July 27, 2005: Over a week of violence in Yemen has left nearly fifty people dead, and many more wounded. The immediate cause was a 90 percent increase in gasoline (and other petroleum products) prices. The government had long subsidized fuel prices, but increases in the price of oil over the last year (caused largely by growing demand from China and other developing economies), has made the subsidized price about a third of what the government pays for oil. The resulting budget deficit was more than the government could afford. But there's more to it than that.
Oil was discovered in Yemen in 1986. Not a lot, at least by Persian Gulf standards, but billions of dollars worth. However, corruption has led to most of the oil wealth going to corrupt government officials, rather than the population as a whole. This was not a popular development. Moreover, Islamic conservatism has always been strong in parts of Yemen. Osama bin Laden's family came from Yemen two generations ago, and brought their Islamic conservatism with them to Saudi Arabia. The conservative tribes of Yemen are very pro-al Qaeda, and anti-Yemeni government. This has led to the Yemen government joining forces with the United States to fight against Islamic terrorism. This has not been a popular position to many Yemenis. It has been popular with Saudi Arabia, where, in the past week, the United States has issued two warnings to American citizens to be wary of attacks on them by Islamic terrorists. Some of the Islamic terrorism in Saudi Arabia is believed to come from supporters in Yemen.
This has added to the traditionally poor relations with Saudi Arabia. The Yemenis, for thousands of years, were much better off economically than the tribes in what is now Saudi Arabia. That's because most of what little water that falls on Arabia, falls on Yemen. It was easier to grow food, and live, in Yemen. The ports of Yemen shared in the lucrative trade going on with India, Africa and Egypt. But all that changed when oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. Now, the poor cousins were fabulously rich. With about the same population as Yemen, Saudis per capita income is over ten times that of Yemenis (where it's less than a thousand dollars a year). The Yemenis have not gotten over this disparity, and the Saudis are sensitive to the threat of "troublemakers" coming north from Yemen. Both countries accuse the other of supporting dissent and rebellion in each others population. There's some truth to this, but attempts to solve these problems diplomatically have not been completely successful.
Yemen was never known for political stability. The tribal politics has always been vigorous, and nasty. The tribal loyalties are stronger inland, while the people in the coastal towns and cities are more open to new ideas. But overall, more violence is likely.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 11:00 ||
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The UK used to handle that hell-hole with a couple squandrons of the household cavalry visiting from time to time.
KUWAIT CITY: Fifteen police patrols rushed to the Farwaniya Hospital and arrested seven bedouns for fighting inside the hospital premises, reports Al-Anba daily. The daily quoting a security source said two youths who were injured during a fight between rival gangs in Sulaibiya were rushed to Farwaniya and the others followed them to the hospital and the fight continued all over again. The injured youths, bearing stab wounds, have been admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 10:01 ||
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In his meeting with Supreme Security Committee members held Saturday July 23 which discussed the impact of the recent riots, President Ali Abdullah Saleh said all inciters of violence must face up the consequences of their actions. âMalicious individuals who incited violence, chaos and the smashing of government offices during protests against the cutting of the fuel subsidy seized the opportunity to shake the national security, and they must be held accountable for what they did,â the President said.
Kinda falls into the conclusions we've been coming up with here, doesn't it? If the way to control rioting is to go after the people who incite it, doesn't that say it's also the way to control terrorism? Yemen will start moving toward a civil society when the gummint locks up or shoots the guys with the megaphones spewing venom and spittle. Since they're often the same holy men inciting the rubes to jihad, they'll be killing two birds with one stone.
Saleh criticized all those who blocked the public roads and held up oil trucks and confirmed those responsible for this had been captured. He said gas is the nationâs possession and not owned by a particular governorate. On the other hand President Saleh conducted negotiations with tribal sheikhs from Marib on Saturday, reaching an agreement to remove all the tribal checkpoints and allow gas trucks to continue their journeys. Tribesmen had attacked gas trucks, damaging one and killed its driver. Consequently, drivers decided to stop their journeys and the shortage which followed pushed up the gas price to 1400 rials per cylinder.
Cause and effect in action.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 09:09 ||
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DUBAI â It can now be revealed that Dawood Ibrahim, one of the worldâs most wanted fugitives, was âvirtuallyâ present at the wedding of his daughter, Mahrukh, with cricketer Javed Miandadâs son Junaid â images from the wedding were beamed live on to his laptop even as he kept in constant touch over the phone.
The ceremony itself was a simple affair, much like a neighbourhood wedding, except that it involved families of two persons who have always been in media limelight for diametrically opposite reasons.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/27/2005 00:02 ||
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#1
One hopes that the whole thing was tapped and that locations of Dawood were noted.
If not... If anybody wants a close to real time tool. They know where they can reach me...
#2
Remember when Lori Beth married Richie on Happy Days? Richie was "virtually present" too... they married via telephone because Richie was supposedly in Greenland. You could say Ron Howard phoned it in, but he didn't even do that much - you never hear Richie's voice on the other end.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
07/27/2005 23:30 Comments ||
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The International Islamic Relief Organization, Saudi Arabia (IIROSA) denounced the terrorist attack on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In a statement, IIROSA Secretary-General Dr. Adnan Khalil Basha said his organization strongly condemned the heinous crime. "The killings and destruction committed by the deviant group is an indication of their deviation from the right path of religion. It shows that this group is engaged in aggression and aberration," he said. The explosions that ripped through the idyllic resort "targeted peaceful people and are not condoned by Islam," Dr. Basha said.
If you didn't give them money they wouldn't be able to do that stuff, would they?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Tony Blair today defended his wife after she made a speech criticising the effects of new anti-terror laws on human rights.
The Prime Minister dismissed suggestions that he was at loggerheads with Mrs Blair, a senior human rights lawyer, who warned yesterday that the Government's attempts to tighten security following attacks like the July 7 bombings in London must not be allowed to undermine the rights of citizens.
She said that clashes between the two priorities were inevitable in times of crisis. Judges played a "vital" role in protecting the public against executive power, she said, and she praised the law lords for overturning the Governmentâs policy of detaining terror suspects without trial last December.
Typical lib lost of reality, unlike her husband who has some survival instinct...
Speaking to 2,000 lawyers, diplomats and academics in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, Mrs Blair urged the courts to continue to ensure that governments respected the rights of suspects in the international fight against terrorism.
"Nothing I say here could possibly be construed as making light of these horrific acts of violence, or of the responsibility imposed on the UK and other governments to keep the public safe," she said.
"At the same time, it is all too easy for us to respond to such terror in a way which undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and which cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilised nation. The Government, even in times when there is a threat to national security, must act strictly in accordance with the law."
She added: "In our troubled times, where terrorism, division and suspicion of others, are the order of the day, this role for judges is perhaps more vital than ever before."
Courts have to "act as guardians of the weakest, poorest and most marginalised members of society against the hurly-burly of majoritarian politics."
By contrast, at a Downing Street press conference yesterday Mr Blair showed his irritation over past decisions by the courts that have frustrated deportations and terrorism legislation. He particularly criticised the law lordsâ rejection of the law that allowed terror suspects to be held indefinitely without trial.
Yup - a fly on the wall must hear alot!
He said that much of the world had dropped its guard against terrorism since the September 2001 attacks in the US. Those events had been a wake-up call but much of the world had quickly gone back to sleep.
He delivered a direct riposte to Lord Hoffman, the law lord who said in December that the real threat to the nation came not from "terrorism" but from detention law. Mr Blair said that he doubted "whether those words would be uttered now".
Welcoming the all-party consensus over legislation, he made clear that he expected the judiciary to uphold it. "The independence of the judiciary is a principle of our democracy. We have to uphold it but I hope that recent events have created a situation where people understand that it is important that we do protect ourself."
But at a press conference in 10 Downing Street today, Mr Blair insisted he was not embarrassed by his wifeâs remarks.
"I think I have said myself that it is important that we balance these things - civil liberties for people," he said.
"It is very important to protect our way of life and it is important to protect our security. I think probably, to be fair, if you read the whole of the speech she was saying the same thing."
Honorable fellow - sticks up for his woman, and says under his breath "Gee I wish she hadn't of said that..."
THE ethnic mix of the eight London bombers, ranging from young Somalis to Yorkshire-born sons of Pakistani parents and an Anglo-Jamaican convert, has surprised investigators.
In Madrid, the team were all of North African origin. For September 11, Osama bin Laden chose almost all Saudis. The suicide bombers in Istanbul, whose targets included the British Consulate, were all ethnic Kurds, from the same city in southeast Turkey.
Organisers normally prefer to recruit from the same communities, so that their cells have a common language, a shared cause and can often be drawn from the same neighbourhoods.
What distinguishes the British cells of suicide bombers is the striking differences between their family backgrounds, their upbringings and even their pastimes.
Detectives have been piecing together these eight lives to determine how their paths crossed. The suspicion is that these fanatics from north and south met at Finsbury Park mosque.
Mohammad Siddique Khan, 30, the oldest of the Leeds bombers and the suspected leader of that group, is known to have visited this North London mosque over recent years. Police are investigating claims that a second Leeds bomber also spent time there.
The East African-born cell lived not far away in North London, so this was a regular place of worship.
Other would-be suicide bombers linked to the mosque include Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a passenger jet in midair, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker from the 9/11 attacks.
It was also a focal point for European and American converts to Islam, including a number linked to terror cells.
While police are still trying to establish where these eight men have travelled and whether they attended madrassas or foreign training camps, the belief is that the first moves to turn them into jihadis probably happened here.
Properly known as the North London Central Mosque, the five-storey redbrick building was taken over by a group of Islamist extremists in the mid-1990s.
Situated close to Arsenal FCâs Highbury stadium, it subsequently became a centre for radical activity and the commonly associated criminal enterprises of credit card fraud and identity document forgery. These activities have stopped since the mosque has come under new leadership.
Not all those attending the mosque, which was built in 1988, were extremists or terrorist sympathisers. Many members of the local Muslim community attended it as their nearest place of worship.
But the radical takeover made the mosque an immediate draw for Algerians arriving in London as refugees from bitter conflict in their homeland. Among those genuinely fleeing the massacres in Algeria were members of the GIA and GSPC terrorist groups.
For many refugees, Finsbury Park mosque was a place where they could buy forged or stolen passports and identity documents that would enable them to find work. It was also a place where they could buy clothes, which had often been stolen by gangs of shoplifters.
Refugees from the conflict in Somalia also gravitated towards this area of North London and the mosque, which was the focal point of its Muslim community.
The mosque offered the displaced not only a place to pray but also a place to sleep. Over the years thousands of people are thought to have used the basement as a dormitory. Immigration authorities often wrote to people care of the mosque.
Those who made the mosque the centre of their lives became prey for the radical preachers and activists. They held regular prayer groups, study circles and political lectures at which their brand of fundamentalist Islam was preached in violent, uncompromising terms.
The Taleban regime in Afghanistan was held up as an example of how to run an Islamic state and money was raised to send people and equipment to Kabul.
Youths from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities went there, as did a number of black African Muslims and black British converts to Islam.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 14:47 ||
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"Those who made the mosque the centre of their lives became prey for the radical preachers and activists."
Within this moronic statement is the most foolish PC lie of all. No one is forced to attend, listen, or be converted to "radicalism" - that's just an utterly inane and intentional lie. Purest symp limpdick apologist tripe.
When the West finally decides to do something about the imams, to ignore their followers, who chose to become their followers, is truly stupid and suicidal. What do the tools who wrote this drivel think their followers, those poor put-upon followers will do, revert to passivity and take up horticulture? Fuckwits.
Well, color me shocked and call me Shirley! Would've never guessed it! And to be linked to Finsbury's most infamous 2 terrorist (Reid and Moussoui?)...I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I tell ya!
Posted by: BA ||
07/27/2005 15:24 Comments ||
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Detectives have been piecing together these eight lives to determine how their paths crossed. The suspicion is that these fanatics from north and south met at Finsbury Park mosque.
These allegations are the work of England's Zionist dominated Labor government. Lies, all lies! Britain belongs to God!
#6
No one is forced to attend, listen, or be converted to "radicalism" - that's just an utterly inane and intentional lie. Purest symp limpdick apologist tripe.
You missed the money quote in the article, .com:
Not all those attending the mosque, which was built in 1988, were extremists or terrorist sympathisers. Many members of the local Muslim community attended it as their nearest place of worship.
Given that the Finsbury mosque is the poster child for the "we can tell who the extremists are" argument, why would non-radicals continue to attend there? Particularly given the rather extensive public transportation network in London; it seems impossible that less radical mosques were not available.
Yet supposed non-radicals continued to attend what is supposed to be the most radical mosque ever in England. Could that be because the radicalism either did not offend them, or because it isn't really that different from other places?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/27/2005 16:01 Comments ||
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The London bombings have spurred the British government into proposing a series of new laws designed to put an end to the reputation of the capital as "Londonistan", a centre for militant Islam. It wants to create offences such as "indirect incitement to terrorism", "acts preparatory to terrorism" and using the internet for terrorist recruitment and training. It also wants to make it easier to deport foreign nationals who openly preach jihad and violence.
However, one attempted deportation shows how human rights legislation and its interpretation by the judiciary can prevent the executive in a Western democracy from simply exercising its will. At a time when al-Qaeda and its associates are showing a resilience and ability to strike at widespread targets in London and Egypt - let alone Iraq - the government feels such legal protections must be looked at again.
The case in point is that of Muhammad al-Massari, an exile from Saudi Arabia, who runs a website that shows videos of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, including one in which three British soldiers were killed. An extended interview with Mr al-Massari was shown in a BBC television documentary about how the internet is an integral part of the far-flung al-Qaeda network, of which the Iraqi insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are part. In the 1990s, Mr al-Massari ran a group in London called the Committee for the Defence of Legal Rights. At that time, he specialised in sending faxes into Saudi Arabia to promote his cause.
According to a British official who has tracked the case, the Saudi government told the British authorities at the time that he was more Islamic militant than human rights activist. "He opposed the Saudi royal family from an Islamist point of view. He thought, and probably still does, that it was not Islamic enough, that it was corrupt and decadent," the official said. "The royal family was not greatly amused."
During the Conservative government of John Major, a high-level assurance was given to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that Britain would send Mr al-Massari back. That is when the legal problems began. The case was handed to an unusually senior British official, a sign of how important it was deemed. For the next 18 months, this official spoke to almost every lawyer in the government but was blocked at every turn.
The issue was that of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, which says in Article 32: "The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order." Government lawyers said that British national security was not sufficiently engaged, even though the then-Home Secretary Michael Howard argued that British interests in the Gulf were at risk from Mr al-Massari's activities. Eventually, another route was explored. "We looked at whether another country might take him," said the British official. "We narrowed it down to about 10. They all said that they would like to help but always added that their relations with Saudi Arabia might be jeopardised. Finally it came down to one - Dominica."
Dominica, a former British colony, is a volcanic dot in the Caribbean, one of the lushest of the West Indian islands and about as far away from the Middle East as you can get. It had been run for 15 years by a tough prime minister named Eugenia Charles, an admirer of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Dominica agreed to take the Saudi exile. "Massari appealed and the court upheld his appeal," said the official. " It held that although Dominica had signed the 1951 Convention, this was not incorporated into its domestic law, so there was a chance he would be sent on somewhere else. We could not get rid of him." The promise to the Crown Prince could not be fulfilled. The Saudis were not pleased.
Mr al-Massari was eventually allowed to stay in Britain and is now protected even more because of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act of 1998. It prevents anyone from being deported if there is a risk of them being tortured, which is against Article 3 of the Convention. "The Saudis have offered assurances that he would not be tortured," said the British official, "but the lawyers said this was not enough."
Whether the government tries to deport Muhammad al-Massari again, especially after the considerable satisfaction he appeared to show in displaying his video of the deaths of the three British soldiers, remains to be seen. The government's frustration showed when Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a news conference on Tuesday that judges had been "blocking" deportations. "Other countries have managed perfectly well, consistent with human rights, to expel people who are inciting in other countries. "We have tried to get rid of them and been blocked. I think there has been too great a caution in saying: 'Sorry this is unacceptable.'" Some favour more radical solutions than hoping for a more compliant judiciary.
Sir Andrew Green, a former senior British diplomat who now runs campaign group Migration Watch UK, says there needs to be "fundamental review of the whole system". "We should withdraw from the 1951 Convention and have a national convention for asylum which would cut out the abuse. We should also withdraw from Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention and re-enter with a new provision," he said. But a warning against such an approach has come from none other than Mr Blair's wife, Cherie Booth, a lawyer. She told a conference in Malaysia that Britain should not take measures that would "cheapen our right to call ourselves a civilised country". Other European countries are facing the same dilemma.
France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has said recently that he will deport more Muslim clerics preaching violence. In October last year, after a case which went right up to the highest administrative body, the Council of State, France sent an imam back to Algeria.
Germany has sometimes also been accused of harbouring militant Islamist preachers and in January this year it, too, acquired new powers of deportation. The Social Democratic Interior Minister Otto Schily called the new law a "historic breakthrough" and a "blessing for Germany".
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 09:23 ||
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#1
Deportation is great against the furriners, but what are you going to do with the home-grown jihadi pigs?
#7
Deporting terrorists to Dominica only exports terror cells and gives them new staging ground and smuggling routes. Dominica is not an unihabited island in the middle of no where; it is uncomfortably close in the Caribbean. The President wants to return to the moon, which would make a great desolate internment camp, IMHO.
#9
The issue was that of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, which says in Article 32: "The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order."
Mr al-Massari was eventually allowed to stay in Britain and is now protected even more because of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act of 1998.
No entangling treaties! (hat tip to Thomas Jefferson)
Hey MS, tell me again why the UN, ICC and Kyoto are good for America?
#10
Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security Check! or public order."Check!. Whats the hold-up? Don't let the infidel door hit you in the ass as you go.
#14
Screw it, just hire some "out of work" Bulgarians who used to deport people from the quick to the dead and be done with it. I don't believe that in the UK the government faces the "restraints" we do here, they just act as if they do.
#17
We don't need to OWN the moon to deport them TO the moon, rjschwarz! But it would be cheaper to just drop them off somewhere between London and Bermuda.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/27/2005 20:21 Comments ||
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Any of the Lagrange points, L1-L5, would suit. No jurisdictional problems there, I'm sure.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair categorically told the press on Tuesday that it was Pakistan's prime responsibility to rein in seminaries teaching extremism and militancy. The prime minister vowed to use "all measures to root out terrorism" and said that laws would be made to tackle the menace of terrorism. He said that the new anti-terrorism laws would be reviewed at every level so that human freedom was not restricted. He said that he supported giving police expanded powers of detention under the proposed changes to anti-terrorist laws in the wake of the London bombings. "I think it's perfectly reasonable for us in circumstances of great difficulty to have a greater detention in order to interrogate people who are suspected of doing this," he told reporters.
Blair said that there was no justification whatsoever for suicide bombing anywhere in the world. "There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, Iraq, London, Egypt, Turkey, United States of America or anywhere. There is no justification for it, period," he told journalists. After being repeatedly quizzed at a Downing Street press conference about whether the London bombings this month might have been prompted in some way by the Iraq war, Blair rounded angrily on his critics. "The battle against terrorism must be unequivocal," he insisted. "I want to make one thing very clear to you. Whatever excuse or justification these people use, I do not believe we should give on inch to them," he said. Not in this country and the way we live our lives here," Blair said. "Not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in our support for two states, Israel and Palestine, not in our support for the alliances we choose, including with America. Not one inch do we give to these people. It is ludicrous to argue that suicide attacks could be excused in any circumstances."
Couldn't have said it better myself. I've just said it more often.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
It's refreshing to hear Tony cut to the chase and call a ¢¼ a ¢¼. Still a tad refined for my taste, and I think the message is diluted a tad because of that habit, not to mention about a year late in coming, but refreshing.
I'm thinking more along these lines... Pervy's Excellent Adventure as ruler of PakiWakiLand is a very mixed bag. She's a high maintenance whore who has failed to please for some time, now. In fact, she's downright butt ugly when the lights are on, as they are now - leaving the customer (the West) to wonder aloud just WTF it was we thought we saw in her in the first place to make us lay our money (and trust) down on the dresser.
Yeah, I know the refrain about Pervy being our buddy, etc. Heard it, thought about it, don't buy it. I'd rather do without the heavy expense - read: tying our hands - that this arrangement entails. It's not like Pervy's not in this for himself anyway, he most certainly is. He's staked out his game and plays it for his own amusement and survival.
I'm more interested in our amusement and survival.
Same goes for all of our State Dept legacy accommodation arrangements with assholes which stopped serving our interests long long ago and are now merely habitual actions, patently ineffective with absolutely lousy returns on investment, whitewashed for public consumption.
#2
If it's the press conference I caught the tail end of, he was quite pissed off.
However, this article doesn't mention the most potent part of the speech - it was just after the part about "There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, Iraq, London, Egypt, Turkey, United States of America or anywhere. There is no justification for it, period,"
I can't find a source online yet, so I'm going from memory, but he said something like;
"And let's get one thing cleared up as well, there is no justification whatsoever for suicide bombing in Israel either".
Ah, just seen this is from a paki newspaper - that might explain it.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/27/2005 2:31 Comments ||
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Ah, that's good to hear, Tony, thx! Were it reported in the print MSM it would be even better, but it certainly isn't on the approved agenda of any major "news" outlet.
I like pissed off - it's the appropriate response when others are actively interested in killing you and destroying your way of life. I hope it's exceptionally contagious.
#4
British Prime Minister Tony Blair categorically told the press on Tuesday that it was Pakistan's prime responsibility to rein in seminaries teaching extremism and militancy.
How about reigning in the islamist Mosque preachers spewing hate and intolerance, Mr. Blair?
You'll never hear that "no justification for Suicide bombings in Israel" in the MSM.
#5
agree with what's been said above and good for Tony, but am I the only one who finds it a bit hypocritical that he's busy pointing fingers at Pakistan when he's done precious little to stop the hate spewed in the openly hostile Mosques in his own country?
Hey Tony - might want to take a good look at that speck in your own eye.....
#7
Blair warns Pakistan to rein in militants
Or else what? Does anyone have the ability to "rein in' Pakiwakiland? How about turning the Northwest Frontier Province into the Northwest Frontier Parkling Lot...
The recent bombings in London overshadowed terrorist attacks in Dagestan, Russia's largest North Caucasus republic in terms of area and population, where attacks have become as routine as the muezzin's calls to prayer. But the bombs in Makhachkala and Khasavyurt and the terrorist attacks in the London Underground are links in the same chain.
Islamic terrorism in Dagestan will grow into a major problem for the Russian Caucasus. Viewed by its organizers as part of the global jihad, terrorism in the republic merits as much attention as the London explosions.
Terrorism in Dagestan is more complicated and sophisticated than in Chechnya, and has a more serious ideological content. First, it is closer to "international standards" of terrorism, as terrorist attacks staged by Chechen rebels are mostly anonymous, and the names of organizers and those who carry them out are established only after investigation. Chechen separatism today is striving to maintain a limited battleground that no authority can control. But the series of recent terrorist attacks in Dagestan have one source: Shariah Jamaat, a terrorist Wahhabi organization.
Shariah Jamaat assumed responsibility for the July 1 attack in Makhachkala and a series of other recent political assassinations, including that of Magomed-Zagid Varisov, a public opponent of Wahhabism. In March this year, Jamaat proclaimed an all-out war against Dagestani law enforcers allegedly guilty of "murdering Muslims."
Second, the organization has declared its goals clearly and boldly: The creation of an Islamic state in Dagestan and the liquidation of Russia's military and political presence in the Russian Caucasus. After the tragedy in Makhachkala, it issued a statement over the Internet stating its readiness to "land a group of Dagestani mujaheddin in Moscow to stage a series of subversive attacks."
Experts say Dagestan is the most Islamic of Russia's regions. It has the largest proportion of practicing Islamic believers in Russia as a total of the population at over 90%.
The Islamic revival began in the early 1990s, when Islam was viewed as an integrating force that would rally multiethnic Dagestan. Z.S. Arukhov, a leading expert on Islam in Dagestan, who died recently in a terrorist attack, once said, "It was expected that the totality of the Islamic regulation system, the limitations of Islam as a social culture, and flexible relations with state authorities would give Islam crucial advantages in conditions of social and political modernization."
But Islam did not become a stabilizing and rallying factor. Instead, it grew increasingly political and radical - the reverse, negative side to religious liberalization. The revival of Islam in Dagestan was marred by the development of fundamental conflicts between Tariqatists (the local Sufi variety of Islam) and Wahhabis (Salaphites).
Wahhabi propaganda in Dagestan rested on the criticism of the local authorities. Massive abuses of office by officials, corruption, social stratification and ensuing mass unemployment, the aloofness of the authorities and their disregard for the public needs pushed disillusioned locals into the arms of the Salaphites. The latter offered them an alternative: A true Islamic order and radical rejection of communism and democracy and "false Islam" as political models.
The Salaphites present a model of Islam without clans, teips, virds and other forms of ethnic groups. Theirs is a standard project that could be in demand in the multiethnic and fragmented Dagestan.
The spread of Wahhabism in Dagestan is a result of the clan structure and the aloofness of the local authorities. The republic's political elite has not changed since the early 1990s. It was effective in the struggle against ethnic extremism during the "parade of sovereignties," the "Chechen revolution," and Basayev's invasion from Chechnya. But it takes a more finely tuned system of power to combat religious extremism.
What can Russia do in this situation?
Firstly, Russia should finally put an end to regional self-government. To do this, the federal center should use all available resources to push the project of a "Russian political nation." At this first stage of Islamization, many Dagestani residents are not ready for a clean break from Russia. Hence, the Russian project (universal and supra-ethnic) should defeat the Islamic project.
Secondly, the establishment of Russian state institutions in the Caucasus should not be limited to the war on terrorism. Russia should above all ensure effective control of internal migration in the overpopulated region. Out-migration of ethnic Dagestani groups (economically motivated migration) is a major problem.
Another emergency task is to restore the Russian population in the republic. Historically, Russians have always brought along European values and modernization. They are not connected with ethnic clans or struggles between Islamic factions, and so can function as a stabilizing factor. The return of Russians to Dagestan is also necessary to fill the social niches left by their departure (the intellectual market and skilled personnel). A normal migration policy would prevent Dagestan's secession by stealth.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 11:41 ||
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Igor Dobayev, a terrorism expert with the Russian Academy of Sciences discussed a report he wrote that was issued Friday. It stated that militants carried out 70 attacks in Dagestan in the first six months of this year and that there are about 300 âinstructors and treasurersâ from other countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Jordan - and with links to al-Qaeda (Iran) are working with the terrorist organizations in the North Caucasus.
That is why my most important recommendation is that the U. S. and Germany arrange industrial assistance to Russiaâs military. The main front is here. When Teheran realizes they cannot defeat Russia arrangements will begin to end the war. But if it takes Russia two more years to strengthen its border the Jihad will have some easy major successes. Access to raw materials in Central Asia could be cut off. Early 1997 a Russian official admitted that if Russian armed forces continue to deteriorate Moscow could lose control of the area from the Urals to the Far East.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 09:55 ||
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Russia is breaking my heart. They tried to play like we were buddies for a few years (2001-2003), now they have gone back to positioning themselves as an adverary. They still like to swing their dicks around like they are some kind of world power or something, so let them deal with this themselves.
#2
I'd rather have Russia as an adversary than the Islamofascists. They seem capable of rational behavior, even if we disagree. The enemy of my enemy is my 'friend'.
EFLMOSCOW -- Facing pressure from Russia and China to end America's military presence in two Central Asian states, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld won assurances Tuesday from Kyrgyzstan's new leaders that they would not shut down a U.S. base on Kyrgyz soil used for combat and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan.
The U.S. air base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan and its air base at Karshi-Khanabad in southern Uzbekistan have become vital cogs in American anti-terrorism operations in Central Asia.
The continued use of those bases was put in doubt by a declaration July 5 by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security coalition made up of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The group called on the United States to fix a date for its pullout from its Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan bases.
Since then, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kyrgyzstan's newly elected president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, have questioned the need for the U.S. bases in their countries, contending that Afghanistan for the most part has stabilized.
U.S. troops can remain at Manas and Karshi-Khanabad only as long as the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan allow them to stay.
After meeting with Rumsfeld on Tuesday in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, Kyrgyz leaders said Rumsfeld convinced them that Afghanistan remains volatile, and that Manas is needed to provide logistical support for operations there.
"The base at Manas will stay as long as the situation in Afghanistan requires," acting Kyrgyz Defense Minister Ismail Isakov said during a news conference with Rumsfeld. "Once there is stabilization, there will be no need. But now I agree with [Rumsfeld], who said the situation in Afghanistan is far from stable."
Rumsfeld would not discuss the future of the Manas base, saying it was a matter for the Kyrgyz government to decide.
Bakiyev, elected July 10 after a popular uprising in March that toppled autocratic leader Askar Akayev, had expressed doubts about the need for the U.S. to keep about 1,000 troops at Manas in northern Kyrgyzstan.
Relations with the Uzbek leader worsened after Washington criticized the Karimov regime's May crackdown on demonstrators in Andijan, which human-rights groups said killed more than 700 people, many of them unarmed. Karimov maintains that his troops fired solely on armed protesters and put the death toll at 187.
Karimov responded to calls for an international probe into what happened in Andijan by ordering a curtailment of operations at Karshi-Khanabad. The U.S. has about 800 troops there.
On Monday, Rumsfeld said losing access to Karshi-Khanabad would not jeopardize U.S. operations in Afghanistan. "We're always thinking ahead. We'll be fine," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him.
The U.S. has been operating air bases in northern Kyrgyzstan and southern Uzbekistan since 2001, when American troops invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban. The regime collapsed in late 2001, but insurgents and other guerrillas have kept up attacks on Afghan authorities and U.S. troops
At the start of the Afghan war, the Kremlin acquiesced to the establishment of temporary American bases in Central Asia, experts say, largely because Russian leaders fully understood the threat Islamic militants posed in the region. But Moscow has grown wary of a U.S. military presence in Central Asia, a region it wants firmly under its wing.
"In 2001, there was a sense that Russia was incapable of providing security for Central Asia," said Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Moscow. "But Russian leaders always had this nightmare scenario: What if the U.S. did not leave? What if they deceive us and stay in Central Asia for much longer than planned?"
Russia now appears poised to ratchet up its own military presence in Central Asia. Russian military leaders say they may double their forces at the Russian air base in Kant, Kyrgyzstan, where 500 troops are stationed. The Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported earlier this month that Karimov's government had signaled its readiness to allow Russia to establish airfields at up to 10 locations in southern Uzbekistan.
"Russia and China are clearly trying to oust the U.S. so they can establish their own military protectorate over the area," said Stephen Blank, a professor at the U.S. Army War Colle
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/27/2005 09:00 ||
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The Kyrgyz government is shaking Uncle Sam down for more money. The Uzbek government is unhappy that Uncle Sam tried to take their government down. The Kyrgyz government is probably also perturbed at Uncle Sam's verbal support for the Uzbek rebels.
For existing governments, when you criticize government actions against rebels, you are, in effect, on the rebels' side. This is why Washington has been losing friends and not influencing people in the past several decades - this emphasis on human rights means encouraging rebels to overthrow existing governments. In cases where the government is somewhat inclined to cooperate with Uncle Sam, the rebels are much less friendly than the existing governments. Continued interference in the internal affairs of Central Asian regimes will turn them all against the US.
#2
And how are Cold War Soviet, now Russian, and Chicom INTEL facilities in Cuba, etc. NOT a desire of Russia-China to meddle in America's affairs? FYI, a few bloggers are reporting that Russia-China have allegedly mutually agreed to activate 10+ combat-ready divisions for potential use ags these new US bases in Central Asia.
ROTTERDAM â Mohammed B, sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for the murder of Theo van Gogh, will also be prosecuted for his suspected role in the Hofstadgroep terror network. Public prosecutor A van Dam announced at Wednesday's third pro forma hearing of twelve suspected Hofstadgroep members that action would be brought against B. The prosecutor's office's assertion that B played a leading role in the group is key to its case that the Hofstadgroep is a terrorist organisation.
In the last pro forma hearing concerning the Hofstadgroep, in early May, the prosecutor's office said B had played a leading role in the group. That statement is key to its case that the Hofstadgroep is a terrorist organisation. Eleven Hofstadgroep suspects are still in jail on suspicion of participating in a criminal terrorist organisation.
Jermaine W's preventive custody was suspended at the last hearing, but he remains a suspect. Two other suspects, Ismail A and Jason W, were arrested in November during a raid on a residence in the Laakkwartier in The Hague.
Besides these twelve suspects, several other people are in jail on suspicion of connections with the Hofstadgroep. Among them are Nourredine El F and Rachid B. El F was arrested in late June at Amsterdam-Lelylaan railway station and is believed a key member of the group. At the time of his arrest he was in possession of a loaded machine gun.
Just one of the holy relics his grandad left him
Police arrested two women on the same occasion, one of whom was El F's wife, Soumaya S. Rachid B was arrested in London in late June. The public prosecutor's office believes he helped the Syrian Abu K, the suspected spiritual leader of the Hofstadgroep terrorist network, get out of the Netherlands on 2 November 2004, the day Theo van Gogh was murdered.
B arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday and will be brought before the judge on Friday. Wednesday's hearing before a Hague court will take place in a high-security courtroom in Rotterdam because of security concerns.
The trials of the letters B, A, W, F, S and K are brought to you by the number 12.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 15:10 ||
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PARIS, July 27 (AFP) - A group of 40 Afghans have been deported on a flight organised jointly by the French and British authorities, the interior ministry in Paris said Wednesday. The flight took off from Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris on Tuesday evening carrying 25 Afghans detained in France and 15 in Britain. The two countries announced recently that they would collaborate in returning failed asylum-seekers to their countries of origin.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 14:37 ||
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The two countries announced recently that they would collaborate in returning failed asylum-seekers to their countries of origin
#2
I was always wondering how they handle security with a bunch of ne'er do wells on a deportation. I would not let these clowns on my plane. Just curious.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/27/2005 15:25 Comments ||
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wheel wells hold 13, AP
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 15:45 Comments ||
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Canada's normally zip-lipped spy service yesterday took the unusual step of speaking out publicly against a Muslim leader, alleging that he has been making accusations against government agents that "we believe to be totally without foundation."
"We really want to counteract these allegations," said Canadian Security Intelligence Service spokeswoman Kathryn Locke, who called The Globe and Mail to respond to comments made by Aly Hindy, the imam of the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough.
"These unsubstantiated charges are not helpful," she said, adding that Mr. Hindy's comments threaten bridges that CSIS has been trying to build with the Muslim community.
On Monday, The Globe and Mail published an interview with the imam, in which he complained that a young Muslim woman told him that CSIS agents roughed her up while her husband was away at prayers.
This, he said, was an outrage that could lead to reprisals from Muslim youth.
Mr. Hindy first raised the charges in a meeting in May with dozens of Muslim leaders and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan. But he has also circulated flyers about the alleged incident, urging Muslims never to talk to CSIS. His subsequent interviews to newspapers and Toronto talk-radio stations have outraged CSIS leaders.
"Enough is enough," said Ms. Locke, the CSIS spokeswoman. She said the spy service investigated the complaint and "could not substantiate these charges."
But CSIS took the complaint seriously enough to forward it to the Toronto Police Service, she said. The police force was not prepared to comment on the status of that investigation yesterday.
Government investigators probing the complaint have previously told Mr. Hindy they found no evidence of wrongdoing, but he isn't giving the spy service the benefit of the doubt.
"We believe CSIS should stop terrorizing us," he said in a flyer.
CSIS and Mr. Hindy have had a tangled history.
Court records indicate that the spy service has asked several men suspected of links to terrorism about Mr. Hindy, who was close to Ahmed Said Khadr, a Canadian who became friends with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and moved his family to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Pakistani security forces killed Mr. Khadr in 2003.
Mr. Hindy has long alleged that CSIS has been wrongly spying on him and members of his mosque. He has appeared in court as a character witness for several immigrants CSIS accuses of al-Qaeda links.
He also blames the spy agency for the overseas arrests of several men -- including his own day-long interrogation by Egyptian authorities a couple of years ago.
"I speak my mind and I don't care what happens. But I get in trouble, many times," Mr. Hindy said in his interview with The Globe. "But you know what? This gives me the trust of young people."
He complained that more moderate Muslim leaders are hypocritical. "They want to be politically 100 per cent right. They say whatever the government wants to hear."
While his public comments run against the conciliatory tone of Muslim leaders who have lately spoken out against terrorism, Mr. Hindy is not alone.
Other Canadian Islamic leaders also question why Muslims must speak out against acts of extremism in Britain, especially given the carnage that takes place daily in Iraq.
For example, Tariq Abdelhaleem of the Dar Al-Arqam Islamic Centre in Mississauga recently posted an open letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin on his centre's website.
While condemning the attacks in the United Kingdom, Mr. Abdelhaleem says the bombings took place because "it is the country that is helping the American crusaders (or neo-conservatives if you wish) to kill innocent Muslims, and try to change the face of the Islamic faith in the Middle East.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 09:53 ||
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Other Canadian Islamic leaders also question why Muslims must speak out against acts of extremism in Britain, especially given the carnage that takes place daily in Iraq.
Odd, isn't it, how it never sinks in that the carnage is being caused by their fellow Muslims.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/27/2005 9:57 Comments ||
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Anyone ever heard a single protest of a Muslim organization about the carnage in Soudan or even about the carnages perpetrated by Saddam or by the Taliban?
The WOT will make a big step fotrward the day one of those m..rs is invited to a TV show and when he starts hios standard fingerr pointing someone asking them that little question.
#3
Oh he'll make a great Canadian one day I am sure, just give him a little time and space. He is a special one to be certain. Check back on him in two years and he will have flowered and gone to seed.
#3
HH lost another listener (streaming online) and a lot of respect for not countering the CAIR lies. I don't mind a giv-n-take, as long as the parties are held to reality, not propaganda
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 19:21 Comments ||
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Here's the print version of the link without the annoying ad.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/27/2005 19:36 Comments ||
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I heard Representative Tancredo on Michael Savageâs show last night. What an interview! Tancredo gets it w/r/t illegal aliens. He gets it w/r/t Muslim extremists. He makes no bones about being ostracized by mainstream Republicans and the White House. When Savage asked Tancredo about how he keeps going with the stands he makes on these key issues, then came the money quote (I paraphrase):
âWhen I take the oath of office, I raise my right hand and I swear, not to defend the Congress, not to defend the President. I swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States.â
That is presidential material. We need more Tancredos in Congress.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/27/2005 19:58 Comments ||
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Looks like the ACLU can stuff it in their pipe and smoke it!
Hat Tip Stop the ACLU
WASHINGTON â The Senate voted Tuesday to allow U.S. military bases to continue to host Boy Scouts events, responding to lawsuits and a federal court ruling aimed at severing relationships between the government and the youth group.
The vote came one day after four adult Scout leaders from an Alaska troop were killed on the opening day of the National Scout Jamboree at the Army's Fort A.P. Hill in Bowling Green, Va., when a tent pole apparently struck a power line.
In a 98-0 vote, I wonder who didn't vote?
the Senate approved the provision continuing the hosting of Boy Scout events as part of massive bill setting Defense Department policy for next year. After the vote, Senate leaders decided to put off further debate and votes on the overall bill, probably until fall when Congress returns from a monthlong break.
In 1999, the ACLU of Illinois filed a lawsuit claiming the Pentagon's sponsorship of such Boy Scout activities violates the First Amendment. The ACLU argues that direct government sponsorship of the group amounts to discrimination.
Civil liberties advocates have assailed the Boy Scouts organization because it bans openly gay leaders and compels members to swear an oath of duty to God.
On June 22, U.S. District Judge Blanche Manning ruled in the ACLU's favor, saying the Pentagon can't spend millions of dollars to sponsor Boy Scout events. She said in an earlier ruling that the government spent between $6 million and $8 million to host the Jamboree on a military base in 1997 and 2001.
The House in November overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution that recognized the Boy Scouts organization for its public service efforts and condemned legal efforts to limit government ties to the organization that has 3.2 million members.
#1
Wonder if Senator Kerry was present and attended.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/27/2005 15:14 Comments ||
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Here in San Diego the ACLU's been trying to get the boy scouts thrown out of all City facilities since they won't let gay pedophile scout leaders lead young impressionable men. I keep increasing my Scout donations every time they raise a ruckus, and email the local ACLU about it. F*&kers
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 16:14 Comments ||
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The Boy Scouts have been bashed enough. I was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout Leader all the years up to them earning their Eagle. I am very glad that I was able to be so actively involved with such a wonderful organization. The Boy Scouts have been teaching our young guys how to be fine young men, especially during a time that we have so many dysfuntional families that aren't doing it themselves. My son along with several others that were in our Troop enlisted in the service and some are over in Afghanistan and Iraq for a second time already. Thankfully it sounds like alot of this foolishness over the Scouts has passed, at least I hope so.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/27/2005 17:55 Comments ||
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Thank you, Jan. You and so many others have helped boys become men capable of benefitting society by being role models
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 17:59 Comments ||
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I was a Boy Scout and an Explorer. One of the best things I did in my teen-age years.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/27/2005 18:17 Comments ||
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i wuz gonna be an exploder scout too
Posted by: abu pali star scout ||
07/27/2005 19:43 Comments ||
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Edited for new material: The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case. Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.
Lucy Ramirez?
In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."
Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.
Just happened to bump into a "friend" of Wilson on the street, who just "happened" to ask about yellowcake? And notice, the only person talking is Wilson.
Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to discuss the investigation, as has Fitzgerald.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 11:38 ||
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Occam's razor: Wilson did it. And Plame most likely encouraged him.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/27/2005 13:56 Comments ||
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Notice this sentence
"an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war"
Sorry, but I thought this whole thing was about who outed Ms. Wilson? This is the Post being judge, jury and handing down a verdict.
#7
The Wilson's planned it out (actually Plame, she's the "brains" behind the team). Wilson was to "out her" blame it on Washington for the head hunt. If anyone finds out, he cant be prosecuted because she didnt qualify in her current position. MHO
EFL: WASHINGTON - An "independent panel" headed by two "former" U.S. national security advisers said Wednesday that chaos in Iraq was due in part to inadequate postwar planning. Planning for reconstruction should match the serious planning that goes into making war, said the panel headed by Samuel Berger and Brent Scowcroft.
Berger was national security adviser to Democratic President Clinton.
Samuel Berger; AKA: Sandy Berger, Sandy Burgler, Sandy "Documents in My Pants" Berger, Samuel "Security-Clearance-Suspended" Berger.
Scowcroft held the same post under Republican Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush but has been critical of the current president's Iraq and Mideast policies.
Brent "Stability at All Costs" Scowcroft never met a dictator he didn't want to leave in power.
"A dramatic military victory has been overshadowed by chaos and bloodshed in the streets of Baghdad, difficulty in establishing security or providing essential services, and a deadly insurgency," the report said. "The costs, human, military and economic, are high and continue to mount," said the report, which was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent foreign policy group.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 11:15 ||
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Newz flash: Bushy is stoopid.
/LLL
Posted by: Chris W. ||
07/27/2005 11:40 Comments ||
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Yes, it really is incredible that the Bush Administration didn't have perfect 20/20 foresight to know exactly how things would turn out. No other administration ever made any mistakes or was caught unprepared!
Posted by: Dar ||
07/27/2005 12:19 Comments ||
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So, I'm supposed to take Sandy Berger's word for someting? He's a criminal for crying out loud!
He's a criminal with a (D) after his name. That makes him a respected figure in national politics.
Back in April I made a (rare) post to my own blog predicting Begala's rebirth six months later. The press pulled it off three months earlier than I thought.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/27/2005 13:27 Comments ||
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There was plenty of preparation for post-war Iraq. THe problem is that the situation turned out to be different from the ones most of the plannign was done for. To say we were "unprepared" is to basically tell a lie. To say we were inadequately prepared due to a change in the post-war scenario is the truth.
Pre-war contingency was done with the assumption that the 4th ID would be coming in from Turkey into the "Triangle" area, there would be a much heavier and quicker occupation of the Baathist/Sunni areas, and the 4th woudl be bale to seal central Iraq off from the Syrian border area.
I would bet that the change of the 4th ID entry point and time caused a lot of planning work for the initial assault and that the vat amount of planning resources were focused on winning the war quickly with what was on hand, next getting the 4th ID quickly disembarked, and after that, the changed occupation.
But Sandy Bergler and that has-been Scowcroft had political axes to grind - because the current adminstration is rapidly revealing the mistakes they made in failing to diagnose and act against terrorism of the sort that faces us now. THey were the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" set of NS-Adv in the 90's that got us into this mess.
The article I read was ass-covering by the two of them - pointing a finger at obvious things that can occur in the chaos of a war, in hopes that nobody will trace back the causes to the two of them failing in their jobs. In this case, the old adage "when you point a finger, there are 3 other fingers you point back at yourself" rings very true.
Of course, dont expect the MSM to question things - or look any deeper, because this article by these losers fits with the MSM "Bash Bush" mindset.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the nomination of Karen Hughes, a former political adviser to President Bush, as the State Department's top public relations official. The Senate is expected to complete the confirmation process this week before leaving for its August recess.
Hughes' main assignment as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is to reverse anti-American sentiment around the world. She said at a committee hearing last week that the challenge was ``the urgent need to foster greater understanding, more respect and a sense of common ideals among Americans and people of different countries, cultures and faiths around the world.''
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/27/2005 00:04 ||
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Hughes is a nice person, which disqualifies her for a public diplomacy job. She has never been enthusiastic about secularism, which is something that the US government should be selling in mullah polluted Islamania.
Posted by: Vlad the Muslim Impaler ||
07/27/2005 2:28 Comments ||
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NEW YORK So what is shown on the 87 photographs and four videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon, in an eleventh hour move, blocked from release this weekend? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images: "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe. They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added. A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of ârape and murder.â No wonder Rumsfeld commented then, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
Yesterday, news emerged that lawyers for the Pentagon had refused to cooperate with a federal judge's order to release dozens of unseen photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by Saturday. The photos were among thousands turned over by the key âwhistleblowerâ in the scandal, Specialist Joseph M. Darby. Just a few that were released to the press sparked the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal last year, and the video images are said to be even more shocking. The Pentagon lawyers said in a letter sent to the federal court in Manhattan that they would file a sealed brief explaining their reasons for not turning over the material. They had been ordered to do so by a federal judge in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU accused the government Friday of putting another legal roadblock in the way of its bid to allow the public to see the images of the prisoner abuse scandal. One Pentagon lawyer has argued that they should not be released because they would only add to the humiliation of the prisoners. But the ACLU has said the faces of the victims can easily be "redacted."
Well, that's not what really happened, was it PT? Even your beloved NYT was forced to issue a correction yesterday: An article on Saturday about a federal judge's order regarding photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal misstated a deadline and the response by Defense Department lawyers. The government was given until Friday to black out some identifying details in the material, not to release it. Defense Department lawyers met that deadline, but asked the court to block the public release of the materials. They did not refuse to cooperate with an order for the materials' release.
To get a sense of what may be shown in these images, one has to go back to press reports from when the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal was still front page news. This is how CNN reported it on May 8, 2004, in a typical account that day:
Like we believe CNN
âU.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealed Friday that videos and âa lot more picturesâ exist of the abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison. "âIf these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse,â Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. âI mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.â âThe embattled defense secretary fielded sharp and skeptical questions from lawmakers as he testified about the growing prisoner abuse scandal. A military report about that abuse describes detainees being threatened, sodomized with a chemical light and forced into sexually humiliating poses. âCharges have been brought against seven service members, and investigations into events at the prison continue.
And the last trial is going on right now
âMilitary investigators have looked into -- or are continuing to investigate -- 35 cases of alleged abuse or deaths of prisoners in detention facilities in the Central Command theater, according to Army Secretary Les Brownlee. Two of those cases were deemed homicides, he said.
"âThe American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,â Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. âWe're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.â
Maybe there were charges, but none of them have been proven to be true.
âA report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a âmale MP guard having sex with a female detainee.â
Did he? Don't recall any charges being filed
âRumsfeld told Congress the unrevealed photos and videos contain acts 'that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman.ââ
They were a bunch of assholes on the night shift, and they're spending time in jail. Their lawyers tried to shift the blame up to Rumsfeld, but failed.
The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other. In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: âSome of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their menâŠ.The women were passing messages saying âPlease come and kill me, because of what's happened.
âSeymour Hersh is one of the biggest leftists in the media, speaking before the American Communist Litigation Unit.
âBasically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out.â
#1
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention:
More complete bullshit from the press. Hersh did NOTHING about Abu Ghraib except reprint rumors, defense lawyer spin, and lie, lie, lie. It was uncovered by the military. It as reported by the military in daily press briefings months before Hersh got his first hard-on over the story.
When will the press be held accountable for its lies?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/27/2005 12:23 Comments ||
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I saw this Article on the Left Coaster blog earlier. I got the impression that there might be children and women involved and that the U.S. wanted to black out their faces. I patiently explained to the LLL that it was a good choice to withhold and black out photos if they involved pedophilia. Also it made no sense to release photos of abuse (they want to call it interrogations) without covering the faces of the abused. They are still of the impression that Rumsfeld is responsible and personally ordered, if not participated in, the abuse at Abu Grahib. Friggin moonbats! Nothing is added by the release of these photos unless Senator Kennedy needs to add them to his personal collection.
#3
I don't doubt that there were abuses at abu Ghraib -- we know there were. The specific ones mentioned below: womens' breasts exposed, prisoners threatened with dogs, simulated or real sex between prisoners and the deaths of several prisoners - have been acknowledged by the Pentagon and were under investigation well before the press got wind of them.
And, SECDEF Rumsfeld has testified that he found the abuses horrible, that they were not officially sanctioned and deserved punishment - which has happened to at least several of the perpetrators.
Are there worse abuses that have not been made public? Possibly -- but an article based on a snapshot in time over a year ago isn't quite persuasive to me. Unnamed senators speculating -- 14 months ago -- on what MIGHT have happened is less than useful.
My own suspicion is that critics of the war in Iraq want the photos released because visual images can be replayed on TV stations throughout the Muslim world. We saw the impact of this strategy when Newsweek's incorrect article about Koran desecration led to riots and death. Absolutely no mitigation of that by Newsweek's later retraction of the story -- the damage was done by the images beamed around the world to millions of people, many of whom are functionally illiterate.
Steve notes, albeit with a bit of energy, that a key allegation in this article from a media insiders journal is factually incorrect. Once again, a damaging allegation is made that is later withdrawn -- but the original lie continues to circulate.
#4
My own suspicion is that critics of the war in Iraq want the photos released because visual images can be replayed on TV stations throughout the Muslim world.
Ding!
That's the goal. Given that one of the London bombers said he was motivated by the -- false -- reports of torture at Gitmo, the whole reason to get the pictures out is to motivate more attacks.
The press, the ACLU, the left -- they hate this country, its people, and its Constitution.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/27/2005 12:49 Comments ||
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#5
Abu Ghraib, again? What is this, a slow news day or something? This crap was old many, many months ago.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/27/2005 13:11 Comments ||
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#6
PT's dredging - anything Anti-America is timeless to the idiot left, particularly since it's easier to embellish as age dims memories. See: Ward Churchill and the smallpox blanket. Same scum
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 13:47 Comments ||
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#7
The point to all this equine necroflailia, of course, is to undermine our resolve to win this war.
I'm beginning to wonder how much longer we can sustain our suicidal hyper-tolerance not only of the Muslim extremists among us, but also of our seditious Left.
My guess is, not much longer.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/27/2005 14:12 Comments ||
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#8
Given their recent meme efforts have gone down in flames, Downing St Memo, Rove is a Criminal, etc. and the scandal cupboard is currently bare, well, they're prolly just reverting to their last PR success. Desperation suits them rather well, methinks.
I want the MSM stooges and tools lined up against the wall first.
#9
The ACLU doesn't give a whit about protecting my rights, the only thing that interest them is tearing down out country because they hate it. Dittos for the press.
I have planed what I will do if one of these critters crosses my path. The ACLU and Press in this country are outside the protection of the law as far as I am concerned.
The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, according to senior administration and military officials. I thought "jihad" meant "struggle". Stop confusing me.
In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the country's top military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice.
Administration officials say the earlier phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." And, for the most part, they are.
He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremism, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use." Sorry, General, but you're a fool.
Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded.
Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President George W. Bush's senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Bush's own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Rumsfeld spoke in the new terms on Friday when he addressed an audience in Annapolis, Maryland, for the retirement ceremony of Admiral Vern Clark as chief of naval operations. Rumsfeld described America's efforts as it "wages the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization." But what Rummy said is not fundamentally different from what W has said repeatedly in his own speeches during the last four years. Methinks NYT is trying to blow this out of proportion and claim "victory" for those media shills who have tried to change the WoT verbage, ala BBC, CBC, NYT itself, etc.
The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration's strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Bush's recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas. "It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative." It's always been about more than the military portion of the WoT. Doesn't make it any less of a war, NYT.
The language shift also comes at a time when Bush, with a new appointment for one of his most trusted aides, Karen Hughes, is trying to bolster the State Department's efforts at public diplomacy. Lawrence Di Rita, Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the change in language "is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach." "The president then said we were going to use all the means of national power and influence to defeat this enemy," Di Rita said. "We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq."
By stressing to the public that the effort is not only military, the administration may also be trying to reassure those in uniform who have begun complaining that only members of the armed forces are being asked to sacrifice for the effort. Translation: Grunts are pissed about the MSM continually conducting "polls" and reporting the WoT from the most pessimistic standpoint they can.
New opinion polls show that the American public is increasingly pessimistic about the mission in Iraq, with many doubting its link to the counterterrorism mission. See?
Thus, a new emphasis on reminding the public of the broader, long-term threat to the United States may allow the administration to put into broader perspective the daily mayhem in Iraq and the American casualties. The administration could use some honest help from the MSM when it comes to reorting that "broader perspective" instead of harping on the "daily mayhem", but that's too much to ask for.
Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in an interview that if America's efforts were limited to "protecting the homeland and attacking and disrupting terrorist networks, you're on a treadmill that is likely to get faster and faster with time." The key to "ultimately winning the war," he said, "is addressing the ideological part of the war that deals with how the terrorists recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists." No shit Sherlock, however this is apparently news to the NYT writers.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
07/27/2005 11:01 ||
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#2
How about G-WIT? Global War on Islamic Terrorism? Says it all, sort of insennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnsitive, though. "Global struggle agains violent extremism" sounds like something out of "China Reconstructs" propaganda magazine of the 1960s.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/27/2005 15:29 Comments ||
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#3
I dunno, Pie Fight on Terror, Pillow Fight on Terror? Get the Lefties on board...
#4
He(General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremism, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use.
Let's call it what it is, a war against fundamentalist Islam.
Semantics I know, but important distinctions must be made about who the enemy is. Lest our campaign against "terror" define some friendlies as enemies.
IMHO a war on terrorism is unwinnable, for it is a war on a type of warfare with no indicators of success or plausible end in sight. While a war on fundamentalist islamic terrorism has a realistic goal and plain indicators of success. What are they keeping it PC by not naming the Islamists as the root problem? War on Wahabbi would suit me too!
Our war on terorism could end up becoming more of a global excuse for assmunch leaders like Uzbekistans' "president" to crack down on legitimate freedom fighters in UZ just because of the association with the "war on terror" that has come to be placed on homegrown resistance efforts.
Yeah, the resistance in Uzbekistan is made up largely of Muslims as is the entire country, and yeah they are after his ass with little more than farm implements in many cases, but they are fighting for freedom from a freakin Stalinist asshole who makes Saddam look like a good neighbor.
We should be cheering these people on, lest Wahabbism and radical islam become the only good alternative to being put into the gulags or the ground. We could influence them toward democracy were we to help them wipe this fucknut out and replace him with a legitimate democratic system. God knows we need another friendly govt in Central Asia.
Also, We could have our hands tied in the international forums such as the UN that would limit our military options against such despots if we continue to define "terrorism" as the enemy.
Arms and support from America have and will continue to flow to small groups of freedom fighters(many of whom are defined as terrorist by the powers that be in their country)Kurdish resistance fighters are an example I could point to. We must retain that option as a legitimate use of force lest we allow those unfriendly UN factions the legal room to define our actions as terrorist.
Hell, most of the post WWII conflict of the 20th century was played out in proxy wars betwixt us and the Ruskies. Imagine if we had not retained the "freedom fighter" option. So this redefinition of the War on Teror is needed it seems.
#5
Its official - the WOT is now a clash between GLOBAL EMPIRES AND WHICH -iSM(S) WILL CONTROL THE FUTURE GLOBAL OWG, one realistic [US/Western Democapitalism, Consumerism, etc.]while the other is a down-but-not-out, starving, but still desperate/power-hungry wannabe [Socialism-Communism]. Angry Leftism = Radic Islam = Socie-Communism = "ITS ABOUT ME AND HOW THE WORLD AND EVERYONE MUST BE RULED BY ME EVEN IFF I DON'T DESERVE IT". Left > better get my or our way or I/We are gonna break something, and take the world with us like the way the Chicoms blew up the Moon circa 2030. *BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.
#6
Face it, the 'WOT' was a joke from the beginning. As Wolfowitz would put it, that was just the name used to get the ignorant masses behind the whole poorly thought out invasion of Iraq.
Probably their marketing dept. is changing the 'WOT' propaganda effort, realizing that obviously rather than fighting terrorism, they have simply added more fuel to the fire.
Further, while the U.S. is bogged down, real WMD threats like China and N. Korea build up their military, and countries like Iran ink deals with China, India and Russia. Afghanistan/Pakistan/Saudi Arabia teeter along, where will the resources be should things start to unwind there?
Further, Chicken Little "sky is falling" Bush and his poodle Blair, having lost credibility, where will they get help, having squandered it, when the Wolf really appears?
Sun Tzu long ago said the first thing is to "Understand your enemy." With most people reading Drudge and NYTimes - that's not going to happen.
Posted by: Peter Jones ||
07/27/2005 23:48 Comments ||
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#7
Right, Peter. Maybe if I leave that bully alone, he'll stop taking my lunch money and giving me wedgies.
[July 24 2005] at 2110 LT at Balikpapan inner anchorage, Indonesia. Three robbers were in the process of boarding a tanker. Alert crew raised alarm and robbers jumped back in the water and escaped in a motorboat waiting with three accomplices. Boat was about seven meters with blue hull.
[July 23 2005] at 1650 LT in position 12:32.3N - 043:26.6E, SE lane of Bab El Mandeb TSS, southern tip of Red Sea. Six persons armed with guns in a low profile wooden boat speed 20 kts with an outboard motor approached a general cargo ship underway intending to board. Master raised alarm and crew mustered on deck. Persons aborted attempt, increased speed and went towards a fully loaded tanker in the vicinity.
[July 23 2005] at 1030 LT in position 13:41.53N - 042:29.16E, southern Red Sea. 12-armed persons in two low profile, white hull speedboats approached a general cargo ship underway at high speed. Persons in both boats attempted to board the ship. Crew raised alarm, sounded whistle and activated fire hoses. Attempted boarding was aborted.
[July 21 2005] at 2030 LT at 12nm off Muar, Johor, Malacca straits. Pirates armed with guns fired upon a fishing vessel wounding two crewmembers. Later they were taken ashore for hospital treatment.
[July 21 2005] at 2000 LT at Callao anchorage no.1, Peru. Six robbers in a boat approached a bulk carrier. One robber boarded via anchor chain. Alert crew raised alarm and robber escaped empty handed. Master informed authorities and coast guard arrived for investigation and patrolling the area.
[July 21 2005] at 1745 LT in position 03:38N - 049:30E, Somalia. Pirates armed with guns in a speed boat about 8 to 10 meters long, blue and white hull, attempted to board a bulk carrier underway. Master raised alarm; crew mustered, activated fire hoses and fired one rocket flare. Pirates opened fire with automatic guns. Master increased speed, took evasive manoeuvres and moved away from Somali coast. Pirates abandoned boarding due to rough weather.
[July 21 2005] at 1100 LT in position 03:30N - 049:20E, off east coast, Somalia. Six pirates armed with guns in two boats attempted to board a RORO ship underway. Crew mustered and ship increased speed. Pirates aborted boarding.
#1
I wonder if there isn't an entreprenuerial opportunity in providing private safe-passage and anchorage security in a very few key locations going begging...
Some old salts haunt the 'burg - whaddya think? Are the ship owners / operators just too cheap or would a reasonable service be able to make a go of it, if limited and well-targeted?
#2
I still think a Q-ship is the way to go . . . .
[In the not-too-distant future] at 1650 LT in position 12:32.3N - 043:26.6E, SE lane of Bab El Mandeb TSS, southern tip of Red Sea. Six persons armed with guns in a low profile wooden boat speed 20 kts with an outboard motor approached USS SURPRISE, underway intending to board. When hostile vessel was within 200 yards, officer of the deck sounded general quarters. Crew ran out starboard 30mm Gatling, engaged hostile vessel, and sank it. Ship secured from general quarters and resumed patrol.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/27/2005 6:30 Comments ||
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#3
Love the Weekly Piracy Report. Keep up the good work Pappy.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
07/27/2005 11:42 Comments ||
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#8
There are security escorts in the Malacca Straits, but I haven't heard of them being anyplace else. Some shipowners also provide for guards while in-port.
What might work but is seldom considered nowadays, is the convoy. Especially for places like off Somalia.
This does not sound right. All these acts of piracy failed. If piracy has such a low success it would not exist. Surely if piracy exists, then surely they do genrally succeed.
Think like a predator. They only need to succeed a few times for it to all pay off.
#9
There are many piracy incidents unreported, as insurance rates go up considerably and there is often no one close to report it to. Some have kidnapped the crew, stolen cargo or provisions, or even stolen the boat and repainted it for sale or use elsewhere. Some yachts have even been boarded and assaults taken place in the Caribbean and Red Sea, but the locals really frown on any publicity and nothing much said publicly. The A-B-C islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao) have lost private charters because of South American pirates and smugglers. Their location just of the coast of Venezuela and Colombia could easily put innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time and see something you shouldn't could get ya killed. I also love the piracy reports, so thank you, Pappy. Hijacked chemical tankers scare me as there is so little policing of the shipping lanes and the pirates easily escape by crossing into international waters and into territorial waters where even neighboring countries like Malaysia and Indonesia won't allow pursuit. They don't don't like help from the US Navy, either.
Iranian police have arrested at least 12 people in connection with fresh protests in Khuzestan province. Iranian media said the unrest was sparked when people took to the streets after being tricked by local conmen. Five people were killed in riots last April over reports that Tehran wanted to change the ethnic balance of the area, home to about 2m ethnic Arabs. The authorities are sensitive to reports of unrest in Khuzestan, which contains most of Iran's oilfields.
Reports in the Iranian press quoting local officials said rioting was provoked by thieves who took advance payments and then failed to deliver any goods. However, a UK-based Arab separatist leader is quoted by Reuters saying that protests are building up to mark the 100th day after the April protests. Mahmoud Ahmad al-Ahwazi, from the Ahvaz Arab People's Democratic-Popular Front, told Reuters that four people had been shot dead by police, but it is not possible to verify the claim.
Ethnic Arabs are thought to represent about 3% of Iran's population, but make up a majority in Khuzestan.
In a separate development, three Iranian police have died in an ambush by Kurdish insurgents near the northern border with Turkey, officials said. Officials blamed the Turkish Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for the violence, but did not give further details.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 14:28 ||
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TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's outgoing president said Wednesday his country will restart some activities that could be used to make atomic weapons no matter what the outcome of talks with key European powers aimed at reducing suspicions about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. President Mohammad Khatami, who will be replaced by ultraconservative president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Aug. 6, said the government has already decided to resume uranium reprocessing at a nuclear plant in central Iran. Reprocessing raw uranium into a gas is a key step before uranium enrichment. Uranium enriched to low levels can be used as fuel in nuclear power plants to generate electricity, but further enrichment makes it suitable for use in a nuclear bomb. The United States fears Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing weapons.
In November, Iran suspended all uranium enrichment-related activities to build international trust and avoid possible U.N. sanctions. But it has repeatedly said the suspension is voluntary and temporary. In May, Iran agreed with France, Germany and Britain to continue the suspension of enrichment and related activities including reprocessing for as long as the talks continue. In return, the Europeans pledged to come up with a package of economic and other incentives by August in hopes of persuading Iran to make the temporary suspension into a permanent freeze. Iran has said it is prepared to offer strong guarantees that its nuclear program will not be diverted toward weapons. But Tehran has always maintained it will not give up its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
"Whether the Europeans mention our right in their would-be proposals or not, we will definitely resume work in Isfahan," Khatami said at a news conference after a Cabinet meeting. The Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility reprocesses raw uranium into a gas, the feedstock for enrichment. "The end of the deadline is (when) the Europeans come up with their comprehensive plan," said Khatami. "It was expected that they will agree to Isfahan restarting activities. We prefer to do it with their agreement. If they don't, then the decision to resume activities in Isfahan has already been taken by the ruling system."
But Khatami added Iran has "no intention to end suspension of uranium enrichment."
Iran has a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, about 60 miles north of Isfahan, but such activities were suspended in 2003 under an arrangement between Tehran and the Europeans. Khatami said the suspension of activities at Isfahan has caused financial and professional damage to Iran, including leaving many scientists without work. Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Europe should not expect Iran to do everything unilaterally. Iran already allows inspections of its nuclear facilities by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. "There is a need for a balance," he told reporters, adding that nuclear negotiations with Europe will be the "biggest challenge" for Ahmadinejad's incoming government. Ahmadinejad has said his country will not pursue atomic weapons but also will not submit to international pressure to abandon its nuclear program, a position in line with what other Iranian leaders have said.
Some Europeans worry that Ahmadinejad, who won presidential elections last month with the backing of hard-line elements of Iran's Islamic regime, could take a tougher stance in talks than the reform-minded administration of Khatami he is replacing. Before his campaign, Ahmadinejad criticized concessions made by Iran, including the freezing of parts of the nuclear program. But after he won the election, he said he will continue talks with the Europeans.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 13:55 ||
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TEHRAN, Iran - Iran said for the first time Wednesday it has fully developed solid-fuel technology in producing missiles, a major breakthrough that increases the accuracy of missiles hitting targets. Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani told The Associated Press that Iran has made an "important step forward" in developing the technology, which provides the Islamic Republic with the ability to fire solid-fuel ballistic missiles like the Shahab-3. The Shahab-3, with a range of 810 miles to more than 1,200 miles, is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.
"We have fully achieved proficiency in solid-fuel technology in producing missiles," said Shamkhani in Iran's first declaration that it has locally developed full access to solid fuel missile technology.
So, who did they buy this technology from?
Such technology enables the production of solid fuel, which makes missiles more durable and dramatically increases their accuracy in reaching targets. Missiles using liquid fuel are short-lived. "It's an important step forward, an important achievement. It's a locally developed achievement," said Shamkhani.
Iran said last month it has successfully tested a solid-fuel motor for its medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missile. The motor was one of two engines developed for the Shahab-3. The minister said no flight test of Shahab-3 missile has been carried out using solid fuel. However, he did say that Iran has used solid fuel with its Fateh-110 short-range missile sometime ago, but it was unclear if the fuel was made in Iran or came from outside.
They may have mixed it locally, but I'll wager the recipe came from outside. North Korea or Pakistan via Khan's network?
The Shahab-3 ballistic missile is known as a single-stage device and military experts said the development of a second motor demonstrates a significant improvement in Iran's missile program. The Fateh-110 is a solid propellant surface-to-surface guided missile with a reported range of about 105 miles and is classified among Iran's most efficient missiles.
Last November, Shamkhani said Iran was able to mass produce the Shahab-3 missile. The missile â whose name "Shahab" means "shooting star" in Farsi â was last tested successfully in 2002, and iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were equipped with it in July 2003. Iran launched an arms development program during its 1980-88 war with Iraq to compensate for a U.S. weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 13:37 ||
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#1
The formulae for solid fuels are not really that difficult. It's the actual production that gets a bit dicey. When in High School a couple of other goofballs and I made solid fuel rockets. The fuel was a mixture of potassium nitrate and powdered sugar. It worked very well for small rockets and had the added advantage of not being prone to exploding while we were making it. Solid fuel for the shuttle rockets is a whole 'nother matter. The mixing stage is rather volatile but once made it is fairly stable. Once it is ignited, though, it can't be shut down.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/27/2005 14:31 Comments ||
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#2
When is the liberation of Iran going to happen?
#3
It must have come from the NORKS, or from China through Pakistan or Pakistan directly.
Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani told The Associated Press that Iran has made an "important step forward" in developing the technology, which provides the Islamic Republic with the ability to fire solid-fuel ballistic missiles like the Shahab-3.
Important step forward, all right. He is signing the death warrant for many of his people. When one makes threats to obliterate their neighbors with nuclear weapons, they are taken seriously by the neighbors, PC and PR be damned. This is simple intimidation and bullying, an Iranian MM MO. Only this time, he may have a big stick.
The Iranian MMs are fools, esp with US military assets nearby. If threatened we will not be PC and try to minimize collateral damage. Responses have to be hot and swift. The distances are too short.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/27/2005 15:11 Comments ||
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#4
subs in the gulf have the GPS coords for each and every one of these beturbanned assholes?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 15:12 Comments ||
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#5
Got ya covered, boys. Come on out with yer hands up an' nobody gets hurt...
Primary Function: Intercontinental ballistic missile
Contractor: Boeing Co.
Power Plant: Three solid-propellant rocket motors; first stage - Thiokol; second stage - Aerojet-General; third stage - United Technologies Chemical Systems Division
Length: 59.9 feet (18 meters)
Weight: 79,432 pounds (32,158 kilograms)
Diameter: 5.5 feet (1.67 meters)
Range: 6,000-plus miles (5,218 nautical miles)
Speed: Approximately 15,000 mph (Mach 23 or 24,000 kph) at burnout
Ceiling: 700 miles (1,120 kilometers)
Thrust: First stage, 202,600 pounds
Load: Re-entry vehicle: Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space MK 12 or MK 12A
3x MIRV with either 170kT or 340kT yield/warhead. Thermonuclear.
Guidance systems: Inertial system: Boeing North American; ground
Electronic/security system: Sylvania Electronics Systems and Boeing Co.
Unit cost: $7 million
Date deployed: June 1970, production cessation: December 1978
Inventory: Active force, 500; Reserve, 0; ANG, 0
An advertisement in an Iranian publication has called for people to come forward for "martyrdom operations" against the enemies of Islam. It is published by an institute managed by one of Iran's most conservative and radical clerics, Ayatollah Masbah Yazdi, who has declared his support for Iran's new President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
The advertisement calls for men and women to enlist with the "Martyrdom Lovers' Headquarters". It says the idea is to achieve "all-out readiness" against the enemies of Islam - and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those who are picked will be specially trained for their missions in different divisions in every province. To apply, all that is needed are photographs, a form and a copy of a birth certificate.
This is not the first time Iranians have registered for suicide missions - though in Islam a clear distinction is made between ordinary suicide and martyrdom for a religious cause. Several people have signed up with different organisations to defend the holy shrines in Iraq and the rights of Palestinians. But in practice, their pledges are merely symbolic and it is highly unlikely that they would actually go on suicide missions. One function was held earlier this year to honour dead Palestinian women suicide bombers, and a huge mural in central Tehran still depicts one Palestinian woman who had two children, yet chose to die.
#5
I, of course, can not go with you, as the Teheran satellite has a classic American porn festival running that weekend, but I will be with you in spirit, as always...
#6
Applicants will be given a series of detonator button pushing tests to ensure they have mastered the requisite fine motor skills. A rapid Psychological examination will also be administered to verify the mandatory religiously inspired violent psychosis of each applicant. If selected, applicant will be required to sign a noncompetition clause and an assignment of rights to 36 of their deferred mule compensation program benefits. EOE - both Sunni and Shia are welcome.
#9
Agreed, .com! On a serious note, when is the Beeb gonna quit calling them martyrs. A martyr is one who dies (is murdered) for his beliefs by him/herself...not one who commits suicide in order to take out as many Joooos/infidels as possible. Next thing ya know, they'll be "suicide bombers/insurgents"
Posted by: BA ||
07/27/2005 10:33 Comments ||
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Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
"crush our military, Baath political control, and economic control, yes, but NEVER our will"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 0:25 Comments ||
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#2
"Will". Funny, hearing a dictator use that word. I could get behind "gig" or "scam" or other similar term to describe what gangsters do, but "will"?
Nah, when the heat reaches Baby Assad, he'll bail. They never fight to the death, they either get caught and strung up from a lampost, go into hiding - which rapidly devolves from safehouses to a spider hole, or make a run for it and, if they make it, set up some phony "exile" thingy and live off what they were able to steal while the gig was good, giving interviews to moron socialist rags.
"Will" has nothing to do with it, Babe. When the spotlight gets turned on you, you'll be toast, asstard. Read: very bright, very hot, certainly final.
#6
"Syria Says US Pressure Won't Break Its Will." Their soldiers, Marines, tanks, Bradleys, Strykers, Apaches, Cobras, Strike Eagles, Falcons, Super Hornets, Nighthawks and Predators . . . well, that's another story.
Posted by: Tibor ||
07/27/2005 2:24 Comments ||
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#7
I see a nice cosy optometry practice somewhere in the south of France (Lyons perhaps?) somewhere in Assadâs near future. Maybe he could go back to school and learn to do that laser eye surgery thing.
Well, ok, that or three 9mm slugs in the back of the head. One or the other.
An excellent commentary in the Times online.
I agree with this 110%:
"Islam must decide whether it wants to be a faith or a political movement. It cannot be both without being hijacked by Salafis or Khomeinists who have transformed it into a breeding ground for terror."
Wake up and smell the coffee, boys. Join the 21st century and modernize Islam, or stay stuck as barbarians in the 14th while you watch your hijacked religion slowly die off. Machs nicht to me.
#3
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When I came.
âO Mujtahid! Figure thee in a garden of roses and hyacinths with the evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What, prithee, would be the result?'
The holy man bowed the chin of doubt upon the collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie presently whispered, 'Allah defend me from such temptation of Satan!"
#7
Geez. What's with the storm of people agreeing with me this week.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/27/2005 20:56 Comments ||
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#8
BigEd-
"...These two goyim walk into a bar..."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/27/2005 21:10 Comments ||
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#9
The only thing I'd disagree with mojo is the "slowly dying off".
Islam has less - at an extreme maximum - 50 years to get its house totally in order, and by that I mean something akin to a non-practising Catholic - i.e. someone to whom their faith is a private affair.
Why? Events are spiralling out of control - the genie the Islamists finally let loose on 9/11 (but which we were warned about through events over the previous decade) has awoken *huge* numbers of people - and certainly not just in the West. Situations such as mass deportations, annihilation of holy sites and saturation nuclear strikes of civilian populations are being debated openly, and at *all* levels of society (witness Tancredo). If Bin Laden is still able to get any unfiltered comms from the outside world he must be thinking 'oh fuck', because it's not happening the way he wanted it to - he wanted a full-on religious war, instead he's got more and more people *everywhere* finding out about Islam and generally not liking what they hear. The Russians still have plenty of bombs left, and they and the Chinese are capable of killing 40 million of *their own people!*, so why would they care about killing anyone else?
Personally, I have spent almost the last four years examining what it means to be a Westerner. I've had years, nay decades of being told that the West is no better than anything else, and our economic system is unfair and we *always* treat people with darker skin than us as though they are subhumans and that our way of life is shit because apparently all we think about is money or there's no mysticism in our lives and we should treat other cultures as though they're equal even though they treat women like cattle or kill their new born daughters because they wanted a son or their method of worship is 'cleaner' than ours because they have no 'idols' or any one of a thousand things that says the West is the worse thing that was ever invented.
Well, FUCK THAT! - the first piss-ant country other than a Western country that can put a man on the moon will get a golfers clap from me. Why? because 'The West' will be on Mars by then, or in colonies in space. And 'The West' is not just the US, although it has become the purest embodiment of what the West is - it's more a set of values and an ideal, an understanding that individuals are more important than the group, and freedom is precious and is worth fighting for and property is for *people*, not for governments, and laws apply equally to everyone. Of course these values are not always lived up to, but try we do and we continue to do so. What that means is 'The West' can be anywhere on the planet, anywhere that those values have a chance to take root and grow.
And maybe, just maybe, there's a chance for an Islamic 'West'. But there will never, ever be a West that is Islamic.
So Mr Taheri, you have your work cut out. I admire your balls in saying what you've said, but the sands of time are running out, and you have a hard road ahead of you. You'll get no help from me, your people have to tread that road themselves, as every free people have had to do. I'm not even sure I wish you luck, I've heard too much hatred for me and people like me from your brethren...
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/27/2005 22:04 Comments ||
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#1
It is pretty easy to identify the threads that interconnect such an organization. At the lowest level you have the instigators, mostly Wahabbi Imams, trained in Pakistan. They are very common based on the fact that Wahabbis train far more Imams than any other sect. The second level are the transient knowledge base, that recruit the willing, inform them of opportunities, help them network locally, and help them go to where they can get training. The recruiters then move on, leaving them to their own devices. Lastly, is the "command", who just issue occasional strategic directives, but otherwise are disconnected. They broadcast dates when attacks should happen and also they trickle down particular targets that they think would be most effective. This type of operation is based in tribalist thinking. Similarities can be found in how some other tribes have organized and carried out offensive campaigns, especially Native Americans.
From Memri:
Sabahi: "When the conflict is directed against the Americans, it is good. Any weapon that kills an American is good. Any gun aiming at the Marines is good. Any kidnapping or slaughtering of an American in Iraq is good."
#1
Time for the US to send an ultimatum to the Egyptian government: is this a declaration of war on the US, or will you deliver that man to US justice so he can be tried and executed?
And by all means, let's keep sending billions of dollars to Egypt every year...
#2
I would be OK with this speech and consider it to be a sign of the emergence of democracy in that quarter, if only I believed that Sabahi were a member of the opposition. I am doubful that he is an Egyptian version of Dennis Kucinich.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/27/2005 19:01 Comments ||
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#3
$2 billion would be helpful in buildig the Mexican American Friendship wall.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 20:01 Comments ||
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In the propaganda war waged in parallel to the bloody attacks by Jihadi terrorists around the globe, the Internet and video images are paramount. The latest salvo from Jordanian terror chief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is a 46-minute video, of which Adnkronos International (AKI) has a copy. Entitled "Religion is all for Allah" the mini-documentary, recaps the terrorist activity perpetrated in recent years by the organisation of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Unlike the grainy amateurish videos issued by Iraqi terrorist groups two years ago, the latest 'film' has high production values and is technically sophisticated.
The images are accompanied for the most part by a voice speaking in Arabic which viewers are told is that of al-Zarqawi, alternated with Jihadist songs and the original sounds from some of the scenes shown. In some parts the narrator's voice is accompanied by archive images of attacks or explanatory texts in Arabic on the screen.
Evan Kohlmann, terror expert and director of globalterroralert.com, described the video which has been on Islamist sites over the past 24 hours, as "recent" and that the narrator is indeed al-Zarqawi. According to Kohlmann, the video includes some previoulsy unreleased footage.
The video opens with high definition images of Osama bin Laden walking through the mountains in Afghanistan. At the fourth minute the narrator says: "The crusader armies have been taken prisoner in Iraq and the head of the crusaders [the US president George W. Bush] made an error when, in 2003, he announced the end of the war in Iraq, because it has only just begun".
Six minutes into the video, a compedium of images of al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, most serious attacks appears, including one on an Italian base in the southern city of Nassiriya, in which 19 people were killed.
"Then came the Nassiriya expedition in which the crusaders base was destroyed and their prime minister shed tears over its desruction". Al-Zarqawi's group had claimed responsibility for the November 2003 attack on one previous occasion. This segment is accompanied by video footage of the devastated base and of Berlusconi with his head in his hands.
The mujahadeen have turned Iraq into an inferno, the narrator informs, with a series of attacks, including "the destruction of the UN headquarters which protected Jews and that of the Red Cross".
The video-history of al-Zarqawi's group continues with quotations from a Human Rights Watch report on Iraq and on torture in Iraqi jails. It shows the interrogation of an Iraqi policeman and it attacks the Iraqi Al-Iraqiya television channel which it says is "funded by the United States and by Jews to transmit false videos of Mujahadeen turncoats".
The final part of the video shows videos shot by the insurgents themselves during various attacks. One shows US soldiers in combat and the images shown suggest that whoever recorded the footage was remarkably close to the troops.
A group of 20 young suicide bombers, the testimony of a Falluja woman who claims she was beaten by the police and the video-will of a Saudi suicide bomber conclude the video document.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 15:29 ||
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#1
It's like a Disney classic for the faithful! Not terribly original though. Baseyev and Khattab in Chechnya had two hourlong versions called Russian Hell in Chechnya pre 9/11. Back then they peddled the crap for a buck through the Kavkaz and Azzam sites. Copies were reportedly found in the residences of a few of the nutters nabbed in the west.
#2
So how does this differ from any CNN broadcast?
Posted by: Matt ||
07/27/2005 16:05 Comments ||
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#3
Find and kill every jihadi fuck on the video, then release footage of their deaths and/or bodies with AC/DC's Highway to Hell playing in the background. Mix in some clips of a few old super bowls or those Wolf Brigade videos of jihadi confessions and a most wanted list that produced jihadi body counts and we've got high entertainment value!
I'd watch that, hell I'd buy my father in law a copy for Christmas, he'd love that shit!
Most Palestinians think the Islamic insurgency forced Israel's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, according to a new poll. missing the reality that Israel could stay in any place they wanted if they chose to adopt Paleo morality/methods.
The survey reported that a majority of Palestinians credit strikes by Hamas and Islamic Jihad for the decision by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank and evict their 10,000 Jewish residents. The poll also found, however, that only 40 percent of those surveyed want the attacks to continue.
The study was conducted by the Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies, based in An Najah University in Nablus.
Forty percent of respondents agreed that "pressure caused by Palestinian resistance" led to the Israeli withdrawal decision. Another 34 percent said Israel regarded its presence in the Gaza Strip as a "security and economic inexpediency."
Twenty-two percent of respondents did not cite the Palestinian war as a reason for the Israeli withdrawal. Instead, they said the pullout decision stemmed from international pressure on Israel.
[On Tuesday, Palestinian gunners fired a Kassam-class short-range missile into Israel. The missile landed in the Israeli city of Sderot. There were no reports of injuries. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, Middle East Newsline reported.]
About 40 percent expressed support for continued attacks on Israel after the Gaza withdrawal. Fifty-two percent opposed the insurgency campaign and 8.4 percent said they were undecided.
A poll of Israelis reported a decrease in support for Sharon's plan. In a survey of 519 Israeli adults conducted by Tel Aviv University's Herzog Institute for Media, Society, and Politics, 48 percent expressed support for the plan. The poll reported that most of the respondents believed the withdrawal would bolster Palestinian attacks as well as civil unrest in Israel They take away the worst possible lesson....
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 15:08 ||
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#1
Forty percent of respondents agreed that "pressure caused by Palestinian resistance" led to the Israeli withdrawal decision.
It's been awhile since I've done the math, but since when is 40% "most" of 100%?
Posted by: .Math B Hard Barbie ||
07/27/2005 15:34 Comments ||
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#3
Twenty-two percent of respondents did not cite the Palestinian war
What war? All I see are a bunch of murdering and killing of innocent women and children. They should be thankful that Israel didn't fight a war....
Also, I wonder how they will feel when the wall is completed and Hamas and the other terrorist organizations have to kill Paleos to get their 'fix' of murder?
#4
"Most" Palestinians are dumber than a f**cking post. The evidence of this is overwhelming. My sympathy meter for them is buried in the negative zone.
#5
Every time Israel gives away territories to the Paleo-Arabs they take it as a sign of weakness and renew their claims that Allah wants them to destroy Israel.
The withdrawal from Gaza would only make sense with concomitant promises (call them threats if you prefer): there will be a wall, no passage allowed in either direction, anybody trying to cross the border will be summarily shot, and any attack (such as rockets) coming out of that area will be taken as a declaration of war to be met with artillery fire for 24 hours.
If Gaza can't be part of a free Israel, it will necessarily become a base for Paleo-Arab terrorism. In that case the strip should be devastated.
Creeping advances by Algeria's hardline Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) into neighbouring Sahel countries pose the greatest security threat to remote northwest Africa, a top US Defense Department official said on Monday.
Fears that the isolated nations lined up along the Sahara desert could become havens for terror groups have ramped up considerably with the inroads the Al-Qaeda-linked GSPC has made into Mauritania, which was hit June 4 by an attack claimed by the Algerian militants.
The group made headlines again this week with an electronic message of congratulations to their "Al-Qaeda brothers" for the kidnapping in Iraq of two Algerian diplomats last Thursday.
"The GSPC poses the greatest threat to the region's security because, even as the Algerian people turn against jihad (holy war), the organization has found itself adherents across the Sahel region and is recruiting to better develop those resources," Rear Admiral Hamlin Tallent of the US European Command (EUCOM) said.
"They truly represent the modern experience with Al-Qaeda; a mobile, self-sustaining and worldwide but loosely connected group of wily, desert-hardened militants," he said by telephone from EUCOM's headquarters in Germany.
"What's needed (to rid the region of their insurgency) is a cooperative effort by well-armed militaries."
The US military has planted the seeds of this cooperative effort with joint military exercises, which took place in June across five Saharan states including Mauritania and Algeria.
Including training in general marksmanship, orienteering and communications, the exercises known as Operation Flintlock 2005 was the first step in a broader five-year, 500 million-dollar US plan to boost the capacities of African militaries in the context of Washington's anti-terror campaign.
A command post exercise was also organized in the Senegalese capital Dakar which took military commanders from nine nations - including regional heavyweights Nigeria and Morocco as well as Niger, Mali, Chad and Tunisia - through terrorism scenarios requiring cooperation to solve.
Building on these exercises, military commanders from Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria met with their US counterparts in Nouakchott in mid-July for a strategic planning session which Tallent said could lead to a regional headquarters for the Saharan anti-terror fight.
Mauritanian and Malian troops are also working together to "exert some pressure" on the insurgency, though Tallent declined to elaborate.
A second meeting, in Algeria, is scheduled for the next several weeks, he added.
Washington's militarized approach to assistance to these northwest African states, among the world's poorest and least stable nations, has been criticized as feeding a threat that does not really exist and helping to legitimize a crackdown on opposition through stepped-up security measures.
"The abuse of what we bring to bear is always a subject of concern, and we recognize that there is a history of an abuse of resources, which is sobering," said Tallent.
"But ultimately, our footprint here is very small, and we are providing only as much as the governments want us to provide, which, ultimately, should be help in keeping their populations safe."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 14:45 ||
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Washington's militarized approach to assistance to these northwest African states, among the world's poorest and least stable nations, has been criticized as feeding a threat that does not really exist and helping to legitimize a crackdown on opposition through stepped-up security measures.
This week, Interior Minister Habib El-Adli confirmed that Mustafa Hamza, the leader of the outlawed Al-Gamaa Al- Islamiya group, was in Egyptian custody. Egypt believes Hamza -- also known as Abu Hazem -- was the mastermind behind the assassination attempt against President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995. He is also charged with involvement in the assassinations of late president Anwar El-Sadat and speaker of parliament Rifaat El- Mahgoub, and with involvement in an assassination attempt on Shura Council Speaker Safwat El-Sherif when El-Sherif was still information minister.
El-Adli made the announcement in Tunis, where he was attending an Arab interior ministers' conference. He said Hamza, who will be brought to trial at the soonest opportunity, "would be re-tried before a military court because he is one of the most dangerous terrorists to have remained at large. His handover marks a success for Egypt's security agencies, and our bilateral relations with other countries."
El-Adli also announced that Jihad leaders who are currently in Egyptian prisons had declared that they have renounced violence and extremist ideas, "in an initiative similar to the one taken by leaders of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, which represents an important ideological breakthrough because the Jihad group espouses more violence and destruction than any other terrorist organisation."
At the same time, the Interior Minister warned that the explosive situations in Iraq and Palestine only served to fuel terrorism, predicting that hundreds of young Iraqis would be driven to join the ranks of terrorists and would thus have access to the latest and most lethal weaponry available.
The one thing Adli did not mention was the name of the country that had extradited Hamza to Egypt. Most analysts regard Iran as the most likely candidate since it was the last country Hamza was known to have fled to. Several weeks ago, El-Adli visited Tehran, where he met senior Iranian officials, including President Mohamed Khatami. At the time, some observers suggested that Egypt was seeking the extradition of persons wanted for their connection with Al- Gamaa Al-Islamiya and Jihad, and who had been either arrested in Iran or been given asylum there.
Hani El-Sibaai, director of the London-based Al-Maqrizi Centre for Historical Studies, first revealed the news of Hamza's extradition on 4 December 2004. Citing reliable sources in Al- Gamaa Al-Islamiya, he said that Iran had decided to hand over the 48-year-old Hamza, who is married with children, as part of a deal struck with Cairo. In exchange for Hamza's extradition, Tehran would be permitted to set up cultural centres in Egypt and receive intelligence on the Iranian opposition group, Mujhadi Khalq, members of which reside in Egypt. Egypt also promised to use its diplomatic channels with the US to improve Tehran's image in Washington. However, both Cairo and Tehran persisted in denying this report, the release of which coincided with news of an espionage scandal in which an Egyptian citizen and an Iranian diplomat were alleged to have been spying in Egypt on behalf of Tehran.
Hamza has long been on Egyptian security's most wanted list because of his record of militant activity as well as his standing among radical Islamist groups. He and Jihad leader Ahmed Salama Mabrouk graduated from the same Cairo University class. Mabrouk later became a reserve officer in the Egyptian army. It was later rumoured that the CIA intercepted Mabrouk in Azerbaijan and handed him over to Egypt, where he was prosecuted in the so-called "returnees from Albania" case in April 1999.
Hamza was arrested following the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981; in prison, he was indoctrinated into the Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya's radical ideology. After his release, he went to Afghanistan, from where he paid frequent visits to other countries such as Pakistan, Sudan and Iran. He headed Al-Gamaa's paramilitary branch, which mounted major terrorist strikes against Egypt between the mid-1980s and 1997. Following the terror attack against tourists in Luxor in November 1997, Hamza fell out with former Al-Gamaa Al--Islamiya leader Rifaai Taha, who, according to Al-Gamaa Al- Islamiya sources, was kidnapped from Syria and handed over to Egypt in 2001. Hamza is said to have repeatedly stated that Al-Gamaa was not responsible for the Luxor attack. Apparently, Taha's wife and children lived with Hamza's family in Mashhad, Iran, following Taha's abduction, and until they were eventually permitted by the Egyptian authorities to return to Egypt. Egyptian authorities have neither confirmed nor denied that Taha was handed over to them by Syria.
In 1998, following Taha's resignation, Hamza took over as head of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya. He has remained in this position ever since, and continued to enjoy the support of the group's historical leadership in Egypt when he agreed to their recent renunciation of violence. Hamza faces three death sentences issued by special military tribunals for his terrorist activities, which included the assassination attempt against Mubarak in 1995.
According to Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamist groups at Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, the most striking revelation in El-Adli's announcement was that the military tribunal would be reconvened in order to try Hamza again. Under Egyptian law, the state has the right to execute the death penalty, even if issued in absentia, since verdicts pronounced by military courts are considered final and not subject to appeal. Rashwan believes that the retrial may be an expression of leniency on the government's part, in recognition of the role Hamza played in promoting and sustaining the pledge issued by Al-Gamaa Al- Islamiya leadership to renounce violence.
Rashwan also suggested several reasons for the government's sudden acknowledgement -- after repeated denials -- of Hamza's handover. The Interior Ministry, he said, was eager to prove itself after the recent Taba bombings had called its efficacy into question. The government also wanted to convey the message that it has not let the terrorist issue slide, and that it is still relentlessly pursuing terrorists both at home and abroad.
On the other hand, the Rashwan did not believe that Hamza's arrest would severely debilitate Al-Gamaa Al- Islamiya. Hamza belonged to the second generation of the group's leadership, while several members of the old guard had been released from prison within the framework of a truce with the Interior Ministry after having renounced violence.
Since Sudan was strongly implicated in the 1995 assassination attempt against President Mubarak in Addis Ababa, questions about the impact of Hamza's arrest on Egyptian-Sudanese relations have also emerged. Investigations and intelligence leaks from neighbouring countries, Washington, and the UN Security Council all indicate that the operation in its entirety was planned and supervised by Sudanese First Vice- President Ali Othman Mohamed Taha and his aides: Salah Qosh, current Security Department director and former special operations chief; Awwad Ahmed Al-Jaz, minister of energy and technical director of special security; former chief of security Nafie Ali Nafie; Osama Abdullah, who was in charge of financing the operation; Mohamed Abdul-Aziz Ahmed, manager of the Jiyad automobile firm, who supervised and coordinated the operation; Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Matraf Sadiq; and Hassabullah, formerly Qosh's deputy.
According to security sources, Hamza served as the link between this so-called "Sudanese first vice-president's group" and the Egyptian Al- Gamaa Al-Islamiya. He is thus a valuable repository of information on terrorist activities during the mid-1990s and, specifically, on the alleged Sudan connection. It remains to be seen whether Egypt will re-open this file with Sudanese officials and use it as leverage in its relations with Khartoum, or whether it will merely be satisfied with learning the facts about what really happened in Addis Ababa and the workings of this terrorist network in general.
If, meanwhile, it proves true that Iran handed Hamza over, a rapprochement between Cairo and Tehran may be on the cards, even as the revelations in Hamza's retrial precipitate tensions with Khartoum. It thus appears that the long- wanted terrorist will become a catalyst in the thawing or freezing of relations between the region's capitals.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 12:52 ||
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JESSICA SIMPSON wants to know where missing footage of her and husband NICK LACHEY's harrowing trip to Iraq got to - because she thinks Americans would like to see just how bad conditions are there. The pop singers-turned-reality TV couple travelled to the war-torn nation to visit US troops as part of a recent ABC TV variety special, and they were both left shellshocked by what they saw. But all the controversial moments and harrowing footage of the trip didn't appear in the fun-filled TV show.
Simpson says, "It was unbelievable. They didn't show a lot of what really went on with the enemy attacks and the shelling. There was so much stuff that went on and somehow the tapes got mysteriously misplaced. "It put everything in perspective for me. It really did teach me the definition of sacrifice. I can't even fathom being out there right now. I was ready to come home." "And gosh! Who would ever think that 'Za-qwar-i' would rhyme with 'Chicken of the Sea'???"
#1
I do give the 'bimbo' credit for going over there to visit the troops. I'm sure they appreciated it--and probably wish she'd "forgotten" to bring Nick along.
Posted by: Dar ||
07/27/2005 12:16 Comments ||
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#2
She sounds like a young, naive, and pampered star. Not everyone gets to live in Saddam's palaces or Malibu mansions. On the upside, she did go and perform. On the downside, it was made into a TV show and gave hubby another 15 minutes of fame.
Posted by: ed ||
07/27/2005 12:57 Comments ||
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#3
"missing footage"? Does she think that outtakes from her shows go to the National Archives?
Posted by: Matt ||
07/27/2005 13:20 Comments ||
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#4
There's got to be other "missing footage" that I and every other red-blooded male on the planet would dearly love to see. Please to find it. Soon.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/27/2005 13:35 Comments ||
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#6
As attractive as blonde hair is, its not for every woman. Some women apparently do suffer brain damage when exposed to peroxide, some, such as Anne Coulter, do not...
Even though Annie is wrong on John Roberts...
Most of the time she is right...
#7
Mods - please change the headline - you're slamming someone who genuinely supports the troops - and as well as talking the talk, she walks the walk and visits them wherever they are.
Guys, I think you missed the point.
The headline is wrong. She's not upset by the war (were that the case, she would not have visited the troops MULTIPLE times) - shes upset by the net execs HIDING the war from viewers of her show.
She wanted them to show that they got shot at (like Charlie Daniels), that war is tough, and she was scared -- but that she admires the troops who are over there in the "hard places", doing good work, and THAT is why she was there.
The TV show, by omitting the footage, makes it look like she was on a lark out in a back lot in Hollywood, and denigrates the danger the troops live with every day - and the danger she went through to go there to entertain the troops.
Her is a quote form the GQ magazine interview with her about the trip over there:
According to the article, âSimpson is just back from Iraq, where she and [Nick] Lachey filmed the two-hour ABC special Nick & Jessicaâs Tour of Duty -- in which Americaâs sweethearts don flak jackets, board Black Hawks, and bring smiles to our troops overseas. . . . Simpson and her husband also boarded a C-130 with fresh troops deploying to Iraq. âAnd when we landed, it was so surreal and so...badass,â she says, eyes wide as she shakes her head. âI mean, these men and women are the most spectacular people. Theyâre just rugged and rough and, you knowâ -- she gestures with a clenched fist -- âout there for freedom.ââ
So you guys are way off base. Learn more about Jessica Simpson. She may be naieve and a bit simple-minded, but her heart (amongst other body parts) is truly in the right place on this.
You guys and Rantburg owe her an apology. And a headline change.
In her bags today, she carries In the Company of Soldiers by Rick Atkinson;
{from Amazon.com Publisher's Review: The son of an army officer and thoroughly up to date on the modern American army, the author pays an eloquent and incisive tribute to how the men and women of the 101st won their part of the war in Iraq, in a manner that bears comparison to his Pulitzer-winning WWII volume, An Army at Dawn. Superb writing and balance make this the account to beat.] I HIGHLY recommend this book if you have not yet read it.
Further quotes:
The trip had real dangers, with one base getting shelled hard enough to prompt an evacuation of pop's first couple. But Simpson says the most haunting visit came before Iraq, at an army hospital in Germany. "These guysâjust kids," she says softly of the wounded. "It just blew my mind. Twenty years old. Sent into Iraq two days prior, and they were in suicide bombings or attacked in Humvees. And it's like...you just try to hold yourself together."
Had enough mods? Enough registration rounds, or do I need to flip to fire-for-effect?
#9
and she's no dummy. Long line of "dumb blondes" make incredible amount of money with marketing, cheesecake, etc. She's patriotic, don't underestimate her
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 16:36 Comments ||
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#10
Check your fire, OS. I apologize if my tomfoolery offended you.
I did see the show mentioned in the article, and thought well of her on account of it. The part I think she's referring to is where she and hubby go to Iraq with the intention of returning to Germany the same day. They get stuck overnight (impliedly as the result of enemy action) and the next morning she and hubby come out looking pale as ghosts. I thought that shot got the message across pretty well.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/27/2005 16:37 Comments ||
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#11
I saw part of the show, she's behind the troops. Her and her husband have done other shows as well that did not make the news. Headline fixed.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 16:41 Comments ||
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#12
good work AOS :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/27/2005 16:44 Comments ||
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#13
Hotter than a firecracker too she is, damn fine specimen of some sweet American ass!
Good to know she's as patriotic as she is hot, makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
#16
I'm with Spook on this. While she has no real talent beyond the obvious, she does appear to give a shit about the troops and the innocent Iraqi people. Let's give credit where its due.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/27/2005 23:33 Comments ||
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Investigators identified an Egyptian as a possible suicide bomber in the weekend terror attacks at this Red Sea resort and were searching Tuesday for his suspected Islamic militant cohorts â the first break in the probe.
A relative of Moussa Badran (search) told The Associated Press that he disappeared after deadly attacks at two other Sinai resorts in October, and that some family members were detained afterward.
The development came as two security officials revealed that authorities received information of an imminent terror attack in Sharm el-Sheik (search) several days before the bombings Saturday. But they believed casinos would be targeted, so security was increased around those sites, not hotels.
The officials would not say where the tip came from but said headquarters in Cairo told security forces in Sharm to be on alert and to step up measures around key locations.
It appeared authorities chose the wrong possible targets to watch, said one of the officials in Cairo. Both officials are close to the inquiry and spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not authorized for release.
Security was heightened around casinos on the theory they would be attacked because Israelis come to Sharm for gambling, which is banned in their country.
The government has sacked the heads of security in OfiNorth and South Sinai provinces, an apparent sign of the failures that may have allowed the assault on one of Egypt's most closely guarded tourist towns.
Instead of going after casinos, bombers in two explosives-laden trucks targeted hotels. One plowed into the Ghazala Gardens Hotel (search) reception area, leveling the lobby. A second headed for another hotel but got caught in traffic and blew up before reaching the target. A third explosive device, hidden in a knapsack, went off minutes after the Ghazala blast at the entrance to a beach promenade. As many as 88 people were killed.
Police had been studying two bodies found at the Ghazala as possible bombers because the remains were dismembered. DNA tests identified one of the bodies as that of Moussa Badran, an Egyptian resident of Sinai who police said has links to Islamic militants.
Initially, officials said the body was that of Badran's brother Youssef. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the release of the details had not been authorized, did not give a reason for the change in identification.
The second body from the Ghazala is still being tested. A third body in Sharm's Old Market, the site of the other truck explosion, is also being examined as a possible bomber.
Moussa Badran â a resident of Sheik Zawaid, a town near el-Arish in northern Sinai â fled the family house soon after a terror attack last October at two other Red Sea resorts, his stepmother told AP.
Many relatives â including women â were arrested after Badran's disappearance and tortured, and another brother remains in custody, said the stepmother, Mariam Hamad Salem al-Sawarka.
Hours after the Sharm blast, police took DNA samples from Badran's father and siblings and from other families with relatives who have gone into hiding since the Taba attacks, al-Sawarka said. She said Youssef Badran moved to another town near Sheik Zawaid several years ago and she had not seen him since.
Investigators have been exploring possible links between Saturday's attacks and those in October against hotels in the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, near the Israeli border. Those earlier attacks killed 34 people, including many Israelis.
Israel warned Israelis a year ago not to visit Egypt, and especially Sinai, because of the possibility terrorists would attack tourist sites. No Israelis are known to have died in the Sharm bombings, although Israeli media have said there were a number of Israelis there at the time.
Security forces detained thousands of people after the October attacks â mainly from the north Sinai area.
This time, across Sinai, security forces took in 70 people for questioning on Tuesday, bringing to 140 the number questioned since Saturday's attacks. Police detained an unspecified number of people overnight in the villages of Husseinat and Muqataa near the Gaza border.
Security officials in el-Arish said that, based on information from interrogations, they were looking for two other people from the area, Moussa Ayad Suleiman Awda and Ahmed Ibrahim Hamad Ibrahim, in connection with the Sharm attacks.
Investigators are concentrating on the theory that the bombings were carried out by Egyptian militants, but were not excluding the possibility they received international help, the security officials in Cairo said.
They noted that there has been an increasing number of hard-line Islamists in Sinai who may have formed cells. In previous years, the sparsely populated peninsula saw little militant activity, in contrast to the Nile Valley where the majority of Egyptians live and where an Islamic insurgency took hold in the 1990s.
Investigators were looking closely at funding for Islamists in Sinai, possibly from abroad. Large sums have come into the area in recent years, and no one is sure of the source, one of the officials in Cairo said.
Authorities are also trying to learn the origin of the more than 1,100 pounds of explosives used in the Sham attacks. Police said they were exploring the possibility they may have been brought in from Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Israel.
Another possibility was that the bombs were made of old explosives or from explosives used in quarries and hoarded by Sinai's Bedouin inhabitants.
Police have set up checkpoints on isolated desert roads north of Sharm, entrances to the region that previously had been only loosely guarded. The attackers may have used such roads to reach the resorts.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 11:39 ||
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It would seem quite possible that the casinos were the intended targets; perhaps heightened security there caused the terrorists to change targets to something they could reach.
July 27, 2005: Congress, and U.S. Army bureaucrats, responded to email from the troops, and some bad publicity about the IED (roadside bomb) jammer situation, and got thousands of new jammers, each month, sent to Iraq. These included the new âBlueâ version of the Warlock jammer, and a new lightweight (wearable) IED jammer (SLAM-DEP) for the infantry, and other troops on foot patrols. Other models of jammers, like ICE (Improvised Explosive Devices Countermeasures Equipment), were developed and put into the hands of the troops within six months, using new ârapid developmentâ procedures that have upset many Pentagon bureaucrats, but pleased many of the troops. The army is also sending 187 âexpendable robotsâ to help troops deal with IEDs. These âlow costâ robots cost about $35,000 each, which is about a hundred times the cost of the ones troops had improvised using civilian radio controlled hobby vehicles. However, the more expensive robots wonât have their signals jammed by the army jammers (which sometimes happened with the hobby grade gear the troops were using.)
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 11:12 ||
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Yes!
Attaboy, Rummy & Co, keep it up. Pissing off the bureaucrats is just icing.
July 27, 2005: Quietly, and without much fanfare, the U.S. Air Force has been equipping some of its fighters with electronic ray type weapons. Not quite the âdeath rayâ of science fiction fame, but an electronic ray type weapon none the less. In this case, the weapon uses the high-powered microwave (HPM) effects found in Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar technology. These radars have been around a long time, popular mainly for their ability deal with lots of targets simultaneously. But AESA is also able to focus a concentrated beam of radio energy that could scramble electronic components of a distant target. Sort of like the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) put out by nuclear weapons. The air force wonât, for obvious reasons, discuss the exact âkill rangeâ of the of the various models of AESA radars on American warplanes (the F14, F35 and F22 have them). However, it is known that ârangeâ in this case is an elastic thing. Depending on how well the target electronics are hardened against EMP, more electrical power will be required to do damage. Moreover, the electrical power of the various AESA radars in service varies as well. The air force has said that the larger AESA radar it plans to install on its E-10 radar aircraft would be able to zap cruise missile guidance systems up to 180 kilometers away. The E-10 AESA is several times larger than the one in the F35 (the largest in use now), so make your own estimates.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 11:08 ||
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Let me introduce you to my giant "la-zer".
Posted by: Dr. Evil ||
07/27/2005 11:37 Comments ||
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I've been suspicious why the US has suddenly started to downplay manned fighter aircraft, along with a strong emphasis on UAVs. Very high speed and high maneuverability UAVs with energy weapons capable of taking down enemy aircraft, sam, cruise, a2a, and maybe even ballistic missiles really change the tactical situation. But then other factors come into play, such as, can they be used against ground targets? Can they be used against 'stupid' weapons, like unguided rockets? How effective are their own countermeasures against similar air and ground based weapons? Can the enemy shield against it? Are there parallel energy weapons that can be deployed in tandem (on different airframes) with them, for complementary purposes? And I'm sure a whole bunch more questions I haven't thought up.
#4
They meant F15. Some of the F15Cs are getting the ASEA radar upgrades. Also a 100KW infrared laser is being developed for some F35s (in place of the lift fan and powered by the engine) for both air-air and air-ground.
Posted by: ed ||
07/27/2005 11:57 Comments ||
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#5
I've always maintained that the SM2/3 missle system was just a cover for the Aegis main kill system it's radar.
#6
There is an old tale from the Vietnam War about an NVA land-based radar system, that when activated for the first time, unintentionally "pinged" one of our aircraft carriers off the coast. They responded by turning on their radar pointed at the NVA source, which instantly shut down; our technicians suspecting so violently, that "their console blew up". The aircraft carrier people then guessed that they thought the problem was on their end, as they repaired then fired it up twice more, at several days' intervals, just to get the same response from the aircraft carrier, much to the amusement...
#7
This is cool, but let's hope Clinton and the Dems didn't trade this to the ChiComs for campaign contributions.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
07/27/2005 14:11 Comments ||
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It has been alleged at Indymedia that a number of recent West Texas car wrecks were in fact live fire tests of airborne energy weapons. It has been noted that such sinister aircraft as the B-1B, E-6A Hermes, and KC-135 are seen regularly around the Lubbock airport and that these may be zapping unsuspecting motorists as a kind of field trial.
The stupid Indymediots have not even noticed the new and rather odd antenna array on my Cessna 182.
China will use its veto to stop the United Nations Security Council from criticising Zimbabwe's slum clearance, President Robert Mugabe says. The UK and the US have asked the Security Council to discuss the demolitions, after a UN report said 700,000 had been made homeless.
Mr Mugabe is on a week-long visit to China, seeking help with Zimbabwe's economic crisis and foreign loans. He has signed a trade deal with China, of which the contents remain unknown.
I think China pretty much holds the lease to every thing in ZimBob.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had said he would visit Zimbabwe but has now clarified that this would not happen until the demolitions end.
So I guess this means he ain't going
Despite pleas for an end to Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Rubbish], riot police continue to demolish illegally-built structures in the capital, Harare. The scale of suffering is immense, particularly among widows, single mothers, children, orphans, the elderly and disabled persons. Mr Mugabe says the demolitions are intended to weed out criminals and black-market traders he accuses of bringing down the economy. Asked about the moves to discuss the demolitions at the Security Council, the state-owned Herald newspaper quotes Mr Mugabe as saying: "I know, of course, China will never allow that nonsense to happen".
Well, China can veto any plan to sanction Bob, but I don't believe they can stop the SC from talking about it.
Permanent members have considerable say over the agenda. The Chinese might not stop a conversation, but they'd exact a heavy price for having one, a price the other permanent members might not want to pay ...
Details of the trade deal signed by Mr Mugabe and Chinese President Hu Jintao have not been made public but it is expected to involve arms loans in exchange for trade and mineral concessions. Zimbabwe has adopted a "Look East" policy since increasing criticism from the west for alleged human rights abuses and electoral fraud. Mr Mugabe has also asked South Africa for help repaying its debts to avoid expulsion from the IMF.
I'd really enjoy watching Zimbabwe's new democratic government repudiate all the Chinese loans ...
Last week's UN report said the campaign violated international law and Mr Annan himself called it a "catastrophic injustice" to Zimbabwe's poorest. The UN report was compiled by Mr Annan's special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, after a two-week fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe. The report found that programme had been carried out in "an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering". It said Zimbabwe's government was collectively responsible, and it urged prosecution of those who "may have caused criminal negligence".
But Zimbabwe said the allegations were "definitely false" and that the report showed an "in-built bias". The Zimbabwean opposition says the evictions are meant to punish urban residents, who mostly vote against the government.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 10:11 ||
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*sigh* Another case of "birds of a feather..."
Posted by: BA ||
07/27/2005 10:39 Comments ||
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So where is the LLL outrage at the human rights violations of ZimBob and ChiCom's aiding and abetting Bob?
***generations of crickets chirping, reproducing, dying, and beginning anew***
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/27/2005 11:03 Comments ||
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Let them rot no body carred when Mugabu was killing and siezing all of the white peoples lands in his country after all the white man but them down right. Then after destroying the economy with those actions Mugabu is now turned on his own people and turning the chineese into what the whites used to do. I wonder if this means now the Chineese will be blamed as the man?
Not meant to be rasist just happens to be in Zimbabwae that the whites were the majority of farm owners and buisness owner CEO types. If in America they siezed all of the buisneses killed imprisoned or deported all the CEO's the result would be the same.
Most of the men who attacked towns in Ivory Coast over the weekend are from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, an Ivory Coast military prosecutor says. The men did not say who had sent them to attack the main city, Abidjan and Agboville 70km north, said Ange Kessi.
Well, not yet anyway.
President Laurent Gbagbo has accused both neighbours of backing rebels who control northern Ivory Coast. The attacks threaten a fragile peace process, which is supposed to lead to elections in October.
Members of Mr Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party have accused the New Forces rebels of being behind the attacks, which the rebels have denied. FPI chief Pascal Affi Nguessan condemned the 10,000 French and United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast for their "passivity and complicity" in the "repeated barbaric killings". Following the attacks, pro-Gbagbo militants have attacked journalists and members of opposition parties in Abidjan. The army has now retaken control of Agboville.
Seventeen of the assailants were killed, along with seven members of the security forces, the army says. Eleven alleged assailants were paraded before journalists at a military prison in the main city, Abidjan. After killing five policemen at an Abidjan police station, the attackers retreated some 70km to Agboville, where they took control of government buildings and released prisoners from the town's jail.
The Muslim Djoula community lives in northern Ivory Coast, Mali and Burkina Faso and pro-Gbagbo groups from the Christian and animist south see them as rebel sympathisers.
More antics by the ROP on Islam's bloody border
Almost a quarter of Ivory Coast's population are said to be immigrants from Mali and Burkina Faso. Ivory Coast's neighbours have denied backing the rebels. Under a South Africa-brokered peace deal, the rebels and pro-Gbagbo militias are supposed to be disarming, ahead of election in October.
Uh huh
Posted by: Steve ||
07/27/2005 09:27 ||
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I've often thought we should be keeping a closer eye on Burkina Faso. People who would intentionally name their country "Burkina Faso" are capable of just about anything.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/27/2005 11:36 Comments ||
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Lol, Matt! I say the say thing about people sho cheat at solitaire, but yours is much funnier, heh.
Yasin Hassan Omar fled war-torn Somalia when he was just 11 years old, to find a haven in Britain. Yet he seems never to have gotten very far from the tentacles of war, or those of al-Qaeda.
The boy who grew up to be a welfare-claiming asylum seeker ran away from his anarchic country just as Osama bin Laden arrived to set up a franchise there.
This week, the British Home Office identified Mr. Omar as a suspect in last week's failed mass-transit bombings, after a man was videotaped vaulting a ticket barrier after trying to blow up a subway train.
It's unclear whether the alleged involvement of the 24-year-old in an al-Qaeda-style attack had its ideological roots in East Africa or was something that grew through contacts in Britain.
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Yet, the basics of his story seem very similar to that of his roommate and fellow suspect, Muktar Mohamed-Said, a 27-year-old Eritrean refugee, who got his British citizenship just months before becoming a bombing suspect.
Now that the Home Office has confirmed that the pair were refugee claimants who arrived in the 1990s seeking respite from war, some members of the British press are calling for reviews of asylum policies.
Historically, al-Qaeda's message has had only a limited resonance among East African militants, even though the terrorist group has long claimed the area falls within its sphere of influence.
In the 1990s, generals from what is now known as al-Qaeda arrived in Somalia to train insurgents. The trainees killed 18 U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu in October of 1993, according to a U.S. indictment against Mr. bin Laden, who was handed a major propaganda victory by the subsequent U.S. withdrawal.
"When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area carrying humiliation, defeat and your dead with you," Mr. bin Laden said in a 1996 statement.
Years before he attacked Americans at home on their home soil, he added that, in Somalia, "you have been disgraced by Allah, and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear."
A number of other African countries have been more prominent suppliers of militants: Egypt's Islamic Jihad merged with al-Qaeda in the late 1990s, Sudanese officials briefly provided Mr. bin Laden with a base, and scores of North African radicals have been involved in recent al-Qaeda-style strikes.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has flagged Sunni Islamic extremism as its major domestic concern, including reputed members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. However, investigations have tended to focus on individuals of Arab or Pakistani heritage.
Canada's more sizable Somali community has not generally raised alarms for its extremist links, although hawala money-transfer networks were shut down as a result of U.S. pressure in 2001.
One individual -- Mohammed Warsame, a 31-year-old Canadian of Somali origin who travelled to Afghanistan in 2000 -- has attracted scrutiny. Last year, the former Toronto resident was jailed in the United States on charges of lending material support to al-Qaeda. He awaits trial.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/27/2005 09:08 ||
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BAGHDAD - An early draft of Iraqâs planned constitution has revealed that Islam is set to play a dominant role in the countryâs basic law.
Government mouthpiece Al Sabah on Tuesday published what it described as a proposed draft of the constitution aimed at laying out the framework for a new Iraq following the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein. The draft states that âIslam is the official religion of the State,â and that âNo law that contradicts the universally agreed tenets of Islam may be enacted.â
Wiggle room?
Parliament is to vote on the draft constitution by August 15 before it goes to a national referendum in October. The draft however is still under discussion.
Sunni Arab members of the constitutional committee announced Tuesday that they were ending their boycott of the drafting procedure, called in protest at the killing of two of their colleagues last week. Their absence had threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the document. The Sunni community, about one-fifth of Iraqâs 27-million population, was dominant under Saddamâs regime but is now under-represented in parliament.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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KhaleejTimes...
Okay, I'm off this roller coaster. I'll just wait for the final document and read the best translation I can find. Enough elevator rides, lol.
Then we shall see if item #4 on Dave's Excellent Summary has a real chance... and adjust accordingly.
#2
Article: Government mouthpiece Al Sabah on Tuesday published what it described as a proposed draft of the constitution aimed at laying out the framework for a new Iraq following the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein.
Note that the government mouthpiece is now controlled by Shia Islamists. What the delegates will agree upon is likely to be something very different.
Dozens of people were feared dead and many more injured in clashes that broke out on Friday and continued over the weekend in the town of Boru-Hache, also known as El-Waaq, in southwestern Somalia's Gedo region, sources said. "Violations of human rights and international law occurred particularly with regard to the protection of civilians in time of war," Abdullahi Alas Jimale, chief investigator of the Mogadishu-based Isma'il Jim'ale Human Rights Centre (IJHRC), said.
I sympathize with the innocents who're bumped off by thugs acting out Emma Goldman's fantasies, but international law doesn't apply within countries. It governs (such as it does) the relations among countries.
Boru-Hache is situated on Somalia's border with Kenya. IJHRC said thousands of people displaced by the clashes between two clans had fled across the border to seek refuge in the neighbouring Kenyan border town of El Wak. The weekend clashes pitted militias from the Gare clan against those from the Marehan. Both sides, Alas said, had used heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, which were fired "without regard to the lives and property of the civilian populations". IJHRC put the civilian death toll at 40 with more than 60 wounded. "These are noncombatants whom we were able to register, but there are probably some who were not registered," Alas added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Five civilians are reported to have died and thirty five others wounded Sunday evening in a grenade explosion that took place in Jijiga, the capital of Somali Regional State. A statement issued by police in the region yesterday said that the hand grenades were thrown into three hotels at around 8:30 P.M. Following the explosion, the wounded were rushed to hospitals of which five died immediately after they arrived at the Karamara Hospital. Yesterday, some 35 were reported to have survived the explosion with minor and serious injuries.
The regional state condemned the incident as a "terrorist attack" committed against civilians at a time where eligible voters of the region were to be registered for the remaining 23 parliamentary seats of the Federal government and regional parliamentary seats of the Somali regional state. It added that the incident will never affect the upcoming election and called up on the residents to register to cast their vote in the election scheduled to take place in August.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Lol... "Jijiga"? Got an instant flash of dirka, dirka off that one.
SPo'D I'm thinking that, obviously, hotels are dens of iniquity, or um something, and must be blasted to bits. That they are likely major job sources, and certainly a major multiplier in that sense, is irrelevant. They offend, um, someone, uh, somehow. *slaps forehead* Oh, I know! It's like Willie Sutton said about banks being where the money is... Hotels are where the evil [insert group of choice here] are!
Eleven Ethiopians, suspected to have taken part in the Marsabit massacre, have been arrested. They were to be handed over to the Kenyan authorities yesterday together with the livestock stolen in the July 11 attack on Turbi village where more than 80 people, including 18 school children, died. The children were from Turbi Primary School, which has been closed following the tragedy.
Yesterday, the Eastern Province security team, led by the deputy provincial police officer, Mr Robert Kitur, was at Forolle village on the Kenya-Ethiopia border ready to receive the suspects and the animals. The animals included more than 200 camels, 60 donkeys and 20 sheep and goats stolen during the incident. Marsabit police boss Amos Cheboi had earlier said 12 people had been arrested in connection with the attack. They include suspected raiders of Turbi and others who had killed nine people at Bubisa trading centre, 80 kilometres north of massacre scene, in a revenge attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Lawyers for former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein have said he has asked to meet a former US attorney general who is a member of his defence team, but he is yet to hear from the authorities. A statement on Monday issued by the team, which goes by the acronym ISNAD, said Saddam asked the special tribunal set up to try him, for a meeting with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, but his request had not been answered yet.
The statement, which was sent to Aljazeera.net, said the team's representative in Baghdad, lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, had met Saddam on Thursday, The statement expressed concern over the lack of access for Saddam, and said it could not start preparing his defence unless Saddam enjoyed full access to his counsel.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Ok, what does ISNAD stand for? Other than being DANSI backwards, that is.
Saddam:"Clark? Yeah, sure. Does he have any cousins as stupid as he is? Bring 'em along, the more the merrier. I haven't got a snowball's chance in hell anyway, so I might as well be entertained..."
#2
Actually, I remember when LBJ decided to put a civil rights' face in the AG' office, as a legislative flunkey. Ramsey Clark was always a one trick pony, but used that trick to posit credentials that he never had. Supposedly, J Edgar Hoover would go straight to the Oval Office at the time, when the FBI needed some legal clarification. Clark was wallpaper.
Posted by: Vlad the Muslim Impaler ||
07/27/2005 2:50 Comments ||
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#3
It stands for: Ramsey Clark is a freakin' idiot.
Posted by: Tom Dooley ||
07/27/2005 3:35 Comments ||
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#4
...and tell him not to forget the Doritos. The BIG bag.
#6
Ramsey Clark was AG at the time of the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations in 1968. Moonbat conspiracy theorists have tried to implicate everyone else who was in government at the time, but Ramsey, the most obvious suspect, gets a complete pass.
Clark's moonbattery has been so slavish, so dogmatic, so innocent of even the pretense of logic, for so long that other moonbats actually find it embarrassing. One wonders what is really driving him. As AG, for example, he presided over the actual COINTELPRO project for harrassing anti-war radicals. As soon as he left office in 1969, he turned 180 degrees, and launched his career of slavish obedience to the lefty line.
I want to suggest a conspiracy theory of my own: leftist traitors somehow beat everyone else to the smoking gun on Clark's involvement in the '68 assassinations, and they have simply been blackmailing him ever since. Some of the luminaries of the pop-treason movement were quite young and many have gone on to positions of power and influence in business, media, and government. It is not far-fetched that they could still be monitoring their most useful tool and feeding him his cues.
#7
AC Lies it was all a conspiracy! They were all out to pin me on the gassny knoll then place me in the Oklahoma City boom! I'm not a muslim! I swear ramadan Joseph is still in jail.... you people are crazy! Help me Kojo!
Posted by: Jack Rubenstein ||
07/27/2005 19:50 Comments ||
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Good to hear from you, Jack.
Sorry about the trial thing. Someday the truth will come out and you will get the Medal of Freedom for silencing that little rat Oswald before he could blow our cover and tell the world that JFK was shot for being a KGB mole.
#9
Btw, Jack, you were right about Oswald being wobbly, but can you believe that Bobby tried to rat us out too? What a weasel, he thought it might score him some points with Cronkite. We took care of him, though, and even managed to blame it on a Pali. Two buzzards with one stone, eh?
Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab'i, former Kuwaiti minister of education and columnist for the Arabic London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an article titled "A Bit of Shame" on July 25, 2005.
The following are excerpts from the article:
"If we were to go according to the logic of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement then we shouldn't condemn the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, nor [should we condemn] other terrorist crimes!
"The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has its own justifications for violence. In a statement by the movement, in which it 'condemned' the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, it laid out its justification for the crime. The statement said: 'the colonialist policies that the world's strong countries pursue, as well as the aggression against the peoples â they are what engender the culture of violence.'
"The Muslim Brotherhood's problem is that it has no shame. The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology of takfir [accusing other Muslims of apostasy]. Sayyid Qutb's book Milestones was the inspiration and the guide for all of the takfir movements that came afterwards.
"The founders of the violent groups were raised on the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who worked with Bin Laden and Al-Qa'ida went out under the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood.
"If the imperialist countries' policy is what engendered violence, as the Brotherhood's statement says, then what is keeping a few citizens in Vietnam â which American planes utterly destroyed with millions of tons of bombs â from blowing up buildings in San Francisco? What is keeping a few citizens in Japan â which America attacked with an atom bomb â from blowing up Boston?
"Also, what do foreign tourists and innocent Egyptian citizens have to do with the policies of 'the imperialist countries'? Should peaceful and defenseless citizens be killed in Sharm Al-Sheikh, Baghdad, Riyadh, and San'a in order to take revenge on imperialist countries?"
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2005 00:00 ||
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So Muslim leaders both "condemned" and "justified" terror bombings in the same paragraph. Arafat is gone but his deceit remains.
As for pointing the blame at the Ikhwanis (Muslim Brotherhood), the birth of neo-Salafi extremism predates the Ikhwanis by over a century. Islamofascism is nothing but alternate Ikhwani, Wahabi, Jamaati, Deobandi, etc movements aimed at restoration of the Caliphate, but this time on a global scale. That is why I advocate extreme measures in suppression of this jihad, with shoot-to-kill orders being only a small part of what we have to do: kill them all, including potential thems.
Posted by: Vlad the Muslim Impaler ||
07/27/2005 2:40 Comments ||
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"If the imperialist countries' policy is what engendered violence, as the Brotherhood's statement says, then what is keeping a few citizens in Vietnam â which American planes utterly destroyed with millions of tons of bombs â from blowing up buildings in San Francisco? What is keeping a few citizens in Japan â which America attacked with an atom bomb â from blowing up Boston?
If the religious bigotry of Islamists is what engendered 9/11, then what is keeping a few citizens in Newark from nuking Mecca and Medina?
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.
KUWAIT CITY: Fifteen police patrols rushed to the Farwaniya Hospital and arrested seven bedouns for fighting inside the hospital premises, reports Al-Anba daily. The daily quoting a security source said two youths who were injured during a fight between rival gangs in Sulaibiya were rushed to Farwaniya and the others followed them to the hospital and the fight continued all over again. The injured youths, bearing stab wounds, have been admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital.
In his meeting with Supreme Security Committee members held Saturday July 23 which discussed the impact of the recent riots, President Ali Abdullah Saleh said all inciters of violence must face up the consequences of their actions. âMalicious individuals who incited violence, chaos and the smashing of government offices during protests against the cutting of the fuel subsidy seized the opportunity to shake the national security, and they must be held accountable for what they did,â the President said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair categorically told the press on Tuesday that it was Pakistan's prime responsibility to rein in seminaries teaching extremism and militancy. The prime minister vowed to use "all measures to root out terrorism" and said that laws would be made to tackle the menace of terrorism. He said that the new anti-terrorism laws would be reviewed at every level so that human freedom was not restricted. He said that he supported giving police expanded powers of detention under the proposed changes to anti-terrorist laws in the wake of the London bombings. "I think it's perfectly reasonable for us in circumstances of great difficulty to have a greater detention in order to interrogate people who are suspected of doing this," he told reporters.
PARIS, July 27 (AFP) - A group of 40 Afghans have been deported on a flight organised jointly by the French and British authorities, the interior ministry in Paris said Wednesday. The flight took off from Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris on Tuesday evening carrying 25 Afghans detained in France and 15 in Britain. The two countries announced recently that they would collaborate in returning failed asylum-seekers to their countries of origin.
[July 24 2005] at 2110 LT at Balikpapan inner anchorage, Indonesia. Three robbers were in the process of boarding a tanker. Alert crew raised alarm and robbers jumped back in the water and escaped in a motorboat waiting with three accomplices. Boat was about seven meters with blue hull.
An advertisement in an Iranian publication has called for people to come forward for "martyrdom operations" against the enemies of Islam. It is published by an institute managed by one of Iran's most conservative and radical clerics, Ayatollah Masbah Yazdi, who has declared his support for Iran's new President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. 
July 27, 2005: Quietly, and without much fanfare, the U.S. Air Force has been equipping some of its fighters with electronic ray type weapons. Not quite the âdeath rayâ of science fiction fame, but an electronic ray type weapon none the less. In this case, the weapon uses the high-powered microwave (HPM) effects found in Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar technology. These radars have been around a long time, popular mainly for their ability deal with lots of targets simultaneously. But AESA is also able to focus a concentrated beam of radio energy that could scramble electronic components of a distant target. Sort of like the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) put out by nuclear weapons. The air force wonât, for obvious reasons, discuss the exact âkill rangeâ of the of the various models of AESA radars on American warplanes (the F14, F35 and F22 have them). However, it is known that ârangeâ in this case is an elastic thing. Depending on how well the target electronics are hardened against EMP, more electrical power will be required to do damage. Moreover, the electrical power of the various AESA radars in service varies as well. The air force has said that the larger AESA radar it plans to install on its E-10 radar aircraft would be able to zap cruise missile guidance systems up to 180 kilometers away. The E-10 AESA is several times larger than the one in the F35 (the largest in use now), so make your own estimates.
Dozens of people were feared dead and many more injured in clashes that broke out on Friday and continued over the weekend in the town of Boru-Hache, also known as El-Waaq, in southwestern Somalia's Gedo region, sources said. "Violations of human rights and international law occurred particularly with regard to the protection of civilians in time of war," Abdullahi Alas Jimale, chief investigator of the Mogadishu-based Isma'il Jim'ale Human Rights Centre (IJHRC), said.
Five civilians are reported to have died and thirty five others wounded Sunday evening in a grenade explosion that took place in Jijiga, the capital of Somali Regional State. A statement issued by police in the region yesterday said that the hand grenades were thrown into three hotels at around 8:30 P.M. Following the explosion, the wounded were rushed to hospitals of which five died immediately after they arrived at the Karamara Hospital. Yesterday, some 35 were reported to have survived the explosion with minor and serious injuries.
Eleven Ethiopians, suspected to have taken part in the Marsabit massacre, have been arrested. They were to be handed over to the Kenyan authorities yesterday together with the livestock stolen in the July 11 attack on Turbi village where more than 80 people, including 18 school children, died. The children were from Turbi Primary School, which has been closed following the tragedy.
Lawyers for former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein have said he has asked to meet a former US attorney general who is a member of his defence team, but he is yet to hear from the authorities. A statement on Monday issued by the team, which goes by the acronym ISNAD, said Saddam asked the special tribunal set up to try him, for a meeting with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, but his request had not been answered yet. 
"If we were to go according to the logic of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement then we shouldn't condemn the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, nor [should we condemn] other terrorist crimes! 
