(from Memri)
One of the anti-soccer fatwas was published in full in Al-Watan on August 25, 2005. According to other sources it had been issued by Sheikh 'Abdallah Al-Najdi. [5]
The fatwa declared that it is only permissible to play soccer when its rules are different than the accepted international rules. This was based on a hadith [Prophetic tradition] which forbids Muslims to imitate Christians and Jews. [6] The fatwa read:
"1. Don't play soccer with four lines [surrounding the field], since this is the way of the non-believers, and the international soccer rules require drawing [these lines] before playing.
"2. One should not use the terminology established by the non-believers and the polytheists, like: 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick,' 'goal,' and 'out of bounds.' Whoever pronounces these terms should be punished, reprimanded, kicked out of the game, and should even be told in public: 'You have come to resemble the non-believers and the polytheists, and this has been forbidden.'
"3. If one of you falls during the game and breaks his hand or his foot, or if the ball hits his hand, he shall not say 'foul' and shall not stop playing because of his injury. The one who caused his injury shall not receive a yellow or a red card, but rather the case shall be judged according to Muslim law in the case of a broken bone or an injury. The injured player shall exercise his rights according to the shari'a, as [is stated] in the Koran, and you must testify together with him that so-and-so tripped him up intentionally.
"4. Do not set the number [of players] according to the number of players used by the non-believers, the Jews, the Christians, and especially the vile America. In other words, 11 players shall not play together. Make it a larger or a smaller number.
"5. Play in your normal clothing, or in pajamas, or something like that, but not in colorful pants and numbered jerseys. Pants and jerseys are not appropriate clothing for Muslims. They are the clothing of the non-believers and of the West, and therefore you must be careful not to wear them.
"6. Once you have fulfilled [these] conditions and rules, you must play the entire game with the intention of improving your physical fitness for the purpose of fighting Jihad for Allah's sake and preparing for the time when jihad is needed. One should not waste time in celebrating a false victory.
"7. Do not play for 45 minutes, as is the practice among the Jews, the Christians, and in all of the countries of non-belief and atheism. This is also the length of time that is accepted in the soccer clubs of those who have strayed from the righteous path. You must be different than the non-believers, depart from their path, and not imitate them in anything.
"8. Do not play in two parts [i.e. halves], but rather in one part or in three parts, so as to be different than the sinful and rebellious, the non-believers and the polytheists.
"9. If neither side has defeated the other and neither side has inserted the ball between the posts, do not waste further time [in an extension] or in 'penalty kicks' until someone has won, but rather leave [the field] immediately, since this kind of victory is precisely an imitation of the non-believers and [adoption] of the international soccer rules.
"10. Do not appoint someone who follows the players around and is called 'a referee', since, after canceling the international rules such as 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick' and so on, there is no need for his presence. Moreover, his presence is an imitation of non-believers, Jews and Christians, and constitutes adoption of the international [soccer] rules.
"11. In the course of the game it is forbidden for groups of youth to gather and watch, since if you are gathering for the sake of sports activity and physical fitness, as you claim, why should they be looking at you? You must make them participate [in order to improve] their physical fitness and prepare for jihad; or else say to them, 'Go propagate Islam and seek out moral corruption in the marketplaces and in the press [in order to correct it], and leave us to improve our physical fitness.'
"12. When you finish playing, be careful not to talk about the game, and not to say 'we play better than the opponent,' or 'so-and-so is a good player,' etc. Moreover, you should speak about your body, its strength and its muscles, and about the fact that you are playing as [a means of] training to run, attack, and retreat in preparation for [waging] jihad for Allah's sake.
"13. If one of you inserts the ball between the posts and then starts to run so that his companions will run after him and hug him, like the players in America and France do, you should spit in his face, punish him, and reprimand him, for what do joy, hugging, and kissing have to do with sports?
"14. You must take the three posts or iron rods which you use to construct [the goal], and into which the ball is kicked, and replace them with just two instead of three. In other words, take out the cross-post or rod⊠so that [the goal] will not be similar to what is customary among the non-believers, and in order to violate the despotic international soccer rules.
"15. Do not do what is known as 'substitution' â that is, putting in a player in place of a player who has been disqualified â since this the custom of the non-believers in America and elsewhere." [7]
#4
Dude, don't even be calling it 'soccer'! You can get Christian/infidel/Joo cooties just from *saying* the word.
These guys are such colossal asshats. I hope they are not surprised when Alan finally gets fed up with their antics and kicks their collective asses. Heh, he will probably even use the infidel crusader/christian/joos to do. Hey, wait a minute! You don't suppose...
Posted by: Mark E. ||
10/10/2005 14:06 Comments ||
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#7
Still waiting for Israel and, lets say, Syria or Soddyland to make it at the same time into the World Cup being played next year in freaking Germany. Now there is the mother of all fatwa making matches.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/10/2005 14:47 Comments ||
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#11
IOW, the anti-soccer fatwas > Islam is in general a "Warrior's Faith", and soccer played the Radical Islamist way is the "warrior's way" of soccer, ergo its okay to vilate the Quran by engaging in suicide attacks and slaughtering other Muslims wid out their knowedge or consent. Yep, the Raddies are "Warriors/Samurai of the Desert, ala THE MUMMY/THE MUMMY RETURNS, as long as they don't stick their scimitars into the ground, identify their names and clans, and dare enemies to kill them in glorious one-on-one or one-to-many battle, D*** YOUR JUDAEOCHRISTIAN HIDES!? NOT EXACTLY SALADIN, OR EVEN KLINGONS, ........................@, ARE WE!? Like any good God/Faith-based Commies or Totalitarians, they will smite milyuhns and zilyuhns of their enemies with someone(s) else's blood.
#12
I could respect playing with a broken foot. But nooo, imam Pansy wants to convene a sharia court right on the freaking field. You think soccer was slow and boring before, wait until 22 whiny muslim mamma's boys and a cleric take the field. Hopefully the fans will have the good sense to throw some loaded AKs onto the field.
Posted by: ed ||
10/10/2005 22:27 Comments ||
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PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) - North Korea promised to pursue a stronger military as it marked a major anniversary, but made no mention of its long-running nuclear standoff with the outside world.
That's what they need by gum! More juche! More army-based policy!
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il was present as the communist state held a large-scale convention Sunday on the eve of the 60th anniversary of its ruling Workers' Party of Korea, the North's official media reported Monday. International delegations at the anniversary included one from China, the North's only major ally.
Kim Yong Nam, president of North Korea's parliament, said the country should ``direct primary efforts to the strengthening'' of the Korean People's Army, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/10/2005 00:33 ||
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#1
IOW, more martial law and controls as the Norkies prelimin end-of-year estimates of food production has been found to be less than publicized. The starvations go on.
#2
What they need is a stronger rice crop. But then in a few more year the place will be like Africa, desolate and starved. MSM will of course call it our fault and we will go in and spend millions on bringing them back to health.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
10/10/2005 8:11 Comments ||
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#3
I would try reeducating the Rice plants so that the kernels will adhear more firmly to the Songon way and grow faster, stronger and fatter for the honor and glory of the revolution and Dear Leader.
AUSTRALIANS must not forget their sense of outrage at the latest terrorist bombings in Bali, Prime Minister John Howard said today.
Mr Howard moved a motion in Parliament today condemning the October 1 attacks and expressing Australia's outrage.
"The sense of innocent outrage, the sense that people going about something as inoffensive as an Australian being on holidays should have their life interrupted, and in the case of four of our fellow Australians taken away, does produce in all of us a very deep and strongly held sense of outrage," he told Parliament.
"And that is a depth of feeling that should be maintained by the Australian community."
Mr Howard said the impact of the October 1 attacks, which killed 23 people including four Australians, would devastate the people of Bali.
He also remembered the October 12, 2002 Bali bombings which killed 88 Australians, saying a memorial service to mark the third anniversary would be held at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday morning.
Federal Opposition leader Kim Beazley said Australia's hearts were with the victims of the recent Bali bombings.
"All these cases touch our hearts tremendously."
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer will travel to Indonesia tomorrow to try to persuade its government to ban the Jemaah Islamiah group, thought to be responsible for the latest attacks at Kuta and Jimbaran Beach.
The family of one of the Australian victims, 16-year-old Brendan Fitzgerald, is still to be told when his body might be returned.
Family friend and West Australian Liberal MP Troy Buswell said he spoke to Brendan's sister today and the family was still unaware of any plans to return the teenager's body to WA.
The bodies of Jennifer Williamson and Colin and Fiona Zwolinski, all from Newcastle, arrived back in Sydney yesterday.
Today, the school attended by the victims' sons, St Francis Xavier College, held a memorial service for the victims.
Principal Brother Hubert Williams said the service was an opportunity for the school community to support students and families affected by the attacks.
"(It was a chance) to remind the school that we are all part of the greater community of humankind and that everyone is diminished in someone's death but at the same time we support (those affected)."
Also back at school today was acting assistant principal Julia Lederwasch, who was discharged from hospital last week after being wounded in the bombing.
Her daughter, Aleta Lederwasch, 21, remains in hospital in a stable condition.
The Balinese Catholic Bishop of Denpasar, visiting Australia, has asked Australians to still consider Bali as a holiday destination.
Bishop Benyamin Joseph Bria, speaking in Adelaide, had scheduled his trip to coincide with the anniversary of the 2002 blasts.
"I want to make sure that you are still our friends and that we are still your friends ... and don't be afraid to come to Bali," he said today.
Posted by: Oztralian [AKA] God Save The World ||
10/10/2005 06:47 ||
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Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says there is a real risk that terrorists will acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Downer has launched a report outlining Australia's efforts to combat the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
He says the world has changed since the end of the Cold War, with the main threat to global security now coming from rogue states and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah.
"Jemaah Islamiah's spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir recently stated that the use of nuclear weapons was justified if necessary," Mr Downer said.
"We know all too sadly the deadly effect of Jemaah Islamiah's home-made bombs but can we conceive the devastation were they ever to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction?"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 00:57 ||
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#3
"Jemaah Islamiah's spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir recently stated that the use of nuclear weapons was justified if necessary," Mr Downer said.
"We know all too sadly the deadly effect of Jemaah Islamiah's home-made bombs but can we conceive the devastation were they ever to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction?"
Hat tip to Mrs. Davis.
Which is why it becomes increasingly necessary for all target countries of such an atrocity to put terrorism supporters and proliferators on notice that a single nuclear terror attack will result in wholesale destruction of all specified parties.
It is time to raise the stakes and make sure that terrorism and any failure to combat same comes with a horrendous price tag. The sooner this is made clear, the more quickly this world can return to fighting truly important battles.
Islamist terrorism absorbs an enormous portion of available security resources and finances in the name of combating a puny handful of fanatics and those who actively or tacitly support them. This monstrous diversion of wealth is directly responsible for the death of thousands on a daily basis.
Money better spent upon fighting disease, famine, poverty, illiteracy and oppression is instead flushed down the rathole of suppressing terrorist activity. How many more thousands must die at the behest of combating terrorism?
If Islamist fanatics unleash even a single nuclear atrocity, this world is no longer obliged to sort tediously amongst tendrils and roots of their murderous networks. Simple clearcutting will alleviate the majority of symptoms and permit a return to fixing far more important problems than one particular religion's bloodthirsty quest for global domination.
#4
Simple clearcutting will alleviate the majority of symptoms and permit a return to fixing far more important problems than one particular religion's bloodthirsty quest for global domination
Can someone look at this article for me and tell me if it has any validity? It's in the Independent, which makes my teeth hurt they're so awful...It's an abstract from a new book coming out in UK next week.
#1
Zarqawi was working hand in glove with Abu Zubaydah for the 2000 Millennium bombings in Jordan that are the subject of the original Jordanian indictment against him. Zark was supposed to supply the local muscle, while Zubaydah brought in the professionals and the getaway routes. When things went south, Zark fled to Afghanistan.
In Herat, Zark was training everybody from Chechens to Turks to Kurds at Binny's behest, though many experts decided to split hairs otherwise so as to undermine the Saddam/al-Qaeda connection. But to pretend like he wouldn't have become a major force to be reckoned with minus the US invasion is pure BS.
But don't believe me, believe Hans-Josef Beth, the head of the German BND, who called him an al-Qaeda leader with experience in chemical and biological weapons back in October 2002.
Ship of fools ...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 9:51 Comments ||
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#2
Sea,
Tha facts about his early life coincide with what I was told by a Lebanese Christian friend whose family is from the same area. Small time thug who made it big in Al Qaeda.
Posted by: DanNY ||
10/10/2005 13:57 Comments ||
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On a damp, gray day in March 2004, the Dutch traffic police stopped a Belgian driver for a broken headlight and accidentally stumbled onto a major investigation of Islamic radicals.
The driver was Khalid Bouloudo, a Belgian-born baker and former Ford automobile factory worker. During a routine check, his name turned up on an Interpol watchlist, for an international arrest warrant from Morocco charging him with links to a Moroccan-based terrorist organization and involvement in suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003.
The random arrest set into motion a cascade of events that underscores the extent of the radicalization of young Muslims throughout Europe - and a rapidly expanding and homegrown terrorist threat.
The case suggests connections to individuals and groups that have provided support to criminal and even terrorist operations in a number of other countries. This wide distribution of terrorist sympathizers and supporters has presented even small countries like Belgium with difficult law enforcement problems, forcing them to employ new investigative methods and pass tougher laws. For more than a year, the Belgian counterterrorism police had been gathering information about Bouloudo and his contacts in an investigation code-named Operation Asparagus, after the plump white asparagus grown in the eastern border area where they lived. His arrest abruptly cut short the operation.
Fearing that Bouloudo's contacts would go underground or try to flee, the counterterrorism forces started a series of raids throughout the country, dismantling over the next few months what they believe was a sophisticated network that supported the terror bombings in Casablanca and in Madrid in 2004 and that is also suspected of trying to recruit fighters for the insurgency in Iraq.
Next month, the case of the Asparagus 18, as the suspects might be called, finally goes to trial in Brussels. For the first time, Belgian prosecutors will be using an antiterrorism law that came into effect at the end of 2003 that specifically criminalizes a terrorist act and association with terrorists and imposes a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
None of the 18 men indicted - most of them Moroccan-born or of Moroccan descent and ranging in age from 24 to 42 - have been charged with committing or even plotting a specific terrorist act in Belgium.
Instead, the trial will highlight how over the past decade, Belgium has become a support center for terrorists in Europe, offering safe haven, false documents and financing.
Prosecutors hope to prove that the cell's members provided material support, including lodging and false papers, to the bombers who killed 190 in Madrid last year.
Among the other charges are the fabrication and the use of false documents, illegal entry and residence in Belgium, possession of illegal weapons and criminal association with a terrorist enterprise - in this case the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, or GICM, a loose-knit organization founded by Moroccans, many of whom were trained in Afghanistan before the Taliban was overthrown. Bouloudo is believed to be one of them.
"The case is a prototype of the new, post-Afghanistan network a little bit of everything: native-born radicals, immigrants from Morocco, travel to places like Saudi Arabia, connection to operations like Madrid," said Glenn Audenaert, head of Belgium's federal police force. "It's like handling a number of particles of mercury, toxic in themselves and even more toxic when they come together."
Despite a well-integrated Moroccan immigrant population that has lived and worked in Belgium for more than half a century, the country in recent years has become the destination of choice for many French-speaking immigrants who are put off by France's intrusive security and intelligence services and tougher laws.
It was in Belgium, for example, that the two Tunisian killers of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan resistance leader who was assassinated in September 2001, received logistical support. Disguised as journalists, they carried Belgian passports and had traveled to Afghanistan from Belgium.
Even defense lawyers involved in the Asparagus 18 trial acknowledge the attractiveness of Belgium as a support center for international criminal and even terrorist activity.
Indeed, Belgium's terrorism-fighting tools are limited, even though Brussels, as the headquarters of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is the closest Europe comes to having a Continental capital.
It has no equivalent of a Central Intelligence Agency and only a few intelligence officers work abroad. Only 50 police officers, detectives and special agents are assigned nationwide to monitor the Muslim community for potential terrorist plots.
Investigators complain that suspects in Belgium can be held for only 24 hours - compared with up to four days in France - under the vague charge of suspicion of association with criminals. And the hurdles to use intrusive investigative methods, like wiretaps, to obtain evidence in terrorist-related cases are more onerous than in many other European countries.
The wake-up call that Belgian laws against terrorism were too lax followed the case in 2003 of Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian former soccer professional and cocaine addict, for a plot to drive a car bomb into an American air base in northeast Belgium. Despite a confession and material evidence, prosecutors were forced to think creatively to win the maximum sentence - 10 years in prison - using, among other laws, one from 1934 that banned all private militias. If the new law had been in effect, police investigators said, Trabelsi's sentence could have been doubled.
In the Asparagus 18 case, prosecutors will be relying heavily on information gathered from foreign governments and foreign intelligence sources, a practice that defense lawyers have vowed to challenge. Wiretaps and audiovisual surveillance tapes will also be introduced as evidence, which has been unusual in the past and whose admissibility will be tested under the new law for the first time.
"The proof is very thin," said Christophe Marchand, a defense lawyer for one of the suspects. "Much of the evidence comes from statements made by people interrogated abroad."
Belgian police officers and prosecutors involved in the investigation, meanwhile, believe they have a strong case, saying that they have been stunned by the organization and discipline of the accused and the reach of their contacts abroad. The Asparagus 18 were able to take on new identities, cross borders to places like Saudi Arabia and Malaysia and avoid the police along the way.
One of the men, a 28-year-old Moroccan named Youssef Belhadj, was arrested in Belgium in 2004 and extradited to Spain this year in connection with the Madrid bombings. Some Spanish investigators are convinced that he is the person speaking in a video for a group called Al Qaeda in Europe that claimed responsibility for the Madrid attacks. He will be tried in absentia.
A 25-year-old Moroccan named Mourad Chabarou is suspected of trying to recruit insurgents for Iraq and of helping to finance and provide material support to the Madrid bombers, in particular of sheltering one of the suspected bombers. In telephone conversations monitored by wiretaps and electronic bugs for weeks by Italian authorities last year, Chabarou and an Egyptian man who claimed to have organized the Madrid bombings discuss what investigators believe was a terrorist plot to be carried out by someone currently in France.
Particularly distressing for Belgian investigators is that four of those standing trial were born and raised in Maaseik, a picturesque 13th-century Flemish-speaking town of 24,000 on Belgium's eastern border with the Netherlands, where they were also arrested.
A small Moroccan population has lived here since the 1950s, when the region needed low-cost workers for the now defunct coal mines. There are no slums here. Even the poorest area of town has clean streets and flower boxes in the windows.
The first visible sign of Islamic radicalization came in the past few years, when a handful of Muslim women began appearing in public with their faces veiled in black.
"I started received phone calls from the people of the city," recalled the mayor of Maaseik, Jan Creemers. "'There is something bizarre happening here, we see strange veiled women,' they said."
The city imposed a fine of $150 on any woman who refused to reveal her face, arguing that it was a security issue. The only woman in town who refused was the wife of Bouloudo.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 01:13 ||
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Iraq has been through a tempestuous time of late - and then came Jeremy Clarkson. The BBC presenter was the latest "celebrity" to make a whirlwind visit to the country and has left speaking glowingly of his experience of covering combat. Mr Clarkson, who was accompanied by the Sunday Times restaurant and television reviewer AA Gill, was on a fact-finding mission and has told the British military how he came under fire several times in one day. After mortar rounds landed at a British base, the motoring journalist told a British officer "Don't worry, this happens to me quite often wherever I go." Mr Clarkson also described how the aircraft he and Mr Gill were travelling in came under fire in central Iraq. Undaunted by his experience, Mr Clarkson appear to have craved further excitement. At one point during his visit to Basra he is said to have asked the British military to organise the blowing up of a car. He was told, however, that staging explosions in Iraq of all places was not a good idea.
The ancient myth has it that a person entering the maze will never find the way out. As if that were not terrifying enough, inside the maze lives the beast whose special appetite is for the young. The maze is a cluster of tricks, paths to nowhere, the realm of dead ends. There is no escape. The young must fear being eaten alive, but an eternity of false exits threatens everyone. Colorful - and oh so skeery.
The maze is a daunting metaphor, an image of psychological imprisonment. At night, the dream of the maze comes to every sleeper, involving movement through a string of corridors that lead only into other corridors. Humans can be afraid even in the absence of the thing that kills. Not getting out can be terrifying enough. Dreams in which the monster actually appears, with child's blood on its teeth, have a simpler function -- to awaken the knowledge that the future itself can be at risk. Marvel at the word-smithing expertise with which they frighten children and Moonbats. Positively "Dark and stormy night" quality.
For ancient Athens, the maze was on the island of Crete, and the monster was the Minotaur. For America, the maze is in Iraq, and the monster is labeled "insurgency." This is no myth, no metaphor, no dream. The war is America's prison. Our politics are paralyzed now because no one can imagine the way out. Youthful GIs and Marines hustle from one dead end to another, from the false exit of Iraqi "sovereignty" to the trap door of the constitutional vote to the trick mirror of Iraqi armed forces that can take over "security." This string of exitless corridors leads our troops ever deeper into the maze, more at the mercy of the devouring monster than ever. So how's he doing? You a'skeered of those a'skeery quotes?
Just as Athens sent its boys and girls to feed the Minotaur, keeping the beast appeased and far away, so -- just so -- does Washington. But in our circumstance, the sacrificial offering of the young is not quite working. Here is the ironic surprise that only recently dawns on the United States: We have followed our young ones into the maze. We are a lost nation, right behind them. Or lost in a nightmare of Tranzi fog, methinks.
Iraq is far away, but its maze transcends locality. US foreign policy is the maze now; so is the evening news, and so are the pages of the newspapers that arrive each morning. We sit at our breakfast tables wide awake, yet the feeling of dreams is over everything. The corridors of American consciousness open only into other corridors. We hustle from one threshold to the next, busier than ever, but we never come out. This war was the entrance into a world with no exit. Those who oppose the war and those who support it are alike in feeling a vast demoralization. And if it remains true that, of Americans, the literal violence of the monster consumes only the uniformed young, the rest of us have begun to devour ourselves. A fair description of the panic and fears drinking Kool Aid generates. Self-description by the self-loathing.
We were so afraid that some awful thing would come at us from outside our walls. It didn't have to. The walls defined us, walls that open only into other walls. No wonder the Democrats have nothing to say. No wonder the Republicans are reduced to whining about the indictments of their leaders. The president has given up pretending that he has a clue. Like a pink-eyed mouse in a laboratory, he makes his blind circuit through the maze of his own limited imagination. Unlike the president, the laboratory mouse knows better than to pretend its panicked running reflects the virtue of steadfastness. This is how the nation's leadership behaves when it sees no way out of the horror it has created. And here he hits closer to home than he realizes, for the danger, indeed, originates from within: it is the MSM ilk that spawned this tripe.
How else might citizens think of this situation? There is the maze, with its false trails and dead ends, a geography of despair. But in the dream life of humans, and in the store of metaphor, there is something else -- a labyrinth. In common parlance the words are interchangeable, but there is a difference, and it is instructive. A labyrinth is winding and mysterious but has only one pathway, no tricks, and no cul-de-sacs. To follow this trail in patience and humility is to come, eventually, to a center, which is the knowledge of contemplative truth. The answer is to ignore you - or run you out of the country, tarred and feathered, on a rail.
Purposeful walking is the opposite of panicked flight. That is why labyrinths are on the floors of cathedrals, not prisons. To find the way into the heart of the labyrinth is, simultaneously, to find the way out. The labyrinth, therefore, answers the maze. How do we leave Iraq? By reversing ourselves and simply leaving. Looking for traction... quagmire is in decline, wearing the burning tire necklace of ridicule it deserves. So, um, okay... labyrinth, anyone?
#1
Ooooh, someone's studied Classic Lit'rachah... and can write at a high school level. There is a small amount of creativity in the choice of maze as metaphor, rather than the cliched quagmire. But the metaphor was overused in the essay, and the final paragraph was not well-reasoned nor well-connected to the previous imagery. One can almost hear the writer gasping for breath as he rounds third base, then misses on the slide into home plate. I'd give it a C+ for the attempt.
#9
SJB, some teachers and schools have higher standards than others. But I suspect even at your school you wouldn't have actually been rendered deceased just for writing such a breathless piece of trash. ;-)
Settling a score, Louis J. Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under President Bill Clinton and in the first six months of the Bush presidency, asserts in a new book that Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, was "basically a second-tier player" who had little access to power and was in no position to issue credible warnings in advance of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"If he was rushing around the executive branch trying to make a case that we were in imminent danger of a terrorist attack on our shores, he wasn't trying to make that case with me," Mr. Freeh writes of Mr. Clarke in a memoir to be published this week called "My F.B.I.: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton and Fighting the War on Terror." The publisher is St. Martin's Press.
In his own book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," published last year, Mr. Clarke describes himself as a herald of the dangers of terrorism and paints a scathing picture of Mr. Freeh and the F.B.I., criticizing the former director and his agency as ignoring the possibility of terrorism in this country.
Mr. Freeh says that incidents involving the two of them that Mr. Clarke describes in his book never occurred and that the Clarke book can be fairly described as "bad facts and no access."
Mr. Clarke was traveling over the weekend and did not respond to messages left on his office phone and his cellphone.
Mr. Freeh's accounts in his own book of the events leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the bureau's antiterrorism activities add little to his public testimony before investigating panels and articles he wrote about the topic.
Far from ignoring terrorist threats, Mr. Freeh writes, the F.B.I. under his directorship was "all but obsessed with terrorism and its proponents."
But the bureau was hamstrung, Mr. Freeh says, because Congress never provided sufficient money for a good computer system, a strong counterterrorism staff or Arabic translators. In terms of technology, "we were in the Dark Ages," he says.
While "you can always do the job better in hindsight," Mr. Freeh writes, "I'm proud of the way I ran the F.B.I."
Mr. Freeh also uses his book to fan the flames of his incendiary relationship with Mr. Clinton.
"With Bill Clinton," Mr. Freeh writes in a chapter called "Bill and Me," "the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones, never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting, it was leading him in the wrong direction, and he lacked the discipline to pull back once he found himself stepping into trouble. Worse, he had been behaving that way so long that the closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out."
Mr. Freeh describes how he argued unsuccessfully for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Mr. Clinton's fund-raising practices during the 1996 campaign and says he could never communicate with the president because "with him, it always seemed to be personal."
It was the campaign finance issue and conspicuous leaks of Mr. Freeh's private memorandums on the subject that led to the complete deterioration of the director's relationship with the president.
Mr. Freeh writes that from the outset of his tenure, he insisted on an arm's-length relationship with Mr. Clinton, going so far as to return the pass he had been given that would have allowed him to come and go from the White House without signing in and out.
"It might have come as a surprise to the man who hired me, but I didn't take the job of F.B.I. director so I could roll over and play dead whenever it became convenient for the White House," he writes.
Describing Mr. Clinton's actions that led to his impeachment, Mr. Freeh writes, "Just when I thought things couldn't get any more outlandish, along came Monica Lewinsky and turned the White House into a theater of the absurd."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 01:32 ||
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#2
Freeh joins a long list of Clarke foes. The list includes Tommy Frank, George Tenet, and there is a glaring reason why Clarke's role in the Bush Administration was diminished.
Don't forget Richard Clarke is a special terrorist advisor for ABC News.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/10/2005 1:43 Comments ||
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#3
Keep in mind too that NY Slimes published at least 3 commentary pieces by Clarke over the past 18 months.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/10/2005 1:46 Comments ||
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#4
Lol, CA. All I can say is, well, so what? Nobody made them publish this - much less without the usual lame scare quotes, snide asides, unsourced slurs, etc. that we've come to consider normal for the Slimes. I just found it a bit surprising, that's all. It's okay if I'm surprised and you're not. Have fun - you don't need me to rip 'em a new one, heh. Please do. :)
#5
Franks wrote in his Bio, that he
NEVER recieved even ONE actionable piece of intel from Clarke.
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. and General Henry H. Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both Clintoon appointees, saw him as a non asset.. lol.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
10/10/2005 2:29 Comments ||
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#6
"during the 1996 campaign and says he could never communicate with the president because "with him, it always seemed to be personal."
And there we have slick Willy's main problem in a nutshell.
Posted by: Evert V. in NL ||
10/10/2005 3:52 Comments ||
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#7
Clarke is a supreme tactician and strategist unsurpassed in his understanding of the terrain on which the struggle is waged. He is unequalled in his ability to combat foes and engage in creative asymetrical warfare using all the assets available to him. Probably the finest bureaucratic infighter of his generation. As for national security, a null.
#9
Ahhh...Secretary of Defense William (Bill?) S. Cohen; now THAT was a SECDEF what am; fo' sho'! Gittin' giggy with his FINE, high-yeller troph. A pure Stud, and one patriotic American. On that same watch, we had mad maddy. She jis love dem brooch pins she collected (expected) from dem oppressed peoples in dem sub-third world countries. She B a patriot 2!! Right On!
Article comes complete with quotes from Tommy Chong!
The FBI, famous for its straight-laced crime-fighting image, is considering whether to relax its hiring rules over how often applicants could have used marijuana or other illegal drugs earlier in life. Some senior FBI managers have been deeply frustrated that they could not hire applicants who acknowledged occasional marijuana use in college, but in some cases already perform top-secret work at other government agencies, such as the CIA or State Department. FBI Director Robert Mueller will make the final decision. "We can't say when or if this is going to happen, but we are exploring the possibility," spokesman Stephen Kodak said The change would ease limits about how often â and how many years ago â applicants for jobs such as intelligence analysts, linguists, computer specialists, accountants and others had used illegal drugs. The rules, however, would not be relaxed for FBI special agents, the fabled "G-men" who conduct most criminal and terrorism investigations.
So this 'change' is no change at all.
Also, the new plan would continue to ban current drug use. Current rules prohibit the FBI from hiring anyone who used marijuana within the past three years or more than 15 times ever. They also ban anyone who used other illegal drugs, such as cocaine or heroin, within the past 10 years or more than five times. The new FBI proposal would judge applicants based on their "whole person" rather than limiting drug-related experiences to an arbitrary number. It would consider the circumstances of a person's previous drug use, such as their age, and the likelihood of future usage. The relaxed standard already is in use at most other U.S. intelligence agencies. The proposed FBI change also reflects cultural and generational shifts in attitudes toward marijuana and other drugs, even as the Bush administration has sought to establish links between terrorists and narcotics.
"I don't think you could find anybody who hasn't tried marijuana, and I take a lot of credit for that," said Tommy Chong, the comedian whose films with Cheech Marin provided over-the-top portrayals of marijuana culture during the 1980s. "They're going to have to change their policy."
You tell 'em, National Security Advisor Chong...
An agency's attitude toward drug use has been blamed for unexpected consequences. The CIA forced one of its officers, Edward Lee Howard, to resign in May 1983 after he failed a polygraph test and disclosed his drug use in Colombia during 1975 when he was a Peace Corps volunteer. Howard defected to the Soviet Union in 1985 after he was accused of espionage activities that spy hunters believe were driven by resentment over his forced resignation.
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer, loser.
"I had been totally honest about each and every misdeed in my past, including my drug use in South America and my occasional abuse of alcohol," Howard wrote in his 1995 memoirs. He died in July 2002 at his home outside Moscow.
Of natural causes, Comrade?
Some other federal agencies also have tough marijuana policies. The Drug Enforcement Administration will not hire applicants as agents who used illegal drugs, although it makes exceptions for admitting "limited youthful and experimental use of marijuana." The DEA, however, permits no prior use of harder drugs.
#2
"I had been totally honest about each and every misdeed in my past, including my drug use in South America and my occasional abuse of alcohol"
dittos...sorta.
I have lied my ass off had been totally honest about each and every misdeed in my past, including my drug use in Hawaii, Mexico, Morocco, Europe, Asia, South America, North America, Space Shuttle and my occasional abuse of alcohol. *ahem*..and where do I get an application.
#3
Anybody got that Whizinator I lent out last week?
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/10/2005 1:31 Comments ||
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#4
Hey, it's much more important that we hire people smart enough to lie about their youthful mistakes than it is to hire those who are honest enough to acknowledge them.
#7
Also, the new plan would continue to ban current drug use. Current rules prohibit the FBI from hiring anyone who used marijuana within the past three years or more than 15 times ever.
Good Heavens, what kid of braindead BS is this? I mean, who counts their usage of drugs??? And it's very likely that someone that has smoked weed has done so more than fifteen times. When I smoked it in high school, I know for a fact it was more than that.
#9
So, like 14 times in each alternate universe is cool. Do they have any rules about the weed being soaked in liquid O? How about layered with O tarball chunks. Or hash... Or peyote...
I'm thinking they really don't know dick about dope... Or people, for that matter. I know straights, never did anything in their lives and sport degrees and such, yet are totally fucked up, worthless, untrustworthy scumbags. And dopers upon a time, who design unbelievably sophisticated microcircuits, can be trusted with the Nuke Football, and have more honor in a single cell than the entire mass of a Mass Senator.
It's an individual thingy, ABC cookbooks rules are for simpletons.
Contestant: "I'll take Liberal Physics for $200, Alex."
Alex: "The answer is: a black hole that bends truth rather than light."
Contestant: "What is a Mass Senator?"
Alex: "CORRECT!"
#12
LOL, PD. I've always held that one of the main we reasons we hosed 9-11 is that the hiring rules for the FBI and CIA forced them to hire essentially un-clever, un-street smart people. This in turn created a culture that was obsessively rules oriented (I can't circumvent the "wall" because it would be wrong!) and uncreative (let's face it, the guys with the broad shoulders, jutting jaws, and piercing eyes, never had to scheme to get anything). The guys that I knew that went into the FBI after military service were grade-A individuals, but had never had a run-in with a street gang, or knew what a prison tattoo looked like, or what a drug transaction looked like. The were All-American, straight-arrow, never did a bad thing in their lives kinds of dudes. To say that they might have a hard time understanding the mindset of the enemy is not an understatement. It was widely rumored that besides ex-military types, the FBI and CIA were recruiting Mormons because they were among the few demographic groups that could reliably pass the screens. (Although it seems that they were also recruiting guys who had a thing for middle-aged Chinese broads.)
The only way that I know to fix this sort of cultural dead end is to start over. Find a Wild Bill Donvan type of guy and let him recruit his own people. Ease the FBI out of the domestic counter-intel business as the new organization starts to show some success.
Able Danger seems to be precisely this sort of effort. It was staffed by Reservists instead of lifers. It was a conscious attempt to break through the oldthink of the existing intel organizations. It did well until it came to the attention of the Clintonista Tranzi lawyers, who promptly shut it down. There seems to have been a attempt by Rumsfeld to create such an organization in the Pentagon, but he was foiled when established interests discovered its existence and forced the resignation of its chief for alleged unprofessionalism.
#13
"Although it seems that they were also recruiting guys who had a thing for middle-aged Chinese broads."
LOL! I know the Mormons, having "been" one from 12-16 and even being dragged from Taxes (intentional) to Newtah at 14. They are good folks, but straight they be. There is a fair Asian population in MormonLand - which may be part of that accurate, though puzzling fact, heh. I dated a Japanese girl who was 1st gen American, not unusual there.
Excellent comments...
I think it takes people who are self-directed, but respect command (not demand) authority, have (had) strong curiosity, got it satisfied and realized it led nowhere, so they dumped it and kept looking for personal "answers". What are the questions? Lol - utterly subjective, heh.
So turf wars killed Rummy's attempt? Sheesh - he'll have to go outside the loop then, if he wants something of that nature and he's not willing to wade into the battle and kick a lot of narrow ass. I wouldn't survive 10 minutes in the Pentagon, given the BS to results ratio it seems exists there. We used to say the only officer you could really trust was a Major - who had been passed over at least once for light Col. See few reasons to challenge that pearl of wisdom. Exceptions, such as LTC Kurilla exist, of course, but -> I <- never met one... and that includes the 3 ex-Generals I came to know through a particular job. The One Star was the best of the three, lol. Sigh.
#14
I get it now. This is why there has been such a shortage of intelligence agents and border patrol! It's the same reason a draft would no longer work. No one qualifies.
#19
I completely agree with .com about the need for those hunting bad people to have had some experience on the wild side of life. No doubt I would fit the desired FBI profile -- except for the broad shoulders bit (I literally only inhaled the one time, but it made me cough). But I was walking around downtown once with my formerly wild brother, and would have walked right into the middle of a drug deal if he hadn't shushed me and led me away. I never saw anything because I didn't know what to look for.
#20
Hey .com. I tried to reply about 20 times and kept getting sent to Roadside America, after many attempts to ensure that I wasn't using language that might offend even the most delicate among us. Sheesh.
#22
11A5S - It's Fred's new "I know what you're thinking - don't do it!" filter... Lol - I dunno, bro, what that is about. Mebbe there's a Mod with an itchy trigger finger...
CHILDREN'S favourite Smurfs are wiped out in a gruesome bloodbath in a new episode of the cartoon made for the United Nations.
The UN is a cartoon organization, just not as realistic.
Stunned adults and weeping children watched a preview in disbelief as Papa Smurf and Smurfette were blown to bits when bombs rained down on their village.
Oh, be still my heart!
Only baby Smurf survives the carnage, far worse than anything dished out by their usual enemy Gargamel.
Now, if they'd only go after that purple dinosaur
The chilling film, produced by the UN children's organisation Unicef Belgium, warns, 'Don't let war affect the lives of children'.
Nice to see they're spending all that money on something useful instead of wasting it on food
It will be broadcast after the 9pm watershed. It was approved by the Smurfs late creator Peyo and aims to raise £70,000 for former child soldiers in Burundi.
Wonder if we can find this video online? I know a lot of people who'd love to see smurf guts splattered all over the screen.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/10/2005 13:52 ||
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Papa Smurf meets Mr. Bill? Oh no-o-o-o-o-o-o...
#5
If they promise to let me nuke the Teletubbies, I'll be Colonel Tibbets ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/10/2005 16:50 Comments ||
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#6
As Rush said, if they show terrorists sawing the head off papa smurf and the baby girl smurfs getting raped by the terrorists, it would be more realistsic.
B-2s unless I miss my guess, since the little blue terrorists were caught by surprise.
They undoubtedly had it coming.
Hell, they were probably celebrating the anniversary of 9-11 or the latest beheading video when the bombs served a cease and desist order.
Thanks, Unicef, for finally showing the world what happens if you piss us off, and that human(?) shields are useless, with or without a media presence.
#12
"...bombs rained down on their village...Burundi": is this a PC way of arguing that its the USA and Dubya's Fascist Imperialist air forces that wiped out an innocent, enviro-correct African = World village ergo the USA is responsible for local Burundi warlords going ona rampage and recruiting child soldiers???
#13
Wonder if we can find this video online? I know a lot of people who'd love to see smurf guts splattered all over the screen.
No way!!
Make love not war>
With U.S. mediation, Shiite Muslim and Kurdish officials negotiated with Sunni Arab leaders Sunday over possible last-minute additions to Iraq's proposed constitution, trying to win Sunni support ahead of next weekend's crucial referendum.
But the sides remained far apart over basic issues -- including the federalism that Shiites and Kurds insist on, but that Sunnis fear will lead to the country's eventual break-up. And copies of the constitution were already being passed out to the public.
Though major attacks in the insurgent campaign to disrupt the referendum have waned in recent days, violence killed 13 Iraqis Sunday.
In one attack, masked gunmen in police commando uniforms burst into a school in the northern town of Samarra, pulled a Shiite teacher out of his classroom and shot him dead in the hallway as students watched from their desks, police said. A suicide car bomb killed a woman and a child in the southern city of Basra.
A U.S. Marine was killed by a roadside bomb in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, the military announced. It was the ninth American death during a series of offensives waged in western Iraq seeking to knock al-Qaida militants and other insurgents off balance and prevent attacks during Saturday's national vote on the constitution.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said the number of foreign militants involved in Iraq's insurgency had fallen to around 900, from as many as 3,000 three months ago.
Their ranks have fallen because of deaths inflicted by U.S. and Iraqi military offensives -- but also because al-Qaida in Iraq has started sending fighters to other Arab nations to build terror networks there, Jabr said in an interview with the Arab daily Sharq al-Awsat.
As Sunni-led insurgents staged attacks to discourage Iraqis from voting in the referendum, the government launched a campaign to persuade Iraqis to go to the polls despite the threats -- and despite calls by some Sunni Arab leaders for a boycott.
"We think (a boycott) would weaken Iraq because the only way that Iraq can recover is done by concentrating on the political process, writing the constitution and participating in it," government spokesman Laith Kubba said. "Any act that calls for violence or boycotting would deviate the country from its course."
Many Sunni Arab leaders are calling on their followers to turn out in force to vote in the referendum -- but to vote "no" to defeat a draft they say will break Iraqi into pieces, with Shiite and Kurdish mini-states in the north and south and the Sunni minority left poor and weak in a central zone.
Though a minority, Sunnis can defeat the charter if they garner a two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces -- and they have the potential to make that threshold in four provinces. But turnout is key, since they must outweigh Shiite and Kurdish populations in some of those areas.
Even with copies of the official text of the constitution being distributed to voters to consider before the polls, all sides were debating last-minute changes in a bid to swing some Sunnis to a "yes" vote. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani met with Sunni Arab leaders Saturday and Sunday trying to convince them on the changes, officials from all sides said.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad "has a central role in the talks," said Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman, though he would not say if Khalizad was actually attending the meetings.
U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but have confirmed in recent weeks that Khalilzad was involved in discussions over last-minute "tweaks" to the charter.
The United States is eager to see the passage of the constitution, since its rejection would prolong Iraq's political instability for months -- and could hamper the U.S. military's plans to start pulling out some troops next year.
But there appeared to be too wide a gulf to get Sunni leaders to drop their opposition. While Shiite and Kurdish parties were willing to make some cosmetic additions to the draft, they rejected what they called central changes sought by Sunnis, particularly ones aimed at reducing the strong powers the charter gives to regional administrations over the central government.
"In general, there is no problem with making additions because it doesn't contradict the principles of the constitution. But the amendments the Sunnis are demanding ... are basic changes in these issues that absolutely won't be accepted," Sheik Jalaleddin al-Saghir, an official in the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which dominates the government, told The Associated Press.
The Sunnis want changes to articles outlining the purging of members of Saddam Hussein's former Baath Party -- most of whose major figures were Sunnis -- and others allowing provinces to join together into "regions" under a single administration that would have considerable powers.
"We don't want a federal system. It shouldn't be a system of regions, it's a system of provinces," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, said. He said the Sunnis want the articles on de-Baathification rewritten to "not single out the Baath Party."
Shiite and Kurdish parties staunchly support the federalism provisions. Many of the same issues brought up by Sunnis were the subject of rancorous debate during the drafting of the constitution, which ended with the Shiites and Kurds approving the draft for the referendum over Sunni opposition.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 01:23 ||
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With U.S. mediation, Shiite Muslim and Kurdish officials negotiated with Sunni Arab leaders Sunday over possible last-minute additions to Iraq's proposed constitution, trying to win Sunni support ahead of next weekend's crucial referendum.
Enough already. The Sunnis should have learned their lesson the first damn time - no play, no say. Simple as that.
The two raised voices bounce off the latticed walls of the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad, where hundreds of Sunnis have gathered for the first night of Ramadan. Korans snap shut, and heads turn toward the corner, where a quiet discussion among a group of Sunnis is getting contentious. The subject preoccupies Sunnis across Iraq: whether to vote in this week's referendum on a new constitution. "The best way for us to show our opposition is to boycott," says Majid al-Bayati, 63, a retired lawyer, as some congregants mutter approval. "It's a complete waste of time." Upon hearing this, construction worker Samir Abdel-Haadi, 33, pushes back. "That is the kind of thinking that got us where we are today," he says, referring to the elections last January that produced a victory for religious Shi'ite parties. This time around, he says, Sunnis should stand up and be counted.
The Bush Administration would probably hail this kind of exchange as a sign that some of Iraq's Sunnis--who make up 20% of the population but the bulk of the anti-U.S. insurgency--are willing to participate in a political process they have until now largely rejected. But the Sunni dilemma reveals deep anxieties that cannot be resolved simply by holding elections. Whether or not Sunnis come out to vote in large numbers in Saturday's referendum, the underlying tensions that have pulled Iraq to the brink of civil war aren't likely to disappear. Few Sunnis have faith in the U.S.-sponsored political process or the Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders who have risen to power in Baghdad. The vote on the constitution--which Sunni leaders oppose because it paves the way for a semiautonomous region in the south (like the one already created in the Kurdish north)--may serve only to heighten Sunni estrangement, since it will probably pass no matter how many Sunnis come out to vote against it. It's no wonder that ordinary Sunnis increasingly believe they have no say in the political events sweeping through their country. "There is a sense that we are losing control of our destiny," says Hatem Mukhlis, a prominent Sunni politician. "We feel marginalized, victimized and completely alone."
For the U.S., those are worrisome sentiments. The U.S. exit strategy in Iraq hinges on convincing moderate Sunnis that it's in their interests to embrace democracy and accept political setbacks with grace. Few Sunnis say they support the terrorist atrocities that are perpetrated daily by followers of al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, but many still regard attacks against U.S. and Iraqi troops as legitimate resistance. At the Abu Hanifa mosque, the most prominent Sunni mosque in Baghdad, a banner hangs from the clock tower calling on worshippers to pray in the name of Muhammad, imam of the mujahedin. Over the door to the main prayer hall, another banner paraphrases the Koran, exhorting God to deliver the faithful from the infidels--a not-so-subtle call to drive U.S. troops out of Iraq. Says Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer, the highest-ranked Sunni in the government: "An angry community that feels helpless and powerless--it's not hard to see how the terrorists and insurgents will exploit the situation."
And yet while expressions of Sunni anger are common in Iraq, identifying the precise sources of that anger and what it will take to defuse them remains a huge challenge. Though a numerical minority in Iraq, the Sunnis have ruled the country for centuries, giving them a strong sense of entitlement--and an equally powerful resentment at their abruptly reduced status. Sunni leaders couch their demands in politically correct language, citing specific grievances and mistreatment by the Shi'ite majority, but in private they argue that Iraq would not be experiencing its current convulsions had the U.S. left the Sunnis in charge. Nazer al-Koudsi, a Sunni political activist in Baghdad, voices a common Sunni perception when he describes the current government as "a mix of Shi'ite fanatics from the south and Kurdish traitors from the north, none of whom have any experience in ruling Iraq." In that view, the Sunnis are the preordained ruling class, groomed for the task under Ottoman and British colonial tutelage, while the Shi'ite majority are ignorant, superstitious rabble.
The Sunnis' belief in their natural right to rule makes the current reality all the more depressing. At the Abu Hanifa mosque, al-Bayati and Abdel-Haadi bemoan the Sunni plight. "Look at how we live now, like prisoners," says al-Bayati. Outside the mosque, the Adhamiya district has fallen silent at 8 p.m., a contrast with Ramadans past, when the neighborhood came alive at the end of the day's fasting. Now, few Sunnis dare step out for fear of harassment by Iraqi security forces made up mainly of Shi'ites. The security measures are probably warranted: Adhamiya has a history of harboring Sunni insurgents. But locals don't see it that way. "We are being singled out," says Abdel-Haadi. "If you are a Sunni, the government automatically assumes you must be a terrorist."
The Sunni sense of victimhood is not entirely imaginary: Iraqi police and security forces are certainly guilty of profiling. Hundreds of innocent Sunnis have been detained in antiterrorist sweeps and later released without apology. In recent weeks, Sunni groups have complained that people picked up by the Interior Ministry's special forces have been turning up dead, their bodies bearing signs of torture and execution. The assassinations of many Sunnis have been attributed to Shi'ite death squads; the government seems to be doing nothing to investigate, much less apprehend, the guilty. "Sunnis feel that they are not being provided the protection of the state," says Mukhlis, the Sunni politician, "and instead the state is protecting their killers."
But while the Sunnis are swift to air their grievances and point to everything that's wrong with the government, few have articulated an alternative, democratic vision for Iraq. Community leaders have not yet figured how they can best fit into the new order. They have a strong sense of what they don't want--a government that's run by Shi'ite religious parties, a constitution that weakens the center and hands more power to non-Sunni provinces, the presence of foreign soldiers on Iraqi soil. But their ability to push their interests was damaged by their boycott of the January election. It gave the Shi'ites and Kurds disproportionate influence over the drafting of the constitution, which Sunni leaders have refused to support.
Some Sunni leaders acknowledge that the boycott was a mistake and are urging their followers to turn out this Saturday--to vote against the constitution. In Sunni-dominated Anbar and Salahuddin provinces, up to 75% of eligible voters have registered to vote. If two-thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote no, the draft constitution will be thrown out and a new government, elected on Dec. 15, will go back to the drawing board to produce a new charter. The Iraqi parliament tried to change the rules last week so that it would take two-thirds of the registered voters--not just those who actually vote--to defeat the constitution, but reversed itself after the move was condemned by the U.N. Still, if Sunnis do turn out in high numbers and the referendum passes despite their opposition, the losers probably won't be philosophical in defeat. "What worries me the most is the scenario in which the Sunnis make a maximum effort and fall just a bit short," says Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The possible reaction is, 'It's all rigged against us.' That's the troubling scenario, and it's also the most likely."
Moderate Sunni leaders are pushing for an 11th-hour compromise on the draft constitution's wording under which the Shi'ites and Kurds drop their key demand for federalism in exchange for Sunni support. "We will keep negotiating until the last minute," says Saleh al-Mutlaq, the lead Sunni negotiator. "If we can get a compromise, our people will be happy to vote yes, and we can all move forward as Iraqis." But the Shi'ites and the Kurds have shown little inclination to compromise, and there is enough Sunni mistrust to fuel the insurgency for years. At the Abu Hanifa mosque, al-Bayati and Abdel-Haadi continue to argue over the way forward, with the younger man saying he is not prepared to give up on politics. "We have to be inside the system, not shouting on the outside," he says. But after a few more minutes of discussion, al-Bayati cuts him off and makes it clear that Sunnis like himself, at least, aren't ready to stop fighting. "There will be 20 drafts of the constitution," he says as he rises from the carpeted floor to leave. "But the last one will be written by the mujahedin."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 01:18 ||
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It was a dark and stormy night. I was out of prozac and my anxieties were increasing. Should I join the political process, or should I strap the bomb belt on my waist, take out a few baby strollers and just get it over with? I lit a cigarette and pondered the question.
#3
**Snort**
**giggle**
Sux when the shoe is on the other foot, Don't it, Hajji? While I weep for the kids that are going to be ground up, the rest of the idjits need a lesson in humility. I just hope the survivors actualy learn something.
Posted by: N Guard ||
10/10/2005 9:49 Comments ||
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#4
" I just hope the survivors actually learn something."
#6
Moderate Sunni leaders are pushing for an 11th-hour compromise on the draft constitution's wording under which the Shi'ites and Kurds drop their key demand for federalism in exchange for Sunni support. "We will keep negotiating until the last minute,"
It's the Souk thingy again, again and again. Maybe we should have given each of the 3 major factions 1 billion each and let them bargain their way to a constitution.
Calling armed insurgents "rats spreading disease among the people", Iraq's government on Sunday urged voters to approve the new constitution in a referendum next week and stand firm against militant efforts to taint it. Violence has escalated ahead of the October 15 vote on the charter, which is backed by most Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders but strongly opposed by much of the Sunni Arab community, elements of which are in open revolt against the U.S.-backed government. Sunni insurgents have detonated roadside bombs, launched suicide attacks, kidnapped people and vowed to step up violence ahead of the constitution vote, which many fear will seal the decline of Sunni influence in Iraq that began with the overthrow of former President Saddam Hussein.
Chief government spokesman Laith Kubba on Sunday said the bloody campaign, which has intensified in recent months, should not sway Iraq's hopes of establishing a new, democratic state. "The people we are confronting are rats, spreading disease and death among the people," Kubba told a news conference. Although the rats are small, the disease they are carrying is harmful and there is no cure except confrontation."
Sunni Arab political groups appear to have backed down from earlier threats to boycott the referendum vote, with many urging their followers to turn out and vote against the draft. But Iraq's political landscape makes it unlikely that even a massive Sunni "No" vote would be able to prevent passage of the charter by the Shi'ite majority and its ethnic Kurdish allies.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2005 00:00 ||
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Via JihadWatch
Has al-Qaida started operating in the Gaza Strip? A leaflet distributed in Khan Yunis over the weekend by al-Qaida's "Palestine branch" announced that the terrorist group has begun working towards uniting the Muslims under one Islamic state.
"The Muslim nation has been subjected, through various periods, to conspiracies by the infidels," the leaflet said. "[The infidels] have brought down the Islamic Caliphate, dividing the nation into small and weak states. They also managed to dilute the Islamic and character of the nation."
The leaflet said unity was the only way for Muslims to achieve victory over their enemies, adding that the terrorist group's chief goal was to enforce Islamic law in the entire world. "Our efforts are now focused on establishing a strong and unified Muslim nation where love prevails among all its members," it added.
The leaflet, signed by al-Qaida of Jihad in Palestine, is the latest indication of al-Qaida's effort to establish itself in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal from the area.
On the eve of disengagement, a number of rockets were fired at the former settlements of Neveh Dekalim and Ganei Tal. An announcement claiming responsibility on behalf of al-Qaida members in the Gaza Strip was made by three masked gunmen who appeared in a videotape.
"We stress that this attack comes in the context of the Islamic jihad launched by our comrades in al-Qaida," the masked men said in the statement. They also vowed to step up their attacks on Israel.
Palestinians reacted with mixed feelings to reports that al-Qaida had begun operating in the Gaza Strip. "The Palestinian Authority is responsible for this new phenomenon," said a resident of Gaza City named Nizar. "Extremist rhetoric in some areas, especially in mosques, produces such cases. The Palestinian Authority is to blame because it is preventing economic development and prosperity, particularly in the refugee camps, where it is easy to recruit unemployed and frustrated young men."
According to Nizar, some areas in the southern Gaza Strip are already beginning to resemble Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban. "This is very disturbing," he remarked. "You see more and more women covering their faces and in the mosques you hear extremely radical sermons. The people there are behaving as if they were members of a tribe in Afghanistan."
Another Gaza City resident, Fadel, urged al-Qaida to stop tampering with the future of the Palestinians. "They're not welcome here," he said. "Their presence will only destroy our lives."
A Palestinian security official in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post that the al-Qaida members were actually Hamas activists operating under the name of Osama bin Laden's organization. "They are serving the interests of the Israel Right, which has predicted that al-Qaida would start operating in the Gaza Strip after the disengagement," he said.
However, some Palestinians welcomed the news about al-Qaida's presence in Gaza. "This is good news and we welcome al-Qaida in Palestine â from the sea to the river," said a Khan Yunis resident named Ayman.
Last week al-Qaida's new on-line television channel branded PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas a "collaborator with the Jews," accusing him of assisting Israel in its war on Hamas. Rest of 2 page article at link.
Posted by: ed ||
10/10/2005 15:25 ||
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Well, Paleostinians, you again have a leadership problem. If you want to hook up with losers, hey, blow yourselves up knock yourselves out. That is the wonderful thing about freedom of choice. You "drove out" the Israelis, and you now have the beginnings of a free-fire zone new country, with all of the rights, privelages and responsibilities and consequences that come with the territory, so to speak. Good luck t' ye.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/10/2005 16:19 Comments ||
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#2
Sounds like "Enduring Freedom - Gaza" for the future. Bring on SF.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/10/2005 18:12 Comments ||
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#3
Rolling Thunder II has a nice ring.
Posted by: ed ||
10/10/2005 18:14 Comments ||
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A planned meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been postponed at least until the end of the month. The meeting was stalled on Monday, after talks deadlocked over Israeli troop withdrawals in the West Bank and Palestinian prisoner releases.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2005 11:50 ||
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The presence of an al-Qaeda cell which infiltrated the Gaza Strip following Israel's August withdrawal from the territory is likely to feature high on the agenda of Tuesday's scheduled Israeli-Palestinian summit, according to an Arab newspaper. The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said Israeli premier Ariel Sharon is likely to ask Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas what steps are being taken to destroy the cell.
Several messages have appeared in Islamic Internet forums claiming that members of the al-Qaeda cell in Gaza handed out pamphlets at two mosques during last Friday's prayer time, while some of the newly constituted cell's statements have been distributed in the area around the Khan Yunis refugee camp.
Besides the threat posed by the al-Qaeda cell, Israel is also concerned that militants from the radical Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah have also taken advantage of the lax security conditions that followed the departure of Israeli troops to infiltrate the Strip.
Israeli intelligence officials have evidence that a high-ranking Hezbollah member, Qis Abid, is in the Egyptian town of Arisha close to the border with Gaza to plot fresh attacks against Israeli targets, together with representatives of the al-Aqsa Brigades, an armed Palestinian group linked to Abbas' Fatah faction.
According to Asharq al-Awsat, Israel will launch a huge military operation in Gaza to root out the militants from the Strip unless it receives assurances from Abbas that the PA will handle the matter.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/10/2005 09:53 ||
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The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said Israeli premier Ariel Sharon is likely to ask Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas what steps are being taken to destroy the cell.
If it's anything like his approach to Hamas, the answer is probably "not much".
No evidence suggests that the deadly earthquake that rocked Pakistan on Saturday injured or killed the worldâs top terror leader, Osama Bin Laden. And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
The quake shook the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Bin Laden is believed to be hiding. However, authorities at this point have no information indicating heâs been injured or killed, said a US official.
Bin Laden is now believed to be living a relatively isolated existence to evade capture. He was last seen publicly on a videotaped message before the November 2004 elections in US.
Meanwhile, scores of activists from an Islamist charity linked to a banned Pakistani terrorist militant organization died in the devastating earthquake. Good.
A spokesman for Jamat-ud-Dawa, a group drawn from the ranks of Lashkar, said the charityâs ammo dumps mosques, hospitals, schools, and terrorism training seminaries were obliterated in Saturdayâs earthquake. âMany of our members have been killed. They are in scores while several others are still trapped under the rubble,â the spokesman said yesterday.
#1
I remember some propaganda leaflets passed out in Afghanistan that showed Osama as mustached, but otherwise clean shaven, and wearing a cheap looking suit with wide lapels and a tie.
#2
I thought the Paki Nukes were sited about 90miles north of the capital.
That would put their silo's right in the earthquake zone. Wonder how they survived?
The Islamic school in Tenggulun has some of the most notorious alumni in the world, having been a place of learning, preaching and refuge to many of the key protagonists in the October 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people. Today, it has 150 students from all over the far-reaching archipelago and, according to its founder Muhammed Khozin, he teaches his students to do with words what his brothers chose to do with bombs.
Welcome to the breeding ground of radical Islam in Indonesia. It started with Jemaah Islamiah spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir's Ngruki school in Solo, Central Java, and has spread into other pesantren across the country. The schools are popular with poor families for their discipline and thorough religious curriculums. For the price of a cheap meal out in Australia, a family can send their son to this pesantren for a year. A boy from the island of Flores told The Australian his tuition cost 300,000 rupiah, about $40.
Al-Islam is on the outskirts of the village of Tenggulun, a two-hour drive west of Surabaya in East Java. Khozin, as well as being one of the school's founders, is the brother of three of the 2002 Bali bombers, Ali Gufron, known as Mukhlas, Amrozi and Ali Imron, who all attended and taught at the school. As head of one of Indonesia's most notorious families, he is keen to distance his community from the second Bali bombings, which he says are "different" to the first. His brand of Islam, he says, is different. He says the community has moved on and does not want to be linked to the new "tragedy".
But to Khozin, there is no difference in his ideology and his brothers'. The difference is in how they chose to act on their anger at Westerners flaunting their liberal values. He refers to the non-Muslim community as Kaffir Dhimmi, the name the prophet Mohammed gave to the non-Muslim communities. He says it is the responsibility of Muslims to fight this group by convincing them to behave with respect towards their Muslim neighbours. He says the fight should not be "physical" but a fight with words. Khozin does not believe that Westerners and Muslims can live side by side while Westerners continue to believe, for example, in allowing women to wear bikinis at the beach and to drink alcohol. It is a "morality war" brought on by Australians and Westerners in general refusing to respect his culture.
He said his school "prepares the student to make sure foreigners do not do that in Indonesia". You only have to talk to his son, 19-year-old Afif, to know that the young people coming through the Islamic schooling system take that message to heart and maybe even beyond. He says Bali will not be safe from terrorism until Australians and other Westerners visiting there behave in a way that is respectful of Muslim culture. Ask Afif what he wants to do when he grows up, the answer is simple: "Fight for Islam."
While Afif's uncles, Mukhlas -- the commander of the 2002 bombings -- and Amrozi, who played a key role procuring most of the equipment they needed, are facing the death penalty, he doesn't view what they did as wrong because they scared away many Westerners. He considers the Muslims who died as martyrs; he says the Westerners who died are not his concern because they were unbelievers. Police investigating the latest tragedy have not visited Khozin. "If they want to come here, that's OK, we have nothing to hide," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2005 00:00 ||
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One last time kid, get your damn foot off the desk.
JAKARTA: Indonesian Vice President Yusuf Kalla said on Sunday the government cannot ban an Islamic militant group blamed for the Bali bombings despite Australia's insistence it do so, because it never recognised it in the first place."If we have never recognised the existence of that organisation, how can we disband it?" Kalla was quoted as saying by the Detikcom online news service.
That makes sense, I guess. Not a lot of sense, but sense. In an Islamic sort of way...
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2005 00:00 ||
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Today's news is right out of the Saturday night live writer's trash cans. Too stupid even for the doped up SNL viewers. But then the dialog between Kalla and the OZ Ambo would make a great skit.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
10/10/2005 8:17 Comments ||
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Did Yusuf get a rim shot when he told that one?
Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the US officials have conveyed contradictory and ambiguous positions with regard to Iran's nuclear activities, noting that new negotiators are expected to join EU3 (Britain, France and Germany).
Asefi made the remark while speaking to domestic and foreign reporters during his weekly press conference, IRNA reported.
"Why is the United States not destroying its nuclear weapons if these are bad? Why does it not launch a global campaign to destroy nuclear weapons? We have repeatedly said Iran does not seek nuclear weapons. The United States wants to propagate a public policy that has no clear end," he said.
The spokesman also said US President George W. Bush has antagonized the Muslim world and "this will not be beneficial to the US administration."
He expressed his regret to the American people for having such a president.
Asefi urged US officials to seek the international public opinion, "if they were truly interested in knowing the views of the world about themselves."
Asefi also warmly felicitated International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed ElBaradei for winning this year's Nobel peace prize for his untiring efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
He urged ElBaradei to continue the IAEA's professional approach to resolving nuclear issues.
On the possibility of resuming nuclear negotiations with the EU3, he said, "Currently efforts are being made to name new participants to join in the negotiations which will be announced in the near future. We do not shun negotiations because we believe it will push forward our position. Other ways of resolving the issue such as making threats will bear no fruit."
Concerning the recent threats made against Iran by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the continuation of negotiations with Britain, Asefi said Iranian officials do not wish to keep Britain out of the nuclear talks.
"Britain?s threats against Iran were properly dealt with and we avoid mixing various matters. Nuclear negotiations are distinct from Britain's threats. Since we believe Britain is responsible for the unrest in southern Iran, they have no right to make claims against Iran as the accused party," he said. Talking trash and pretending the game is still on. Yewbetcha. Wish real hard and click your heels together 3 times. See who comes running to play another round... besides Elbaradei and the Keystone Cops IAEA.
A top US diplomat said on Sunday Washington was worried about Syrian interference in Iraq, Lebanon and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and said Damascus did not seem to be heeding US calls to keep out. David Welch also told reporters in Cairo that this month's release of a UN report on the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri would probably be an occasion for the world to send a signal to Syria about its "misbehaviour".
"Our worries are not just with respect to the situation in Iraq but also with respect to Syrian interference in Lebanon and its renewed interference in the situation of the Palestinians and the Israelis," said Welch, who is US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. "These are very, very difficult issues, and we would ask the Syrian government not to interfere in such matters. It appears they are not listening and it seems that this behaviour is not changing," he said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2005 00:00 ||
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..and said Damascus did not seem to be heeding US calls to keep out.
That's because the type of "call" issued by Washington doesn't have anything substantial behind it.
#2
Sure would be a shame if the unhappy Kurds in NE Syria started getting lots of arms and supplies, huh? Lots of stuff lying around in the desert, I hear...
The Left is fast losing patience with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
A section of the CPI-M, including party boss Prakash Karat, blames Singh personally for what it calls a marked pro-US tilt in foreign policy.
More specifically, it holds him responsible for India's surprise vote at the recent International Atomic Energy Agency meeting, which riled Iran so much that it accused India of betrayal.
Opinion in the CPI-M against the PM has hardened to such an extent that one cannot rule out their seeking his removal in the near future.
The Left is veering round to the view that if Singh persists going down the pro-West road, they will have to demand his replacement by a Congress leader with known leftist or socialist credentials.
Of course, the Communists have no intention, at least as for now, of withdrawing support to the UPA government.
With 60 of their members in the Lok Sabha, the UPA arrangement cannot survive for a day without their support. They can always insist on replacing Singh as the minimal price for their support though.
It would then be for the Congress leadership to decide whether it wants to continue with the UPA arrangement or go in for an early general election.
On his part, the PM has shown no inclination of succumbing to Left pressure on Iran, convinced the course adopted by India was correct. His reported decision to stick to that stand at the IAEA board meeting in November hasn't exactly helped either.
Posted by: john ||
10/10/2005 18:35 ||
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The cost of Principles.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
10/10/2005 19:53 Comments ||
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Wait, so PM Singh is the man behind our strategic alliance with India?
We have GOT to help him stay in power, somehow. This man seems to be the linchpin, and if India falls to the lefties...
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
10/10/2005 20:13 Comments ||
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The defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Finance Minister Chindabaram are also pro-US (both Chindabaram and Singh were educated at Harvard).
Strongly anti-US is the petroleum minister Mani Shankay Ayer. The Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is a senile leftist full of third world solidarity. He was educated at Peking University and was reported to have raised money for chinese interests during the 1962 Indo-China war.
The communist party boss Karat gets his orders straight from Beijing.
During the recent China-Japan problems he visited his masters in Beijing and returned to India to forment trouble. The Japanese had indicated intention to increase investment in India and decrease their dangerous reliance on Chinese manufacturing. The CPI formented strikes and walkouts at Japanese MNC owned plants in order to stop the Japanese investments.
Posted by: john ||
10/10/2005 20:53 Comments ||
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I assume they succeeded... (re: CPI vs. Japan)
Defence Minister and Finance Minister -- GOOD. So, how crucial are the petro minister and the FM?
Damn, don't tell me the commies have political headway here...
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
10/10/2005 21:19 Comments ||
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#5
They're both close to Sonia Gandhi. They routinely ignore the PM (who has no political base of his own).
The FM Natwar is senile though. He is stuck in the 1970s and refers to the "Soviet Union" often.
Manmohan Singh sent him to Africa and China to express third world solidarity (and get him out of the way) He did not know about the IAEA vote until too late.
The Petroleum minister is actively seeking to sabotage US ties. He is quite dangerous. He will try to get rid of the PM.
The defence minister is another story. He has his own support base and is close to the Nehru-Gandhi family. The anti-US elements can't touch him.
The main opposition party, the BJP has several pro-US figures so an election would not derail US ties (unless the communists manage to gather enough allies to form a governement of their own).
Posted by: john ||
10/10/2005 21:37 Comments ||
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Before the topic is closed...
They're both close to Sonia Gandhi. They routinely ignore the PM (who has no political base of his own). How much is the influence of the PM role? This is bad...
re: FM Natwar -- THANK GOSH
The Petroleum minister is actively seeking to sabotage US ties. He is quite dangerous. He will try to get rid of the PM.
Get him out of the way first?
The main opposition party, the BJP has several pro-US figures so an election would not derail US ties (unless the communists manage to gather enough allies to form a governement of their own).
Here's hoping the commies don't...
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
10/10/2005 23:35 Comments ||
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A new television series being broadcast around the Middle East tells the story of Arabs living in residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the militant Islamists who want to blow them up so they can collect their rewards in heaven -- 72 beautiful virgins. The show's message: terrorism is giving Islam a bad name, and Muslims are suffering because of the actions of a few.
The programs, which began last Tuesday on the first day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, have come under a blistering attack on the Internet in Arabic language chat rooms. The critics are demanding the Saudi-owned and Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, a popular Arabic satellite television station that bought the show and broadcasts it across the region, cancel it. Others lambasted its Syrian Muslim director and producer, Najdat Anzour, as an infidel for tarnishing the image of Islam. But still others have praised the groundbreaking series.
Perhaps the most controversial thing about the new program is its title: "Al-Hour Al-Ayn," Arabic for "Beautiful Maidens." Islamic militants have taken a reference in one of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and made it their belief that martyrs who die defending God and their honor will meet more than 70 virgins in paradise. For militants throughout the Middle East, suicide bombers are martyrs. The Quran, Islam's holy book, tells of beautiful maidens in paradise but does not mention any number. The Prophet's saying (or Hadith), adopted by militants, speaks of 72 virgins in heaven as a reward for virtuous men. But there is no mention of martyrs in the saying.
One of the show's writers, Abdullah Bjad, is a Saudi and self-described former militant who was consulted on religious aspects of the script. He said that just before one of the 2003 attacks on a residential compound in Saudi Arabia, an attacker who was in contact with his superiors was "heard on the mobile phone counting down the seconds to the 'beautiful maidens.' His last words were: 'One second to the 'beautiful maidens.' He then blew himself up."
The show's director Anzour said his work is based on that string of bombings against residential compounds in Saudi Arabia that began in May 2003. "The series is aimed at those who have not made up their minds about terrorism yet," he said, puffing on a cigarette in his studio in Damascus. "We want to tell them that Islam is a religion of tolerance, peace and dialogue," he added. "It's not a religion of violence." An advertisement for the show aired on different Middle East television stations before it debuted made clear its anti-terrorist theme. It said the show was dedicated to "all innocent victims of terrorism."
MBC said the show's critics had complained the actors were not qualified to tackle such an issue and that the title and the entire series denigrated Islam. The outburst of anger on the Internet forced MBC to issue a statement in response. It urged viewers to watch all 30 episodes before passing judgment. The station denied the show mocks Islam and said it was using art as a medium to confront terrorism.
Anzour also focused on the influence of underground clergymen luring young men from the more moderate message of other clerics and brainwashing them into becoming suicide bombers. Bjad, the former militant, said the show's "provocative" title was just one reason it has come under attack. He said it has incensed militants because it touches on the violent actions of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia and on Islamists whose radical mind-set offers justification for those who want to commit terrorism.
Bjad, 35, said he decided to work on the show because it offered a way to counter such radical views. "In the serial, we refute every militant argument by referring to the Quran," Bjad told The Associated Press from Dubai.
Mishal al-Mutairi, a Saudi actor portraying a would-be suicide bomber, said he is not worried about being involved in such a controversial project. He told Al-Hayat newspaper that Aznour was trying to undermine attempts to justify terrorism on religious grounds and to "purify the concept" of the beautiful maidens. "No one can deny that one of the reasons that push terrorists to commit terrorism is a concept in terrorist literature: 'Blow yourself up so you can meet 'beautiful maidens,'" al-Mutairi said.
"Beautiful Maidens" is not the first Arab television show that has provoked controversy. In fact, almost every Ramadan, one show in the Middle East is singled out either because it is perceived as ridiculing Islam or because it deals with a controversial social issue, such as polygamy. Last year, some television stations canceled "The Road to Kabul," which chronicled life under Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, after Internet threats from Islamists against everyone from actors to television executives if the show portrayed the Taliban in a negative light.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2005 12:59 ||
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Blaa-blaa-blaa, I can't hear you! We don't have the issue. Blaa-blaa-blaa - says the arab on the street.
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.
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) - North Korea promised to pursue a stronger military as it marked a major anniversary, but made no mention of its long-running nuclear standoff with the outside world.
Iraq has been through a tempestuous time of late - and then came Jeremy Clarkson. The BBC presenter was the latest "celebrity" to make a whirlwind visit to the country and has left speaking glowingly of his experience of covering combat. Mr Clarkson, who was accompanied by the Sunday Times restaurant and television reviewer AA Gill, was on a fact-finding mission and has told the British military how he came under fire several times in one day. After mortar rounds landed at a British base, the motoring journalist told a British officer "Don't worry, this happens to me quite often wherever I go." Mr Clarkson also described how the aircraft he and Mr Gill were travelling in came under fire in central Iraq. Undaunted by his experience, Mr Clarkson appear to have craved further excitement. At one point during his visit to Basra he is said to have asked the British military to organise the blowing up of a car. He was told, however, that staging explosions in Iraq of all places was not a good idea. 
Calling armed insurgents "rats spreading disease among the people", Iraq's government on Sunday urged voters to approve the new constitution in a referendum next week and stand firm against militant efforts to taint it. Violence has escalated ahead of the October 15 vote on the charter, which is backed by most Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders but strongly opposed by much of the Sunni Arab community, elements of which are in open revolt against the U.S.-backed government. Sunni insurgents have detonated roadside bombs, launched suicide attacks, kidnapped people and vowed to step up violence ahead of the constitution vote, which many fear will seal the decline of Sunni influence in Iraq that began with the overthrow of former President Saddam Hussein.
The Islamic school in 
A top US diplomat said on Sunday Washington was worried about Syrian interference in Iraq, Lebanon and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and said Damascus did not seem to be heeding US calls to keep out. David Welch also told reporters in Cairo that this month's release of a UN report on the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri would probably be an occasion for the world to send a signal to Syria about its "misbehaviour". 
