NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Nigeria and Venezuela plan to cut production amid OPEC concern about the rapid drop in prices, the OPEC countries say.
The move, which accounts for about 170,000 barrels a day, may suggest other cuts by the oil-producing cartel, The Financial Times reports.
Figures to be released in the next few weeks are expected to show Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also reduced output, but are keeping quiet about it, the newspaper reports. Nigerian Oil Minister and OPEC President Edmund Daukoru has said the price of oil was "very low."
Nigeria and Venezuela both said their cuts were part of an informal deal worked out at a meeting in September to pare output if prices fell, The New York Times reported.
Oil prices peaked in midsummer at $77.03 a barrel and have fallen nearly 20 percent since then.
Current oil futures rose 15 cents to close at $62.91 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Friday.
An investigation has revealed that the Muslim riots that destroyed 18 Christian churches, 20 homes owned by Christians and dozens of Christian shops in the Nigerian city of Dutse happened after a Christian girl rejected a Muslim boy's advances.
As WND reported earlier, the riots erupted after the boy accused the girl of "blasphemy" to the prophet Muhammad.
Now word comes from Voice of the Martyrs that the investigation shows nearly 5,000 Christians were displaced and 40 Christian shops destroyed in the capital city of Jigawa state.
"After an Islamic young man made several unsuccessful advances on Jummai, a female Christian, he angrily reacted by calling her a fake Christian who follows a 'useless Jesus,'" the VOM report said.
"Jummai responded by telling the boy he followed a 'useless prophet – Muhammad'," the report said. "Furious, the Muslim boy raised alarm through the town by proclaiming that a Christian lady blasphemed Muhammad. She was quickly taken to the local police station where she was kept in custody to diffuse the potentially volatile situation."
After several hours, the Muslim returned to the police station with a "militant band of friends" and incited them to attack police by alleging the woman wasn't being punished after her "insult" to Muhammad.
At least six Christians were injured in the resulting riots that destroyed churches, homes, vehicles and shops, officials said.
The government ended up imposing a nighttime curfew and deploying soldiers in tanks and trucks to deter further mayhem, officials said.
Aderemi Ogunmola was treated for a slash on his head
Voice of the Martyrs also said Aderemi Ogunmola was one of the Christians who was caught in the violence, and was captured by the Muslim militants to be beaten and slashed. They doused him with gasoline but he fled before he could be killed.
Rioters also ransacked the Christ Apostolic Church and while Pastor Adeyinka was trying to flee in his car, they stopped him and burned his car as he escaped.
Voice of the Martyrs said it is mobilizing workers to help repair the damage at Calvary Life Church, Divine Life Church, Assemblies of God Church, Living Faith Church, Christ Apostolic Church, The Apostolic Church, Ecwa Clinic Church, Presbyterian Church, Anglican Cathedral, Celestial Church and others.
The Christian aid organization Barnabas Fund said the conflagration destroyed two-thirds of all Christian churches in the area, including St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral, and there were reports that the state's governor himself was attacked when he tried to calm the mob.
The Barnabas Fund noted Muslims already were in an uproar worldwide because of a recent comment from the pope where he cited a historic document that describes Islam as violent.
"There have been attacks against Christians in the Palestinian territories, Somalia and Iraq," the group said.
The comments from the pope that have left the Muslim world calling either for his death or his conversion to Islam came as he quoted 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus.
"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached," the pope quoted.
Telegraph - China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by "blinding" their sensitive surveillance devices, it was reported yesterday.
The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon's annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat.
"After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.
The document said that China could blind American satellites with a ground-based laser firing a beam of light to prevent spy photography as they pass over China.
According to senior American officials: "China not only has the capability, but has exercised it." American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under attack "several times" in recent years.
Although the Chinese tests do not aim to destroy American satellites, the laser attacks could make them useless over Chinese territory.
The American military has been so alarmed by the Chinese activity that it has begun test attacks against its own satellites to determine the severity of the threat.
Satellites are especially vulnerable to attack because they have predetermined orbits, allowing an enemy to know where they will appear.
"The Chinese are very strategically minded and are extremely active in this arena. They really believe all the stuff written in the 1980s about the high frontier," said one senior former Pentagon official.
In a post 9/11 world, border security is a matter of national security. Securing our borders is not an insurmountable problem … but it has been a problem that too many have been willing to ignore for too long.
While our borders are still inexcusably porous, we’ve made a great deal of progress in the last two years. With the passage of Defense and Homeland Security appropriations bills, we will have added 3,736 new Border Patrol agents … 9,150 new detention beds … and 1,373 detention personnel. We’ve more than quadrupled spending on border and immigration enforcement … increasing funding from $4 billion prior to 9/11 to over $16 billion today. We’ve seen apprehensions at the border increase by 45%.
We’ve ended catch-and-release. And, just moments ago, the Senate invoked cloture on the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 71-28. Tomorrow the Senate will pass this legislation and send it to the President’s desk for his signature.
By requiring the construction of at least 700 miles of two-layered reinforced fencing along our southwest border and by mandating the use of cameras, ground sensors, UAVs and other forms of hi-tech surveillance, this legislation will help us gain control over every inch of our borders. The Homeland Security appropriations bill authorizes $1.8 billion in funding … so
construction will proceed as quickly as possible. As the fence is erected, more funding in future budgets will be required, but I’m confident that the 71 Senators who proved themselves serious about border security today will support continued funding.
And the 27 Democrat Senators who opposed this crucial measure? Their votes serve as a reminder of the stakes of the elections this November. Democrats like Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Maria Cantwell, Robert Menendez, and Harry Reid have again proven they don’t understand what it takes to secure the homeland. They simply cannot be trusted to support real action to secure our borders and they cannot be trusted to lead.
Written by Bill Frist, M.D.
We must keep nipping and yapping on their heels to get the rest of the laws, enforcements and penalties that we are going to have to have. We also need to support the Minutemen in their continued efforts to assist the Border Patrol.
Papa Ray
[note: Blogger problems prevented this from being published last night 9-28-06]
Drudge Report - Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean came to Austin Tuesday to rally Democrats."We are going to take back Texas. And we're going to do it before we take back other states we've lost the last 15-20 years," Dean said during the rally.
The former Presidential candidate fired up the troops at Scholz Garten in downtown Austin.
Dean predicts statewide and nationally Democrats will make big gains in November. He says between the war in Iraq and deficit, the Republicans have taken the country in the wrong direction.
Reuters - Former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan, a Muslim with wide international respect, emerged on Thursday as a possible last-minute candidate to replace Kofi Annan as United Nations Secretary-General.Citing "informed sources", Thailand's Nation newspaper said Surin was about to receive backing from the United States, who felt he was a "strong candidate".
"He is an Asian, a moderate Muslim and a former foreign minister who is well-known and respected in the international community," the paper quoted an unidentified source as saying.
Surin, Thailand's top diplomat for four years in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, did not deny the report.
"I can only say that one feels honoured for having his name being mentioned in such a positive light," he told Reuters. "At this moment, I am not a candidate but the international community has been aware of my keen interest in an international position."
Asked if he had been approached by Washington as a possible candidate, he said: "Not personally, not directly."
UN Security Council members conduct a third informal vote on Thursday on their preference for the seven declared candidates. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon has emerged top of the two previous polls.
U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton is pushing for a quick resolution to the race, saying Annan's replacement needed a decent transition period before taking up the reins on January 1.
Thailand's declared candidate, Surakiart Sathirathai, a deputy prime minister in the government ousted in a coup last week, has come third in the previous votes.
Analysts say the coup against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra cannot have helped his cause.
New York Times - In his first act after being installed as prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a popular nationalist who has vowed to make Japan more assertive globally, appointed a cabinet on Tuesday packed with social conservatives and foreign-policy hawks.
Mr. Abe, 52, bowed deeply in front of lawmakers after winning 339 votes in the 476-member lower house, which selects the prime minister.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Abe’s predecessor and political mentor, Junichiro Koizumi, vacated the prime minister’s residence in central Tokyo after nearly five and a half years. Mr. Abe had been virtually guaranteed to succeed Mr. Koizumi, 64, since winning last week’s leadership election in the Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for most of the past half-century.
Mr. Abe is Japan’s youngest prime minister since World War II and the first to be born after the war. His ascension appears to be a changing of the guard in a country that has kept a low profile in international affairs since its defeat in 1945. He enters office riding a crest of popularity, as his message of renewed national pride has found followers amid the resurgence of Japan’s long dormant economy.
“Japan must be a country that shows leadership and that is respected and loved by the countries of the world,” Mr. Abe said Tuesday in his first news conference as prime minister. “I want to make Japan a country that shows its identity to the world.”
At the same time, Mr. Abe (pronounced AH-bay) said he wanted to improve relations with South Korea and China, which soured after Mr. Koizumi paid visits to a Shinto shrine honoring Japan’s war dead.
Mr. Abe called on the leaders of South Korea and China to meet with him, something both countries refused to do with Mr. Koizumi. So far, Mr. Abe has been vague about whether he will visit the shrine.
He told reporters that one goal of his administration was to revise Japan’s pacifist Constitution, written after World War II by American occupation forces, to permit a full-fledged military. He also indicated that he favored closer military cooperation with Washington. These goals have alarmed many here who worry that any upgrading of the status of the armed forces could damage ties with Asian neighbors, which fear a revival of Japanese militarism.
After winning leadership of the governing party last week, Mr. Abe reportedly spent several days holed up in his country retreat near Mount Fuji, drawing up his cabinet. His choices, said Tomoaki Iwai, a professor of politics at Nihon University, and others, gave a decidedly hawkish bent to the new administration.
Mr. Abe increased the number of advisers to the prime minister, adding new posts for national security, education and the issue of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea. Many of his appointees are in their 50’s, a decade younger than most cabinet ministers in the past.
One of the most watched appointments was to the new job of national security adviser, which went to Yuriko Koike, 54, a former television reporter. Ms. Koike has been a vocal supporter of the economic sanctions on North Korea linked to its refusal to provide more information on the fate of Japanese citizens kidnapped two decades ago.
Another was the education adviser, Eriko Yamatani, 56, a critic of sex education and the teaching of “excessive” equality of the sexes in schools.
The new state minister in charge of sex equality, Sanae Takaichi, 45, has opposed allowing women to have different legal family names from their husbands, a freedom women sued to win in the late 1980’s.
The defense agency chief, Fumio Kyuma, a 65-year-old party veteran and a friend of Mr. Abe’s, and the foreign minister, Taro Aso, 66, who ran against Mr. Abe in last week’s leadership vote, retained their positions.
There are few political heavyweights in top economic posts, reflecting what some economists and political scientists said was a shift in priorities toward foreign policy and national security. Mr. Koizumi, in contrast, filled economic posts with prominent reformers like Heizo Takenaka, a former economics professor credited with fixing Japan’s debt-ridden banking system.
First Coast News - Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier at more than 2,100 locations and switching to its own brand of fuel.
The retailer said Wednesday it will purchase fuel from several distributors, including Tower Energy Group of Torrance, Calif., Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City, and Houston-based Frontier Oil Corp.
A spokeswoman for Dallas-based 7-Eleven said its 20-year contract with Citgo Petroleum Corp. ends next week. About 2,100 of 7-Eleven's 5,300 U.S. stores sell gasoline.
Citgo is a Houston-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, and the foreign parent became a public-relations issue for 7-Eleven because of comments by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Chavez has called President George W. Bush the devil and an alcoholic. The U.S. government has warned that Chavez is a destabilizing force in Latin America.
7-Eleven spokesman Margaret Chabris said that, "Regardless of politics, we sympathize with many Americans' concern over derogatory comments about our country and its leadership recently made by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez."
Chabris said a boycott of Citgo gasoline would hurt the 4,000 employees of the U.S. subsidiary, who have no connection to Venezuela.
7-Eleven had been considering creating its own brand of fuel since at least early last year. Company officials said at the time they had spoken with independent fuel distributors.
Arizona Republic - Republican Len Munsil vowed Monday to tear down the Arizona Sept. 11 Memorial in the state Capitol Mall if elected governor.
Munsil, who is running against Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, said some messages on the new monument are objectionable and can't be trusted.
Flanked by family members of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Munsil blasted the $500,000 monument's inscriptions as being political commentary on war rather than historical fact on the terrorist attacks.
The sculpture, called "Moving Memories," consists of facts and comments designed to represent viewpoints related to the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath. Some messages display historic facts, such as when airplanes hijacked by terrorists struck the World Trade Center.
Munsil said that taken as a whole, the messages indict the U.S. government and mock the Bush administration.
Other critics of the sculpture have objected to specific messages, including one that says, "You don't win battles of terrorism with more battles."
"It's an anti-war mentality and an anti-American mentality," said Munsil, who won the Republican bid one day after the memorial was dedicated on Sept. 11. "The people of Arizona need to know that this is what's on state property."
During last week's dedication ceremony, Napolitano said the memorial was built to preserve the meaning of Sept. 11 for future generations. While flying to Prescott on Monday, Napolitano called the memorial "impressive and meaningful" and continued to support it.
"It's a respectful memorial to the tragedy of 9/11," she said. "For him to politicize the 9/11 memorial like that is just shameful. I just think it's very sad."
The monument, in Wesley Bolin Plaza, features quotes, dates, anecdotes and a timeline of key events associated with the attacks carved out through a huge metal ring. Napolitano appointed half of the 30 members of a commission that helped design the memorial. Former Gov. Jane Hull, who created the panel in 2002, seated the other half. Several members are Arizonans who had loved ones killed in the 2001 attacks.
Munsil promised to dismantle the monument if elected and replace it with one featuring phrases such as "United We Stand" and "Let's roll," reportedly among the last words uttered by passengers who tried to retake United flight 93 on Sept. 11.
"It's a disgrace," said Robert Zurheide, whose son Robert, a Marine lance corporal, was the first Tucson resident killed in Iraq. "It's a slap in the face to every one of our sons who have sacrificed and to every one of the victims of 9/11."
You might read the rest!
Did you know....(What your teachers or professors may not have taught.)
How America's Constitution Convention Began: Constitutional Convention: June 28, 1787, Thursday, was embroiled in a bitter debate over how each state was to be represented in the new government.
The hostile feelings created by the smaller states being pitted against the larger states was so bitter that some delegates actually left the Convention. Benjamin Franklin, being the President (Governor) of Pennsylvania, hosted the rest of the 55 delegates attending the Convention. Being the senior member of the convention, at 81 years of age, he commanded the respect of all present, and, as recorded on James Madison's detailed records, he arose to address the Congress in this moment of crisis:
"Mr. President, the small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance & continual reasoning's with each other - our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ayes, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of
political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those Republics, which, having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all around Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstance.
In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding?
In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection - Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor.
To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need His Assistance? I have lived. Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without His aid?
We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." (Psalm 127:1) I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move - that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on out deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service."
Jonathan Dayton, delegate from New Jersey, reported the reaction of Congress to Dr. Franklin's rebuke: "The Doctor sat down; and never did I behold a countenance at once so dignified as was that of Washington at the close of the address; nor were the members of the convention generally less affected. The words of the venerable Franklin fell upon our ears with a weight and authority, even greater than we may suppose an oracle to have had in a Roman senate." And: "We assembled again; and...every unfriendly feeling had been expelled, and a spirit of conciliation had been cultivated." (America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations by William J. Federer pp. 150-152)
Aljazeera - Fifty-six Kurdish mayors have gone on trial in Diyarbekir, a city in southeastern Turkey, on charges of supporting Kurdish separatists.The men were charged with "supporting terrorism" on Tuesday for writing a joint letter to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister ,last December.
The mayors had asked Fogh Rasmussen to ignore the Turkish government's call to close down Roj TV, a Denmark-based Kurdish television station.
Turkey says Roj TV is a mouthpiece of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed separatist group, which Ankara, together with the European Union and the US, classifies as a terrorist organisation.
The mayors rejected the accusations, arguing that the letter aimed to defend freedom of press and the interests of the Kurdish people in the southeast, where Roj TV enjoys a wide audience.
One of the mayors, Firat Anli, said as he presented a joint defence on behalf of all defendants: "We stand behind each and every word of the letter... This trial is yet another reflection of the undemocratic approaches to the Kurdish question in Turkey.
"Rather than defending a certain channel, our letter underlined the need to tolerate different voices, even if they are dissident, and to ensure freedom of press and freedom of expression."
The mayors had written that silencing Roj TV "would mean the loss of an important vehicle in the struggle for democracy and human rights" in Turkey.They said efforts to press Denmark into banning the channel contradicted Turkey's commitment to improve its democracy record in its bid to join the EU.
Fogh Rasmussen rejected Turkey's demands to close Roj TV and said that Turkey should not put the men on trial.
"I find it rather shocking ... that because you write a letter to me, you are being accused of violating the law," Fogh Rasmussen told Danish public radio in June.
"It is shocking that it can take place in a country which is seeking EU membership."
Recently, Turkey has come under intense scrutiny for putting a series of high-profile authors on trial.
Los Angeles Times - Kentucky's law forbidding protests within 300 feet of military funerals and memorial services was suspended Tuesday after a federal judge ruled it was too broad.
The law, approved this year, was aimed at members of a Topeka, Kan., church who have toured the country protesting at military funerals. The Westboro Baptist Church claims the soldiers' deaths are a sign of God punishing America for tolerating homosexuality.
U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell wrote that the law could restrict the free speech rights of people in nearby homes, sidewalks and streets, even if they cannot be seen or heard by funeral participants.
The 300-foot zone "is large enough that it would restrict communications intended for the general public on a matter completely unrelated to the funeral as well as messages targeted at funeral participants," Caldwell wrote in a ruling issued in Frankfort.
Those found guilty of violating the law, which also applies to memorial services, wakes and burials, would face up to a year in jail.
Kentucky Atty. Gen. Greg Stumbo said he was considering an appeal.
About a dozen states have similar laws, and Congress passed a law this year prohibiting protests at military funerals at national cemeteries.
Westboro Baptist issued a statement Tuesday night saying members would be in the southeastern town of London on Saturday to picket the funeral of a Kentucky National Guard soldier who died last week in Iraq.
By Diana West
September 22, 2006
Shut up.
When all is said and done -- when protesters junk their placards, when burning churches cool, when a murdered nun's grave grows grass -- "shut up" is the underlying message of Pope Rage, the latest fulmination to come from Islam, this time over Pope Benedict's recent lecture on faith and reason. When the pope argued, quoting a Byzantine source on Mohammed, that the practice of forced conversion -- key to Islamic expansion over the centuries -- is inimical to both faith and reason, the reaction of anger and violence was instantaneous. Just shut up, the umma exclaimed.
Or, to put it more elegantly, as did Daniel Pipes: "The Muslim uproar has a goal -- to prohibit criticism of Islam by Christians and thereby impose Shariah norms in the West. Should Westerners accept this central tenet of Islamic law, others will surely follow. Retaining free speech about Islam, therefore, represents a critical defense against the imposition of an Islamic order."
The question is, Will we retain our free speech about Islam? Speaking at the United Nations this week, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf asked the international community to ban the "defamation of Islam" -- a rendition of "shut up" that's a constant refrain at the UN -- but it looks like mum's already the word. Just read through George W. Bush's address to the world body. "Islamic fascists" are out. "Extremists who use terror as a weapon to create fear" are in.
We probably have presidential pal and roving ambassador Karen Hughes to thank for Mr. Bush's discreet-to-the-point-of-incomprehensible talk. "Diplomats say that Muslims hear [the phrase "Islamic fascists"] as an attack on their religion, thereby validating the extremists' false charge that the United States is at war with Islam," writes Morton Kondracke, explaining Mrs. Hughes' semantic sentiments, which he says have put the kibosh on administration straight talk. But maybe there's more (less) to it. Earlier this month, Mrs. Hughes wrote: "As I have traveled the world, I have met those who try to justify the violence based on policy differences, long-held grievances or a perceived threat from the West."
Differences, grievances, threat: Isn't she missing some little old jihad thing? Not that she's alone. Take Hughes mentor Edward Djerejian. Veteran diplomat to assorted Middle Eastern countries -- warm to Arabs, cool to Israel (just like his close associate James Baker, who now co-chairs the vaunted Iraq Study Group) -- Mr. Djerejian is another happy warrior of ambiguity. The "seminal challenge" of our age, as Mr. Djerejian describes it, is "the struggle for ideas between the forces of moderation and extremism, whether it be secular extremism or religious extremism of no matter what religion, no matter what culture."
This is a challenge, all right -- a challenge to know what he's talking about. But such obfuscation is more than just the antithesis of reasoned critique. It also happens to comply with what Mr. Pipes calls "Shariah norms" in the West.
Islam prohibits "blasphemy," which includes criticism of its prophet Mohammed. The Shariah penalty is death. But if it is "extremists" who carry the penalty out -- as in the ritual murders of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam (2004) and Mohammed Taha in Sudan (2006) -- what Pope Rage reveals is how shockingly little separates "moderates" from "extremists" when it comes to the blasphemy-taboo in the first place.
"Even the most moderate and Westernized Muslim will not tolerate insults to the Prophet Mohammed," writes Tulin Daloglu, commenting on Pope Rage from the moderate side of Islam in The Washington Times. "Each offense unites Muslims against Western prejudices and rejection -- and the extremists gain more credibility."
So shut up.
Blogging online, columnist Mona Charen reported on another moderate, George Washington University's Seyyed Hossein Nasr. In an interview with NPR host Diane Rehm, Mr. Nasr contested the notion that Pope Rage violence against Christians was not unprovoked. As Mrs. Charen wrote, "Diane Rehm equably restated his position (I paraphrase): 'So you think words are violence.' He confirmed."
So shut up.
Meanwhile, listen to the voice of bona fide "extremism," Great Britain's own Anjem Choudary, as reported in the Evening Standard: "The Muslims take their religion very seriously and non-Muslims must appreciate that and must also understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet." He continued: "Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment."
"Shut up," say the moderates, "or else," say the extremists. Frankly, this sounds an awful lot as if the "moderates" are as non-reasonable as the "extremists." This may be shocking-but it's nothing to be left speechless over.
Aljazeera - A Muslim cleric is reported to have been shot dead by gunmen in Russia's southern spa town of Kislovodsk.
The country's Interfax news agency quoted police as saying the assailants fled late on Monday after killing the imam of a mosque in the doorway of an apartment block where he lived.
A police officer was also wounded when trying to stop two armed people in the street.
Kislovodsk, like many parts of southern Russia, has a strong Russian nationalist Christian community which eyes with suspicion the growth of a Muslim population arriving from the impoverished Caucasus region.
Ethnic tensions in many parts of Russia have become a cause of concern for authorities, alarmed by the increase in racist attacks.
Analysts have said that by the year 2020, one in ten Russians could be Muslim.
New York Times - One month after a United Nations Security Council resolution ended a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, members of the international force sent to help keep the peace say their mission is defined more by what they cannot do than by what they can.
They say they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they can not stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.
The job of the United Nations force, and commanders in the field repeat this like a mantra, is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by supporting the Lebanese Army. They will only do what the Lebanese authorities ask.
The Security Council resolution, known as 1701, was seen at the time as the best way to halt the war, partly by giving Israel assurances that Lebanon’s southern border would be policed by a robust international force to prevent Hezbollah militants from attacking. When the resolution was approved, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of its principal architects, said the force’s deployment would help “protect the Lebanese people and prevent armed groups such as Hezbollah from destabilizing the area.”
But the resolution’s diplomatic language skirted a fundamental question: what kind of policing power would be given to the international force? The resolution leaves open the possibility that the Lebanese Army would grant such policing power, but the force’s commanders say that so far, at least, that has not happened.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding what we are doing here,” said Lt. Col. Stefano Cappellaro, an Italian commander with the San Marco Regiment.
The force, known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or Unifil, now has 5,000 troops on the ground, including 1,000 from Italy, and is stepping gently as it tries to carve out a role in a country that is feeling its way through the postwar period. It is early in the United Nations mission, but officials say that their most difficult task, and one they are adamant about achieving, is not being drawn into any power struggles between the religious and political factions in Lebanon. “We will not get involved in any domestic or regional politics,’’ said Milos Strugar, senior adviser to the force.
So while there may have been some expectation that the international force would disarm or restrain Hezbollah, or search for hidden weapons caches, the commanders on the ground say very clearly that those tasks are not their job for now. “We will advise, help and assist the Lebanese forces,” said Col. Rosario Walter Guerrisi, commander of the San Marco Regiment, referring to the Lebanese Army.
But the challenges facing their determined neutrality are significant and often beyond their control. In Syria, for example, President Bashar al-Assad was reported in the Lebanese news media to have told a visiting Lebanese delegation that the strengthened United Nations force, with its heavy European contingent, resembled a force from NATO. In Lebanon, the United Nations force found its credibility questioned when German officials said that their country would contribute to the naval patrols off the coast of Lebanon as a means to protect Israel.
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has also questioned the purpose of the expanded force.
“Thus far, I have not heard any country participating in the Unifil say that it sent its sons and soldiers to defend Lebanon and the Lebanese,” he said in a speech Friday before hundreds of thousands of his supporters. “They are ashamed of us, brothers and sisters. They are ashamed of saying they came to defend us, but they talk about defending Israel.”
Hezbollah has so far acted in accordance with the cease-fire terms of 1701, which prohibits the deployment of weapons south of the Litani River, close to the Israeli border.
When the United Nations Security Council passed 1701, which set up the cease-fire, it outlined basic principles with few specifics. One of those principles was that militias were to be disarmed in compliance with earlier agreements and resolutions. It did not say, though, that the United Nations force would carry that out.
Hezbollah, the only militia that did not lay down its weapons after the Lebanese civil war ended, has made it clear that it is not going to surrender those weapons now. And Sheik Nasrallah made it clear that the international forces had better not even think about trying.
Page 2
BREITBART - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in an interview, asked for a long-term US military presence in Iraq, saying his country will need two permanent US air bases to deter "foreign interference."
"I think we will be in need of American forces for a long time -- even two military bases to prevent foreign interference," Talabani told The Washington Post.
"I don't ask to have 100,000 American soldiers -- 10,000 soldiers and two air bases would be enough."
The president indicated the bases would most welcome in Kurdistan, an autonomous region in northern Iraq that has practiced de facto self-government since the 1991 Gulf War.
But he suggested that the Sunni Arab segment of the Iraqi population would also welcome a long-term US military presence in Iraq.
"In some places Sunnis want the Americans to stay," he argued. "Sunnis think the main danger is coming from Iran now."
The comments come as top US military commanders admitted the United States will not be able to reduce its 147,000-strong contingent in Iraq in the coming months because of spreading sectarian violence and the possibility of the country slipping into civil war.
US Central Command head General John Abizaid told defense reporters last week any previous plans to draw down US troops in Iraq had been put off until at least next spring, and the force level might even go up.
"I think these are prudent force levels," Abizaid said of the current contingent. "We'll bring in more forces if we have to."
Mexican leader knocks U.S. crime rates
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Mexican President Vicente Fox said Friday that violence was a problem on both sides of the border and that U.S. officials need to work on their own rising crime rates.
U.S. officials have criticized the high murder and kidnapping rates in Mexican border cities and the danger they pose to Americans. The U.S. ambassador recently advised U.S. citizens to exercise extreme caution when traveling in Mexico.
"There is work to be done on both sides. As we've always said, it's a shared responsibility," Fox said while traveling in Puerto Penasco, a tourist destination in the northern state border of Sonora that's referred to in Arizona as Rocky Point.
"I saw that crime rates in the United States increased 3.5 percent so far this year. So they have their own problems," Fox said. "And with numbers of homicides, it's better we don't speak about them, because, even though they show up on the front pages every day, there are many fewer here than there."
On Thursday, high-level Mexican and U.S. officials agreed to redouble efforts to crack down on drug-related violence and kidnappings plaguing the border. They met in Laredo, Texas, across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo.
Scores of U.S. citizens have been abducted in Nuevo Laredo in recent years and more than two dozen cases remain unresolved.
Yahoo! News - Islamist gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead the head of a women's department in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Monday, a security official and a relative said.The Taliban, who have killed numerous government officials as part of their war against the government and foreign forces supporting it, claimed responsibility for shooting Safia Ama Jan.
Ama Jan was on her way to work, getting into a car outside her house, when the gunmen struck, said her nephew, who identified himself as Farhad.
"She died on the spot," he told reporters.
Farhad declined to speculate on the identity or motive of the gunmen, except to say: "We had no personal enmity with anyone."
Ama Jan had served as the head of the province's women's affairs department since shortly after U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, said Ama Jan was killed because she worked for the government.
"We have told people time and time again that anyone working for the government -- including women -- will be killed," Khan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
"The Holy Father stated his profound respect for Islam. This is what we were expecting," said Iraqi envoy Albert Edward Ismail Yelda.
A papal spokesman said the meeting is a sign that dialogue is returning to normal with the Muslim community after a controversial speech the pope made two weeks ago in Germany that included a 14th-century emperor's thoughts about Islam. Benedict has made a series of increasingly apologetic statements since then.
The Navy officially retired its F-14 fighter jet Thursday at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia.
But first, two fliers gave a final salute and a final thumbs-up before roared into the sky for a ceremonial last flight.
About 3,000 invited guests were on hand, mainly former pilots, mechanics, suppliers and builders.
The Cold War-era fighter jet with moveable, swept-back wings was glamorized in the 1986 Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun." It's being replaced by the F-A-18 Super Hornet attack fighter.
The F-14 joined the Navy fleet in 1972. The last 22 Tomcats returned home to Oceana in March after a support mission in Iraq.
The "Tomcatters" of Strike Fighter Squadron 31 and the "Black Lions" of Strike Fighter Squadron 213 were deployed on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
The last F-14s will go to museums such as the Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond, which received one last week.
The Navy said it decided to decommission the Tomcat and move to the Super Hornet because of the excessive amount of maintenance needed to keep the Tomcats operational.
"It takes about three to four times more maintenance man-hours per flight hour to maintain than the newer Hornet," Cmdr. Richard LaBranche said.
"Retiring the extremely relevant but maintenance intensive Tomcat was a way to save the exhaustive efforts of our people and better spend their labors."
TIME - Last week, many Muslims in India, like their counterparts around the world, gathered on the streets to burn effigies of the Pope and shout slogans denouncing him for his remarks on Islam and violence. Even before that fully died out, however, a new controversy erupted — one that has turned Muslim ire against some of their own local clerics.
India's "cash-for-fatwas" scandal broke out last weekend when a TV channel broadcast a sting operation that showed several Indian Muslim clerics allegedly taking, or demanding, bribes in return for issuing fatwas, or religious edicts. The bribes, some of which were as low as $60, were offered by undercover reporters wearing hidden cameras over a period of six weeks. In return for the cash, the clerics appear to hand out fatwas written in Urdu, the language used by many Muslims in Pakistan and India, on subjects requested by the reporters. Among the decrees issued by the fatwas: that Muslims are not allowed to use credit cards, double beds, or camera-equipped cell phones, and should not act in films, donate their organs, or teach their children English. One cleric issued a fatwa against watching TV; another issued a fatwa in support of watching TV.
Adding to the shock in India, home to the world's third-largest Muslim population (approximately 150 million), is that some of the clerics apparently caught in the sting operation teach at important institutions — one belongs to India's most famous Islamic seminary, the Darul Uloom at Deoband. At least two of the clerics have been suspended from their posts, but that hasn't satisfied everyone. Students at one madrassa in north India denounced the clerics, and in the city of Meerut, where a mufti, or cleric, had been caught on camera, the congregation at one mosque refused to offer prayers until he came before them, admitted to taking the money, and apologized.
Iraqi Tribes Turn on al Qaeda
September 22, 2006: Coalition forces in Iraq have suddenly received the manpower equivalent of three light infantry divisions. They did not suffer any repercussions in domestic politics as a result, and now have a huge edge over al-Qaeda in al-Anbar province. How did this happen? Tribal leaders in the largely Sunni province on the Syrian border got together and signed an agreement to raise a tribal force of 30,000 fighters to take on foreign fighters and terrorists.
These leaders have thrown in with the central government in Baghdad. This is a decisive blow to al Qaeda, which has been desperately trying to fight off an Iraqi government that is getting stronger by the week. Not only are the 30,000 fighters going to provide more manpower, but these tribal fighters know the province much better than American troops – or the foreign fighters fighting for al Qaeda. Also, this represents just over 80 percent of the tribes in al-Anbar province now backing the government.
The biggest gain for the coalition is that they will now have forces on their side that know the terrain in al Anbar province. This is a very big deal in a campaign against the terrorists. When a force knows the terrain, it can make life miserable for its enemies. Just ask any Army unit that has gone through the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. The OPFOR (Opposing Force) has fought there for so long that they know all the good ambush sites. Units coming there for a training session don't have that knowledge – and they pay the price in the exercises held there.
This is just one sign that the tide is turning in favor of the coalition in Iraq. Many of the Sunni leaders have decided that the Shia-dominated Iraqi government is not going away any time soon, nor is the democratic process. As such, the tribal leaders have now decided that it is better to be on their good side rather than to be seen as uncooperative. Constant Arab casualties in al Qaeda attacks – and al Qaeda's desire for a caliphate – have not helped matters any, either.
On the other hand, by signing up with the government, these tribal leaders will hasten the construction of government services, and gain something else just as valuable – the government's gratitude. In essence, the tribal leaders have slowly been won over by a combination of coalition perseverance and al Qaeda strategic ineptness.
This agreement, if it holds, is a win for the United States, which is looking for measurable progress. It is a win for the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, which will now have an easier time in that province. It is a win for the tribal leaders, who will get a few markers they can call in down the road from the government for their assistance. For al Qaeda, now facing the equivalent of three additional light infantry divisions composed of people who will have knowledge of al Anbar province, it is a huge loss. The major downside is that many of the tribesmen still support al Qaeda, and will defy their tribal leaders by continuing to work with the terrorists, or by not being very enthusiastic in fighting the terrorists. – Harold C. Hutchison (haroldc.hutchison@gmail.com)
Townhall.com - A gun shop is running a radio commercial advising Houstonians to arm themselves against Katrina evacuees, contributing to rising tensions between longtime residents and the storm refugees who have been blamed for the city's rising crime rate.
Gun shop owner and radio talk-show host Jim Pruett said Thursday that he started running the ad a few weeks ago after hearing a TV interview with a Katrina evacuee in Houston implied he would have to turn to crime if his government assistance ran out.
"There are many evacuees here who are working," said Pruett, owner of Jim Pruett's Guns & Ammo in Houston. "They have become Houstonians now. That is fantastic. That is what you are supposed to do. You are not supposed to threaten the place you are working in."
The city welcomed at least 250,000 evacuees after Katrina swamped New Orleans last year. As many as 120,000 evacuees remain in Houston.
According to police, Katrina evacuees are suspects or victims in 59 of Houston's 262 homicides between Jan. 1 and Aug. 26. Residents in upper-middle-class west Houston have blamed evacuees for violent crime rates that have increased almost 14 percent in one district and homicides that have nearly doubled in another.
Pruett's radio ad says: "When the `Katricians' themselves are quoted as saying the crime rate is going to go up if they don't get more free rent, then it's time to get your concealed-handgun license."
Pruett, 62, said that gun sales at his store are up 50 percent from last year but that he was uncertain whether it had anything to do with fear of the evacuees.
State figures show that from January to Sept. 1, the number of concealed-carry permits issued for handguns was up almost 25 percent from the same period a year ago in in Harris County, which includes Houston.
Black activists planned a community meeting Thursday evening to "end the conflict" between Houston and New Orleans. They planned to discuss Pruett's radio ad.
The meeting was also expected to address comments made earlier this month by gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, who attributed a spike in Houston's crime rate to "crackheads and thugs" from New Orleans.
Aljazeera - The Pakistani president has said that after the 9/11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America's campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In an interview with the CBS news show "60 Minutes" that will air on Sunday, Pervez Musharraf said the threat came from Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, and was given to Musharraf's intelligence director.
Musharraf said: "The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.'
"I think it was a very rude remark."
Armitage was not immediately available to comment. A Bush administration official said there would be no comment on a "reported conversation between Mr. Armitage and a Pakistani official".
But the official said: "After 9/11, Pakistan made a strategic decision to join the war on terror and has since been a steadfast partner in that effort. Pakistan's commitment to this important endeavor has not wavered and our partnership has widened as a result."
The official 9/11 Commission report on the attacks and their aftermath, based largely on government documents, said US national security officials focused immediately on securing Pakistani cooperation as they planned a response.
Documents showed Armitage met the Pakistani ambassador and the visiting head of Pakistan's military intelligence service in Washington on September 13 and asked Pakistan to take seven steps.
They included ending logistical support for bin Laden and giving the United States blanket overflight and landing rights for military and intelligence flights.
The report did not discuss any threat the United States may have made, but it said Musharraf agreed to all seven US requests the same day.
CASTLE ROCK, Colorado (AP) -- A man was arrested in the gruesome dragging death of a woman after a stained and tattered photograph of him was found at the crime scene, police said Wednesday.
Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, 36, was arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of murder and jailed without bail.
Investigators said they were still trying to identify the victim, who was dragged behind a vehicle with a rope, leaving a trail of blood more than a mile long.
At a court appearance Wednesday afternoon, Rubi-Nava listened through a translator as District Judge Paul A. King formally told him the charge he faces.
King sealed the arrest warrant affidavit, which outlines the preliminary allegations against Rubi-Nava, at the request of public defender Kathleen McGuire. King said he would consider McGuire's request for a gag order.
Authorities did not say how the photograph ended up near the woman's body, which was discovered Monday in a suburban neighborhood about 20 miles south of Denver. (Watch investigators look for clues along the blood trail -- 1:31)
The photo had been released to the public, and Sheriff Dave Weaver said tips from citizens helped lead to the arrest.
Weaver offered no motive for the killing.
The picture shows a couple who appear to be in their 30s, with the man leaning his arm on the woman's shoulder. Investigators did not say whether the woman in the picture was the victim.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Carl Rusnok said agents believe Rubi-Nava is an illegal immigrant from Mexico.
Neighbors discovered the woman's body before dawn. Her face was unrecognizable and an orange tow rope was around her neck, said Nancy Foley, who lives nearby.
An autopsy indicated the woman died of asphyxiation and head injuries from being dragged.
The trail of blood led from Interstate 25 to the woman's body, which was found on a street lined with large ranch-style homes on spacious lots.
On Wednesday, highway crews spread fresh tar over the roads to cover the traces of blood.
Or
Have these people lost their freaking minds?
SAN FRANCISCO — California sued six of the world's largest automakers over global warming on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.
It also comes less than a month after California lawmakers adopted the nation's first global warming law mandating a cut in greenhouse gas emissions.
An automaker trade group called the global warming move a "nuisance suit." Car manufacturers have also held up California state rules to force cuts in tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks with legal action of their own.
The lawsuit names General Motors Corp. (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F), Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), the Chrysler Motors Corp. U.S. arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX) and the North American units of Japan's Honda Motor Co. (HMC) and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.
(California) just passed a new law to cut global warming emissions by 25 percent and that's a good start and this lawsuit is a good next step," said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program.
Lockyer told Reuters he would seek "tens or hundreds of millions of dollars" from the automakers in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California.
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for past and ongoing contributions to global warming and asks that the companies be held liable for future monetary damages to California.
It noted that California is spending millions to deal with reduced snow pack, beach erosion, ozone pollution and the impact on endangered animals and fish.
"The injuries have caused the people to suffer billions of dollars in damages, including millions of dollars of funds expended to determine the extent, location and nature of future harm and to prepare for and mitigate those harms, and billions of dollars of current harm to the value of flood control infrastructure and natural resources," it said.
Ford deferred comment to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which called the complaint a "nuisance suit" similar to one a New York court dismissed.
"Automakers will need time to review this legal complaint, however, a similar nuisance suit that was brought by attorneys- general against utilities was dismissed by a federal court in New York," the industry group said in a statement.
Toyota declined to comment as the company evaluates the lawsuit. The other automakers had no immediate comment.
David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization that provides public research and forecasts into the industry, said it would be tough for the industry to immediately meet demands from some critics.
Adoption of diesel engine emissions technology or gasoline- electric hybrids comes at great cost and improving gas mileage also likely means smaller lighter vehicles, trade-offs that are not attractive to consumers, he added.
"These are not free technologies, they are very expensive," Cole said. "Most people are price sensitive."
In the complaint, Lockyer charges that vehicle emissions have contributed significantly to global warming and have harmed the resources, infrastructure and environmental health of the most populous state in the United States.
Lockyer — a Democratic candidate for state treasurer in the November election — said the lawsuit states that under federal and state common law the automakers have created a public nuisance by producing "millions of vehicles that collectively emit massive quantities of carbon dioxide."
Carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases have been linked to global warming.
You might ask, what has the Siege of Jerusalem to do with us. Well, I ask you to read it to remind you that on Sept. 20, 1187 the Muslims were on a jihad driven by Islam just like they are today. But today they are not armed with swords, spears and knives only. Today they have access and training on the use of today's weapons. What will they have access to in just a few short years?
Legislation that would make illegal immigrants eligible for financial aid at California public colleges is waiting a decision by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The bill — named the California D.R.E.A.M. Act — extends more rights to undocumented students, which legislators estimate numbered almost 600 across the UC system last year.
Currently, those students are allowed to obtain in-state residency status if they meet certain criteria, including attendance at a California high school for at least three years. However, undocumented students are not currently allowed to compete for state aid, which bill author Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) said limits opportunities for students who usually need financial relief the most.
“These students, among the best and the brightest young minds in our state, should not be punished for their parent’s pursuit of greater opportunities,” Cedillo stated in a press release.
During its Senate approval in late August, the legislation was attacked for being “unfair” and “flat-out wrong.” The passing vote in the Legislature was mainly split along party lines, with most Republicans in opposition. Assemblyman and Minority Leader George Plescia (R-San Diego) took issue with the fact that, if passed, the bill would give undocumented students rights not granted to out-of-state students, who must pay higher fees and are not eligible for state aid.
“This is a slap in the face to any student who is here legally,” said Morgan Crinklaw, Plescia’s spokesman. “California has students who are from Arizona, the Midwest and everywhere around the nation. Is it fair to let them get cut in line for financial aid?”
The bill’s passage would mean granting incentives to criminals at the expense of other California students, Crinklaw said. The cost of providing aid to illegal immigrants in the UC system would be $3.7 million, legislative analysts estimated.
The governor has not released any statements on the bill, but supporters are hoping he continues a trend of providing state help to undocumented youth. Schwarzenegger signed the current state law, which allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates, in 2002.
In 2005, a group of nonresident students sued the UC system, claiming that they were unjustly charged with higher tuition rates than illegal aliens.
In the lawsuit, which could cost the University of California hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, over 40 plaintiffs contend that the university system is violating a federal law passed in 1996 requiring colleges provide the same level of aid to nonresident and undocumented students.
For 2006-07, UC officials estimated that non-California students paid an extra $18,168 each in tuition and fees, but total costs for 2007-08 could increase.
In addition, the bill would allow undocumented students at state community colleges to apply for fee waivers.
UN's Reuters - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a farewell address to global leaders on Tuesday, depicted a world divided by an unjust economy, contempt for human rights and a failure to make peace in the Middle East.
To a standing ovation from presidents, prime and foreign ministers, Annan, who ends 10 years in office on December 31, said there had been some progress in living standards, security and a drop in global conflicts since he first addressed the General Assembly in 1997.
"And yet. And yet. Every day, reports reach us of new laws broken, of new bestial crimes to which individuals and minority groups are subjected," Annan said.
"The events of the last 10 years have not resolved, but sharpened, the three great challenges I spoke of - an unjust world economy, world disorder, and widespread contempt for human rights and the rule of law, "Annan said.
"As a result, we face a world whose divisions threaten the very notion of an international community, upon which this institution stands," he said..
Annan said that fear of terrorism had made many people feel insecure but warned that should not be used as a pretext "to abridge or abrogate fundamental human rights."
Annan had pushed for the right of the international community to protect populations when their governments refused to do so, which was enshrined in a document adopted by world leaders a year ago.
But Annan, a Ghanaian, said that the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region made that commitment to protect people from atrocities seem like an empty promise.
CNN - NASA has been forced to hold off Wednesday's landing of the Shuttle Atlantis because of an object — possibly debris — floating nearby, shortly after sensors in the craft's wings indicated the shuttle had been hit by something.
NASA officials want to make sure it's not a piece of the spacecraft, something that might in some way endanger the crew and ship on re-entry.
No one knows what it is for certain, though some reports allege that the object may have come from the craft's cargo bay. The mysterious, gray round object is orbiting near Atlantis at an altitude of 187 nautical miles.
Flight controllers first noticed the object early this morning at 2:41. They were so concerned that they had the shuttle crew delay stowing the KU TV antenna so the crew could downlink more video of the mysterious object.
Mission controllers are manipulating the camera on the shuttle's robotic arm and looking inside the payload bay to see whether anything is missing that might account for the object.
The object was first noticed about 15 minutes after the shuttle crew performed a test firing of the forward and reaction control systems.
New York Times - Senator John McCain, who is battling with the White House over the interrogation and trial of terrorism suspects, on Sunday flew to New Hampshire — and right into a blistering editorial from the conservative Manchester Union-Leader that assailed him for standing up to President Bush on the issue.
Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, responded with a spirited defense, invoking his experience as a prisoner of war as he vowed to block the White House effort.“This issue is not them — this issue is about us,” he said of terrorists, facing an audience sipping cocktails on a lush lawn next to a pool. “The United States has always been better than our enemies. I’ll tell you right now: one of the things in prison, in North Vietnam, that kept us strong was that we knew we were not like our enemies. That we came from a better nation, with better values, with better standards.”
After months of orchestrated peace, the battle with Mr. Bush over the administration’s effort to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions has put Mr. McCain back into a familiar position: bucking the White House and at odds again with some conservatives, who had already been wary of his ideological views.
Mr. McCain said Sunday that he was acting out of conscience, not political calculation, to reinforce an image of independence that has been questioned in recent months as he has supported Mr. Bush on issues like the war in Iraq. Still, he said his office had been deluged with critical phone calls, and that he had picked up enough buzz from conservative radio talk stations to conclude that he might have once again rattled his support among conservatives.
“I would imagine so,” he said, riding in a helicopter rumbling over the New Hampshire hills as it took him to a Nascar race at the New Hampshire International Speedway. “The radio talk show hosts have already been very critical.”
Mr. McCain appears to be in a strong position politically as he takes on this battle. He has methodically been signing up supporters in crucial states in preparation for a 2008 campaign, part of a strategy to create a stampede to his candidacy. Although Mr. Bush has sharply challenged Mr. McCain and the other senators supporting him in the debate on interrogation tactics, the president and his aides have taken care not to attack Mr. McCain, in clear deference to his position in the party.
“There is no acrimony with the White House,” Mr. McCain said. “I certainly consider him a friend. And I hope he considers me as one. We just have a disagreement.”
Still, many conservatives have criticized Mr. McCain for his support for campaign finance legislation, his backing of what they believe are permissive immigration laws, and now this. “The question is being asked: in the midst of the most difficult and challenging war we have ever faced, can the nation afford a President McCain?” The Union-Leader — the largest newspaper in the state, which holds the nation’s first presidential primary — asked in a front-page editorial on Saturday. It was one of two editorials it published this weekend attacking Mr. McCain’s views.
Mr. Romney has been making an increasingly vigorous challenge for conservative votes and is viewed by many Republicans as the strongest challenger to Mr. McCain, at least for now. He saw the interrogation debate as an opportunity to draw contrasts with Mr. McCain among conservative voters.
Asked if this was his sharpest difference with Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney said: “No. There are a number of things. We have different views on McCain-Feingold, differing views on immigration policy, differing views on the interrogation of terrorists. There are also many other areas where we see eye to eye.”
Told about Governor Romney’s position on the treatment of terrorism suspects, Mr. McCain noted tartly, “He doesn’t have a vote.”
Mr. McCain said he was not overly concerned about the criticism. When an aide offered him a copy of the editorial as he rode in a car to the cocktail party here, he at first refused it, but a second later took it back and read it. And at the reception, he aggressively raised the issue, to decidedly light applause.
“We do not believe we should change the Geneva Conventions that we have adhered to for 57 years,” he said. “I hold no brief for Al Qaeda. No.”
“What is this all about?” he continued. “It’s all about the United States of America and what is going to happen to Americans who are taken prisoner in future wars.”
Mr. McCain’s efforts have complicated one political component of the White House’s strategy: trying to bait Democrats into a battle that might allow Republicans to portray them as weak on terrorism. But Mr. McCain said he had not heard any objection from the White House, on political grounds, about what he was trying to do.
“They know better than that,” he said.
Afghan terror commander hints at big attack on N.Y., WashingtonContinue reading the rest
Posted: September 17, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Adnan el-Shukrijumah The new al-Qaida field commander in Afghanistan is calling for Muslims to leave the U.S. – particularly Washington and New York – in anticipation of a major terror attack to rival Sept. 11, according to
an interview by a Pakistani journalist. Abu Dawood told Hamid Mir, a reporter who has covered al-Qaida and met with Osama bin Laden, the attack is being coordinated by Adnan el-Shukrijumah and suggests it may involve some form of weapon of mass destruction smuggled across the Mexican border.
"Our brothers are ready to attack inside America. We will breach their security again," he is quoted as saying. "There is no timeframe for our attack inside America; we can do it any time."
As WND has previously reported, el-Shukrijumah is a trained nuclear technician and accomplished pilot who has been singled out by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to serve as the field commander for the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The terrorist was last seen in Mexico, where, on Nov. 1, 2004, he allegedly hijacked a Piper PA Pawnee cropduster from Ejido Queretaro near Mexicali to transport a nuclear weapon and nuclear equipment into the U.S., according to Paul Williams, a former FBI consultant and author of "The Dunces of Doomsday."
"He is an American and a friend of Muhammad Atta, who led 9/11 attacks five years ago," said Dawood. "We call him 'Jaffer al Tayyar' (Jafer the Pilot); he is very brave and intelligent. (President) Bush is aware that brother Adnan has smuggled deadly materials inside America from the Mexican border. Bush is silent about him, because he doesn’t want to panic his people. Sheikh Osama bin Laden has completed his cycle of warnings.You know, he is man of his words, he is not a politician; he always does what he says. If he said it many times that Americans will see new attacks, they will definitely see new attacks. He is a real mujahid. Americans will not win this war, which they have started against Muslims. Americans are the biggest supporters of the biggest terrorist in the world, which is Israel."
As I have stated before (as many others have) it is just a matter of time until the next (massive) attack. It is of course up for discussion if this reporter is telling the truth in the first place and then it's up for discussion when this super mujahid or someone else can successfully pull off another massive attack.
Personally I worry more about a biological or chemical attack, but I am prepared for all three. I'm not one for shouting "fire" or the "sky is falling",
but I am one for having a fire extinguisher and a strong roof.
Papa Ray
¶ Posted by Papa Ray 9/17/2006 03:40:00 PM
Reuters - A far-right party won seats in a regional parliament in eastern Germany on Sunday, profiting from a weak economy there and mounting anger towards Chancellor Angela Merkel's government in Berlin.
Preliminary results showed the National Democratic Party (NPD), which the government has likened to the early Nazi Party and tried to ban, won 6.4 percent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a northeastern state on the Baltic Sea which borders Poland.
If confirmed that result would allow the NPD, which advocates closing German borders to immigrants, to enter the regional assembly, making Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the third state in the ex-communist east with far-right representation.
The result alarmed mainstream politicians and Jewish groups, who called on the federal government to renew its bid to ban the party after a previous attempt in 2003 failed.
"The government must look for ways to impose a ban," Dieter Graumann, vice president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, told Reuters.
Results showed the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) winning 28.8 percent of the vote in the state, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) 29.7 percent and the reformed communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) 18.1 percent.
That should allow the SPD and PDS, who have ruled in coalition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the past eight years, to remain in government -- a blow to Merkel, whose CDU was given a decent chance of seizing power.
Voter disillusionment with Merkel's national government in Berlin, which has been plagued by infighting and struggled to deliver on promised reforms, has contributed to the rise of smaller parties like the NPD. Merkel heads a grand coalition with the SPD after inconclusive elections a year ago.
The constituency of Germany's first female leader is in the rural east German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but this week in the villages on the state's coast, hundreds of black, red and white election placards with slogans such as "Asylum cheats - Out !", "Work not immigration!" and images of clenched fists with the word "Enough!" were plastered across walls and hanging from lamp posts.
ThreatsWatch.Org - In what could be the most troubling development in the War on Terror since it began, Pakistan has released nearly all of the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists it has had in custody since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Since the invasion, Pakistan has taken into custody thousands of al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban fighters. But with Pakistan’s inability to defeat or control the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance on the Pakistani side of the Afghanistan border, Mushrraf has ceded land, arms and now all terrorists held prisoner.
The Telegraph cites Pakistani lawyers who claim that the Pakistani government has “freed 2,500 foreigners who were originally held on suspicion of having links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban over the past four years.” This number includes virtually all al-Qaeda prisoners in Pakistan’s custody, including those held for the beheading of Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl.
These terrorists can now be considered on the road to return to carrying out their terrorist duties, with destinations not only in Pakistan, but around the world. Of the interviewed, one is headed to Bangladesh and the other to Algeria.
Just who is facilitating their travel is of particular note: al-Khidmat Foundation.
While the al-Khidmat Foundation is described as a “welfare organisation run by the hard-line Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami,” it is far from that. It is the Maktab al-Khidmat, the group founded in 1980 by Usama bin Laden’s mentor and ideological inspiration, Abdullah Azzam. Its primary purpose was then and is now to serve as “a support organization for Arab volunteers for the jihad in Afghanistan” and elsewhere today. Usama bin Laden financed this group from its inception. It is from this group that al-Qaeda sprang to life in 1989.
To separate the ‘al-Khidmat Foundation’ from al-Qaeda today is to separate the Department of Transportation from the United States Federal Government. This is who the Pakistani government released the terrorists to under the guise of a charity foundation.
While NATO commanders warn of a forming new Taliban sanctuary in Afghanistan’s Farah Province along the Iran border, an already-created Taliban sanctuary exists – officially – in Pakistan along Afghanistan’s southern border.
Seeking a way out of the bloody mess in the Waziristan provinces, Pakistan ceded North Waziristan to the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance to add to South Waziristan. Talks are ongoing for the same treatment throughout the North West Frontier Province to achieve an expansion of the forming Taliban-al-Qaeda empire, creeping persistently closer to Islamabad. But Musharraf granted far more than just land.
But, as Pakistan cedes more and more, the Taliban are failing to honor their end of the agreement on a regular basis, an agreement which contained their promise to cease kidnappings and targeted killings, particularly of Pakistani government officials.
It was indeed previously mentioned that Pakistan was releasing Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists as part of the North Waziristan deal, but no one expected a wholesale release of nearly all imprisoned since as long ago as 2001.
At the behest of Pervez Musharraf, over 2,500 jihadis have stepped foot once again on the road to jihad. This is a potentially devastating development when considered within the context of recent Pakistani ‘terms of defeat.’
This is a nuclear power that is currently ceding swaths of its own territory to Islamic terrorists with a global reach. Seemingly in an effort to seek personal peace, its secular leader is returning thousands of able, experienced and trained terrorists to the hands of an encroaching enemy with violent religious motivation. Yet the bulk of Pakistan’s professional army stands watch over the Indian border or waging an intense and bloody war for control of Baluchistan’s natural resources. al-Qaeda seeks to control something else.
The consequences are grim and the outlook is not good.
Los Angeles Times - California will become the fourth state in the country to ban motorists from holding cellphones while driving under legislation Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he will sign into law today.
The governor's office said Thursday that the signing will take place in Oakland, ending a five-year campaign by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) to outlaw one of the most common distractions of California drivers.
Under the law, which will take effect in July 2008, Californians risk a minimum $20 fine for driving while yakking into a phone — unless they are using a headset, speaker phone, ear bud or some other technology that frees both hands while they talk. Drivers in emergency situations would be exempt.
"Public safety is the governor's No. 1 priority," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson, "and this bill will make the streets and highways of California safer by ensuring that drivers have both hands available for driving."
The bill passed both legislative bodies in late August — the Assembly 50-28, and the Senate 21-16. In both houses, the measure passed with largely Democratic support and the votes of a few Republicans.
Although 38 state legislatures considered bills to minimize driving distractions such as cellphones this year, only New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and the District of Columbia have banned drivers from using hand-held cellphones.
It took Simitian five attempts to get enough support in the Legislature to pass the bill, but Schwarzenegger warmed to the idea quickly.
Though the only official opponent of the bill was the Sprint-Nextel cellular phone company, several lawmakers argued that the act of conversing — not of holding a phone — is the real distraction to drivers.
They also argued that children, the radio, pets, hamburgers and sodas are all as likely to divert drivers' attention as cellphones.
Some Republican lawmakers criticized the bill, SB1613, as "nanny government."
"What's next — helmets while you're riding a horse? Airbags in the bathtub?" said Assemblyman Doug La Malfa (R-Richvale) during the Assembly floor debate last month.
But Simitian argued that the traffic safety risk of cellphone use while driving is "measurable and significant." In a letter sent Monday to the governor, the senator pointed to academic research in the Accident Analysis and Prevention journal that concluded that the risk of death is nine times greater for drivers who use a cellphone while driving.
California Highway Patrol data from 2004 show police reports for 775 accidents in which a driver at fault was using a hand-held cellphone.
There were only 28 reports of accidents in which drivers using hands-free phones were to blame. Preliminary data from last year show a similar pattern.
BREITBART - Kinky Friedman says he favors legalizing marijuana to keep nonviolent users out of prison. If Texas elects him governor, he says, he'll try to get locked-up pot users released to make room for more violent criminals.
"I think that's long overdue," Friedman told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "I think everybody knows what (U.S. Sen.) John McCain said is right: We've pretty well lost the war on drugs doing it the way we're doing it. Drugs are more available and cheaper than ever before. What we're doing is not working."Friedman, the often irreverent singer, entertainer and mystery writer, is running as an independent in a bid to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry, and he's getting some serious attention.
He said he'd take a closer look at the use of the death penalty in Texas, wants to clean house on the state's board and commissions and would dump public school assessment tests, even if it costs the state federal money.
On the death penalty, he said he would be more liberal with the governor's authority to grant a one-time 30-day reprieve to condemned killers.
"I would be careful killing a guy," he said. "I think there are people who need to die, but the question I've asked mostly is: When was the last time we've executed a rich man in Texas?"
He bristled at the criticism heaped on him after he called some Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston "crackheads and thugs."
Friedman said Wednesday that his plan to give $100 million to Houston to hire more police "was not in any way racist."
"How can you possibly regret that, telling the truth?" he asked. "I am not a racist, I am a realist. In looking at the statistics, I know that 20 percent of the homicides in Houston have been committed by the element in the evacuee population.
"I never said what color their skin was. I never said all evacuees are crack dealers or crackheads. I'm smarter than that."
Also in the race for governor are Democrat Chris Bell, Libertarian James Werner and another independent, Carole Strayhorn, the state comptroller who won that office as a Republican.
As for Friedman, he said he doesn't like being called a politician.
"I don't mind being called a flip-flopper," he said, a description Perry's campaign has placed on him. "I think we actually could use a flip-flopper as governor because a flip-flopper is a human being open to change, and God knows change is what we need now."He acknowledged that the Texas governor's authority is limited compared with executives in other states but said he would use the bully pulpit to cajole legislators. He doesn't trust them, he said, adding: "I do not trust the media either."
"Right now the lobbyists are leading us. We have a lack of leadership, a vacuum," he said.
One of the Texas governor's few powerful roles is in appointing state board members, and Friedman said he would replace as many as he could, including regents at the University of Texas and Texas A&M.
"You clean house," he said. "You get the old farts out of there. You put a bunch of young people in and you put a bunch of people who care about Texas. It's pretty simple."
If he wins _ most polls show Perry leading in the race but not running away with it _ Friedman said one of the first calls he'd make as governor would be to Robert Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam in Houston, who he said "the Lord put in my path at the Austin airport earlier this year."
"He's a very visionary man," Friedman said. "You would think we're at opposite poles, but we're not. That's the guy I would tap. I would tap him to help us get those gangsters and thugs and crackheads out of there."
By Charles Krauthammer
In his televised Sept. 11 address, President Bush said that we must not "leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons." There's only one such current candidate: Iran.
The next day, he responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: "It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."
"Before" implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.
The costs will be terrible:
Economic . An attack on Iran is likely to send oil prices overnight to $100 or even to $150 a barrel. That will cause a worldwide recession perhaps as deep as the one triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Iran might suspend its own 2.5 million barrels a day of oil exports and might even be joined by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, asserting primacy as the world's leading anti-imperialist. But even more effectively, Iran will shock the oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's exports flow every day.
Iran could do this by attacking ships in the Strait, scuttling its own ships, laying mines or just threatening to launch Silkworm anti-ship missiles at any passing tanker.
The U.S. Navy will be forced to break the blockade. We will succeed, but at considerable cost. And it will take time -- during which the world economy will be in a deep spiral.
Military . Iran will activate its proxies in Iraq, most notably, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr is already wreaking havoc with sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians. Iran could order the Mahdi Army and its other agents within the police and armed forces to take up arms against the institutions of the central government itself, threatening the very anchor of the new Iraq. Many Mahdi will die, but they live to die. Many Iraqis and coalition soldiers are likely to die as well.
Among the lesser military dangers, Iran might activate terrorist cells around the world, although without nuclear capability that threat is hardly strategic. It will also be very difficult to unleash its proxy Hezbollah, now chastened by the destruction it brought upon Lebanon in the latest round with Israel and deterred by the presence of Europeans in the south Lebanon buffer zone.
Diplomatic. There will be massive criticism of America from around the world. Much of it is to be discounted. The Muslim street will come out again for a few days, having replenished its supply of flammable American flags, most recently exhausted during the cartoon riots. Their governments will express solidarity with a fellow Muslim state, but this will be entirely hypocritical. The Arabs are terrified about the rise of a nuclear Iran and would privately rejoice in its defanging.
The Europeans will be less hypocritical because their visceral anti-Americanism trumps rational calculation. We will have done them an enormous favor by sparing them the threat of Iranian nukes, but they will vilify us nonetheless.
These are the costs. There is no denying them. However, equally undeniable is the cost of doing nothing.
In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, nonnuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.
Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.
Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?
These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.
Aljazeera - Muslim scholars and religious leaders in Kuwait, Turkey and Pakistan have criticised Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks critical of Islam and urged him to play a positive role in bringing Islam and Christianity closer.
Ali Bardakoglu, head of the state-run religious affairs directorate in Turkey, said on Thursday that Pope Benedict XVI as "full of enmity and grudge" against Islam. He opposed the pontiff's planned visit to Turkey in November.
Bardakoglu also demanded that the pope immediately retract and issue an apology for his remarks about Islam and his criticism of the concept of Holy War.
The pontiff's remarks "reflect the hatred in his heart. It is a statement full of enmity and grudge", Bardakoglu told the NTV news channel on Thursday.
"It is a prejudiced and biased approach."
The controversy
During a six-day visit to his native Germany this week, the pope hit out at Islam and its concept of jihad or holy war, citing a 14th-century Christian emperor who said that Prophet Muhammad had brought the world "evil and inhuman" things.
"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," he said on Tuesday in an address at Regensburg University.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi later said he did not believe the pope's words were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam.
Bardakoglu, however, described them as unacceptable.
"[The pope's] approach is a spoilt and cocksure point of view that looks down on the other. At times, we also criticise the Christian world for its wrongs, but we never defame either Christ or the Bible or the holiness of Christianity," he said.
In comments to the Anatolia news agency, Bardakoglu said the pope carried the same mindset as that "of the Crusades" which arose from the Church view that Islam is the enemy.
In Kuwait, two high-ranking Islamist officials also called on Thursday on Pope Benedict XVI to apologise for his remarks.
Haken al-Mutairi, secretary-general of the emirate's Umma [Islamic Nation] party, urged the pope to to apologise immediately "to the Muslim world for his calumnies against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam".
Al-Mutairi hit out at the pope's "unaccustomed and unprecedented" remarks, and linked the Catholic Church leader's comments to "new Western wars currently under way in the Muslim world in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon".
The pope's statements amounted to "the pursuit of Crusades", he said.
"I call on all Arab and Islamic states to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican and expel those from the Vatican until the pope says he is sorry for the wrong done to the Prophet and to Islam, which preaches peace, tolerance, justice and equality," al-Mutairi said.
Sayed Baqer al-Mohri, head of the assembly of Shia ulemas, or theologians, in Kuwait, labelled the pope's comments "unrealistic and unjustified", and also called on him to apologise.
"His unjustified attack on Islam and the Prophet Muhammad clearly contradicts his call for dialogue between civilisations," Mohri said. "It opens the way to animosity between religions.
"We demand that the pope make a public apology" to help bring an end to animosity.
Pakistan
The pope was also criticised by Muslim scholars and religious leaders in Pakistan who urged him to play a positive role in bringing Islam and Christianity closer.Khurshid Ahmed, head of the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad, said: "It is very unfortunate that a religious leader of his stature is issuing statements which can fan religious disharmony.
"The Pope's attitude is very different from his predecessor. Instead of bringing Islam and Christianity closer, he is straining relations between the two religions," Ahmed said.
"In the present political atmosphere such views can be exploited by those who are trying to malign Muslims and Islam.
"We expect the Pope to play a positive role in promoting relations between religions and civilisations.
"The Pope's views about the role of Sharia [Islamic law] and jihad are at variance with Muslim beliefs."
Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a leader of the Jammiat Ulema-e-Islam party and an MP, urged the Pope not to take inspiration from George Bush, the US president.
He said: "The Pope is a respected personality not only for Christians but for Muslims also. He should not lower his stature by giving Bush-like statements."
Shahid Shamsi, spokesman for the Jamaat-i-Islami party, said:"The Pope's statement was an attempt to jeopardise a remarkable unity displayed by Christians and Muslims against recent Israeli aggression in Lebanon".
BBC NEWS - The "anti-American feeling" of some European politicians is "madness" as the world needs the US to help tackle pressing problems, Tony Blair says.
There is a danger some countries will "pull up the drawbridge and disengage", the prime minister said in a pamphlet published by the Foreign Policy Centre.
And he said while the "war on terror" is "unconventional", it can be won by promoting values as much as force.
The pamphlet is based on three foreign policy speeches he has made this year.
"The strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in," Mr Blair is quoted as saying.
He called on those with anti-US views to join him by becoming "involved" and "engaged" in tackling global issues such as terrorism.
The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them."
The prime minister concedes that mistakes have been made in the past in attempts to defeat extremism around the globe.
But countries "are not being bold enough, consistent enough, thorough enough in fighting for the values we believe in", he said.
There will never be real support for "tough action" against extremism unless global poverty, environmental degradation and injustice are tackled with equal vigour.
He also calls for an alliance of moderation "that paints a future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian, Arab and Western, wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other".
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Jonathan Marcus, says given that Mr Blair has announced that he will leave office within a year, the publication represents something of a political will and testament.
"This pamphlet reads like a plea for understanding from a leader who firmly believes that he will ultimately be proved right," our correspondent says.
ABC News - The U.S. military said Wednesday it is looking into the unauthorized release of a photo purportedly taken by an American drone aircraft showing scores of Taliban militants at a funeral in Afghanistan.
NBC-TV claimed that U.S. Army officers wanted to attack the ceremony with missiles carried by the Predator drone, but were prevented under rules of battlefield engagement that bar attacks on cemeteries.
Lt. Tamara Lawrence, a spokeswoman with the U.S. military in Kabul, said the photograph was released to the network by someone who did not have the clearance to hand it out.
"It is an operational security issue, and the photo was released at an inappropriate level," Lawrence told The Associated Press. "Inquiries are being made into how it was released."
Lawrence declined to provide further details. It was not clear when the photo was taken nor where the gathering took place.
The grainy black and white photo shows what NBC says are some 190 Taliban militants standing in several rows near a vehicle in an open area of land. The black outline of a box apparently the sight of the drone is positioned over the group.
NBC quoted one Army officer who was involved with the spy mission as saying "we were so excited" that the group had been spotted and was in the sights of a U.S. drone. But the network quoted the officer, who was not identified, as saying that frustration soon set in after the officers realized they couldn't bomb the funeral under the military's rules of engagement.
Taliban militants this year have been waging their bloodiest campaign of violence since their 2001 ouster from power in the U.S.-led invasion launched after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The U.S. military has previously used Predator drones with deadly effect, firing one missile into a Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border in January in a failed bid to kill al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahri. The strike killed at least 13 civilians.
Poland's PM to focus on missile defence, Iraq in US
Warsaw - Making his first trip to the United States since taking office in July, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski was expected to focus on the possible basing of missile defence in Poland and his country's role in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Kaczynski, who heads the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) coalition government, is scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney.
President George W Bush and Kaczynski are not scheduled to meet as the US president has in the past met with Lech Kaczynski, Poland's president and brother of the prime minister. Jaroslaw's aides have suggested Bush might, however, drop in on the meeting.
Kaczynski will also meet with House Speaker Dennis Hastert Thursday before meeting with John Krenicki Jr, the chief executive of global energy goliath General Electric Co.
Energy security is a top item on the agenda of the Kaczynski government, which is currently seeking to diversify suppliers and wean Poland from its heavy reliance on Russian fuel supplies.
Insisting energy security is a crucial part of national security, Poland is also spearheading a drive within the EU to frame a common energy security alliance for the 25-member bloc and beyond.
Kaczynski, 57, will also meet with heads of the large Polish community in Chicago Thursday and then fly on to visit the Fort Worth US military base in Texas on Friday. Kaczynski is due back in Warsaw early Saturday morning.
Prime Minster Kaczynski will be accompanied by several cabinet ministers including Defence Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Foreign Affairs Minister Anna Fotyga.
As ardent anti-communist activists throughout Poland's pre-1989 communist era, President Kaczynski and Prime Minister Kaczynski both have a fondness for the late Ronald Reagan.
Reagan is still seen as a hero by the country's Solidarity opposition for his strident anti-Soviet politics and support for the Polish movement, which succeeded in peacefully toppling communist rule in Poland in 1989.
The law and order agenda of Prime Minister Kaczynski's PiS party in many ways resembles a US Republican approach. The party has promised to crack down hard on crime and corruption in public life and is also stridently anti-leftwing.
It is particularly critical of Poland's ex-communist Democratic Left Alliance party (SLD), which it blames for much of the corruption in public life.
The SLD lost both the presidency and government in elections held last autumn. The party's four-year term in office had been plagued by a string of high profile corruption scandals involving senior politicians.
Reagan and the Kaczynski brothers also share a personal history of being actors before becoming politicians. While Reagan was a Hollywood cowboy hero on the silver screen, the Kaczynski twins are famous in Poland for playing two very naughty boys in the children's' Polish cinema classic 'About Those Two Who Stole the Moon.'
After narrowly winning Poland's September 2006 general election, the PiS eschewed a long-promised coalition with the runner-up liberal Civic Platform (PO), instead allying itself with the populist Samoobrona farmers' party and the Catholic-nationalist League of Polish Families (LPR), Poland's equivalent of the fundamentalist elements of the Christian right in the US.
Recent polls show the LPR is rapidly losing public support, to the point where it would fail to re-enter parliament should elections be called. Support for Samoobrona remains steady at around 10 per cent, while the ex-communist SLD is also in danger of exiting parliament and slipping into political oblivion, less than a year after leaving government.
Surveys, however, show the PiS and PO running neck-and-neck enjoying roughly 30 per cent support each.
Some political observers in Warsaw have suggested the Kaczynski brothers are intent on creating a two-party system in Poland, along the lines of the Republican-Democratic divide of the US rather than the more volatile multi-party constellations which can be found in European politics.
The next true test of party popularity is expected November 12, when Poles will vote in local government elections.
THE HAGUE, 13/09/06 - Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner considers the Netherlands should give Muslims more freedoms to behave according to their traditions. Muslims refusing to shake hands is fine with him. And Sharia law could be introduced in the Netherlands democratically, in the minister's view.
Muslims have the right to experience their religion in ways that diverge from Dutch social codes, accordign to the Christian democrat (CDA) minister. He thinks Queen Beatrix was very wise not to insist on a Muslim leader shaking hands with her when she visited his mosque in The Hague earlier this year.
Integration Minister Verdonk did previously scold an imam who would not shake her hand. Without directly referring to this incident, Donner considers "a tone that I do not like has crept into the political debate. A tone of: 'Thou shalt assimilate. Thou shalt adopt our values in public. Be reasonable, do it our way'. That is not my approach".
Donner strongly disagrees with a recent plea by CDA parliamentary leader Maxime Verhagen for a ban on parties seeking to launch Sharia (Islamic law) in the Netherlands. "For me it is clear: if two-thirds of the Dutch population should want to introduce the Sharia tomorrow, then the possibility should exist," according to Donner. "It would be a disgrace to say: 'That is not allowed!'."
Donner makes his remarks in an interview in a book entitled, 'The country of hate and anger' (Het land van haat en nijd). The book was written by journalists Margalith Kleijwegt and Max van Weezel of weekly magazine Vrij Nederland. Minister Verdonk will be presented with the first copy today.
BBC NEWS - A US court has ruled that a Cuban wanted on terrorism charges by Cuba and Venezuela should be set free from a Texas immigration detention centre.
Ex-CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles was held for crossing illegally from Mexico after serving time in Panama for plotting to kill Cuba's Fidel Castro.
Mr Posada Carriles faces deportation, but it cannot be to Cuba or Venezuela.
Venezuela, which says he was behind a 1976 plane bombing that killed 73 people, condemned the latest ruling.
A Venezuelan government spokesman, Eric Wingerter, said the fact the ruling came on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks would be particularly insulting to the families of those who died in the bombing of the Cuban airliner.
A US magistrate in El Paso, Texas, ruled that Mr Posada Carriles should be set free from the city's immigration detention centre.
The judge noted that the US Supreme Court had ruled that those held on immigration violations could not be held indefinitely.
He also said no third country had been found willing to accept Mr Posada Carriles' deportation. The earlier ruling had said he could face torture in Cuba or Venezuela.
Mr Posada Carriles' lawyer, Felipe Millan, said his client could be free within 30 days if a federal district judge upheld the ruling.
He added that Mr Posada Carriles, 78, would join his family in Miami until the deportation was worked out.
Both Venezuela and Cuba have accused the US government of harbouring a man they consider to be a known terrorist.
Mr Wingerter said: "If we are serious about fighting terrorism then we need to prosecute all terrorists, not just those opposed to US foreign policy."
The US Department of Justice said it was reviewing the court decision.
The entire Cuban fencing team was among those who died when the Cuban jetliner flying from Caracas was bombed.
Mr Posada Carriles was twice acquitted by courts in Venezuela of plotting to bomb the plane.
He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting a trial on appeal.
Mr Posada Carriles was convicted in Panama of trying to bomb Cuban leader Fidel Castro at a summit in the country in 2002.
Mr Posada Carriles has said Mr Castro tried to have him killed in 1990 because of his previous work for Venezuela as a security official.
ABC News - Islamic militants attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Tuesday using automatic rifles, hand grenades and at least one van rigged with explosives, the government said. Four people were killed in the brazen attack, including three of the assailants.
No Americans were hurt, and the attackers apparently did not breach the high walls surrounding the embassy's white compound in the city's diplomatic neighborhood.
But one of Syria's anti-terrorism forces was killed and at least 11 others were injured, the country's official news agency reported. The wounded including a police officer, two Iraqis and seven people employed at nearby technical workshop.
A Chinese diplomat also was hit in the face by shrapnel and slightly injured while standing on top of a garage at the Chinese Embassy, China's government news agency said.
A witness said one Syrian guard outside the embassy also was killed, but the government did not immediately confirm that. At the embassy in Damascus, as at most American embassies worldwide, a local guard force patrols outside the compound's walls while U.S. Marine guards are mostly responsible for guarding classified documents and fighting off attackers inside the compound.
Witnesses also said the gunmen tried to throw hand grenades into the embassy compound, shouting "Allah Akbar!" or "God is great!" It was not clear if any of the grenades made it over the walls, which are about 8 feet high.
The attack came at a time of high tension between the United States and Syria over the recent Israeli-Hezbollah war in neighboring Lebanon. In Damascus the sentiment has become increasingly anti-American sentiment.
Syria has seen previous attacks by Islamic militants. In June, Syrian anti-terrorism police fought Islamic militants near the Defense Ministry in a gunbattle that killed five people and wounded four.
After Tuesday's attack, pools of blood lay splattered on the sidewalk outside the embassy, along with a burned car apparently used by the attackers. A sports utility vehicle with U.S. diplomatic tags had a bullet hole through its front window, and the glass windows of nearby guard houses also were shattered.
Back in 1982 there were some horrible massacres at two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Christian Lebanese Arabs actually did the killing; but the Israeli army was in the neighborhood, and was responsible, at some theoretical level, for keeping the peace in the zone that included the camps. Because of this, the Israelis took much of the brunt of the world's outrage at the killings. Commenting on these events, the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, remarked in disgust: "Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews!"
I've been getting the same feeling from some of my e-mail. The fundamental reason America is under attack by Arab terrorists, several dozen people want me to know, is that the U.S. supports Israel. And the only reason we do that, several of them have said, or hinted, is because of the political power of the Jewish lobby here in the U.S.A. A few of my correspondents have expressed themselves more ... bluntly than that. Put it this way: While I have not yet encountered the word "bloodsuckers" (perhaps my readership isn't "diverse" enough), some of this stuff comes pretty close — though I should say in fairness, most is argued on cold national-interest grounds. At any rate, a lot of people feel that the mass killing of Americans by Arab terrorists is all the fault of Israel and those American politicians who, for low and disreputable motives, or from sheer blindness to America's true ideals and interests, support her. Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.
Setting aside the statistical certainty that some of the dead Americans are Jewish (as, in high statistical probability, some were of Arab origins), and at the risk of yet more ill-tempered or abusive e-mails, I am going to declare that I don't think these recent outrages can be blamed on the Jews, nor even on pro-Israel American politicians. The root phenomenon is not American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs: The root phenomenon is hesperophobia.
This word was coined by the political scientist Robert Conquest. Its roots are the Greek words hesperos, which means "the west" and phobos, which means "fear," but which when used as an English suffix can also carry the meaning "hate." Hesperophobia is fear or hatred of the West. [While I'm in the classical stuff, by the way, I committed a breach of good manners in my last posting by inserting a Latin tag without translation. I am sorry. Oderint dum metuant means "Let them hate us, so long as they fear us." Seneca rebuked Cicero for saying it, though it seems to have been current among educated late-republican Romans.]
Here is the news: A lot of people out there hate us. The name "Durban" mean anything? In China, in India, in Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, in Africa, and in the Arab countries, European civilization — the West — is widely hated. Matter of fact, quite a lot of Europeans and Americans hate it, too, as you will know if you spend much time on college campuses.
I can't see any strong reason for believing that if the state of Israel were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, hesperophobia would disappear with it. Not even just Arab hesperophobia would decline. A common word for Europeans in the Arabic language is feringji, from "Frank," i.e. crusader. Arabs don't hate us because we support Israel. They hate us because we humiliated them, showed up the gross inferiority of their culture. To them, and similarly humiliated peoples, we are the other, detested and feared in a way we can barely understand. Things got really bad in the 19th century. When European society achieved industrial lift-off, Europeans were suddenly buzzing all over the world like a swarm of bees. They encountered these other cultures, that had been vegetating in a quiet conviction of their own superiority for centuries (or in the case of the Chinese, millennia). When these encounters occurred, the encountered culture collapsed in a cloud of dust. Some of them, like the Turks, managed to reconstitute themselves as more or less modern nations; others, like the Arabs and the Chinese, are still struggling with the trauma of that encounter. Neither the Arabs nor the Chinese, for example, have yet been able to attain rational, constitutional government. For a devastating look at the paleolithic condition of politics and society in the Arab world, I strongly recommend my colleague David Pryce-Jones's book, The Closed Circle.
The 1991 Gulf War showed how little has changed since those first encounters. Here were the armies of the West: swift, deadly, efficient, equipped and organized, under the command of elected civilians at the head of a robust and elaborate constitutional structure. And here were the Arabs: a shambling, ill-nourished, shoeless rabble, led by a mad gangster-despot. (That was their Arabs. There were also, of course, our Arabs — the Kuwaitis and Saudis, cowering in their plush-lined air-conditioned bunkers being waited on by their Filipino servants while we did their fighting for them.) Final body counts: the West, 134 dead, the Arabs, 20,000 or more. The superiority of one culture over another has not been so starkly demonstrated since a handful of British wooden ships, at the end of ten-thousand-mile lines of communications, brought the Celestial Empire to its knees 150 years earlier. The Chinese are still mad about that: They are still making angry, bitter movies about the Opium Wars. A hundred and 50 years from now, the Arabs will not have forgotten the Gulf War.
If you haven't spent some time in its company, the depth, and bitterness of hesperophobia in these cultures is hard to imagine. As Thomas Friedman points out in today's New York Times, Palestinian suicide bombers do not target yeshivas, synagogues, or religious settlements. They go for shopping malls or Sbarro's outlets. Sure, they hate the Jews, but they hate the West as much, or more.
Israel is not a cause of any of this, except to the degree that Israeli culture is essentially Western. If the present state of Israel were inhabited by Christian Lithuanians or Frenchmen, the hatred would be nearly as intense. Nearly, not completely: Hatred of the Jews has been built into Arab-Moslem culture since the time of Mohammed. There is a tale you will hear from Arab apologists that the Jews were contented and well treated in the old Arab-Moslem empires. This is nonsense: More often than not, they were treated like swine. For a true account, read Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, or Gil Carl Alroy's Behind the Middle East Crisis. From the Arab point of view, Israel, or any Western state on "Arab land," is an outrage, an illegitimate creation, a crusader state. The fact that the Jews had a wealthy and powerful nation on that land three thousand years ago counts for nothing. Israel is, from the point of view of most Arabs, an alien graft that must not be allowed to "take." It is a reminder of what can barely be thought of without acute psychic pain: the squalid, hopeless, irredeemable inferiority of one's own culture by comparison with another.
So, so, so, is this any of America's business? What are we doing, meddling in the Middle East? Where is our interest? Well, U.S. politicians must speak for themselves, but if I had any position of authority in any Western nation, I would be urging full support for Israel, and I am not Jewish. (Following my Passover column, in fact, a lot of NRO readers, along with at least one ex-editor of The New Republic, believe I am an anti-Semite.) It's a matter of cultural solidarity. We of the West must hang together, or else we shall hang separately. American isolationists simply do not understand how much we are hated in other places.
What, after all, does the Buchananite program offer us, if carried through? We have no troops in Israel to be withdrawn. If we withdraw our aid, the Israelis will be less able to defend themselves against the Arabs. Should we just let the free market take over, U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to them cash on the nail? Apparently not: Several of my correspondents have explained to me that what so enrages the Arabs is the sight of their people being killed "by American weapons." Oh. No weapons, then (and presumably we should try to repatriate the ones they already have — lots of luck with that, guys). But if we don't arm the Israelis, who will? While other hesperophobic countries — China, for example — are gleefully arming the Arabs and other Israel-haters like Iran, and pocketing the profits?
And the end of it all will be ... what? Inevitably, without our support, it will be the destruction of Israel. They are so few, and the Arabs so many. The Arabs will overwhelm that tiny state, and there will be such an orgy of massacre as has not been seen since the Rape of Nanking. And we shall be doing ... what? Watching it on our TVs, with a six-pack and a bucket of Nacho chips in hand? That's the Buchananite vision? If so, it is a vision of cowards and fools, and I want no part of it.
Israel's culture is ours. She is part of the West. If she goes down, we have suffered a defeat, and the howling, jeering forces of barbarism have won a victory. You don't have to be Zionist, nor even Jewish, to support Israel. You don't have to be in the pocket of the Israeli congressional lobbies, or a suck-up to "powerful pro-Zionist interests." You don't have to pretend not to notice the occasional follies and cruelties of Israeli policy. You don't have to forget about the U.S.S. Liberty or Jonathan Pollard. You just have to think straight. You just have to understand that the war between civilization and barbarism is being fought today just as it was fought at Chalons and Tours, at the gates of Kiev and Vienna, by the hoplites at Marathon and the legions on the Rhine. It is, as you have heard a thousand times, this past few days, a war; and the thing about war is, you have to take sides, and close your eyes to your allies' imperfections for the duration. There isn't any choice. What happened this week was not, or not only, an act of anti-Americanism, anti-Israelism, or anti-Semitism. It was in part all those things: but more than anything else, it was an act of hesperophobia.
Poison Pregnancy
Ayman al-Zawahiri released a message to the West last night reminding everyone of the nihilism of radical Islam and its central role in the 9/11 attacks, and warned of more to come. The new message, complete with subtitles, warns that Islam is in the family way again:
A lengthy statement from al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks calls on Muslims to step up their resistance against the United States.
"Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster," al-Zawahiri says in a statement posted on the Internet late Sunday. "And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events, with Allah's permission and guidance."
The video appeared on the Web site for Al-Sahab, the terror network's production company, said counterterrorism expert Laura Mansfield.
Al-Zawahiri calls on Muslims to fight U.S. allies in Somalia, where an Islamic militia recently pushed a U.S.-backed alliance of warlords out of the capital, and urges Iraq's Kurds to take up arms against the Americans.
Al-Zawahiri also attacks "collaborators" he says have abandoned Islam. Zawahiri has plenty to say during this hour-long video, as does As-Sahab, which produced its own 9/11 retrospective for al-Qaeda. The As-Sahab version has
interesting comments about media manipulation that should be seen by all, but the Zawahiri version offers more of the same threats we have heard from al-Qeada since 1998, when we failed to appreciate the danger. In fact, Zawahiri goes all the way back to the first World Trade Center attack when he demands the release of Sheike Abdel Rahman, the "blind Sheikh" who guided the first terrorist conspiracy.
For those who doubt that Iraq holds much significance in the fight against al-Qaeda, Zawahiri assures people of its central nature:
Iran's ambassador to South Africa expressed deep sorrow over attack on the embassy building in Pretoria and stressed that the South African government was responsible for safety of foreign diplomats in that country.
Mohammad-Ali Qanezadeh speaking to IRNA on Saturday said according to Vienna Convention all governments have the duty of protection of all foreign diplomats in their territory.
He added the Vienna Convention also stresses on compensation for the damage to the political representatives and foreign diplomats by the host country.
Qanezadeh denied any kind of political motives of the robbers for the last night event.
Referring to the primary report of the police and existing witnesses, the Iranian ambassador said the attackers entered into the embassy compound with the intention of stealing embassy 's cash.
The ambassador said Iran's embassy submitted an official letter of protest to the South African foreign ministry and has requested for an investigation so that the perpetrators of the crime could be detected and go under legal prosecution.
A group of 8 armed men on Friday evening entered into Iran's embassy building in Pretoria, capital of South Africa.
The armed robbers kept the only diplomat present in the building for 1.5 hours.
The armed group took all the money in the embassy's safe and left the diplomat with tied hands and feet.
The Iranian diplomat was later found and rescued.
Police has started its investigation of the case.
Sarajevo, 8 Sept. (AKI) - Bosnia's wartime president, the late Alija Izetbegovic received money from a Saudi businessman, Yassin al-Kadi - who has been designated by the United States, the United Nations, and the European Union as a financier of al-Qaeda - Sarajevo weekly Slobodna Bosna (Free Bosnia) has reported, quoting local and foreign sources.
Izetbegovic, a Muslim, who died in 2003, received 195,000 dollars in 1996 from al-Kadi, Slobodna Bosna alleges. Al-Kadi's bank accounts were frozen in 2001 by the United States authorities for money laundering and financing al-Qaeda.
The weekly said that Bosnian authorities obtained the information on this transaction from a British bank in the process of investigation of activities of al-Kadi’s humanitarian organisation, Mufavak, which was outlawed four years ago and which began operating in Bosnia under the name 'Blessed relief’.
Under the guise of humanitarian aid, Mufavak channelled 15-20 million dollars to various organisations, which at least three million dollars went straight into the bank accounts of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Slobodna Bosna said, quoting unnamed Saudi sources.
Izetbegovic led Bosnia to independence from the former Yugoslavia, and thousands of foreign fighters or 'mujahadeen' from Islamic countries came to Bosnia to fight on the side of local Muslims in bloody 1992-1995 civil war. The war effort was partly financed under the cover of 'humanitarian' organisations from Islamic countries, according to intelligence sources.
Many mujahadeen remained in Bosnia after the war, and some have been operating terrorist training camps and indoctrinating local youths with radical Islam, intelligence reports have claimed. The Bosnian authorities are currently reviewing the citizenship Izetbegovic’s government granted to 1,500 individuals from Islamic countries. So far, 50 people have been stripped of their Bosnian citenship as a result.
(Vpr/Aki)
Sep-08-06 13:39
In New Letter, Clinton's Lawyers Demand ABC Yank Film
By Greg Sargent | bio
On Friday evening, Bill Clinton's lawyers sent a new letter to ABC chief Bob Iger demanding that ABC yank "The Path to 9/11." We've obtained a copy of the letter, and it reads in part: "As a nation, we need to be focused on preventing another attack, not fictionalizing the last one for television ratings. `The Path to 9/11' not only tarnishes the work of the 9/11 Commission, but also cheapens the fith anniversary of what was a very painful moment in history for all Americans. We expect that you will make the responsible decision to not air this film." Full text of the letter after the jump.
The full text:
Dear Bob,
Despite press reports that ABC/Disney has made changes in the content and marketing of "The Path to 9/11," we remailn concerned about the false impression that airing the show will leave on the public. Labelng the show as "fiction" does not meet your responsibility to the victims of the September 11th attacks, their families, the hard work of the 9/11 Commission, or to the American people as a whole.
At a moment when we should be debating how to make the nation safer by implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, "The Path to 9/11" calls into question the accuracy of the Commission's report and whether fabricated scenes are, in fact, an accurate portrayal of history. Indeed, the millions spent on the production of this fictional drama would have been better spent informing the public about the Commission's actual findings and the many recommendations that have yet to be acted upon. Unlike this film, that would have been a tremendous service to the public.
Although our request for an advance copy of the film has been repeatedly denied, it is all too clear that our objections to "The Path to 9/11" are valid and corroborated by those familiar with the film and intimately involved in its production.
-- Your corporate partner, Scholastic, has disassociated itself from this proect.
-- 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, who served as co-executive producer on "The Path to 9/11," has stated that he raised concerns about the accuracy of several scenes in the film and that his concerns were not addressed during production.
-- Harvey Keitel, who plays the star role of FBI agent John O'Neill, told reporters yesterday that while the screenplay was presented to him as a fair treatment of historical events, he is upset that several scenes were simply invented for dramatic purposes.
-- Numerous Members of Congress, several 9/11 Commissioners and prominent historians have spoken out against this movie.
-- Indeed, according to press reports, the fact that you are still editing the film two days before it is scheduled to air is an admission that it is irreparably flawed.
As a nation, we need to be focused on preventing another attack, not fictionalizing the last one for television ratings. "The Path to 9/11" not only tarnishes the work of the 9/11 Commission, but also cheapens the fith anniversary of what was a very painful moment in history for all Americans. We expect that you will make the responsible decision to not air this film.
Sincerely,
Bruce R. Lindsey
Chief Executive Officer
William J. Clinton Foundation
Douglas J. Band
Counselor to President Clinton
Office of William Jefferson Clinton
ABC News - The U.N. General Assembly adopted a long-awaited strategy to combat terrorism on Friday, though many nations lamented that it does not include a definition or say anything about states that commit terrorist acts.The document, adopted by consensus, is the result of a year of often bitter work to meet world leaders' demands that the United Nations help its 192 members fight the scourge.
Much of the strategy, distributed Thursday, repeats previous commitments for example, promises to implement earlier General Assembly and Security Council resolutions. It also makes promises that are ambiguous and difficult to fulfill: promoting the rule of law and "a culture of peace;" meeting the Millennium Development Goals; encouraging dialogue between people of different faiths.
Yet there are nuggests that could prove useful, including a suggestion that the U.N. and member nations develop a database on "biological incidents" to counter the threat of bio-terror; take measures to combat terrorism on the Internet; and clamp down on counterfeiting of travel documents.
"I think it is the first time that 192 countries have come together and taken a stand on the issue of terrorism, and now the test will be how we implement it," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.
The issue of a counterterrorism strategy has been highly contentious at the U.N. because nations have been unable to agree on what exactly constitutes terrorism. Israel and the Palestinians, for example, both accuse each other of terrorist acts.In a clear reference to the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said the strategy, which is nonbinding, "does not prejudice the right of people for self-determination and the struggle for independence."
Few nations sent their U.N. ambassadors to attend the General Assembly session where the strategy was adopted. That is often a sign that nations do not see it as a hugely symbolic event or are not entirely satisfied with it.
According to the strategy, nations would be encouraged to give money to U.N. counterterrorism assistance projects. Border controls would be stepped up to prevent terrorists from crossing state lines or smuggling arms such as nuclear weapons.
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Washington Post - Several thousand immigrants and their supporters -- far fewer than predicted -- rallied before the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to urge Congress to make citizenship possible for those who have entered the country illegally.
In a muted echo of the massive immigrant-rights protests that filled streets from coast to coast in April, the predominantly Hispanic crowd waved American flags and chanted, "Si se puede," Spanish for "Yes we can."
"I want to get a better future for me and for us," said Juan Manuel, 30, a Guatemalan native who works in construction.
Turnout was far below the hundreds of thousands of protesters that organizers predicted.
Speakers at the rally said lawmakers returning from August recess needed to overhaul the nation's immigration laws before they adjourn for elections in November.
"This is one of the most pressing social and moral issues of our time. Congress does not have the right or the luxury to let four weeks go without dealing with it," said Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has led efforts to open citizenship to those in the country illegally.
Congressional leaders have been unable to reconcile a tough border-security measure passed by the House of Representatives with a compromise passed by the Senate that would create a guest-worker program and set up a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said reaching a compromise would be "next to impossible" before the November congressional elections.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert said on Thursday Republicans hoped to include some border-security measures in other legislation this fall.
Protest organizers are encouraging immigrants who are eligible to vote to show their displeasure at the polls. Some 7 million to 8 million immigrants who could have voted in the last election stayed home, said Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition.
"Whether we change it this year next year or in 2008, the community is extremely disappointed with the leadership in Congress and in the administration and they are going to lose a lot of our support," Contreras said in a phone interview.
The Washington rally was billed as the culmination of a week of similar events across the nation, which likewise failed to attract the large crowds they did in the spring.
SReuters - A U.S. Senate committee scrubbed its planned vote on Thursday on keeping John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, as a key Republican remained undecided on the nomination by President George W. Bush.
Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the only Republican who has not publicly committed to supporting Bolton, sought more time, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said. Chafee, locked in a tough re-election bid, faces a Republican primary election on Tuesday.
Committee Chairman Richard Lugar would only say a Republican member asked for the delay. He said the committee will meet on Bolton again, but did not say when.
"I'm not going to make any comments on time. It's going to require a lot of consultation with members on both sides of the aisle," the Indiana Republican said.
Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a fierce opponent of Bolton, said, "I think the nomination is in deep trouble again, as it should be."
ABC News - A U.S. Air Force officer who disappeared in the Kyrgyz capital two days ago was not kidnapped, Kyrgyzstan's police chief said Thursday.
Interior Minister Murat Sutalinov spoke as U.S. and Kyrgyz investigators continued their search for Maj. Jill Metzger, 33, who disappeared Tuesday after being separated from a group of servicemen while visiting a department store in Bishkek."I rule out the theory that the U.S. citizen may have been kidnapped," Sutalinov told reporters Thursday. He said that police had received no demand for ransom.
Sutalinov said Metzger was seen at a bus station in Bishkek, making a call from a public telephone soon after her disappearance. She had not answered her cell phone and later turned it off, he said.
Bishkek police chief Moldomusa Kongantiyev said Wednesday that Metzger had been expected to return to the United States by the weekend.
A statement from base officials said group of 22 U.S. military investigators and logistics officers along with Kyrgyz police are involved in the search for Metzger, who was stationed at an air base near Bishkek with the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing.
She was dressed in civilian clothes at the time of the disappearance, according to base officials.
Base officials announced new travel restrictions Thursday, barring all off-duty servicemen and women from leaving the base until the missing officer is found.
The U.S. military has maintained an air base at Kyrgyzstan's main civilian Manas airport since 2001, backing operations in nearby Afghanistan.
Washington Post - Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV "docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her "false and defamatory." Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions." And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
ABC's entertainment division said the six-hour movie, "The Path to 9/11," will say in a disclaimer that it is a "dramatization . . . not a documentary" and contains "fictionalized scenes." But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission's report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
Berger said in an interview that ABC is "certainly trying to create the impression that this is realistic, but it's a fabrication."
Marc Platt, the film's executive producer, said that although it "does contain composite and conflated scenes and representative characters and dialogue, we've worked very hard to be fair. If individuals feel they're wrongly portrayed, that's obviously of concern. We've portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view."
The former Clinton aides voiced their objections in letters to Robert A. Iger, chief executive of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co., but the network refused to make changes or to give them advance copies of the movie. They were not interviewed by ABC; it hired as a co-executive producer Thomas H. Kean, the Republican who chaired the Sept. 11 commission, but no Democratic members of the panel.
Among the scenes that the Clinton team said are fictional:
· Berger is seen as refusing authorization for a proposed raid to capture bin Laden in spring 1998 to CIA operatives in Afghanistan who have the terrorist leader in their sights. A CIA operative sends a message: "We're ready to load the package. Repeat, do we have clearance to load the package?" Berger responds: "I don't have that authority."
Berger said that neither he nor Clinton ever rejected a CIA or military request to conduct an operation against bin Laden. The Sept. 11 commission said no CIA operatives were poised to attack; that Afghanistan's rebel Northern Alliance was not involved, as the film says; and that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet decided the plan would not work.
· Tenet is depicted as challenging Albright for having alerted Pakistan in advance of the August 1998 missile strike that unsuccessfully targeted bin Laden.
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Yahoo! News - A new Army manual bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other procedures that have become infamous during the five-year-old war on terror.
Delayed more than a year amid criticism of the Defense Department's treatment of prisoners, the new Army Field Manual was being released Wednesday, revising one from 1992.
It also explicitly bans beating prisoners, sexually humiliating them, threatening them with dogs, depriving them of food or water, performing mock executions, shocking them with electricity, burning them, causing other pain and a technique called "water boarding" that simulates drowning, said Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence .
Officials said the revisions are based on lessons learned since the U.S. began taking prisoners in the war on terror, started in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
An international outcry about prisoner rights began shortly afterward. Human rights groups and some nations have urged the Bush administration to close the prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since not long after it opened in 2002 with prisoners from the campaign against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Scrutiny of U.S. treatment of prisoners shot to a new level in 2004 with the release of photos showing U.S. troops beating, intimidating and sexually abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq — and then again with news of secret facilities.
Though defense officials earlier this year debated writing a classified section of the manual to keep some interrogation procedures a secret from potential enemies, Kimmons said Wednesday that there is no secret section to the new manual.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said from the start of the counter-terror war that prisoners are treated humanely and in a manner "consistent with Geneva Conventions."
But President Bush decided shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks that since it was not a conventional war, "unlawful enemy combatants" captured in the fight against al-Qaida would not be considered POWs and thus would not be afforded the protections of the convention.
The new manual, called "Human Intelligence Collector Operations," applies to all the armed services, not just the Army. It doesn't cover the CIA, which also has come under investigation for mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and for allegedly keeping suspects in secret prisons elsewhere around the world since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sixteen of the manual's 19 interrogation techniques were covered in the old manual and three new ones were added on the basis of lessons from the counter-terror war, Kimmons said.
The additions are that interrogators may use the good-cop/bad-cop tact with prisoners, they may portray themselves as someone other than an American interrogator, and they may use "separation," basically keeping prisoners apart from each other so enemy combatants can't coordinate their answers with each other.
The last will be used only on unlawful combatants, not POWS, only as an exception and only with permission of a high-level commander, Kimmons said.
The Pentagon also on Wednesday released a new policy directive on detention operations that says the handling of prisoners must — at a minimum — abide by the standards of the Geneva Conventions and lays out the responsibilities of senior civilian and military officials who oversee detention operations.
"The revisions ... took time," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson said at the briefing. "It took time because it was important to get it right, and we did get it right."
Thanks,Wild Thing......KEMAL Kerincsiz believes Turkey is one of the greatest, most free countries in the world.
But insult it, and you could find yourself facing him in court.
To some of Turkey's 70 million people, the ultra-nationalist lawyer is the voice of a proud people against a patronizing West. To others, he is the voice of intolerance - a major embarrassment that could derail Turkey's bid to join the European Union.
As the ubiquitous, mustachioed leader of the Turkish Lawyers' Union, Mr Kerincsiz is the reason writers and intellectuals are regularly put on trial in Turkey.
Mr Kerincsiz gained international notoriety this year for dragging the celebrated novelist Orhan Pamuk to court for allegedly insulting Turkishness. Mr Pamuk, often cited as a candidate for the Nobel prize in literature, was acquitted.
But the lawyer has met with success in less high-profile cases, winning a conviction against an Armenian-Turkish journalist for the same offence. He has also opened dozens of other cases against journalists, writers and intellectuals, including one set to go to court this month against the Arizona-based Turkish novelist Elif Shafak.
Mr Kerincsiz and his organization of some 700 nationalist lawyers have exasperated not only EU officials - who have said the cases must be stopped or Turkey will jeopardize its hopes of joining the EU - but also Turkey's intellectuals and its leadership.
The lawyer believes Turkey's future is in the East and represents a growing, powerful faction of Turkish society tired of being told it must aspire to be more like the West. Recently, his view appears to be gaining traction in the government, with Recep Tayyip Egdoga, the prime minister, increasingly making foreign policy overtures to the Middle East - and away from Europe.
"The easterner has to insult himself and degrade his own culture to ingratiate himself with the West," Mr Kerincsiz said. "Our place is in eastern culture, our real aim is finding allies among our own people." By that he means primarily the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, which he hopes to see included one day in the "Turkish Union" led by Turkey.
He admits this is a far-off dream, but it is possible, he says, especially when one looks at the mishmash of different cultures joined together in the EU. Mr Kerincsiz makes no effort to hide his view that the European Union is an enemy of Turkey.
In the year that has followed Turkey's opening of EU negotiations last October, it has become clear that even if they don't entirely share Mr Kerincsiz's view, Turks are cooling in their enthusiasm for accession, and he is tapping into the sources of their discontent.
The latest "Eurobarometer" survey found only 44 per cent of Turks surveyed thought EU membership would be a good thing for Turkey, compared to 55 per cent last autumn. Last spring, 66 per cent said they supported EU membership.
Third, fire Armitage and Rove for outing Valerie Plame, since compromising her and the company she ran dealt a severe setback to our intelligence on middle east WMD's.
BOSSHOG (1000+ posts) Sat Sep-02-06 07:50 PM
Response to Original message
7. They are already here and they are supported by the gop
Insane “christians” led by radical christian clerics doing their best to undermine the constitution. They are the number one domestic enemy of our constitution, and they are more of a threat then Muslims, because the “christians” are amongst us right now, and they have the support of the majority political party in this country.
Reuters - Pro-Taliban militants and the Pakistani government reached a peace deal on Tuesday under which the militants agreed to stop attacks in both Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan, negotiators said.
Hundreds of Pakistani troops and militants have been killed in the Waziristan region as the government has attempted to push its authority into semi-autonomous tribal lands on the Afghan border as part of efforts in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
"The agreement will pave the way for permanent peace in the region," said Malik Shahzada, a member of a tribal council that has been overseeing the negotiations with the rebels.
The agreement was signed on a dusty football ground at a college in Miranshah, the main town of the North Waziristan region.
Scores of members of the tribal council, most in turbans and with long beards, watched as a Pakistani army commander, Major General Azhar Ali Shah, embraced representatives of the militants after the pact was signed.
Many members of the al Qaeda network and the Taliban fled to Waziristan after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who is due to visit Afghanistan on Wednesday for security talks with President Hamid Karzai, has said no group could use Pakistan as a springboard for attacks on other countries.
But Afghanistan and its allies have long complained the Taliban are able to benefit from havens on the Pakistani side of the long, rugged border.
Musharraf has also vowed to clear foreign militants from the Pakistani side of the border but Tuesday's agreement said foreigners could stay in Waziristan, as long as they kept the peace.
According to a copy of the agreement obtained by Reuters, the militants agreed that all foreigners would have to leave but those unable to do so would have to respect the peace deal.
Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding out somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border but security analysts doubt he is in Waziristan, given the security forces' focus on the area.
Several of bin Laden's Arab lieutenants have been killed in North Waziristan and U.S. drone aircraft have carried out missile strikes on al Qaeda targets from across the border in Afghanistan.
Security officials say some central Asian militants are also in the area.
PASHTUN TRIBES
The fiercely independent ethnic Pashtun tribes that inhabit both sides of the porous border have never been brought under the control of any government, including British colonial rulers.
The Waziristan-based militants had been demanding free movement into Afghanistan, which the tribes have always enjoyed, to support the Taliban in their jihad, or holy war, there.
But that had been ruled out under the deal, an official said.
"Except for trade, people will not be allowed to go to Afghanistan to launch attacks," said Nek Zaman, a member of the tribal council who is also a member of the Pakistani parliament.
Under the agreement, the government will stop air and ground operations in Waziristan and dismantle newly built checkposts.
People arrested during military operations would be released and confiscated property, including weapons, would be returned, according to the agreement.
WASHINGTON - Leading Democratic lawmakers on Monday urged President Bush to consider changing the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, one week after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned against fascism and appeasement as he defended U.S. policies in Iraq.
Rumsfeld drew heavy criticism from Democrats after telling an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City that "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." In alluding to criticism aimed at Bush administration war policies, he used terms associated with the failure to stop Nazism in the 1930s.
The political parties renewed debate over Iraq and Rumsfeld's tenure at the Defense Department as the traditional fall campaign season began on Labor Day.
In a letter released Monday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and 10 other congressional party leaders told the president that considering making such a change would show he recognizes the problems his policies "have created in Iraq and elsewhere."
"While a change in your Iraq policy will best advance our chances for success, we do not believe the current civilian leadership at the Department of Defense is suited to implement and oversee such a change in policy," the lawmakers wrote.
The 850-word letter criticizes Bush's policies in Iraq, calling them part of a "stay the course strategy" that has failed to make the U.S. more secure, and it suggests several changes long called for by Democratic leaders.
Others who signed the letter were Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan, Joe Biden of Delaware, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii; and Reps. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, Ike Skelton of Missouri, Tom Lantos and Jane Harman of California, and John Murtha of Pennsylvania.
In response to the Democrats' letter, Sen. Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky., issued a statement accusing Democrats, including national chairman Howard Dean, of calling for retreat from Iraq before the U.S. mission there was completed. U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and removed dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
"The Democrat leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it's retreat. Whether they call it 'redeployment' or 'phased withdrawal,' the effect is the same: We would leave Americans more vulnerable and Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida, a terrorist group whose aim — toward Iraqis and Americans — is clear," said McConnell, the Republican whip in the Senate.
THE Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, is dead.
He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said today.
It is understood he was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest and reportedly into his heart .He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary when the tragedy occured.
The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) was called about 11am (AEST) and an emergency services helicopter was flown to the crew's boat on Batt Reef, off the coast near Cairns, with a doctor and emergency services paramedic on board.
Irwin had a puncture wound to the left side of his chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Irwin's body is being flown to Cairns.
It is believed his American-born wife Terri is trekking on Cradle Mountain in Tasmania and is yet to be told of her husband's death.
In April 1984, President Reagan signed Presidential Directorate Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national "readiness exercise" under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA's readiness to assume military authority in the event of a "State of Domestic National Emergency" concurrent with the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated 400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country. REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being allowed through the newly installed metal security doors. Only personnel wearing a special red Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed vehemently.The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in place. The plan also advocated the rounding up and transfer to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Japs in the 1940s.
The second known time that FEMA stood by was in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted. Prior to President Bush's invasion of Iraq, FEMA began to draft new legislation to increase its already formidable powers. One of the elements incorporated into the plan was to set up operations within any state or locality without the prior permission of local or state authorities. Such prior permission has always been required in the past. Much of the mechanism being set into place was in anticipation of the economic collapse of the Western World. The war with Iraq may have been conceived as a ploy to boost the bankrupt economy, but it only pushed the West into deeper recession.
The third scenario for FEMA came with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King brutality verdict. Had the rioting spread to other cities, FEMA would have been empowered to step in. As it was, major rioting only occurred in the Los Angeles area, thus preventing a pretext for a FEMA response. On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA's new goals. The goal was to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect. National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the "Use of National Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances." The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. Lt. Col. North virtually established the apparatus for dictatorship. Only the criticism of the Attorney General prevented the plans from being adopted. But intelligence reports indicate that FEMA has a folder with 22 Executive Orders for the President to sign in case of an emergency. It is believed those Executive Orders contain the framework of North's concepts, delayed by criticism but never truly abandoned.
Now, FEMA is on stand by once again. Due to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the ensuing "war on terror" known as Operation Enduring Freedom, the president can declare martial law under the guise of "national security."
The crisis, as the government now see it, is civil unrest. For generations, the government was concerned with nuclear war, but the violent and disruptive demonstrations that surrounded the Vietnam War era prompted President Nixon to change the direction of emergency powers from war time to times of domestic unrest. Diana Raynolds, program director of the Edward R. Murrow Center, summed up the dangers of FEMA today and the public reaction to martial law in a drug crisis: "It was James Madison's worst nightmare that a righteous faction would someday be strong enough to sweep away the Constitutional restraints designed by the framers to prevent the tyranny of centralized power, excessive privilege, an arbitrary governmental authority over the individual. These restraints, the balancing and checking of powers among branches and layers of government, and the civil guarantees, would be the first casualties in a drug-induced national security state with Reagan's Civil Emergency Preparedness unleashed. Nevertheless, there would be those who would welcome NSC (National Security Council) into the drug fray, believing that increasing state police powers to emergency levels is the only way left to fight American's enemy within. In the short run, a national security state would probably be a relief to those whose personal security and quality of life has been diminished by drugs or drug related crime. And, as the general public watches the progression of institutional chaos and social decay, they too may be willing to pay the ultimate price, one drug free America for 200 years of democracy."
The first targets in any FEMA emergency would be Hispanics and Blacks. The FEMA orders call for them to be rounded up and detained. Tax protesters, demonstrators against government military intervention outside U.S. borders, and people who maintain weapons in their homes are also targets. Operation Trojan Horse is a program designed to learn the identity of potential opponents to martial law. The program lures potential protesters into public forums, conducted by a "hero" of the people who advocates survival training. The list of names gathered at such meetings and rallies are computerized and then targeted in case of an emergency.The most shining example of America to the world has been its peaceful transition of government from one administration to another. Despite crises of great magnitude, the United States has maintained its freedom and liberty. This nation now stands on the threshold of rule by non-elected people asserting non-Constitutional powers. Even Congress cannot review a Martial Law action until six months after it has been declared. For the first time in American history, the reigns of government would not be transferred from one elected element to another, but the Constitution, itself, can be suspended. The scenarios established to trigger FEMA into action are generally found in the society today: economic collapse, civil unrest, drug problems, terrorist attacks, and protests against American intervention in a foreign country. All these premises exist, it could only be a matter of time in which one of these triggers the entire emergency necessary to bring FEMA into action, and then it may be too late, because under the FEMA plan, there is no contingency by which Constitutional power is restored.
There are now over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty.
Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.
The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.
PS: This is a short version posting. The longer version will be posted later.
The video tape issued by al Qaeda’s “as-sahhab” production, in which Ayman Zawahiri introduces Jihadist Adam Gahdan to the world as a senior speaker to the American people on behalf of the movement, should be taken seriously. Not necessarily at the level of detecting the next Terror attack but at the level of understanding this prelude to Future Jihad both in America and within the West. I wasn’t surprised at all by the 45 minutes elaboration by convert Gahdan regarding all of the issues he raised. For “Azzam al Amrikee” is the clearest specimen of Jihadism’s second generation within the US, in as much as the 7/7 videos revealed the type of future Jihadists for Great Britain’s second generation. However, when one would listen carefully to the taped video, you’d find a treasure of knowledge and indicators for the current state of thinking of al Qaeda and its ideologues. In short it is a sample of what is on the mind of Salafi Jihadists for the United States and the West.
Following are few of the issues I noted:
1) The hand behind the message
In short, Azzam’s videotaped message is indeed “American.” Experts have heard it in US and Canadian cities and internet is flowing with it. Whether Gadahn was reading from a prompter or not –and I believe he was with great skills- I tend to believe that such a speech –rather than being dismissed as mere propaganda- is a message coming to us from what’s already inserted inside America, which leads me to the second point.
2) Who is it destined to?
It is basically addressed to those who will carry a “Jihad in
America,” possibly asserting Adam Gahdan as their leader. Also, this is a very intelligent move to pierce the linguistic shield of America’s media and reach US citizens directly, as a way to spread confusion at least among those who have a hazy understanding of the Jihadists.
3) The ideological platform
In short, the “Azzam” video reconfirms clearly, in an English language that academic translators won’t be able to distort, that al Qaeda’s movement worldwide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies.
4) Argumentation tactics:
The “speech writer,” emulating many commentators on al Jazeera or al Manar, hopes to rally many among those who “hate Bush and Blair” but stops short of stating that Jihadism will hate all future US Presidents and British Prime Ministers “if they do not convert.” He reminds us of the Crusades, Inquisition, Hiroshima, and killings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, the “writer” skips the Genocides of Sudan, and the massacres of Algeria, the Kurds, Shiites perpetrated by Salafists or Baathists.
5) The enemies of Jihad in America
Sensationally but not unexpectedly, he “name” a number of
intellectual-enemies in this country: Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer and Michael Spencer. Rarely Jihadi Terrorists at this high level media exposure named symbols of their enemy’s intelligentsia. And in addition to “experts” named in the tape, Gadahn goes on a ferocious attack against American “Tele-Evangelists” and their media, showing the other type of foes al Qaeda is very upset with.
6) The “friends” of al Qaeda?
“Azzam” names “sympathetic” personalities for whom he has
messages for action; He asks journalist Seymour Hirsh to “reveal more” than what was published in a New Yorker article on the War: Obviously an open call by al Qaeda to M Hirsch to resume the attack against the US War on Terror. Then “Azzam” turn to two British journalists and thank them for their “admiration and respect for Islam” and encourage them to do the final step: Convert. He names British MP George Galloway and journalist Robert Fisk. But more troubling in Gadahn’s tape was his direct call to Jihadists within the US Armed forces to work patiently till the time comes and they should continue to aggregate while escaping the surveillance of their military authorities. This theme, which I covered briefly in Future Jihad,is of great concern to US national security. The “Azzam” speech brings further concerns as to the credibility of this threat.
7) The Al Qaeda offer: Conversion or fire
“Azzam”’s mission in this tape was to deliver a message. His bottom line is this: We –the Jihadists- have you cornered everywhere and you are not going to win this war. His central message is typically Jihadic: “Surrender, convert or the fire:” Meaning war on Earth, all of it, and Hell fire after death.
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This fascinating and revealing taped-speech brings the American public even closer to what lays ahead for this generation and the next one as long as the Jihadist ideology is spreading inside America and worldwide.
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Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. He is the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America.
September 2, 2006 07:28 PM
BREITBART - An Army investigator has recommended the death penalty for four soldiers accused of murder during a raid in Iraq.
Lt. Col. James P. Daniel Jr. made the recommendation in report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.Daniel found several aggravating factors that warrant a sentence of death in the case of four soldiers accused of killing three men during the May raid in the Salahuddin province.
Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber, all of the Fort Campbell, Ky.- based 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, were accused in the deaths.
The soldiers have claimed they were ordered to "kill all military-age males" during a raid on an island on a canal in the province. According to statements from some of the soldiers, they were told that the target was an al-Qaida training camp.
Hunsaker told investigators that he and Clagett were attacked by the three men and shot them in self-defense. Clagett said he was hit in the face and Hunsaker claimed he was stabbed during the attack.
"I had felt this action necessary for they had tried to use deadly force on me and my comrade," Hunsaker wrote in a statement.
CHICAGO, Sept. 1 — Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc. Friday said it has entered into agreement with a South Dakota based company for the development of three-wheeled vehicles, commonly referred to as ''trikes.''
Harley said the plans, with Lehman Trikes U.S.A. Inc. of Spearfish, South Dakota, call for the trikes to be developed around a Harley motorcycle product platform and sold under the Harley brand through its dealers.
Harley, based in Milwaukee, has not announced the timing or other details of the product introduction.
Lehman Trikes U.S.A. is a subsidiary of Lehman Trikes Inc. of Canada.
Reuters - Mexican President Vicente Fox abandoned his state of the nation speech on Friday after leftist lawmakers claiming fraud at elections in July seized the podium of Congress.
Fox handed a written version of his speech to Congress officials and said he was leaving the building without trying to deliver the address.
Aljazeera - American Muslims have blamed politicians and the media for the US public's increasing hatred and fear of Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks.
"The trends of Islamophobia unfortunately are worsening," Abdul Malik Mujahid, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organisations of Greater Chicago, said at the start on the annual meeting of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on Friday.
"During the last five years the Muslim community has been scrutinized by almost all branches of the government and the media to the extent that more than half a million Muslims have been directly touched by this process."
"They continue to face dehumanization and a great trend of Islamophobia," Mujahid said.
Mujahid cited George Bush's recent remark that if terrorism is not beaten in Baghdad then Americans will have to fight it in their own streets as a remark that casts suspicions on Muslims in their own country.
The ISNA annual meeting is the largest yearly gathering of US and Canadian Muslims.
Ingrid Mattson, newly elected president of ISNA and the first woman to head the group, agreed that there was a continuing level of problems faced by Muslims, but said that there was also a growing level of education and understanding acros civil society.
This she said finds Muslim leaders sometimes hard pressed to keep up with demands for speeches and other outreach opportunities.
"Hollywood and popular culture in general seem to have done a better job of putting a human face on Muslim adherents than the news media," Mattson said.
