While hosting an American delegation in Kampala 10 days ago, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda expressed confidence that Somalia can be stabilised by African forces. The president was hosting a team led by Maj Gen Timothy F. Gormley, commander of the combined joint task force in the Horn of Africa. Museveni urged Western powers, the United States in particular, to support the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) initiative on Somalia.
Events taking place in the first three months of this year illustrate the continuing political stalemate and never-ending anarchy in Somali. The Aden Agreement, which was reached in early January by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and parliamentary Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, was expected to break the stalemate, but the opposition expressed by Prime Minister Ali Ghedi defused the euphoria. The holding of the first parliamentary session in Baidoa town was welcomed by the public.
Attention, however, shifted from the provincial town to the confrontation between Mogadishu's infamous warlords and armed groups controlling a network of Islamic courts. The fighting in Mogadishu has been very intense. The Islamists call their warlord foes "demons" and the warlords label the Islamists "terrorists" linked to Al-Qaeda. While they are fighting for control of the city, neither of the two groups wanted the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which was established in Kenya a year and a half ago, to rule the capital.
Those who sympathise with the islamists are the majority in Mogadishu, because residents are fed up with the warlords, who led the nation into mayhem. At the same time, the public cannot express support for the TFG, fearing a backlash from both warring coalitions. Remaining neutral in times of war is one of the survival techniques Somalis have learnt during the civil war. Mogadishu residents are silently waiting for any progress that may be made by the TFG leaders in Baidoa.
The renewed squabbles over where to base the TFG, especially on the choice between Baidoa and Jowhar towns, which are 260km and 90km from Mogadishu respectively, have caused fresh worries. Even the fact that president, the prime minister andSpeaker of parliament met in Kenya early last month to work out a compromise was not seen as a good omen. The Speaker clearly prefers Baidoa, but the prime minister wants Jowhar.
While Jowhar has one ruler, Mohamed Omar Habeb, Baidoa is controlled by various factions and freelance groups and its insecurity is almostas bad as in Mogadishu. There is public sympathy for President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who finds himself sandwiched between the Speaker and the prime minister. But somehow, Mogadishu residents appear to be convinced that US policy plays a negative role in the conflict. The warlords in Mogadishu, who despite being Cabinet members defied their own government, are said to have US support.
Local media in Somalia recently reported that American officials have visited the headquarters of the European Union (EU) in Belgium to study the nature of the recently signed agreement between the EU and Somalia's TFG. "The US may attempt to block the most significant diplomatic breakthrough so far achieved by the TFG," remarked Ali Osman Moghow, a political activist in Baidoa. "We are confident that the EU will defend its support for the TFG, which stands for the best interests of the Somali people."
In these circumstances, the Somali people are inclined to view President Museveni as an African statesman with a viable solution for the Somali problem. His call for military intervention, mobilisation of local forces, the International Criminal Court indicting those opposing the stabilisation of the TFG plus financial and diplomatic support, are right on the mark. "Museveni should continue his crusade, shedding more light on the US's dubious policy on Somalia," remarked Kassim Ali alias Shombe, a Mogadishu resident.
"If IGAD, AU and EU are on the side of the TFG, Americans must be lured to support what is good for Somalia." What sends shivers down many peoples' spines is the TFG striving to stabilise the nation while the US pursues its own agenda to tackle pirates, recruit non-state mechanisms to confront suspected terrorists and cultivate a relationship with clan chiefs, sidelining President Abdullahi Yusuf.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:43 ||
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#1
It's Africa.
Fence it off, bomb every 5 years, repeat. No-one goes in, no-one comes out till they sort themselves out.
#5
The Italians did a job on their colonies: they used to own Ethiopia/Eritria, too. I had an Eritrean friend over for tea this morning, and she tries not to think about what's happening back there. Apparently those in power want to reduce the population, along the lines of Robert Mugabe's goal or reducing the number of Zimbabweans by about half.
The African Union on Tuesday presented the warring parties from western Sudan's Darfur region with a draft peace agreement designed to bring an end to three years of bloodshed.
The document was given to delegates at AU-sponsored talks in Abuja just as the UN Security Council in New York was expected to hear a U.S. proposal for targeted sanctions against four individuals driving the conflict.
Pressure is mounting on both the government and the two rebel movements operating in Darfur to reach a peace deal. "Today ... the chief mediator, Dr. Salem Ahmad Salem, will convene a plenary to officially table a comprehensive peace agreement comprising protocols on power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security arrangements," AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni told AFP on Tuesday afternoon.
After months of inconclusive negotiations to end the civil war in the region, the AU and the international community have set an April 30 deadline for wrapping up a deal at the talks in the Nigerian capital.
On Sunday, the AU's chief mediator Sam Ibok unveiled a "final status security agreement for Darfur" and warned that a peace deal "has to be concluded on the April 30 deadline set by the AU Peace and Security Council." He said the "document reflects a careful balance of the concerns and positions expressed by the parties," and urged them to seriously consider it and submit written and oral reactions to the mediation by Monday.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Note to the rebels. If the deal includes a helicopter, say, "No".
The United States was likely to call a UN vote on Tuesday to impose sanctions on four Sudanese accused of war crimes in Darfur, despite opposition from China and Russia, a US official said. The sanctions, a travel ban and a freeze on assets abroad, would be the first adopted against individuals involved in the Darfur conflict. They were authorised by the UN Security Council in March 2005 against those who thwart peace efforts, violate human rights or conduct military flights over Darfur. "We very well could vote," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations.
Russia and China believe the sanctions could interfere with the two-year-old Darfur peace talks between the Khartoum government and two rebels groups, conducted in Abuja, Nigeria. To ease the concerns of African nations, the Security Council expects to approve at the same time a Tanzanian-drafted statement supporting the Abuja talks. Africa Union mediators have set April 30 as a deadline for a new cease-fire deal.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Actually implementing what was approved over a year ago? Man, the U.N. is speeding things up isn't it?
Posted by: BA ||
04/26/2006 9:31 Comments ||
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Over a year ago and how many more killed or displaced?
Oh, well, perhaps we can find consensus.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/26/2006 11:11 Comments ||
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Yes, Cap'n, I'm sure we can. We need an off-site meeting of our new Committee at a five-star resort soon. Now, that's gettin' things done. I'll then sign a sternly worded letter to those darn janjaweed...that's showin' 'em!
Posted by: Coffee Annan ||
04/26/2006 13:42 Comments ||
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Gathered on the seafront outside the Al Capone cafe yesterday, a weary looking knot of men stared silently at the 2ft-wide crater which had appeared on the cobbled street, as if willing it to disappear.
All around lay shards of glass, scraps of clothing and discarded rubber flip-flops. Splintered roof timbers hung above their heads and on the steps of the cafe, where they had eluded the hoses of the fire-fighters, were spatters of blood and small pieces of flesh.
"It was like a war," said one of the men, Hani Bivars, unable to tear his gaze from the crater. "I saw a child, a baby, lying on top of a young woman who had lost her right foot. I don't know if the woman was the baby's mother, because people had been thrown all over the street.
"There were people covered in cuts and people who had lost arms and legs. One of the waiters here was killed immediately. There were parts of bodies in the sea, and some people started to panic and ran into the waves, wading past the body parts to get away."
Barely had the debris from that blast fallen to earth when another erupted less than 150 metres away, in the heart of the Mashraba district of Dahab, one of the more unassuming resorts on Egypt's Red Sea coast. Survivors described a bright flash and a noise that resembled an earthquake as a bomb, apparently left on the ground in a bag, exploded on a small footbridge. At least three passersby died instantly and many others were maimed.
"One of the dead was an Egyptian and another looked like a tourist," said Hany Asanaf, a hotel manager who had run into the street on hearing the first explosion. "I don't know where the third man was from, because his face had gone."
Five seconds later came the third blast, in a narrow street lined with small jewellery shops. Few people were able to describe what they saw or felt: those who survived were all in hospital yesterday.
It was unclear whether the explosions on Monday evening were detonated by suicide bombers or with timers. The bombs were described by the Egyptian authorities as primitive, yet the toll was high: 24 dead and 85 wounded. Most of those killed were Egyptian. Three foreigners, thought to be a German boy, a Swiss diving instructor and a Russian national, also died.
Among the wounded were three Danes, two Britons, two Italians, two Germans, two French tourists, a South Korean, a Lebanese, a Palestinian, an American, an Israeli and an Australian.
Michael Hartlich, a German doctor on holiday, described how a 10-year-old boy died in his arms. "I'd never seen anything like it before," he told AFP news agency. "A child, a baby, blood everywhere, the smell of burnt skin, of burnt hair."
The British casualties were named locally as Henry Luce, 42, from Devon, a cousin of Lord Luce, the lord chamberlain, and a man named as Sam Still. They were being treated at a hospital in Cairo. Mr Luce, who has a fractured arm, said: "All I can remember is being blown through the air."
Lotta Ericsson, 36, a Swedish diving instructor, described how she emerged from beneath the restaurant table where she had been taking cover with her husband and immediately joined others bandaging the wounds of the injured. "A lot of people were patched up and put into cars before the ambulances arrived," she said.
Sir Derek Plumbly, the British ambassador to Egypt, said there had been great loss of life because the area was so popular. "It was a crowded place, full of happy holidaymakers, the majority of them Egyptian," he said. He declined to speculate about who could be behind the bombings, although there were immediate claims that the attack was linked to a tape recording believed to be by Osama bin Laden, issued a day earlier, which again said that western citizens would be targets of al-Qaida. The attacks appeared consistent with the methods of al-Qaida, but also seemed to have opened a rift between the group's supporters and other radical Muslim groups, such as Hamas, which condemned the bombing.
Tony Blair sent his condolences and said that the world needed to be "firm, united and resolved" in its determination to stop terrorism. "What is important is that the whole world stands united against the terrorists that want to kill innocent people and prevent countries like Egypt making the progress they and their peoples want to see."
The attacks are the third on Egypt's Sinai coast in less than two years. In October 2004, 34 people, including 12 Israeli tourists, died in bombings at Taba and Ras Shitan, while last July 64 people, including eight Britons, died at Sharm el-Sheikh, 60 miles south of Dahab.
Terrorists connected to al-Qaida are widely believed to have been behind the previous attacks.
Much of Dahab was deserted yesterday, as the Bedouin tribesmen who were the only people to live here before the first tourists arrived 30 years ago made themselves scarce. The few who were on the streets said that experience had taught them to be fearful of the mass arrests which they believe will be the Egyptian authorities' inevitable response to the attacks. Ten men were being questioned last night, but it was unclear who they were.
Some tourists were packing up and leaving yesterday, almost all the Israeli visitors had gone, and long lines of cars were backed up at the police roadblocks on the outskirts of the town.
While many in Dahab and other resorts feared a slump in business, some Egyptians and tourists were resolved not to be intimidated. About 100 holidaymakers and Egyptians, including the prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, marched through Dahab, chanting: "We love everyone." Graffiti appeared on walls, in Arabic and English, declaring, Stop All War, and Peace Now.
At the edge of the crater where Hani Bivars and his friends gathered, a couple of tourists, in brightly coloured shorts and T-shirts, were videoing the hole, and the onlookers, for their holiday home movies.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 01:01 ||
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A very strange article... Shows how varied concepts can be in the mid-east.
Premise: Is it possible that that Washington has tacitly given the go-ahead to Iran to build its nuclear bomb? According to this article from the Tunis Hebdo of Tunisia, just as the U.S. let Pakistan have the bomb to keep India from embracing the USSR too strongly, it is ready to sign off on an Iranian atom bomb, with security guarantees for Israel. All of this worries the oil-rich Gulf States, who fear the now almost inevitable arrival of the 'Shiite Crescent.'
#1
The difference is Pakistan is up against historical rivals India, over Kashmir; and China, which has no qualms taking over both Pakistan and India, etal. in the name of [future] Chinese- and Communism-centric East Asian hegemony. Other than post-Hafez Assad, dubious Syria, Iran is surrounded by predomin peaceful democratic or moderate states.
The Arab world reacted in horror and outrage Tuesday at the bombings of an Egyptian resort and a rift opened between hardline al-Qaida sympathizers and other radical Muslim groups who say the latest attacks have gone too far.
"Youse can't kill Moose limbs! Yer supposed to kill infidels, dammit!"
Three bombs ripped through a promenade in Egypt's Dahab resort at dusk Monday, killing at least 24 most of them Egyptians on a holiday marking the first day of spring.
Latest figure is 30 dead...
The attack, the third on Sinai in less than two years, came a day after Osama bin Laden issued a call to arms to Muslims to support al-Qaida in what he calls a war against Islam.
Bin Laden specifically tried to justify attacks against civilians, and tried to align his group with the radical Hamas, which now runs the Palestinian government.
Understandable, since they're in much the same line of work...
But Hamas and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood were as quick to condemn the Dahab attacks as they were when terrorists carried out a triple bombing Nov. 9 at Amman, Jordan hotels, that killed 63 people.
Another set of attacks where the victims were Arabs, not Jews or Christians...
Those attacks provoked howls of outrage against al-Qaida in Iraq, which claimed responsibility. "The attack on Egypt brings back bad memories," said Muhannad Abul-Ghanam, a 37-year-old Jordanian businessman. "The result is the same mainly Muslim Arabs died and there's more public hatred toward these militants."
"If it had been infidels, who would have minded? Except for the guys that own the hotels, of course..."
Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-run Palestinian Cabinet, called the Dahab bombings a "criminal attack which is against all human values."
"Hamas attacks are entirely different, y'see..."
Radical Muslim groups like Hamas and the Brotherhood have in recent months joined a regional chorus denouncing al-Qaida and its sympathizers for targeting Arab and Muslim civilians. "These groups, in the name of religion, justify such acts in which innocent people are killed," said Hassan Naboulsi, a 32-year-old supporter of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah faction in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
According to a poll Big Pharoah posted just about half of the Egyptians responded that they believed these bombs were done by the Mossad.
#3
My bet is destabilize the economy and thus Mubarrak so Muslim Brotherhood can establish an Islamic Republic. It's amazing that no matter how bad our SOB is, there's a worse one waiting in the wings. Let him set up a dynasty, as long as it's our dynasty.
#4
So you mean they were not passing candy around and doing carhorn concert, like they do when there's an high deathtoll in an isareli sucide bombing? So sad.
#5
Now if they could just draw a parallel in the "criminal attack which is against all human values." to include infidels as humans and we might have a start point.
Some of this is internal UK politix, in which I'm not fully versed, but part of this relates to the Global War on Terror.
HOME Secretary Charles Clarke offered to resign before the scandal of released foreign prisoners broke last night, but had his request turned down by the Prime Minister. But today, Mr Clarke was under growing pressure to quit over a blunder which saw more than 1000 prisoners released instead of being deported after serving their time. At Westminster today calls for him to go were stepped up after it was revealed that almost 300 of the convicts were allowed back on the streets after he first knew of the problem last autumn.
It wasn't really an 'oversight' then, was it?
The Home Office said it was still unsure whether any of those who should have been considered for deportation had been let out of Scottish jails and was unable to confirm which prisons across the UK they had been released from. Mr Clarke was today making a statement to the House of Commons about the fiasco which Downing Street said Mr Blair considered to be "deeply regrettable". The 1028 released prisoners - who included three murderers, nine rapists, and five child sex offenders - should have been considered for deportation under the Home Office's own rules. The problem stretches back to 1999 when 160 of them had been recommended for deportation by their trial judges. Mr Clarke said he expected that most of the released convicts could be tracked down and that many were still robbing and raping their neighbors under some form of supervision, but he admitted that he could not guarantee that all would be found. He said that his department did not know the full details of offences committed by more than 100 of them.
Gah.
Mr Clarke said this morning that the authorities had lost track of most of the prisoners due to a breakdown in communication between the Immigration and Nationality Director (IND) and the UK Prison Services. Asked if he told the Prime Minister he was ready to quit over the issue, Mr Clarke said: "Yes I did. I told him I was prepared to resign if he thought it was right. He said he didn't think it was right."
UK politix to follow:
He originally became aware of the problem last autumn after the House of Commons main efficiency watchdog the Public Accounts Committee asked for details about the problems. He made his offer to resign to Mr Blair before Christmas. Today Mr Clarke's aides said that while he was reporting matters to the House of Commons he was not intending to resign and Downing Street said Mr Blair still had "full confidence" in his Home Secretary. But Mr Davis said Mr Clarke was aware of the problem ten months ago and should have dealt with it "as a matter of urgency". But following the revelation that almost 300 more had been set free since then Mr Davis said: "I think that unless he has got a very good explanation - and I cannot think of one that will satisfy the House of Commons - I think his position has become untenable." Mr Mundell said that it was vital to find out if any of the prisoners had been freed in Scotland. And the Scottish National Party's Home Affairs Spokesman Stewart Hosie said: "We are witnessing a department in crisis and a Secretary of State who has failed in his primary responsibility to keep people safe." In Edinburgh the SNP's leader Nicola Sturgeon called for an immediate statement at Holyrood from the Justice Minister. And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said it was "extraordinary" that so many people had simply disappeared.
#1
There just isn't enough jail space to hold all the people during the extended period of time they are contesting deportation (US or UK.) Still, those released should not include murderers, rapists or pedophiles. Of course (in my opinion) those offenders should not be occupying jail cells or deportation court time either - what options does that leave, hmmmm?
British Prime Minister Tony Blair underlined yesterday his support for the Palestinian Government formed by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and said: "I support the elections mandate of Hamas."
"Go ahead and elect anybody you want. It's your country, or protocountry anyway. You're free to screw it up as you please. But..."
But he reminded the latter of the importance of reviving the peace process in the Middle East and renouncing violence.
"If you can't behave like civilized people you're going to have to live with the consequences, aren't you?"
He announced that "peace in the Middle East is an absolute priority for me and the international community" and that the present situation "is causing loss of confidence in the world."
"Since you're not acting like civilized people at the moment, nobody's going to go out on a limb for you except for the princes and the black turbans. And they're not the most reliable of friends."
Speaking at his monthly press conference, Blair set out two fundamental principles for reaching a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by saying: "There is only one way for making progress and that is by having everybody accepting the fundamental principles for reaching peace and these are to support an independent viable Palestinian state with proper and known borders so that the state is indeed viable and by having everybody recognizing the State of Israel and the need to look after its security."
"You can't have one without the other."
He added: "If everyone accepts these two principles, then I and US President George Bush have every desire to take this process forward in order to make progress. But this should be on the basis of these two principles."
"Otherwise, have a nice day."
Blair went on to say, "We should be clear that the reason why the Palestinian elections were held as scheduled was because the international community insisted on holding them. I support entirely the mandate of Hamas. They won the elections fair and square and they are the new elected government."
"They're not the elected revolutionaries. They're not the elected general staff. They're not the elected mob."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Do you suppose that Blair speaks for Jack Straw?
ON the wall of the Kovco kitchen is a calendar marked, "Countdown until my Daddy comes home ..."
Friday, April 21 is the last day marked on the calendar - the same day Private Kovco accidentally shot himself dead while serving in Iraq.
Shelley Kovco yesterday spoke to The Daily Telegraph from her home in Victoria about her devastation at losing her husband of four years.
"Tyrie and I used to cross off the calendar each night he was away, we were going to do it until he came back," Mrs Kovco said.
Pte Kovco, 25, the father of Tyrie, 3, and Alana, nine months, was just weeks into a six-month deployment to the war zone when he died, surrounded by fellow soldiers.
"They said there'll be 109 big hugs waiting for us when they get back [from Iraq]," Mrs Kovco said of her husband's former colleagues. "They [the children] have got 109 uncles who want to help support them."
A doting father, Pte Kovco loved army life and had ambitions to join the elite SAS squad. He was in constant telephone contact with his wife and son, who saw him as a hero.
"The whole time he was away, if anyone said to Tyrie, 'Where's Daddy?', he'd say, 'Gone to 'Raq', which was his way of saying 'Iraq'," Mrs Kovco said.
"They'd say, 'What's he doing there?', and Tyrie would answer, 'He's making a better country'."
Father and son enjoyed a close relationship and shared the same playful, knockabout persona. Pte Kovco grew up an avid hunter and also raced motorcross.
A fun-loving toddler, Tyrie is showing signs of the same personality traits as his father.
"Jake used to play the guitar out in the shed all the time, so Tyrie would get out there with his Wiggles guitar and they'd have a jam session," Mrs Kovco said.
A "bloke's bloke", Pte Kovco loved the comradeship of the army and considered his fellow soldiers brothers.
"I know he had his mates around him when he died," Mrs Kovco said.
"He always classed his battalion as another type of family, so if we couldn't be there, at least they were there."
Mrs Kovco said friends often asked if she worried about being alone while her husband was overseas, but she never thought tragedy would strike them.
"Not once did I ever worry that he was going to be hurt or injured. I was so confident in him, and that he knew what he was doing, and also in the people he was with," she said.
Pte Kovco realised a long-held ambition to join the army in March 2001, having applied the previous September.
The two tied the knot in December 2001, after a whirlwind courtship.
They moved to Wattle Grove in Sydney after Pte Kovco finished his training. Shelley and the children moved to the Victorian suburb of Sale when he went to Iraq so she could be close to their families.
You can donate to the Jake Kovco Appeal, to help his children, at any Bendigo Bank branch.
IIRC, this is only the second Aussie death and none from direct combat. Pretty amazing when you consider these guys aren't in berets patrolling safe areas.
The body of the first Australian soldier to be killed in Iraq was scheduled to arrive in Melbourne this morning, but in what the Defence Department said is a "terrible mistake", the wrong body has been returned. The body of Private Jake Kovco was due to be given a service in Gippsland with full military honours, but the coffin that arrived in Melbourne this morning contained the wrong body. The 25-year-old private accidentally shot himself while cleaning his weapon in Baghdad on Friday. He was a member of the 110-strong security detachment in Iraq's capital to protect Australian officials. The Defence Department said the return of Private Kovco's body to Australia "has been delayed". It said in a statement that an error occurred in Kuwait and the incorrect casket was despatched. The department said Private Kovco's body would be flown to Australia immediately, by private charter if necessary.
The obvious question is: Whose body was in Pte. Kovco's coffin???
It said the cause of "this unacceptable, terrible mistake" will be the subject of a thorough investigation, and "no stone will be left unturned" to get to the bottom of the mix-up.
CHILLING documents seized from the men involved in the second Bali bombing reveal an intricate conspiracy, where secret codes were used to plot the murder of innocent Westerners.
The terrorists used seemingly innocent words to hide their evil intent with one of the bombs being called the "cosmetic box", while Jemaah Islamiah mastermind Noordin Top was referred to as "Mommy".
Details of the October 1, 2005, attacks which killed 20 people, four of them Australians, plus the three suicide bombers were contained in handwritten notes at the scenes of the bombings and in the hiding places of those now in custody.
The notes tell how JI members travelled to Bali to survey potential targets before reporting back to JI's master bombmaker Azahari Husin.
They checked nightclubs, temples, shopping areas, sports venues, fast food outlets, souvenir shops and the airport.
They then decided that Jimbaran Bay, the eventual scene of two attacks, was a good target because "Inshallah"
_ God Willing "I predict that there will be at least 300 people there." Also targeted was a restaurant in the heart of Kuta.
They took note of incoming tourist flights especially from Australia and used codewords to mask their conversations in internet chatrooms.
Their reward for this act of murder would be entry to heaven for the bombers and 70 of their relatives.
The triple bombings last year were the second JI attack in Bali to claim Australian lives.
On October 12, 2002, near-simultaneous blasts at two Kuta bars killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
The dossiers also detail the role of JI's supreme bombmaker and the man dubbed "Demolition Man", Dr Azahari, in the second Bali bombing.
Moh Cholily, one of the four awaiting trial in Bali, said he was with Dr Azahari when they heard news of the carnage on BBC Radio. Dr Azahari had shouted, "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Greatest") and "Our project was a success," he said.
Cholily, who was being tutored in the skills of bomb construction by Dr Azahari, was arrested one month later. It was he who led police to the East Java safe house where Asia's most wanted man was hiding.
At the time of his arrest Cholily was carrying a bomb in his bag, which was to be delivered to another JI operative.
The indictment for another of the four, Anif Solchanudin, 24, says he was prepared mentally and physically to commit an act of "Istimata", or suicide mission.
The survey team noted that Jimbaran was an easy target because there was virtually no security, the bombers could pretend to be admiring the sunset, and 80 per cent of those there would be "Bule", or westerners.
The dossier also includes questions and answers on which the survey team was to report.
They were asked about appropriate dress for the suicide bombers, so as to blend in with the crowd, and the best times for the bombs to go off.
The survey team was also responsible for reporting on security measures that could thwart them bringing the backpacks and bombs from Java to Bali on a bus and ferry.
The results suited them. They found that, at the harbour checkpoint to Bali, it was easy to slip through using fake identity cards and they could leave their backpacks on the bus and no one would ask to check. Security, they said, was "very relaxed".
Transportation to the restaurants was also canvassed and it was decided it was better for the bombers not to catch taxis because the driver might insist on lifting the backpacks into the car and thus become suspicious of their unusual weight.
Instead they opted for motorcycles called "ojek".
Most chilling of all is a detailed instruction sheet of exactly what the bombers should do in the lead-up to the moment they would enter heaven.
It included the time they should stop to conduct their Maghrib, or evening prayers, the times they should board the ojeks and the exact minutes at which they should activate the timing device and switches.
Jacques Toubon, a former French minister of culture and justice, is a member of the European Parliament and the president of France's National Museum of the History of Immigration, scheduled to open next year. He visited Atlanta this week on a trip organized by Alliance Francaise, a nonprofit organization that promotes French culture.
In an interview with Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer Mark Bixler, Toubon discussed recent riots by immigrants in France and similarities between the immigration situation in the United States and France, among other subjects. Here are excerpts, edited for context and clarity.
Q: What is your message here in the United States?
A: I was invited to explain . . . the history of immigration and the history of France as a great country of immigration.
France is the United States of Europe. During the 19th and 20th centuries, all the European countries except France sent emigrants to other countries. France, since the beginning of the 19th century, welcomed millions and millions of immigrants from Poland, Spain, Italy and Portugal. The identity of France is made by this immigration.
We are very diverse, but our model of integration was very different from the model of the United States. Now we are taking into account our differences.
Q: Why change?
A: Because France has changed. We are confronted with social realities. From a moral point of view, some people said, "We have to recognize our depth, what all these people gave to France."
Q: A few months ago, riots in France called attention to the many thousands of Muslim immigrants in France from North Africa and the Middle East. Can you give us a sense of whether these immigrants have successfully integrated or are likely to successfully integrate?
A: First, the majority of the people were not from North Africa but were black . . . from sub-Saharan Africa. That means that in some instances people from North Africa are more integrated than . . . black Africans.
Most importantly, the suburban crisis has its roots in two issues. One is the situation of inequality, of discrimination between people of foreign origin, whether they are French citizens or not, and other people. But this is not only an issue about immigration. It's an issue about segregation between two parts of our country: the center of big urban areas and the suburbs. This suburban crisis is more complicated than an immigration issue. In the American press, the riots were generally presented as young foreigners against French society. That's not true.
Q: What is a more accurate description?
A: There are a lot of people who think the future will be worse than the present. With the recent demonstrations in France of the young students, it was rather the same thing. The issue of immigration is just one component of a social collapse crisis.
Q: Do you think that the influx of so many Muslim immigrants threatens France's cultural or national identity?
A: Among the Muslims, there is a minority, an activist minority. They want Islamic law to apply to them and not the civil law, but we ought not to exaggerate this phenomenon. In the long term, I am sure that with the Arab and Muslim people, we will have the same integration process. It will be more difficult. It will be longer. Gee, how reassuring.
Q: On balance, you see the influx of Muslim immigrants more as an asset than a liability?
A: Right. Immigration was not, is not and would not be a problem but an asset. Uh huh.
Q: The influx of Muslim immigrants to France comes at a time when the Christian church seems to be in decline in France and Europe. Does this influx threaten the French religious identity?
A: Like Europe, France is a strong Jewish-Christian civilization.? The Islamic religion can't change that.?!?
Q: People who are born in France become French citizens, just as people who are born in the United States become U.S. citizens. Do you see other similarities between the immigration phenomena in France and the United States?
A: The great similarity is that in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, by the same proportion, France and the United States were the two big countries of immigration. But in France it was not so well organized. Quelle surprise! For instance, between 1890 and 1920, the United States had a main point of entry for immigrants: Ellis Island. In France, people came in from the north, south, east and west.
The other difference is that they represent two opposite models of integration. In France, integration is individual, without intermediaries of communities. Equality was the foremost value of the republic, and basically the republic aimed at erasing the origins. America cherishes more freedom and makes the minorities (hyphenated Americans) sacred.
Don't forget the third difference, that one system seems, despite its flaws, to be distinctly more successful than the other, because of the difference between the two models.
#1
Jacques Toubon, one of the Great Minds Of the 20th century, now going on to the 21th (IIRC, Shiraq thought he was an idiot) passing the official multicultural mantra around. The National Museum of the History of Immigration will be an another multiculti gadget; I'm not sure, but I seem to recall having heard that a famous museum on french ancient local popular customs had to be closed for this to open. Well, you've got to keep up with your time. French history : bad. Immigration : good.
He's a "conservative", by the way, just imagine how are our leftists.
Reportedly, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, arriving in Ankara today for official contacts, will ask Turkey to continue its support to the US on the issue of Iran.
At the Foreign Press Center in Washington, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza told reporters, "Iran will be on Rice's agenda, which is quite normal."
He reminded that Turkey supports the international community's pressure on Iran. Turkey will be asked to "continue" this support; "All we ask is that Turkey stay with us," Bryza added.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bryza, who mentioned the issue of the terror network Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), said, "Before a trans-border operation, there are many steps that need to be taken regarding the PKK problem and we are working on them."
Bryza said America is not in negotiation with Turkey regarding the issue. "In fact, this is not a proper ground to discuss probable military operations."
When asked whether the US gave Turkey information to be used in a probable operation, Bryza said they do not discuss intelligence issues publicly.
Bryza appreciated Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's statement that the US and Turkey were in cooperation against the PKK. "I think he is right," Bryza said, acknowledging a "very strong sharing of information" between the two countries and the workings in Europe especially for the fight against the PKK.
The United States has not yet verified news that troops are being deployed in Southeastern Turkey, he said. In response to questions regarding Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's statements that he is concerned over the recent activity of the Turkish army, Bryza said, "These are his own views. Before a military operation, there are many things that can be done with Turkey and Iraq in order to fight against the PKK problem."
Bryza, at the press conference, was asked, "Do you agree with the increasing concerns in Brussels about the Turkish army's role in politics and the judiciary?"
To which he responded by saying that the army is "the most popular institution" in Turkey and it developed "a complex political role peculiar to itself." He reminded the European Union "obliged" some political reforms including the Turkish army's role in politics. "As Turkey wants to be a member of the EU, it must fulfill the relevant criteria including changing and diminishing the army's role as well," Bryza added.
While Bryza said US State Secretary Rice would bring up Turkey's progress on EU reforms in general, he qualified the recent social security reform as a "worthy step for the future."
Turkey's cultural and religious traditions of tolerance were inherited from the Ottoman State, reminded the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs; and it would not be surprising if Rice addressed topics such as "religious freedom," the patriarchate and the Heybeliada Seminary.
Rice would also mention "the need to speed up democratic and economic reforms," he said.
"Brussels and many other member countries think the reform process in Turkey has slowed down," Bryza recalled; therefore, the reform process should gain speed to dispel these thoughts.
The Cyprus issue will also be mentioned, said Byrza, reminding Turkey is obliged to open ports to the Greeks. The solution package Gul proposed was "quite assertive," but it was refused.
Instead of a fresh start to talks on a solution to the Cyprus issue, it would be much convenient to assume the Annan Plan, the American official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 01:26 ||
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Terrorism, especially in Iraq, is always at the top of the list when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with foreign leaders. But when Rice met with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, the terrorists he most wanted to talk about weren't related to al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein's regime but to the Kurdistan Workers Party (known as the PKK), a group of violent Kurdish militants who operate from a relative safe haven in northern Iraq.
The PKK has long been a thorn in Turkey's side, but the government has been increasingly angry about the inabilityor unwillingnessof U.S. and Iraqi forces to take down the PKK camps. The PKK is deep into its usual spring offensive, staging cross-border attacks inside Turkey as part of its independence bid for the Kurdish minority inside Turkey.
In the days leading up to Rice's visit, the Turkish press was filled with reports about a large deployment of additional Turkish soldiers to its southern Kurdish areasand near the border with Iraq. Gul told reporters that there are thousands of PKK fighters in northern Iraq.
"Because of this vacuum in Iraq, they have made that area, especially northern Iraq, into some sort of camp for themselves," Gul said. "That area has become a training ground for them." Some reports have speculated that Turkey might send its troops into Iraq to root out the PKK camps if U.S. and Iraqi forces won't take care of them. Gul did not make any public threats but also did not rule it out explicitly as he called for U.S. and Iraqi forces to step up their efforts. "Like any country, Turkey will take her own precautions," he said. "If the Iraqi government establishes its own security forces and controls its own borders . . . then we will have nothing to do."
Rice quickly said that she hoped the new Iraqi government would be able to work with U.S. forces to better secure the border with Turkey.
"We want anything we do to contribute to stability in Iraq, not to threaten that stability or make a difficult situation worse," she said, in a veiled warning against a Turkish invasion. "We all have an interest in making sure the borders are as secure as possible."
Rice pledged to "revitalize" the moribund coordination mechanism between Iraq, Turkey, and the United States once the new Iraqi government takes office.
Still, the issue has been a lower-priority one for the U.S. military because the Kurdish areas have been just about the only reliably stable provinces in Iraq. U.S. officials have also been reluctant to divert resources from fighting Sunni insurgents toward combating a group (even a terrorist one) that enjoys the sympathies of Iraq's leading Kurdish parties, which are close U.S. allies.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:51 ||
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Canada's new Conservative government banned the media from showing live images of the flag-draped coffins of four Canadian soldiers when their bodies were returned Tuesday from Afghanistan, angering political opponents and some families.
The government also has stopped lowering flags to half-staff outside Parliament each time a Canadian soldier is killed, prompting Liberals to accuse Prime Minister Stephen Harper of trying to play down the growing human cost of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.
Fifteen Canadians have been killed, including Cpl. Matthew Dinning, Bombardier Myles Mansell, Cpl. Randy Payne and Lt. William Turner, who were slain in a roadside bomb blast Saturday in southern Afghanistan in the deadliest attack against Canadian forces since they deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. Their remains arrived Tuesday before sundown at a base in Trenton, Ontario.
The media learned Monday that they would be barred from the evening ceremony, a decision that mirrors Bush administration policy blocking media coverage of the coffins of slain service members arriving in the United States.
Like the Pentagon, Canadian Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor cited privacy concerns as a reason for the media ban. "When the bodies return to Trenton, where the families receive the bodies for the first time and they come face to face with the reality that their loved ones are dead, this is for their private grief," O'Connor told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Tuesday. The four bodies are the first returned to Canada since the Conservative government took office.
O'Connor noted that media were allowed to cover the solemn send-off ceremony just before a Hercules transport plane left Kandahar with the bodies.
He also said the Conservatives _ who toppled the Liberals from nearly 13 years in power in January _ were returning to an 80-year-old tradition of honoring fallen soldiers by only lowering the flag on Parliament Hill once a year, on Nov. 11, Remembrance Day.
Harper dismissed accusations that he is using the power of his office to conceal Canada's mounting military casualties from the public spotlight. "It is not about photo-ops and media coverage," Harper told the House of Commons, which engaged in a raucous debate. "It is about what is in the best interests of the families."
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Respect and honor returns to Canada...wonders of wonders
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/26/2006 11:24 Comments ||
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#2
Keep the politicos away also.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/26/2006 11:25 Comments ||
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The media is in open war with Stephen Harper. Started with Harper moving the location of press conferences in Ottawa so government officials would not be subject to media scrums muggings. Next, he would decide which reporters could ask questions. Then he refused to announce cabinet meetings in advance.
The media is using the flag raising and coffin returns as a political weapon, has nothing to do with the public right to know.
So far, the general public has not gone along with the media making itself the story, as Harper popularity continues to rise. The media takes every opportunity to fill column content with phrases such as "US-style", "Bush-style", "a decision that mirrors Bush administration policy blocking media coverage of the coffins of slain service members arriving in the United States."
What the media do not say is that the policy of returning Canadian war dead is a relatively new practise in itself. Traditionally, soldiers have been buried in memorial cemetaries in France and elsewhere.
Posted by: john ||
04/26/2006 11:44 Comments ||
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The press is in open war with Stephen Harper... Harpers popularity continues to rise.
Interesting. Have Canadian MSM revenues begun to drop like those of the American cousins, too?
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday defended the firing of Mary O. McCarthy, the veteran officer who was dismissed last week, and challenged her lawyer's statements that Ms. McCarthy never provided classified information to the news media.
But intelligence officials would not say whether they believed that Ms. McCarthy had been a source for a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles in The Washington Post about secret C.I.A. detention centers abroad. Media accounts have linked Ms. McCarthy's firing to the articles, but the C.I.A. has never explicitly drawn such a connection.
In response to questions Tuesday, the intelligence officials declined to say whether discussion of the prisons had been part of what they described as a pattern of unauthorized contacts between Ms. McCarthy and reporters.
One intelligence official, who was granted anonymity to speak more candidly about the sensitive issue, said it was unclear how much access Ms. McCarthy, who had been assigned to the agency's inspector general's office, had to specific details about the secret prisons.
A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said: "The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."
Ty Cobb, a lawyer representing Ms. McCarthy, said again on Tuesday that she never admitted divulging sensitive material. "She did not confess, orally or in writing, to leaking classified information," Mr. Cobb said.
Since 2004, the inspector general's office has been investigating the agency's role in the interrogation and detention of high-level terrorist suspects, as well as its network of secret jails abroad. At a minimum, intelligence officials said, Ms. McCarthy's work in that office gave her access to some of the agency's most sensitive information, including details about highly secret "compartmented programs."
Officials said that Ms. McCarthy's security clearance was pulled when she was fired, but that no consideration was given to taking away the pension she had earned as a career C.I.A. employee.
Acting before Ms. McCarthy's dismissal, the House Intelligence Committee asked John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, to study whether it should be possible to take away a pension from a retiree who was subject to only administrative or civil punishment and not criminal prosecution. A provision in the intelligence reauthorization bill, which goes to the House floor Wednesday, gives Mr. Negroponte 90 days to study whether pensions of intelligence officers who leak classified information should be revoked.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 01:18 ||
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#1
I have said it before and I repeat it. Cut of their supply of air.
The CIA can't be a political organization. Those with political agendas need to be let go. Those who violate their trusted positions should pay a price worse than losing their pensions. That should be the least of their worries.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/26/2006 3:50 Comments ||
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Ok, so CIA officer/writer Mary McCarthy (sic) is being defended by lawyer/baseball great Ty Cobb.
#3
My guess is Ty Cobb is playing a PR game in hope the Feds will go light on his client. If they have a cofession on tape (like they say) she has very little chance of beating this. Also I doubt she is covered by any whistle-blower rule, but that reamins to be seen. Goss was right to polygraph the senior staff and I suspect Ms. McCarthy will not be the last person to let go.
#4
The question I'm kind of curious about is how Mary McCarthy can afford the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. She must have been very thrifty with her government salary.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/26/2006 10:22 Comments ||
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Right, H&H is spendy. Look for a full court pity party on this one by media and donks.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/26/2006 11:27 Comments ||
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The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."
I say again.....She signed a NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT and a NON-DISCLOSURE STATEMENT!!! What's the PROBLEM???? TRY HER FOR TREASON!!!!
#7
Ms. McCarthy will not be the last person to let go.
This is the key. She is no longer relevant except as a pawn in the game with the rest of the conspirators. Relax, get some popcorn and enjoy the show. She's not going anywhere and she will be destroyed by the time this is over. The only remaining questions are how many go with her (any senators? any reporters?) and is the CIA cleaned out or should we still start from scratch. (I favor the later.)
#8
The question I'm kind of curious about is how Mary McCarthy can afford the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. She must have been very thrifty with her government salary.
she must still be getting royalties from Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, and from the film version of The Group. And at his age, Ty Cobb probably doesnt command a real high ourly rate.
#9
The question I'm kind of curious about is how Mary McCarthy can afford the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.
That is an interesting question.
Who paid for Sandy Burglar's defense?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/26/2006 11:56 Comments ||
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Ms. McCarthy was pretty well paid as an NIO. She was also out of the CIA a couple years working at a think tank, and I suspect she was well paid there.
And I think she has 'friends' who are 'helping' her with Mr. Cobb's services. My understanding is that Mr. Cobb worked with the Hildebeast on certain legal matters. Interesting how it all ties together, eh?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/26/2006 11:59 Comments ||
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I just can't see Ty Cobb defending a Catholic LH, maybe the Peach has mellowed.
#12
She's caught red handed, and she faces 10 years per count. I hope she drags more scum with her. This might also shut the mouths of assholes retired generals and open their brains.
#13
She was an ex-Catholic. She became a Communist, then turned against the USSR and became a Trotskyite, then became an anticommunist, though she never followed her friends who became conservatives.
#14
This really is a watershed moment for anyone who ever dealt with classified information. Once and for all we need to put to bed the suggestion that leaking classified information becasue you think you are a "whistleblower" or need to get the "truth" out your personal sense of morality trumps classification rules! If they don't criminally prosecute someone caught this red-handed (like her former boss Sandy Burglar) the message cannot be clearer...... if you are important you get by, if you are just a hard-working intelligence professional, you go to jail. Pure crap if she doesn't lose her pension, and go to jail. And who is paying for the high-priced lawyer, and why? Why do Clintonistas keep popping up behind the release of classified materials and the inhibition of espionage investigations? (Think Wen Ho Lee, Loral Space Systems, the Able Danger Wall (Jaime Gorlick being on the 911 commission was just too cute)).
#19
unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters
You 'share' classified information with cleared personnel who have need-to-know. What she was doing is called 'divulging' classified information. It's a criminal offense and she should expect to pay the penalty.
In a city that lives for the whispered nugget of information, fired CIA analyst Mary McCarthy is viewed as both hero and villain.
Ask CIA Director Porter Goss, and he will tell you an officer he fired committed a grave offense damaging national security by talking to reporters and knowingly disclosing classified information.
Not so, argue McCarthy's defenders, who contend that she had a stellar government career and is merely the victim of a Bush administration witch hunt for leakers.
Associates, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of her sensitive legal situation, say the CIA authorized McCarthy on a number of occasions to talk with reporters. However, the details and timing remain unclear, including whether that was ever true after Goss took over in September 2004.
It is not yet clear precisely what McCarthy did that led to the firing. In a statement to CIA employees, Goss said that a CIA officer has acknowledged having unauthorized discussions with the media, in which the officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information.
Last week, government officials indicated McCarthy was involved in providing information to reporters that included material used in The Washington Post's award-winning report on a covert network of CIA prisons. Allegations of a Soviet-style gulag in Eastern Europe and other facilities sparked international condemnation and investigations.
Goss and others have said leaks have done dramatic damage to U.S. relationships with allies. He told Congress in February that his counterparts ask: Mr. Goss, can't you Americans keep a secret?
But McCarthy's attorney, Ty Cobb, defends her actions and says she was not the source for the Post story. She did not leak any classified information, and she did not have access to the information apparently attributed to her by some government officials, Cobb said.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano reaffirmed the agency's position Tuesday, saying an officer was fired for unauthorized contact with the media and the improper disclosure of classified information. The agency has not named that officer.
McCarthy, 61, got her start at the CIA in its Directorate of Intelligence the analysis division focusing on Africa and Latin America. By 1988, she landed her first management job as the Central American branch chief.
Former CIA officer Larry Johnson said he had trouble with her management style when he worked for her in 1988 and 1989. Part of his job was to collect cables of importance for the front office of the Middle America-Caribbean division. But she would assemble her own package, undermining his analysis, he said.
Yet Johnson, a critic of the Bush administration, defends McCarthy today. This administration thinks just because you make a political contribution to some campaign, you are tainted, he said. This administration is trying to conduct a political purge.
McCarthy has given $7,700 to Democratic campaigns in the past three election cycles; her husband has donated $2,500, according to public records. While CIA employees face restrictions on political activity under the Hatch Act, they are allowed to donate to candidates.
Johnson said McCarthy never suggested to him that she had a political view or shaped intelligence to conform to an ideology.
McCarthy went on to the National Intelligence Council, the government's most senior analysis office, and then the Clinton White House, where she served as a senior intelligence adviser on the National Security Council staff.
McCarthy was not afraid to go against the grain. As the White House was considering al-Qaeda targets to strike in retaliation for the 1998 African embassy bombings, McCarthy questioned the strength of the intelligence about a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. According to the Sept. 11 Commission, some officials believed al-Shifa was manufacturing a precursor to a nerve agent, with Osama bin Laden's financial support.
We will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously consider any options, McCarthy said in a memo to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger outlining her concerns.
Berger told the commission he was worried about a possible chemical attack, if al-Shifa wasn't attacked. With the Monica Lewinsky scandal consuming front pages, President Clinton decided to attack with cruise missiles there and in Afghanistan. He was accused of trying to distract from the scandal.
As House Intelligence chairman, Goss said in a March 2004 interview that he thought there had been a lousy choice of targets.
McCarthy left the National Security Council shortly after Bush took office in 2001.
She then went to law school at Georgetown University and was a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cobb said she announced her retirement from the CIA and hoped to practice public service law, working on adoptions.
The accusation of media contacts, however, has tainted a career that ended in the CIA inspector general's office, where her work included investigations into allegations of agency involvement in torture at Iraqi prisons.
The National Whistleblower Center says McCarthy could have a strong case to contest her firing. House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., sees her actions differently.
This person in the CIA thought that they were above the law, he said on Fox News Sunday. They have put America at risk. They have put our troops on the front lines at risk.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:41 ||
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A leading American Muslim scholar urged the Bush administration to review its security policies which are unfairly targeting Muslim Americans, as a British Muslim student had to pay extra for security checks when applying for a US visa because his name was Mohammed. "I really hope that the American government and the current administration -- that occasionally took a hard line in dealing with the dignity of the Muslim community -- would review its policies and would have a more friendly approach to the Muslim community," Imam Hassan al-Qazwini told Reuters in an interview.
The Shiite scholar of the Islamic Center of America, located in Dearborn, said the policies that result in unfair treatment include domestic wiretapping, civil rights, immigration and the Patriot Act.
The bill, which was rushed through Congress after the 9/11 attacks, is harshly criticized by rights groups and minorities in the US as threatening civil liberties.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#2
Well we don't really have very many Taoists trying to fly airplanes into building. So who exactly are we supposed to be keeping our eye on? The devious Joooos?
#3
Yes, them and the blue-haired Grandmothers armed with the deadly knitting needles....
'bout time the PC-goggles started slipping down the nose of America..
The conviction of a Lodi, Calif., man on terrorism-related charges Tuesday is a much-needed victory for the Justice Department, which has stumbled in its pursuit of terrorism suspects in the courts recently.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, federal prosecutors have won verdicts against, among others, an Ohio truck driver accused of plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and a man who threatened to kill President Bush.
But there have also been a series of missteps and false starts. The government has seen juries starting to reject charges in some high-profile cases. In one instance, a judge threw out terrorism charges because of alleged misconduct by a federal prosecutor who was later indicted.
The flubs have provided ammunition to critics of the Justice Department and threatened to undermine public confidence in whether the prosecutions are protecting the nation from serious threats.
Tuesday's guilty verdict against 23-year-old Hamid Hayat was a measure of vindication. Hamid had been charged in connection with attending a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003 and then lying about his attendance to the FBI. A separate jury deadlocked on charges that his father lied to authorities about his son's participation at the camp, and a mistrial was declared.
Hayat was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to provide "material support" to terrorists.
The case shows how prosecutors are attempting to use the law to disrupt what they see as evolving terrorist plots before they reach fruition.
But the strategy, first enumerated by Attorney General John Ashcroft a few weeks after the attacks in Washington and New York, has also been highly controversial.
Its supporters say it is an important tool to head off threats. Critics say it allows the government to subject people to lengthy prison terms based on little evidence that they intended to hurt anyone.
In effect, "you prosecute people not for what they have done but for what you fear they might do in the future," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor. Some courts have held parts of the "material support" law unconstitutional on grounds that the law fails to give defendants adequate notice of what is illegal.
The prosecution of Hayat and his father appeared to be one such marginal case. The only evidence against the men were the videotaped confessions they gave last June to FBI agents and the testimony of a paid government informant.
Defense lawyers said the confessions were obtained under duress. The informant's credibility also seemed hurt after he testified having seen a senior al-Qaida operative in Lodi -- a sighting that terrorism experts universally dismissed as unlikely.
But ultimately, the government was able to prove that Hayat himself was not credible. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said in a statement after the verdict Tuesday that "justice has been served against a man who supported and trained with our terrorist enemies in pursuit of his goal of violent jihad."
The courtroom victory was also unusual because most of the convictions the Justice Department has won since the Sept. 11 attacks have come by defendants pleading guilty to crimes rather than by the government proving its case in a court of law. The verdict also reverses what had been a worrisome trend for prosecutors.
In a major setback two years ago, a federal jury in Idaho acquitted a computer science student accused of aiding terrorists when he designed a Website that included information on terrorists in Chechnya and Israel. Lawyers for Sami Omar al-Hussayen successfully argued that the government was seeking to criminalize his political views.
The government suffered another loss in December when a jury in Tampa, Fla., acquitted a former college professor indicted on charges of supporting terrorists by promoting the cause of Palestinian groups. The case of Sami Al-Arian had been touted by the Justice Department as an illustration of how the Patriot Act was empowering investigators by enabling law enforcement officials and intelligence operatives to share information.
And just last month, a former assistant U.S. attorney, Richard Convertino, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit for alleged misconduct in connection with what was the first federal terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks. Convertino has adamantly denied the charges, and has said he is being made a scapegoat for missteps by his Justice Department supervisors.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 01:05 ||
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#1
Considering the institutional preference is for anti-trust actions, the DoJ has come a long way in a few years.
I won't hold my breath for them to go after the secret-leaking MSM, tho...
A Saudi charged with being part of an al Qaeda bomb-making cell branded the United States an enemy of God and rejected its right to try him in a military tribunal Tuesday. Jabran Said bin al Qahtani, an electrical engineer captured at an al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan in March 2002, appeared for a pretrial hearing near the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wearing the beige prison garb given to detainees classed as "compliant."
But when questioned by the hearing's presiding officer, Navy Capt. Daniel O'Toole, Qahtani said he wanted no part of the tribunal and refused to accept the military defense lawyer assigned to his case. "I don't want an attorney. I don't want a court," said Qahtani, a father of two in his late 20s, with bushy dark hair and a shaggy beard.
"A nation that is an enemy of God is not a leader and cannot be a leader," added the detainee, who spoke through a court translator. "You judge me and you sentence me the way you want, if this is God's will."
Hokay.
Qahtani, who at times fidgeted in his seat next to the defense lawyer, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, said he would prefer to be killed than cooperate. He warned the court that perhaps "God would provide me with rescue, and then you will regret everything."
After a recess, Qahtani did not reappear in court. His lawyer said Qahtani decided to boycott the proceedings because he denied the legitimacy of the tribunals and would not return unless physically forced to attend.
Broyles then challenged O'Toole's right to hear the case, saying the presiding officer had shown himself an advocate of the prosecution in earlier rulings, including orders that have kept Qahtani from seeing evidence against him. "Those acts were acts inappropriate to an impartial officer," the defense lawyer told a visibly riled O'Toole, who later ruled himself fit to preside.
Not being a lawyer, I can't hazard a guess on how it will play for the defense to attack and mock the tribunal leader.
Qahtani is one of three detainees who face tribunal hearings this week. His alleged co-conspirators are Sufyian Barhoumi, an Algerian citizen, and another Saudi named Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi. All three who face proceedings this week were captured by Pakistani forces at a house in Faisalabad. The U.S. military says former al Qaeda operations director Abu Zubaydah gave them the job of making hand-held remote-control bomb detonators of a kind later used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Qahtani's attorney has said he intends to challenge evidence against his client, which he believes was obtained through torture and cannot be used under a formal Defense Department directive issued last month.
No evidence of that, but it will make the NYT.
Rejection of the tribunal system is emerging as a common tactic among detainees. Barhoumi, who is charged with training Qahtani and Sharbi on electronic detonators, could also boycott his hearing Wednesday, his military attorney said.
Hokay, boycott and be damned in your absence.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:44 ||
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#1
Shoot him three times in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with #4 shot and throw him in the ocean. If he survives, it's God's will. If he doesn't, then it's God's will.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/26/2006 20:24 Comments ||
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Seaport workers will undergo background checks for links to terrorism and to ensure they are legal U.S. residents, the Bush administration said Tuesday. The heightened scrutiny _ which will begin immediately _ drew praise from some lawmakers and port associations that said the checks were long overdue. Others jeered the security measures as either too weak or too invasive of workers' privacy rights.
Names of an estimated 400,000 employees who work in the most sensitive areas of ports will be matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. They will be among roughly 750,000 workers _ including truckers and rail employees _ who have unrestricted access to ports and will be required to carry tamper-resistant identification cards by next year. "What this will do is it will elevate security at our ports themselves so that we can be sure that those who enter our ports to do business come for legitimate reasons and not in order to do us harm," Chertoff said. He called the safeguards part of a "ring of security" around U.S. ports.
The background checks will not examine workers' criminal history, although Chertoff left open that possibility for the future. How much the background checks will cost was not immediately available.
The Bush administration has been under fire for months for what critics call holes in security measures at ports, which were highlighted after a Dubai company's purchase of a British firm gave it control of six American ports. An outcry in Congress led the Dubai company, DP World, to decide to sell the U.S. operations to an American firm.
Congress is considering port security legislation this week, prompting some Democrats to question the sincerity and timing of Chertoff's announcement. "It appears that DHS steps up to the plate to protect our national security only when the cameras are rolling and the whole world is watching," said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. He gave tepid praise for the push for ID cards, which he said should have been issued years ago.
Which you called for years ago during the Clinton administration, right?
In 2002, Congress ordered the Transportation Security Administration to issue biometric ID card to workers who passed criminal background checks. Those cards were supposed to be issued to port workers beginning in August 2004. By that December, the Government Accountability Office said, bureaucratic delays and poor planning were hampering development of the card.
Cargo industry officials have worried that a federal ID system aimed at boosting security could cost many port workers their jobs _ leading to bottlenecks in the flow of goods destined for virtually every U.S. community. "It seems to us that the biggest security threat is coming from the outside, and not from the workers who live and work in those communities," said Steve "Sylvester" Stallone, spokesman for the San Francisco- based International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
The added scrutiny "looks a lot like harassment of the workers," Stallone said. Because some truck drivers are illegal immigrants who would quit rather than face identity checks, that could "seriously cripple" major ports, he said.
Reeeeeally? We couldn't possibly hire legal workers to drive trucks?
Still others questioned the wisdom of checking for terror links without also examining a worker's criminal history. "While today's announcement is an important and necessary first step, criminal background checks must eventually become a part of the screening process," said Anthony Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Which will put 90% of the New Joisey mob portworkers out of a job ...
Some workers already have their criminal backgrounds checked by local authorities, said Jim McNamara, spokesman for the International Longshoreman Union, which represents East Coast port workers and said it welcomed steps "to secure our ports in any way possible."
Since the DP World furor, Democrats have lambasted Homeland Security for failing to screen and inspect all cargo that enters the United States at seaports. Senate Democrats are pushing legislation to require Homeland Security to outline how it will scan all cargo containers within five years. The department currently inspects 6 percent of cargo containers that enter U.S. ports. Homeland Security treats port security like a "neglected stepchild," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
And Chuckie would know about being neglected ....
Chertoff said two-thirds of all containers will undergo radiation screening for nuclear materials by year's end and that 80 percent of cargo entering the United States comes from foreign ports with rigorous inspection standards. But he said it is impossible to physically inspect every cargo container without snarling port commerce. "To call for all physical inspection of every container is like saying we're going to strip search everybody who gets on an airplane," he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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"Some workers already have their criminal backgrounds checked by local authorities, said Jim McNamara, spokesman for the International Longshoreman Union..."
Heh, The quetta folks have been smoking some of the opium crop.
Has God spoken to president Bush, directing him to attack Iran, jut as the Good Lord did in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan? According to this op-ed article from Pakisatan's Frontier Post, which serves the area where Osama bin Laden is thought to be hiding, it wasn't God telling Bush to 'enslave whole nations and intimidate the world,' but another celestial character with a less savory reputation âŠ
WASHINGTON - Indias self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons testing should assuage doubts US lawmakers may have about passing a civil nuclear deal with the South Asian nation, Indian Minister of Power Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Tuesday. Im quite confident of this (congressional approval) because ... India has accepted these principles, Shinde said in an interview.
The testing issue has emerged as the latest wrinkle in the sweeping deal which would give India access for the first time in three decades to US and foreign nuclear technology, including fuel and reactors, to meet Indias soaring civilian energy needs. It must be approved by the US Congress and the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.
In the breakthrough agreement-in-principle on civilian nuclear cooperation last July 18, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a unilateral declaration that India would maintain a voluntary moratorium on nuclear weapons testing.
The United States and India are now negotiating a more detailed peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement required under US law and proposed by the Bush administration which includes reference to the testing moratorium. Many Indians interpreted the reference as a US move to force India to agree to a permanent ban on nuclear testing and Indian officials said last week they would not make such an explicit commitment.
India has long refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, arguing it divides the world into nuclear haves and have-nots.
But US officials and experts say that instead of committing India to a test ban, the provision asserts the US legal right to halt cooperation under the accord if India conducts a weapons test. If the Indians mean what they say (about not testing), they should have no quibble with this provision, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the private Arms Control Association.
US officials indicated on Monday that they were prepared to negotiate exact language with India on this point. Kimball said if the administration backed off from the standard practice of reserving the US right to halt cooperation in the event of weapons testing, it would be giving India more favorable treatment than any other of the 40 countries with which Washington has nuclear cooperation accords.
Shinde said the world welcomed the US-India deal and I think that in the course of time even the American senators, regardless of party, will.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Nepal's capital was filled with jubilant crowds yesterday celebrating a dramatic victory against humbled King Gyanendra as opposition leaders urged Maoist rebels to declare a ceasefire. Tens of thousands took to the streets to celebrate the king's climbdown late Monday after weeks of violent protests as they waved party flags and chanted "Long live democracy" and "Clear the royal palace".
Many, brandishing photographs of some of those killed during the 19 days of strikes and violent protests, massed at the home of three-time former premier Girija Prasad Koirala. Koirala, now in his 80s, was nominated by the opposition Tuesday to be the new prime minister in the parliament when it sits in Kathmandu for the first time in four years on Friday. But a united front against Gyanendra was shaken when Maoist rebels flatly rejected the monarch's offer to reinstate parliament and warned of new violence.
The opposition is about to learn how they've been played ...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Simultaneous developments around the Middle East and wider Islamic world indicate that the broad movement of "political Islam" has now settled down into three general trends that are important to grasp. Al-Qaeda-style terror-warriors are the smallest but most dangerous group, provoking strong American-led military responses. The second group in terms of size and impact comprises Iran and allied, predominantly Shiite, Arab movements in Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon. They focus on self-empowerment and resisting the hegemonic aims of the United States and Israel. The third and largest group is made up of predominantly Sunni mainstream Islamists - Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Turkish Justice and Development Party - who are increasingly engaging in electoral democratic politics, at the local and national levels.
It is important to note several things: There is a wide variety of Islamists, with different goals and tactics, usually initially spurred by local angst. These are evolving rather than static movements, constantly responding to domestic and external stimuli, but always accountable to their home constituencies if they plan to survive and prevail. In a few crucial areas their motivations overlap, though their operational and strategic goals usually differ. They are likely to reconfigure their relationships and alliances in the future, especially in response to external meddling.
This has been something of a typical week in the wide world of contemporary political Islamism. Osama bin Laden released another threatening audio message. On Monday, three bombs exploded in an Egyptian tourist resort. Turkey's mild Islamist government confronts complex challenges of Kurdish militancy and separatism, growing Turkish nationalism, and a democratic transformation required to meet the terms of joining the European Union. Palestine's elected government headed by Hamas is threatened at home by the rival Fatah movement, and is being strangulated from abroad by the U.S., Europe and Israel. The Iranian government builds on its announcement of mastering small-scale uranium enrichment by defying and provoking the West and Israel, who are trying to prevent its development of a full nuclear fuel cycle. Lebanon's Hizbullah continues to flex its muscles as the largest and best organized Lebanese political group that is also close to Iran and Syria, but it faces increasingly vocal calls for its disarmament or incorporation into the national armed forces. Mainstream Muslim Brotherhood-style movements in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and most other Arab countries continue to explore how they can engage in democratic elections in order to share or control power, without being outlawed or emasculated.
The common denominator among all the Islamist trends is a shared sense of grievances against three targets: autocratic Arab regimes that run security states often dominated by a single family; Israel and its negative impact on Arab societies, through direct occupations or indirect political influence on U.S. policy in the region; and the U.S. and other Western powers whose military and political interference in the Middle East continues to anger and harm the majority of people in this region.
All three Islamist trends have responded to these grievances by fostering a combination of ideological defiance against the West, armed resistance against Israel and America, and political challenges against Arab regimes. They part ways, however, when it comes to their tactics and methods: Al-Qaeda blows up targets everywhere; the Iranian-Shiite groups focus on political resistance and defiance, often wrapped in revolutionary rhetoric; and Sunni mainstreamers resist militarily when appropriate (Hamas in Palestine), but more often concentrate on playing and winning the political game on the strength of their impressive numbers and organization, Turkey's Justice and Development with the best performance to date.
Throughout the Middle East and other Islamic lands, citizens who seek to become politically involved to change their world have these three options. Two of them - Al-Qaeda terror and Iranian-led defiance - are being fought fiercely by the West, and also by some in the region. The third option of democratic electoral politics is at a major crossroads now, following the Hamas victory, Hizbullah's strong governance role, and the recent solid performance by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
If the Hamas-led government is crushed by a combination of American, Israeli, Fatah and Arab pressures, and other Arab Islamists in government are squeezed further, this single largest, mostly Sunni, constituency in the world of "political Islam" will become disillusioned and probably give up on politics. Those who preach robust defiance against the West or who attack it with bombs are likely to gain new adherents, which will only intensify the cycle of violence, defiance, occupation and resistance that now defines and often plagues much of the Middle East.
Should mainstream, peaceful political Islamism be killed and buried, the subsequent landscape could very well see a coming together of five powerful forces that until now generally had been kept separate: Sunni Islamic religious militancy, Arab national sentiment, anti-occupation military resistance, Iranian-Persian nationalism, and regional Shiite empowerment among Arabs and Iranians. Anyone who thinks that we've seen the end of history should hold on to their pants and think again.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:27 ||
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Jawad al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister-designate, said yesterday he hoped to form a government in two weeks, a move that would bring to a rapid close the political crisis that has paralysed government decision-making for almost five months.
It would also mark a swift return on the decision to elevate 55-year-old Mr Maliki, who until last weekend was better known by the outside world as a spokesman for the Daawa party of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the man he replaced as prime minister.
His confidence that a national unity government can be formed speedily stems from his involvement in the intense negotiations of recent weeks.
"We have prior agreements . . . that makes our work easier," Mr Maliki said, referring to the joint statements worked out with Sunni and Kurds on the mechanisms a national unity government would use, and the policies it would apply.
Mr Maliki helped craft these agreements, marking himself in the eyes of many Iraqis as a practical negotiator very different fromMr Jaafari, although both hail from the same Shia Islamist political party.
While Mr Jaafari was known primarily as a Daawa ideologist, for over two years the somewhat unkempt and outspoken Mr Maliki has been the voice of the party, a functionary and spokesman who is more comfortable in the public eye than Mr Jaafari.
A western diplomat said Mr Maliki's reputation was of one who was "very Shia but also pragmatic''. He has pledged to fight rampant corruption and, unlike many politicians, his reputation is untainted by personal corruption, adds the diplomat.
Mr Maliki, who studied Arabic language and literature and who fought the Saddam Hussein regime from exile, first in Syria and later in Iran, is considered a true believer in Daawa's Islamist ideology. Formed in the seminaries of Najaf, it argues that Shia Islamic jurisprudence should guide the government in everything it does.
As a result, Shia Islamists have clashed with the Kurds over regional autonomy, with the Sunni over excluding former members of the Ba'ath party from public life, with secularists over whether religious or civil law should govern family life, and with everybody over the extent to which the majority in parliament should dominate decision-making.
Yet Mr Maliki has been broadly welcomed by Kurd and Sunni politicians.
He is emphatically not a Washington-friendly politician in the mould of Adel Abd al-Mahdi, who opposed Mr Jaafari for the Shia coalition's nomination in February and whose Islamism often seemed a populist gloss on free-market federalist ideas.
While Mr Maliki believed in the Islamist centralism of the Daawa, which the more secular-leaning and federalist Kurds in particular believe is hostile to their interests, he also recently helped write several key policy papers which represent significant compromises and which diplomats say will greatly smooth the creation of government.
Mr Maliki's language since becoming prime minister has apparently been aimed at Sunni worried that Shia militias, including the Mahdi army of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been engaged in a campaign of sectarian violence against them.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 01:23 ||
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According to this op-ed article from Kuwait's Arab-Language Al-Seyassah, the countries surrounding Iraq that have turned the country into a huge terrorist killing field have been defeated, both by the courage of the Iraqi people and by the most powerful nation on earth, the United States of America.
#2
Wow! Common sense and a sharp pen to boot! This guy gets it, and (I assume) it's because he remembers what Saddam did to Kuwait when left unchecked.
Posted by: BA ||
04/26/2006 9:51 Comments ||
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Zarkie is having to show his face for recruitment drives. Osama tries to ignore Iraq and sends jihadists to places the US troops are NOT. I love it.
#4
That government will now take charge of the weapons controlled by the militias, making sure that they are only in the hands of the legitimate armed forces.
That's still wishful thinking at this point. I love the article and the positive tone, but its past time that the militias were disarmed.
The United States believes that members of Iraqi militias should be allowed to join the US-trained Iraqi army only on an individual basis rather than in groups, a senior US official said on Monday. Iraq's new Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said last weekend that powerful sectarian militias should be disbanded and merged with Iraq's military. Such a move would be highly sensitive since the militias are each tied to different ethnic groups and political parties. "It's a good proposal in principle but the devil is always in the details," the official said. "How you integrate them is important. It must be focused on individuals and not units." The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to stir up controversy, said merging entire militia groups with the military could cause new problems. "If it is done incorrectly then you will get infiltration and not integration," he said. "Some of them (militia groups) are disciplined and some are not."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Sure. Send the Shite militias to the Syrian border and any Sunnis to the Iranian border.
Posted by: ed ||
04/26/2006 16:44 Comments ||
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exactly - shake and bake
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/26/2006 19:05 Comments ||
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Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said Tuesday that he expected to have his cabinet line-up ready for approval in two weeks. "I believe that in the next 15 days we can have a new government and present it to Parliament," the premier-designate told Iraqi state television.
An optimistic Maliki, whose nomination in place of outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari cleared the way for an end to the protracted deadlock, said agreements reached during negotiations over his own candidacy applied to posts in a future cabinet and would speed its formation. "We have prior agreements ... that makes our work easier," Maliki said.
Representatives of Iraq's various ethnic and religious groups were quick to stake their claims to ministerial jobs in the national unity government being formed by Maliki. Prominent Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman told AFP he expected the Kurds to be assigned six of Iraq's 30 ministries, including the Foreign Affairs portfolio they hold in the outgoing government. "If not, we want either the Oil or Finance Ministry," Othman said, adding that the Kurds were not asking for security posts.
The main Sunni parliamentary bloc, the National Accordance Front, played down the progress that had been made, saying it "was still premature to talk about ministries."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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HT Cap'n Ed - LOL! Who would steal from a thief??
Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar has had $450,000 stolen from his hotel room during his current visit to Kuwait, the Itim news agency quoted the Kuwaiti media as saying Wednesday. Suha? Do you know a good (I mean discrete) banker?
According to the report, al-Zahar had asked the Kuwaiti authorities to keep the theft under wraps, but the incident was confirmed by a security official at the hotel.
The foreign minister, a senior member of Hamas, is on a tour of Arab and Muslim countries to drum up funds after Israel suspended the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and Western donors cut off aid to the Hamas-led government.
The European Union and the United States have cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority over Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by previously signed peace agreements.
Itim also reported that an official at the Palestinian Finance Ministry has revealed that, despite its empty coffers, the PA has funded the trip for al-Zahar and his entourage.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/26/2006 20:42 ||
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Room 1205? Yes, your 25 member Filipino female fitness training team has arrived.... I'll send them all right up.
After letting the LTTE get away with 95% of the violations of the Ceasefire Agreement since it was signed in 2002 -- a statistic quoted by the European Peace Monitors -- the Sri Lankan government yesterday launched a joint air naval and ground attack on LTTE strongholds in Trincomalee shortly after a female suicide bomber targeted the car of Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, injuring him critically and killing 10 others last afternoon.
In a 15-minute address to the nation President Mahinda Rajapakse said that he will not be scared off by the LTTE terror tactics. He emphasized that these were provocative attacks launched by the LTTE to incite mob attacks on Tamil civilians. He appealed to the people not to be provoked by these violent acts of the LTTE.
Even before he came on air Israeli-built Kafirs bombed the LTTE Sampur camp and the Sri Lankan Navy and the army joined in shelling the Tiger-controlled area in the Trincomalee. This is first time since the Ceasefire Agreement was signed in 2002 that the Sri Lankan forces launched an official attack against the LTTE. A 14 hour curfew too was imposed on Trincomalee.
ndian Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee placed a special call to President Rajapakse and "conveyed India's solidarity with the government and people of the island in its "difficult hour", according to press release of India's External Ministry. Mukherjee conveyed India's shock at the attack on Sri Lankan Army Chief Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka and condemned it as a "brazen act of terrorism".
This is the first international reaction. The other reactions are expected to be very severe on the LTTE. Australia is expected to ban the LTTE in toto and crack down further on LTTE activities on Australian soil. According to political analysts the international backlash against the LTTE will impact heavily with the anti-terrorist wrath hitting them hard. Analysts believe that the LTTE had miscalculated its move and it will not get away easily this time as expected by them. Though the Army Commander was targeted to show its power this "brazen act of terrorism" is bound to ricochet on the LTTE and lose whatever sympathy there was left for it from the international community just at a time when they needed it most. In the eyes of the international community the LTTE has justified the military action that has been launched by the Sri Lankan Government, according to analysts.
Political analysts also pointed out that despite the Ceasefire Agreement which stipulates a 14-day notice before going back to war both sides are now engaged in an undeclared war. The Tamil Tiger attack on the Army commander and the three-pronged air, naval and ground attacks on the LTTE military camp in the Trincomalee district have blown the last shred of the claim of Erik Solheim that his Ceasefire Agreement has worked.
The undeclared war that began yesterday is a blow not only to any prospects of peace in the immediate future but also to Solheim's reputation as a "facilitator". At the last minute neither his deputy Hanssen-Bauer nor the Head of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission, Ulf Henricsson, could meet S. P. Thamilselvam, Head of the Political Wing of the LTTE. Thamilselvam did not agree to meet them even after the two stayed overnight in Killinochchi.
Both Henricsson and Hanssen-Bauer returned empty handed without any response from the LTTE. Solheim today is trapped in his own Ceasefire Agreement without a way out for him to rescue either peace or Norway's shattered image as a failed "facilitator".
All political parties (including the Tamil parties except the LTTE) have been critical of the role played by Solheim, the LTTE-friendly "facilitator", who had taken their side publicly and let the LTTE off the hook even when they committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the Geneva it was noted that he intervened to exonerate the LTTE when evidence was mounted to establish the war crime of forced child conscription. Lakshman Kadirgamar, the former Foreign Minister who was assassinated by the LTTE, bluntly blamed Solheim for not exerting greater pressure on the LTTE. But Solheim often claimed that the Ceasefire he brokered had saved lives. The Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission in a press release said yesterday that 300 had died since January alone - half of whom were military personnel and the other half civilians.
Analysts also believe that Velupillai Prabhakaran has taken a huge gamble in targeting the Army Commander. Earlier Prabhakaran had pledged to give some breathing space for President Rajapakse who took over reins of the office in November. But he reneged on his own commitment and increased provocative violence targeting of soldiers with claymore mines.
Some political analysts say that that they cannot dismiss the hand of Solheim playing a covert role in escalating the violence as a part of his pressure tactics to extract more and more concession from the Government. The tactics of Solheim and the LTTE were to pressure the Government through violence to the point of forcing the latter to cave into their demands.
They misread the restraint of the Government as a sign of weakness. President Rajapakse last night declared bluntly that his patience was not a sign of weakness and he won't be scared by terror tactics. Solheim's attempts to manipulate and force the Government to yield to the unending demands of the LTTE failed last night when the Government retaliated in the language that the LTTE understands. After bearing the burden of patience for four years the Government retaliated with force to send a strong signal to the LTTE, according to Government sources.
Does this mean that the Ceasefire Agreement has ceased to exist? Palitha Kohona, Head of the Sri Lankan Peace Secretariat, states that the Ceasefire Agreement is still in place for the Tamil Tigers to come back negotiations. The LTTE is now seeking clarification from the SLMM as to whether the Government has declared war. According to a statement issued by Ulf Henricsson he expects the offensive launched by the Government to be a limited operation to bring the LTTE back to the negotiating table.
But this is not likely, according to some analysts, who say that the LTTE has been rearing for a fight. They have been raising funds globally for the "Final War". They have armed themselves to the teeth. They have been raising the temperature by escalating violence. Each time the Government moved closer to a compromise the Tamil Tigers escalated their demands blocking path to peace talks. Erik Solheim was either unwilling or unable to draw the line as to where the violence should end and peace should begin. He was sailing along with the LTTE which gave them the licence to flout the Ceasefire Agreement each time they desired. The Tamil Tigers havealso been warning the Tamils of Jaffna that the Ceasefire Agreement will be broken soon and war will be resumed, endangering the lives of people in the peninsula. The leaflets distributed urged the Jaffna people to come back to Vanni where they could be protected. Political analysts also argue that 2006 marks the 30th anniversary of the LTTE fathered by Velupillai Prabhakaran and he is bent on launching final assault on the Sri Lankan forces to commemorate the anniversary.
These factors indicate that the LTTE is ready for a major confrontation. But whether the LTTE will react with a counter-offensive is yet to be seen.Some analysts argue that the LTTE is likely to use the bombing as an excuse to jump out of the Ceasefire Agreement (particularly the 14-day notice) and launch an offensive targeting Jaffna.
But others argue that the LTTE would be restrained by the possible backlash of the international community and Karuna of the east who may come out into the open equipped with better arms and increased cadres. If LTTE goes ahead with an all out offensive in the north military analysts argue that the Tigers would be vulnerable in the east. Since both sides will be freed from the restraints of the Ceasefire Agreement if a major confrontation takes place there is the likelihood of the Army joining hands with the Karuna Group openly. "The LTTE is not in a position to fight in the east and the north.
And whatever short terms gains the LTTE may score, they are bound to lose in the long run with the international community and the Tamils of the east rising against the Vanni leadership", said a military analyst.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:19 ||
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Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday at a meeting here with the Sudanese president that Iran was ready to share its nuclear technology with other countries.
"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country," the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, the news agency IRNA reported. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists."
Mr. Khamenei made his comments just days before the Friday deadline set by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment.
At a conference on Tuesday in Tehran on its nuclear program, senior officials vowed that Iran would continue its enrichment activities.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that in the event of Security Council sanctions, Iran would suspend cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency. If there is a military strike aimed at destroying its facilities, Iran will simply hide its nuclear program, he added.
"You may inflict a loss on us, but you will lose also," he said.
Mr. Larijani said Iran was willing to cooperate if its case was returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency, but warned, "Do not expect us to act otherwise if you drag the case to the Security Council."
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and head of the powerful Expediency Council, speaking at the conference, denounced the role of the nuclear agency and said it had failed to support Iran's program.
"I am not saying that the agency has had bad intentions," he said. "But it has not fulfilled its duty to support countries to enjoy their right to have nuclear technology."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 02:09 ||
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Oh I'm sure all those Sudanese nuclear physicists are just chomping at the bit. Geez louise, those savages can barely handle an Asprin factory.
Iranian statements seem calculated to draw an attack. Could it be that Khamenei wants to be rid of its nuclear program, but can't due to internal politics?
Has anyone asked this guy if he can slip us a map of targets, and times when people won't be there?
Iran could face UN sanctions if it does not accede to demands that it suspend its nuclear enrichment program, Britains foreign secretary warned on Tuesday.
The UN Security Council has set a deadline of Friday for Iran to suspend enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or material for warheads.
The Iranians, in my judgment, would miscalculate if they believed that Russia or China would block appropriate and effective sanctions, which targeted the regime, not the ordinary population, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in the House of Commons. Without going into detail, of course we are thinking about these matters actively.
Straw has said he does not believe Teheran will stop the program, and Irans top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday it would begin hiding its nuclear program if the West took any harsh measures against it.
Iran needs to understand that its increasingly belligerent stance serves only to isolate it further and stiffen the resolve of the international community, the foreign secretary said.
Straw condemned as outrageous Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads assertion Monday that Israel was a fake regime that cannot logically continue to live.
The remarks served only to undermine further the confidence of the international community in the Iranian regime, Straw said.
Teheran says its nuclear activities are aimed only at building power plants, but many nations suspect Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb.
A group of senior Iranian lawmakers said they believed the international demands for their country to cease its uranium enrichment were meant to deny it the right to develop civilian nuclear power, said a British legislators who met with the Iranian delegation Tuesday.
Theyre very adamant. They dont accept the assessment that comes from the (International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog). Their view is theyve done nothing contrary to what they are allowed, said Mike Gapes, chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which invited the Iranians to visit London.
They take a very strong view that its about denying them access to nuclear energy, which of course it isnt, Gapes said.
A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy said he had no information about the meetings.
Gapes said about seven British lawmakers from his committee had discussed topics including the nuclear dispute, Iraq and Afghanistan with the Iranians.
The visitors are Alaeddin Boroujerdi, leader of the Iranian parliaments national security and foreign relations committee; the committees deputy chairman, Akbar Alami, and lawmaker Mohammad Ashouri.
The Britons expressed their unhappiness with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads calls for Israels annihilation and his questioning of whether the Holocaust occurred, Gapes said.
We made it very clear that statements of that kind are not things that we can accept, he said. The (Iranian) parliamentarians overall want to have dialogue, and they dont want other things to stand in the way of that dialogue.
The Foreign Office said none of its officials planned to meet with the Iranian lawmakers.
The group spoke to the opposition Conservative Partys foreign affairs spokesman, William Hague, but Hagues spokesman declined to provide details of what they discussed.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 01:22 ||
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#1
My God, what an astonishingly limp-dicked bunch of bloody morons.
Notice to Mullahs - these daft twits don't speak for anyone else. You're gonna burn.
We don't know how many years it will be before Iran has a nuclear weapon at its disposal. Nor do we know if in the remaining two and a half years of his administration, American president George W. Bush is prepared to bomb Iran if it doesn't give up its nuclear program.
But we do know this: The American president says publicly that for the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program, even the use of tactical nuclear weapons is legitimate. Those familiar with the Pentagon warn that the U.S. Defense Department's most recent war plans against Iran are more than routine planning for a remote possibility.
In Iran meanwhile, the leadership seems determined to continue their nuclear program; and they have gotten their people accustomed to the idea that there could be a war with the United States, as shown by the recruiting of potential suicide bombers.
Europeans still hope that this is just sabre-rattling by both sides; that on the one hand, Bush will have neither the will nor the ability, in the midst of the Iraq debacle, to engage in an adventure in Iran; and that on the other hand Teheran, considering the threats from Israel and the U.S., will bow to the demands of the international community and abandon the enrichment of uranium within Iran proper.
BEYOND REALITY
The crisis may have a happy ending. Still, it's time that Europe's optimists understand that their optimism depends in part on faulty assumptions. The argument that because of the intervention in Iraq, American forces are stretched thin, so wouldn't be able to conduct an attack on Iran misses the point: a very large U.S. air attack against Iranian facilities would be possible even on short notice, assuming forces were ready to repel subsequent Iranian retaliation.
Analyzing the domestic political dynamics in the U.S. or Iran is also misleading. Four weeks ago I wrote that an air attack on Iran would be a distraction from the failure of Bush's Iraq adventure and from his own domestic weakness. But such reasoning would also be a bit cynical: Bush, say those familiar with the White House, is of the opinion that he himself must stop Iran's nuclear program, because none of his successors would have the guts to order such an attack.
#1
Bush, say those familiar with the White House, is of the opinion that he himself must stop Iran's nuclear program, because none of his successors would have the guts to order such an attack.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday said at a press conference that Iran is not obliged to abide by any UN Security Council resolution. Ahmadinejad said US military threats will be meaningless since Iran will strongly defend itself and the enemy will not venture to take such an action. "They know that such an action is dangerous for themselves. They even do not dare to talk about military action, because they know how detrimental such a practice will be. If they make such a mistake, the situation will further worsen for them.
"Any military action on Iran will draw their economic and social situation to a disaster. They only can embark on threats over media networks in order to exert pressure on Iran. Such a threat is futile for Iran."
Today Ahmadinejad said "We have announced repeatedly that Iran is not after crisis generation and we do not want to cause worries for anyone either, but we expect the UN to act based on regulations."
He stressed, "The UNSC has issued many resolutions against Israel so far, none of which has ever been heeded." Ahmadinejad added "We make our decisions based on international rules and regulations and in the framework of our national interests; we favor holding negotiations, are not after oppressing any other nation, and would not yield to being oppressed by others."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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The opposition Future Movement, led by Lebanese member of parliament Saad al-Hariri, son of the assassinated prime minister Rafic al-Hariri, strongly criticized President Emile Lahoud's defense of the four top suspects in the assassination, and his call for the release of the generals, who they said constituted the pillars of his intelligence and police regime.
Saad al-Hariri leads the opposition in Lebanon's parliament, and have the majority of parliament members,
His party, the Future Movement reaffirmed yesterday confidence in the international probe of the February 14 assassination, and said President Lahoud's insistence on the release of the suspected generals has intensified ahead of the launch of an international tribunal that will put them on trial.
The party stressed that President Lahoud "has appointed himself as the judge, lawyer and investigator of the probe, overstepping the judiciary and the UN-commissioned team investigating the assassination." It pointed out that the United Nations Security Council has been monitoring the top judicial body's work to implement resolutions, which were unanimously adopted by the Council, on the assassination.
The Future Movement said since his appointment by the custodian rule and the forcible extension of his term in office, against the will of the Lebanese, President Lahoud has been violating constitutional and legal norms. It cited the "ugliest crimes and violations that were committed in Lebanon's history" under his term in office, "including the manipulation of the judiciary, muzzling young demonstrators in 2001, the assassination of Mr. Ramzi Irani, persecutions by intelligence services of journalists, the terrorist attack that killed the late Premier along with MP Bassil Fuleihan and their colleagues, the assassination of journalist Mr. Samir Qassir, the murder of Mr. Geoge Hawi, the bombing attack that killed journalist and MP Gebran Tueini, and attempts on the lives of MP Marwan Hamadeh, media figure Ms. May Chidiac, and Minister Elias Murr."
The Future Movement made clear that the latest attempt by Lahoud to release the top suspects in Premier Hariri's killing, only adds to suspicions among the Lebanese about his "position" vis-à-vis the string of terrorist attacks. It noted that the Future Movement has yet to file charges for the assassination of Premier Hariri, against the suspects and those suspects who have not been arrested yet, allowing for the UN Security Council-led probe to proceed, and to put on trial the suspects in an international tribunal.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Syria has agreed to take a group of 181 Palestinian refugees currently stranded on the border between Iraq and Jordan, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday. The Palestinian refugees fled violence in Baghdad last month and have been camping out on the border since Jordan blocked their entry. "At the end of last week we learned that the government of Syria has agreed to receive the group of 181 Palestinian refugees stranded at the Iraq-Jordanian border," said William Spindler, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Birds of a feather, after all.
Spindler told journalists that Syria's move had sparked the departure of another 50 Palestinians from Baghdad. However, they were stopped on the Iraqi side of the border with Jordan and the men in the group not allowed to join the original 181 refugees currently camping in no-man's land.
Syria still digging the trenches to contain all the spittle...
"We have not been informed that other Palestinians will be allowed into Syria," Spindler said. "We are in contact with other countries. But so far we have not been able to find any other countries that will take Palestinians," he added. Jordan, which is already home to around 1.7 million Palestinians, has rejected criticism from human rights groups, saying it cannot cope with more refugees.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
I thought 30,000 Palestianians were kicked out of Baghdad. (last weeks story about the Wolves)
Where are the other 29,819?
Didn't meet Syrian stds and still out in the desert?
Tehran's top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that Iran will cease cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency if the U.N. Security Council slaps sanctions on the country.
Will we notice a difference?
The statements by Ali Larijani came a day after Iran's president facing a U.N. deadline on Friday to stop enriching uranium predicted the Security Council would not impose sanctions on Tehran and warned he was thinking about dropping out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
On Tuesday, Larijani, speaking to an international conference on Iran's energy program, said flatly that if the Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran, the country would suspend its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which oversees compliance with the nonproliferation treaty.
The Western countries on the IAEA board "have to understand they cannot resolve this issue through force," he said.
Iran's former President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking at the same conference, claimed that Iran openly launched its nuclear program which Iran insists is for peaceful energy purposes only "but the behavior of Western countries forced it to carry out its nuclear program independently, based on local expertise and knowledge without relying on Western countries."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
And you will give it to anyone who hates Israel, The US, than anyone who hates russia, then china, then India. A bige ole dove of peace whispered from the bottom of a well where ou cannot even drink water from.
The UN will back you and you will send your nukes to the antichrist army in Sudan because you beleve we care nothing about them and then you will have it sent through chad or direct to sout africa because they are still stunned from the last mess of colonization that they cannot realize good from bad.
I tell ya, it is hard to be a pimp. Especially if you oppose GOD.
Tick, Tick, Tick. I could have had flying cars by now but I need to concentrate on this. .....Yawn.
I gots boring terrorists with big bombs thinking they are Gods judgement. that is a 1938 thing.
Um, a hint- If your messiah is coming out of a well, you are not lookng up and that is the wrong direction. (Ahem)
A UN investigator on Tuesday interviewed Syrian President Bashar Assad about the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, an encounter the Syrian leader had previously twice declined.
I'm surprised he didn't have to wash his hair this time...
No details were released, but a spokesperson for the UN commission and the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported that chief investigator Serge Brammertz met Assad and Vice President Farouq Sharaa separately.
"Okay, Farouq. You got your story straight?"
"Right, boss!"
"You know it's treason to tell a different story than what I tell?"
"Right, boss!"
The interview was a milestone in the commission's 10-month-old investigation into the truck bombing that killed Rafiq Hariri and 20 others in Beirut on February 14 last year. Assad refused two requests for an interview last year and the UN Security Council twice accused Syria of failing to cooperate with the commission.
"Sorry. Can't do it. Sovreignty, y'know."
The United States had warned Syria the Security Council would take action unless it cooperated fully with the commission, whose interim reports have said that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agents were involved in Hariri's killing.
"I got three words for Bashir: 1st Marine Division."
Syria has repeatedly denied any role in the murder.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
The killing provoked an international outcry that ultimately forced Assad to withdraw the Syrian army from Lebanon in April 2005, ending nearly three decades of military dominance of the country.
"G'bye! Write if you get work!"
Brammertz is certain to have asked Assad about the accusation that he threatened Rafiq Hariri when he met the Lebanese prime minister in his office in August 2004.
"So tell me, Mr. President, just between us: did you really threaten to have him bumped off?"
According to testimony to the commission, Assad said he wanted the term of Lebanon's pro-Syrian president to be extended, a move that Hariri was known to oppose, and threatened to crush anybody who got in the way.
"Y'hear that, Hariri? I'll crush you like a flea! I'm the president!"
In media interviews, Assad has denied threatening Hariri and pointed out that Hariri later voted for the extension of President Emile Lahoud's term. "Neither me nor anybody else in Syria threatened him," Assad said in a recent TV interview.
"We didn't have to. A few shots through his front window, blowing up his gardener, that was hint enough."
Assad also suggested that Hariri may have lied about the threat to deflect criticism for deciding to vote for the extension.
"Yeah, sure! He used to lie all the time! Look at all the other times he lied about us!"
Vice-President Sharaa, whom Brammertz also interviewed, was foreign minister at the time of the assassination. An interim report last October accused him of lying to the commission in a letter about Hariri's meeting with Assad.
"... and you swear the statements you have made are true to the best of your knowledge?"
"Ngrk."
"Sorry. I can't understand you. Are those your lips by the spittoon?"
The Syrian government announced the interviews only after Brammertz had returned to his base in Beirut from his six-hour trip to Damascus in a convoy of 10 bulletproof vehicles.
Good idea. Brammertz might be a Belgian, but he's not a stoopid Belgian.
Brammertz had said in March that Assad had agreed to meet him. Assad had said he expected a "meeting, not an interrogation."
"That means you can't ask me no questions!"
"Why?"
"Sorry. That's a question. I don't have to answer it."
"So why the hell bother with a 'meeting'?"
"See? You did it again! A question!"
Many Lebanese blame Syria for Hariri's assassination and for a series of mysterious bombings that have targeted Lebanese politicians and journalists opposed to Syria during the past 14 months. Syria denies involvement in all the attacks.
"Wudn't us."
Four top Lebanese generals key figures in Syria's domination of Lebanon have been arrested and charged with playing a role in Hariri's killing. Assad has told reporters that if any Syrian officials are convicted of involvement in the assassination, they would be punished as "traitors."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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Monday's bombings in Egypt fit in with the philosophy of war laid out in a 7,000 word document by Osama Bin Laden which appeared recently in the form of an audio tape.
And in turn, the tape came within weeks of the publication in February of the Pentagon's "Quadrennial Defence Review" which stated: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
We therefore now have two almost simultaneous documents from the leading forces in the war and they are worth comparing.
There will be those who say that any comparison is odious but no professional intelligence officer I know would allow emotion to obscure analysis and it is on that basis that I proceed.
The most striking thing about the Bin Laden statement is its wide ranging nature. One counterterrorism commentator, Walid Phares, of the Florida Atlantic University called it a "state of the jihad address".
The al-Qaeda leader lists about 20 struggles worldwide. It is important to know what they are. Among his declarations:
* There can be no apology for the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which he dwells on at length. Instead he says those "responsible" must be punished and he leaves no doubt as to what that should be
* The West is at war with "our nation", defined as Islam as a whole, which amounts to a "crusade"
* The West's hostility towards Hamas is evidence of this crusade
* The UN Security Council is a "crusader movement along with pagan Buddhism". The Buddhists are represented by China in his view
* Islamic fighters should resist any attempt by the West to cut Darfur off from the rest of Sudan. He rejects the settlement with the South
* Iraq is the central struggle. "The epicentre of these wars and attacks is Baghdad"
* The fight in Iraq is a "crusader-Zionist war against Muslims". So, too, are or were the conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, East Timor, Somalia and Kashmir
* He attacks France for banning the headscarf in school and the writer Salman Rushdie is still "the infidel"
* He calls for the death of "Bush's lackey in Pakistan", meaning President Pervez Musharraf
* King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is responsible for "submissiveness and humiliation"
* The global war is not a clash of civilisations but an attack "by their civilisation against our civilisation"
* He condemns the use of Nato troops in Afghanistan
* The people in the West are as guilty as their leaders. "War is a common responsibility among people and government"
* No dialogue is now possible with the West as it rejected his own offer of a truce "after the withdrawal of their armies"
Thus, Osama Bin Laden's manifesto.
He does not incidentally mention Egypt but has no real need to since Egypt has always been a battlefield for al-Qaeda.
It is evident that Bin Laden has lost none of his determination in the years since 11 September 2001 ("the Manhattan conquest").
His manifesto is characterised by absolutism. Even the fight in Iraq is pitched in terms of protecting "monotheism", which is an implied rejection of the Iraqi majority, the Shias, according to Islamic scholars.
Whether his gathering in of just about every known conflict involving Muslims is a sign of his strength or a sign that he is trying to raise morale in sometimes weakened forces remains to be seen.
But his ambition remains undiminished.
Against this, the Pentagon is preparing its own plans.
These were partly revealed in the four-yearly document it is required to produce looking ahead towards the next 20 years.
The new document gives it own definition of the struggle and it is also couched in global terms.
"Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, our nation has fought a global war against violent extremists who use terrorism as their weapon of choice and who seek to destroy our free way of life.
"Our enemies seek weapons of mass destruction and, if they are successful, will likely attempt to use them in their conflict with free people everywhere. Currently, the struggle is centred in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our nation and its interests around the globe for years to come."
In his usual blunt style, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says in an introduction: "Now in the fifth year of this global war, the ideas and proposals in this document are provided as a road map for change, leading to victory."
The ideas and proposals are then listed in general terms. The principle is to make the US armed forces more flexible and to shift the emphasis:
* From a peacetime tempo - to a wartime sense of urgency
* From a time of reasonable predictability - to an era of surprise and uncertainty
* From single-focused threats - to complex challenges
* From nation-state threats - to decentralised network threats
* From conducting war against nations - to conducting war in countries we are not at war with (safe havens)
* From large institutional forces (tail) - to more powerful operational capabilities (teeth).
There is a lot more like this in the 92 page document.
The practical effects are going to be an increase in Special Forces and more US forces stationed in perhaps smaller groups around the world, sometimes clandestinely and even without the knowledge of local US diplomats.
There will be more unmanned drones.
There will even be special teams trained to disarm nuclear weapons. The threat of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction is partly what lies behind the overall commitment.
Critics are already saying that the Pentagon will no doubt also demand the big ticket items like new jet fighters and heavy equipment for the army.
But the thinking behind the review is to configure forces to better prevent or counter the kind of surprise attacks launched by al-Qaeda and its network of networks.
What the review does not get into, because it is not meant to, is the place that military tactics occupy in the wider strategy in such a long war.
The document does allude to this at the end by stating: "The United States will not win the war on terrorism... by military means... simultaneous, effective interaction with civilian populations will be essential to achieve success."
And of course the lesson from the Cold War is that it was not won by military means, though military strength certainly played a key role. It was won by one system collapsing.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/26/2006 00:23 ||
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#1
9-11 + 3000 dead > America's enemies told America to either surrender to Socialism-Communism and OWG, or be destroyed! Dubya's response > "okay, America's enemies are telling me and my people that I or we, America, must de facto rule the world or America's enemies will kill us. HHHHmmmmmmm, okey dokey, I and America decide we will rule the world"! * BUG BUNNY - "Of course you know this means War"!? JUST AS THE COMMIES SAY THAT AMER HOLOCAUST IS GOOD FOR AMERICANS, OR THAT THE ANTITHESIS OF LEFT-ALLEGED "FASCISM" IS "ANTI-FASCISM" THATS WEIRDLY AND MYSTERIOUSLY ALSO LEFTISM-SOCIALISM INCLUD COMMUNISM, IS NOT THE LOGICAL ANTI-THESIS TO US-ONLY/SPECIFIC WILFUL EXTERMINATION OR HOLOCAUST US-ONLY WORLD CONQUEST BY UNILATERAL, MILITARY MEANS??? Makes sense to me.
#2
Next up on "Celebrity Death Match"....Rummy vs. Binny! Should be a good matchup, although my money's on Rummy.
Posted by: BA ||
04/26/2006 9:41 Comments ||
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#3
Rummy eats Jihadis for breakfast, shits bullets.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/26/2006 11:18 Comments ||
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#4
Hello all!
The cyclone happily went away!
I am concerned for our long war though; Infiltration and cultural change of the Islamonazis is necessary to win, but it is mega hard to infiltrate a suspicious, closed-minded system.
We can't start preaching/beaming stuff in as they don't want to listen it drives them further away.
I still reckon it's going to end in glowing craters as we'll have to thoroughly defeat them. Their system not gona implode by itself unlike communism.
Thanks all for your kind comments the other day when cyclone was coming!
#5
Good on ya, Anon! Glad to hear (and see) you're safe. And, very good points you hammer home there too!
Posted by: BA ||
04/26/2006 13:46 Comments ||
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#6
Oh, and to get their panties all in a wad (no pun intended), I say we have a cartoon fest on Cap'n's idea above. A caricature of Rummy eatin' jihadis and pooping bullets should get page 1 in Sunday's cartoon section in my book!
Posted by: BA ||
04/26/2006 13:48 Comments ||
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#7
Strange, no one on either side seems to take note that America waged a long war against the primitives in North America for nearly a hundred years. Some wins, some defeats, some action, some inaction, politics all around, minor interruption for some national fratricide, no overall consistent strategy.
What evolved was seen as first the military established itself in the region followed by the sodbusters bringing in the culture [today whether pop music, coke, or democratic government], followed by functional marginalization of those who could not or would not adapt. We have experience at this.
Four activists accused of fighting with police during a raucous immigration protest in Arlington Heights were sentenced Tuesday to court supervision and community service work after they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery.
But once they stepped outside the Cook County courtroom, the four Chicago residents quickly claimed victory and denied any wrongdoing during last fall's demonstration. "We did nothing wrong on Oct. 15," said Cindy Gomez, one of the activists who accepted the plea deal with prosecutors to avoid a trial. "We stand by everything we did."
"We feel the agreement we came to was an important victory,'' added Kara Norlander, another of the demonstrators arrested last fall as they protested outside a meeting of the Chicago Minutemen Project.
The guilty pleas may not end the legal action stemming from the demonstration. Rehana Khan, one of the activists, is weighing a civil lawsuit against Arlington Heights, saying that while arresting her, police officers forcibly removed her religious head scarf.
Any chance of filing a suit against these mooks?
The claims of a legal victory rankled prosecutors and Arlington Heights officials, who said the guilty pleas speak louder than the statements made afterward.
Not in progressive la-la land; they spoke truth to power, y'know.
"It's absurd to suggest they were innocent when they in fact pleaded guilty," Assistant State's Attorney Lance Northcutt said.
So take the plea bargain off the table and go to trial.
The four charged were among a group of several hundred demonstrators who gathered last fall outside the Christian Liberty Academy to protest a meeting of the Minuteman Project, a group that opposes illegal immigration.
Critics say the group -- which provides volunteers to patrol the nation's borders -- is a racist organization that encourages vigilante action against immigrants crossing into the United States from Mexico.
More intelligent, sane people say the Minutemen are patriots and volunteers who are calling attention to a festering issue.
Arlington Heights police arrested five people during the rally, saying they blocked an entrance to the building, then hit or struggled with officers trying to remove them. Charged with battery and resisting arrest were Gomez, 28; Norlander, 24; Khan, 23; Eric Zenke, 18, and Marco Quiroz-Rojas. All were in court Tuesday for the expected start of their trial except Quiroz-Rojas, a Chicago man who disappeared after being released on bail.
In the plea bargain, Gomez, Norlander, Khan and Zenke pleading guilty to battery, while prosecutors agreed to drop the resisting arrest charges. Judge Hyman Riebman sentenced each to one year of court supervision and ordered each to do 240 hours of community service work. They had faced a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
For the community service, have them help build the fence.
Arlington Heights Village Attorney Ernest Blomquist said he was satisfied with the plea deal, but a Minutemen leader ripped the punishment as too lax. "I'm just sorry they weren't thrown into prison for 10 years for assaulting police," said Rosanna Pulido, a co-founder of the Chicago Minutemen Project.
Khan, a college student, said she felt her "religious rights'' were violated when officers removed the hijab, or religious head scarf, she was wearing during the protest. "It is very disrespecting,'' she said.
Arlington Heights police defended their handling of the protest and said Khan's head scarf had to be removed as a security precaution because it could have covered a weapon or dangerous object. "We're pleased with the way our officers responded,'' Capt. Jerry Lambert said. You're not the only one, Captain Lambert. Keep up the good work, officers.
#2
You don't suppose Marco Quiroz-Rojas could be an illegal alien, do you? No mention of a warrant being issued for not showing up by the plea Bargain barristers, or is the Bargain still available when he gets bagged next time?
#3
"...removing the hijab, or head scarf" > i.e. the burden is on the local and State Govts to ensure any legit official photo, no matter how costly or inconvenient to the Public Sector and lawful individuals, and which entails the dev of myriad new bureaucracies and sub-bureaucracies, regulations and sub-regulations, manuals and sub-manuals, etal. up the elbow and down the back and up the elbow again, which the protesters andor illegals will not have to pay for since the essence of the protests is for the illegals to stay permanently illegal, permanently subsidized at legal citizens'/residents' expense, and ultimately of course the formation of a State(s)-within-the-State. I haven't heard one activist yet whom has publicly said he or she is willing to pay higher personal taxes or any taxes to support the rights of the illegals to stay perman illegal and perman publicly welfarized in America.
Distancing itself from the remarks, the Michigan State University (MSU) said professor Indrek Wichman was exercising his free speech right when describing Muslims as "brutal and uncivilized" and telling Muslim students to return to their "ancestral homelands."
"He was cautioned that any additional commentary ... could constitute the creation of a hostile environment, and that could ... form the basis of a complaint," Terry Denbow, a spokesman for MSU, was quoted as saying by Detroit Free Press.
He stressed that the remarks, though "very inappropriate," do not violate the university's antidiscrimination policy.
In an e-mail to the universitys Muslim Students Association (MSA) on February 28, Wichman wrote: "I counsul [sic] you dissatisfied, agressive [sic], brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems [sic] to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile protests."
He was referring to global protests against Danish cartoons that ridiculed Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).
"If you do not like the values of the West--see the 1st Ammendment [sic]--you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/26/2006 00:00 ||
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#2
Most will NOT - like US Lefties returning angry and disillusioned from Cold War-era USSR-China, etal.; or post-USSR/Warsaw Pact Russians and East Euros, the majority love the US-Western DemoCapitalist, Materialist, Libertarian lifestyle. Its only a diehard few whom are also politically or media-influential that is fighting for the USA to be as poor and wilfully, permanently regressed as the majority of nations in the pan-Socialist-Commie global universe. OSAMA TO THE CLINTON-LED DEMS > THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR THE WORLD=MASSES TO BE POOR, AND TO STAY POOR FOREVER, NOT UTOPIA, NOT GLOBALISM, OR EVEN UNIVERSAL "PROGRESS"!?
#3
Grom, I thought the same thing, but Muslims are a race according to many MSM reports.
Posted by: BA ||
04/26/2006 9:34 Comments ||
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#4
This conclusively demonstrates that MSU should install a functioning spell checker in their email system (or if they have one, they should teach the faculty how to use it).
#5
"If you do not like the values of the West--see the 1st Ammendment [sic]--you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans."
Thank you professor Wichman. About time someone besides the Ozzies began to take this view.
#6
This is almost impossible to believe that there is a sane and brave faculty member at a top flight US university. Bravo Prof. Wichman. We need many more of you. Also, thumbs up to MSU for the support. Amazing, being that there is a virtual Muslim outpost there.
#7
Since when is the observation of simple fact "racist." A substantial number of Muslims are, indeed, "brutal and uncivilized." Much of the Muslim world certainly exhibits "dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal" and "slave-trading" behavior in the midst of their often "infantile protests."
At least MSU recognizes that there is no basis for accusations of racism. Too bad the MSM cannot refrain from illiberal reassessments when another leftist institution is able to.
#8
This from a university prof...so close to Ann Arbor the Berkeley of the mid-west? This guy is toast..he'll be vilified by his lefty bretheren and hung out to dry. Might have to find a real job...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The African Union on Tuesday presented the warring parties from western Sudan's Darfur region with a draft peace agreement designed to bring an end to three years of bloodshed.
The United States was likely to call a UN vote on Tuesday to impose sanctions on four Sudanese accused of war crimes in Darfur, despite opposition from China and Russia, a US official said. The sanctions, a travel ban and a freeze on assets abroad, would be the first adopted against individuals involved in the Darfur conflict. They were authorised by the UN Security Council in March 2005 against those who thwart peace efforts, violate human rights or conduct military flights over Darfur. "We very well could vote," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations. 
The Arab world reacted in horror and outrage Tuesday at the bombings of an Egyptian resort and a rift opened between hardline al-Qaida sympathizers and other radical Muslim groups who say the latest attacks have gone too far. 
British Prime Minister Tony Blair underlined yesterday his support for the Palestinian Government formed by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and said: "I support the elections mandate of Hamas." 
The body of the first Australian soldier to be killed in Iraq was scheduled to arrive in Melbourne this morning, but in what the Defence Department said is a "terrible mistake", the wrong body has been returned. The body of Private Jake Kovco was due to be given a service in Gippsland with full military honours, but the coffin that arrived in Melbourne this morning contained the wrong body. The 25-year-old private accidentally shot himself while cleaning his weapon in Baghdad on Friday. He was a member of the 110-strong security detachment in Iraq's capital to protect Australian officials. The Defence Department said the return of Private Kovco's body to Australia "has been delayed". It said in a statement that an error occurred in Kuwait and the incorrect casket was despatched. The department said Private Kovco's body would be flown to Australia immediately, by private charter if necessary.
Canada's new Conservative government banned the media from showing live images of the flag-draped coffins of four Canadian soldiers when their bodies were returned Tuesday from Afghanistan, angering political opponents and some families.
Seaport workers will undergo background checks for links to terrorism and to ensure they are legal U.S. residents, the Bush administration said Tuesday. The heightened scrutiny _ which will begin immediately _ drew praise from some lawmakers and port associations that said the checks were long overdue. Others jeered the security measures as either too weak or too invasive of workers' privacy rights.
Nepal's capital was filled with jubilant crowds yesterday celebrating a dramatic victory against humbled 
Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said Tuesday that he expected to have his cabinet line-up ready for approval in two weeks. "I believe that in the next 15 days we can have a new government and present it to Parliament," the premier-designate told Iraqi state television.
Syria has agreed to take a group of 181 Palestinian refugees currently stranded on the border between Iraq and Jordan, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday. The Palestinian refugees fled violence in Baghdad last month and have been camping out on the border since Jordan blocked their entry. "At the end of last week we learned that the government of Syria has agreed to receive the group of 181 Palestinian refugees stranded at the Iraq-Jordanian border," said William Spindler, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 
Tehran's top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that Iran will cease cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency if the U.N. Security Council slaps sanctions on the country.
A UN investigator on Tuesday interviewed Syrian President Bashar Assad about the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, an encounter the Syrian leader had previously twice declined. 
Four activists accused of fighting with police during a raucous immigration protest in Arlington Heights were sentenced Tuesday to court supervision and community service work after they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery.
