closely monitoring the situation. The stakes for the Israelis are high: After the withdrawal of Israel's troops from the Gaza Strip, Egypt and the Palestinians are in charge of policing the border with the Palestinian enclave.
In Israel, senior military intelligence officials say they have no reason to dispute the Egyptian theory that Bedouin tribesmen in Sinai carried out the bombings. But they also say the attacks might have been planned or assisted by foreign organizations, such as al Qaeda.
Israeli officials say the complexity of each operation -- involving multiple, almost simultaneous explosions -- points to possible foreign assistance. Israeli military intelligence officers say the cars used in the Sharm el-Sheikh bombing were rigged with explosives in Arish, then taken overland through the desert to the attack site rather than over well-monitored roads.
Two cells working within the same "terrorist infrastructure" carried out the bombings, according to senior Israeli military intelligence officers working with Egyptian officials on the investigation. Israeli officials say the Sharm el-Sheikh bombers learned from mistakes made at Taba: Chassis numbers on the cars used in Sharm el-Sheikh were removed; such numbers were used to trace the owner of the truck involved in the Taba Hilton bombing, leading to a number of arrests.
The Israelis also said a senior leader of the bombers, Khaled Musaid, who was killed Wednesday, was an Egyptian from the city of Ismailiya, not a Sinai Bedouin, suggesting he might have operated on behalf of other Egyptian groups or a foreign organization.
North Sinai is notable for its long, golden stretches of Mediterranean beach, rugged interior and popular resentment toward the central government. Smugglers ferry drugs, weapons and prostitutes to and from the Israeli border. Resentment over underdevelopment and recent security crackdowns runs deep, as evidenced by complaints about the Egyptian leadership's interference in local affairs and accusations that it disdains the population.
"There is no doubt that the sons of Sinai are angry with Cairo," said Ashraf Ayoub, a member of the Committee to Protect North Sinai, a nongovernmental organization that has mounted demonstrations against Egypt's relations with Israel and the U.S. war in Iraq. "Egypt doesn't consider us part of the nation."
"We are angry, angry, angry -- angry about Palestine, angry about Iraq and angry about the Egyptian dictatorship," said Khaled Arafat, a local political activist.
Sinai was under Israeli occupation for 15 years after the 1967 Middle East war, and Egyptian officials have accused the peninsula's Bedouins, thousands of whom live in and roam the hardscrabble interior, of excessive accommodation to the invaders. "Police from Egypt have always been suspicious of north Sinai and, in turn, the people are suspicious of them. Loyalty to the state is low," said Bashir Abdel Fattah, a historian and expert on Sinai society. "The question is how to avoid war in the Sinai. But the crackdown only makes people more resentful."
In the Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh plots, the Interior Ministry says, Sinai Bedouins provided hard-core Egyptian Islamic militants with explosives available from quarries in the area, as well as with weapons and even land mines left over from the '67 war. At Halal Mountain, Egyptian officials identified a tribal leader named Salem Shonoubi as the prime protector of the Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh suspects. Recently, a mine blew up a vehicle carrying troops in pursuit of suspects and their supporters and killed one police officer and an informer. Explosives of the type used in Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh also killed a pair of soldiers in a roadside blast near Halal. The Israelis say Shonoubi was a key planner of the attacks.
Egyptian police used massive roundups to net a few key suspects, a typical crackdown tactic in Egypt. They put women in detention in hopes of luring husbands to give themselves up. Several detainees told Human Rights Watch, the New York-based watchdog group, that they were tortured during interrogation. As recently as two weeks ago, male members of several families were rounded up. Some were released; some kept in jail. A siege of Halal Mountain began in late August and is still in place. Tanks were sent to the area.
Four Taba suspects died carrying out the bombings, which targeted Israeli tourists. Two surviving suspects who have already been arraigned lived in Arish: Mohammed Gaez, an appliance dealer who is suspected of fashioning timers for the bombs, and Mohammed Rabaa, a metalworker who allegedly fitted the explosives onto vehicles.
Lawyers for Gaez and Rabaa said the two, if they produced anything for the Taba bombers, were unaware of the plot. "Making timers and metal containers was their business. Whatever they did, they did for money," said Ahmad Saif, a lawyer for the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a human rights organization.
Surviving suspects in the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks are to go to court soon, Omar said. Three others, who died in the attacks, were identified as known fugitives from roundups after the Taba killings. They lived in Rafah, a town that borders the Gaza Strip in north Sinai.
The Interior Ministry says the bombers are influenced by Salafism, a militant, fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam that is related to the Wahhabi Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia. Two dead suspects in the Taba bombings, Soliman Flayfil and his brother, Mohammed Saleh Flayfil, had turned to radical Islam. They were ejected from their Bedouin tribe for criticizing their father's religious observances as loose, Arish residents say. Soliman died in one of the Taba blasts; Mohammed was killed in a shootout with police last month in the Sinai mountains.
After the Taba attack, the government concluded that it was a local plot focused entirely on Israeli tourists -- and the beginning and end of the extremist threat in Sinai. But the Sharm el-Sheikh bombing, and the discovery of Taba suspects among the dead there, destroyed the theory.
"The authorities wanted to wrap up Taba quickly, but they hadn't really uncovered all the details. When the fugitives felt the authorities had relaxed a little, they struck again," said Mohammed Salah, a correspondent for the London-based Al Hayat newspaper and a longtime observer of Islamic groups in Egypt.
Omar, however, insisted that the group behind the bombings had been unable to achieve its goals. "They tried to destabilize Egypt by hitting the interests of the political regime," he said, noting that tourism had not dried up as it had after an attack on tourists at Luxor in 1997. "There wasn't a huge echo this time. They failed."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/03/2005 00:33 ||
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#1
The claim that these terrorist attack are locally inspired suggests that Islamic terrorism is a function of spontaneous activity that erupts without warning. Yeah, right.
Posted by: john ||
10/03/2005 9:52 Comments ||
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In the wake of the July 7 attacks in London, Europe's governments continue to sweep their communities for potential terrorists. Last week, French police raids in suburban Paris and the city of Evreux in Normandy bagged nine alleged extremists linked to Algeria's terrorist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). And while nearly everyone in France agrees the threat is serious, there are quibbles about how imminent it is. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that the risk of an attack "is at a very high level."
Some see in that remark political opportunism, or at least exaggeration. "The threat is real and constant, but it has not grown significantly higher of late," remarks one French counterterrorism official. "There was a little bit of grandstanding in some of his comments."
Still, there is reason for concern. An offshoot of Algeria's ultraviolent Armed Islamic Group, the GSPC had largely waged jihad at home against the Algiers regime, but now appears set on taking its terrorism abroad, officials say. Confidential French intelligence reports reviewed by Time confirm the GSPC has decided within the last six months to internationalize its fight by linking with al-Qaeda-associated groups, and sees France as its primary target.
While the GSPC-linked group arrested last week did "have a project to prepare strikes in France," the counterterrorism official notes, it had yet to "determine targets or method of attack, and wasn't operational. Indeed, our strategy is to get cells before it gets that dramatic."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/03/2005 00:27 ||
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Thousands of students have demonstrated throughout Egypt to demand that parliamentary elections next month be free and fair. Organised by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most potent opposition force, protests were staged at four universities in Cairo and several other cities under the slogan "Together for reform: Free university ... Free country".
"One man! One vote! One time!"
"State security is everywhere on campus," said 24-year-old demonstrator Alaa Alam. "We have no freedom to do anything. The security services do not only target us religious Muslims, but everyone in our country's universities. There is a movement for reform in Egypt, and we are part of it. We are not asking for something extraordinary, we are just demanding our rights."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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Pakistan has decided to share information about deportees with their countries of origin, in the hope of extracting clues regarding the whereabouts of terrorists operating on its soil, including those with links to Al Qaeda. The government decided to share information with countries, whose citizens had been caught in Pakistan for minor offences and deported. These include Angola, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and other central Asian countries, sources told Daily Times. The information sharing with these countries will be helpful in seeking out terrorists hiding in various parts of the country, the sources said.
A comprehensive list of foreign nationals - deported on charges of carrying illegal documents, overstaying their visit or involvement in other minor crimes — will be sent to their respective governments, who will be asked to interrogate the deportees regarding militants fighting against US-led forces in Afghanistan near the Pak-Afghan border, sources said. The Interior Ministry has already written to the home secretaries of the four provinces, the Islamabad chief commissioner, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas' (FATA) secretary, the immigration director of the Federal Investigation Agency and passport section officers to provide a list of foreign nationals deported from Pakistan in the last six months, sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/03/2005 00:00 ||
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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.
SYDNEY - Australia has warned its citizens that further bomb attacks in Bali are possible in a travel advisory that reiterates a long-standing official warning against visiting Indonesia. The travel advisory issued late Sunday restates Australiaâs position â initially adopted after the October 2002 Bali bombings â that citizens should defer non-essential travel to Indonesia.
Though Imam 
The surest sign we are winning. 
Russia plans to return to Iraq's oil sector. Russia's Soyuzneftegaz plans to begin development of Al Rafidayn oil field in Iraq by the end of 2005. Soyuzneftegaz chairman Yury Shafranik said the company's effort has been supported by the government in Moscow as part of its drive to restore relations between the two countries. "The company is making contacts with foreign partners about the project, in particular, with U.S. and UK partners," Shafranik told Itar-Tass in an interview. "This type of cooperation will allow the country to be quickly brought out of crisis." Shafranik said other Russian companies would also return to Iraq. He cited LukOil, which has sought to restore operation at Western Qurnah-2. LukOil was said to have formed an alliance with the U.S. firm ConocoPhillips.
Five judges have been chosen for the much-anticipated trial this month of toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein over the massacre of Shiite villagers in 1982, a source close to the court said. "Five magistrates will try Saddam Hussein," the Iraqi Special Tribunal source said without identifying the judges. Saddam and seven of his former henchmen are due to go on trial on October 19 for killing 143 Shiites in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad in 1982, following an attempt on his life. The eight face the death penalty if found guilty.
High turnout is expected at Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, a senior election official said on Sunday, although insurgents will likely attack on the day and voting will be difficult in several areas. More than 14 million Iraqis are registered for the Oct. 15 vote, which will determine whether a draft constitution, drawn up over the past four months and meant to unite the country's increasingly divided society, is approved by the people. If the referendum passes, then the constitution will come into force ahead of a general election in December.
Iraq's interior minister lashed out angrily at Saudi Arabia, rejecting its accusations that Iran now dominates his country, and accusing the Saudis of discriminating against their own Shiites. Interior Minister 
Amman - King Abdullah II met Sunday with European Union ambassadors to Jordan and especially urged EU countries to help Israel and the Palestinians to restore the truce that was shattered during the last week, according to an official statement. "The monarch urged the world community, particularly the European Union countries and the Middle East Quartet, to step in to 
Israel expects the findings of an international investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri to prove extremely embarrassing for Syria and put President Bashar Assad's regime in a difficult situation, government sources said Sunday.
The UN team investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will be seeking to extend its term until December 15, according to Lebanese Premier Fouad Siniora. "I think [Mehlis] will take all the necessary measures so his mission continues until December 15, which was the period originally assigned to him by the Security Council," Siniora said Sunday. The international team's mission had been extended by the UN Security Council in August for 40 days, which will end on October 24. German Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, the head of the UN investigation team, will be presenting his report on the outcome of his investigations to both the UN and the Lebanese government on October 21, as Lebanese Justice Minister Charles Rizk affirmed Sunday.
Chouf MP Akram Chehayeb blamed Lebanon's security system for a general deterioration in the country and urged the dismantlement of the lingering Syrian-Lebanese security network. "We need a security system built around a national Lebanese policy, an activation of coordination between units, and for the networks of the Syrian-Lebanese security system to be dismantled." Chehayeb was speaking following a ceremony in Qornayel Sunday organized by the Progressive Socialist Party to commemorate the General Financial Inspector Malek Ali Hilal who died one year ago. "We are seeing day by day how responsible this system is for the political, economic, security and national deterioration," Chehayeb added. "We have to think of Lebanon's future and rebuild the country. This requires maintaining the Taif Accord. We also have to hold on to Lebanon's Arab identity on the basis of an open humanitarian Arabism far from oppression and tutelage in both words and action. In addition to that we have to maintain national dialogue between everyone."
Palestinian factions denounced the security measure deployed by the Lebanese Army around the 
The President of the Iranian Shura Council, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, reiterated his country's support for Lebanon, and the Islamic resistance group Hizbullah, urging unity to confront American and Israeli ambitions in the country. 
Iran's president has denied telling a newspaper that his government might curtail oil sales if Iran is referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear programme. A statement from the president's office on Saturday said, "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never had an interview, either oral or written, with the Khaleej Times."
A ship carrying food aid is being towed to the Somali port of El-Maan after being released by pirates, the UN says. The MV Semlow ran out of fuel and is being towed by another ship carrying an Egyptian cargo which was also seized. The UN is concerned that some of the grain on board, intended for Somali victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, could be sold off once it docks. It believes the owners of the Semlow, which was hijacked in June, have done a deal to get the pirates off their ship. The World Food Programme has put adverts in the Somali press warning that dealing in stolen grain would be against international law. 
Thousands of students have demonstrated throughout Egypt to demand that parliamentary elections next month be free and fair. Organised by the 
