USS Neverdock

They are Muslims, anarchists and peace activists. They may not have much in common, but two dozen groups and individuals in the St. Louis area united this month to denounce the FBI, claiming the agency is carrying out unwarranted investigations for religious or political reasons.

Mohammad Basirul Haq Sinha: "You often call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces globally. How far is it possible under current situation?"

Galloway: "Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries.

It's become increasingly clear in recent weeks that a second front has opened in the War on Terror. Now, not only is the United States battling Islamic terrorism and its state supporters, it's facing another enemy. That enemy is the mainstream news media that is aided by its allies among so-called international human rights organizations, the anti-American left, and detractors within our own military, government and intelligence services who are leaking as much dirt as they can muster. The mainstream news media is doing all it can to defeat the United States abroad.

In short, as the president’s critics are rightly reminding him, more time has passed since 9/11 than transpired between Pearl Harbor and the surrender of the Japanese empire, and our most lethal enemies are still in power and still killing our people and our friends. It is good that the desire for freedom is now manifest among the oppressed peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia, and it is very good that dramatic strides toward self-government have been taken by the Georgians, Kyrgistanis, Ukrainians, Iraqis, and Lebanese. But it is not good enough. Indeed, it is shameful that we have yet to seriously challenge the legitimacy of the terror masters in Tehran and Damascus, who represent the keystone of the terrorist edifice.

Our enemies know this, because, to their delight and perhaps their surprise as well, they are still in power throughout the Middle East. Until and unless they are removed, the terror war will continue, our friends in the region will be killed, tortured, and incarcerated, and the president’s vision of regional democratic revolution will go down the memory hole. He is at yet another great turning point, and, as after the fall of Afghanistan and again after the defenestration of Saddam’s Baghdad, he is drifting, perhaps hoping that he has risked enough, that history is firmly on his side, and even — although it is hard to imagine — that the Europeans are helping the spread of freedom.

It is not so. In matters of war, peace, and revolution, winners are characterized by the constancy of their vision and the relentlessness of their pursuit of it. The French, Germans, and British are trying to restrain the revolution, not to encourage it, as their pathetic vaudeville-style negotiations with Iran abundantly demonstrate. One expects to hear one of their foreign ministers on the evening news, pronouncing Groucho’s immortal words: "I got principles. And if you don’t like ‘em, I got other principles..."

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It's become increasingly clear in recent weeks that a second front has opened in the War on Terror. Now, not only is the United States battling Islamic terrorism and its state supporters, it's facing another enemy. That enemy is the mainstream news media that is aided by its allies among so-called international human rights organizations, the anti-American left, and detractors within our own military, government and intelligence services who are leaking as much dirt as they can muster. The mainstream news media is doing all it can to defeat the United States abroad.

The mainstream news media for the most part has long had it out for President Bush as well as being transparently opposed to the war in Iraq. But beginning with the Abu Ghraib story, it started focusing almost solely on the U.S. military. The obsession with Abu Ghraib began a narrative in which U.S. soldiers were always the bad guys and the terrorists they fought just innocent victims of American "oppression" or even "imperialism."

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GAZA CITY (AFP) - The radical Islamist group Hamas rejected calls from Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas for the movement to renounce violence and hold dialogue with the ruling Fatah party.

"We think that the past experience of our people with the Israeli occupation confirms that resistance is the main language that this occupation understands," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP in Gaza City.

The intelligence agencies of the US and Israel are aware of the fact stated by Dichter and the outgoing IDF chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, that large quantities of weapons are being constantly smuggled to the Gaza Strip. In 2004 alone about 10,000 automatic rifles and a 1,000 RPG anti-tank weapons were smuggled in.

The dimensions of the smuggling have now reached a new peak since the IDF is hesitant to carry out military operations in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are digging additional tunnels both for smuggling weapons and for perpetrating terrorist attacks against IDF bases and the settlements that are about to be uprooted.

Murdered Al-Rantissi is one of the main Palestinian figures who drafted the controversial Geneva agreement between Israeli and Palestinian figures Including Abd Rabbou.

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They're gone now. But their spirit lives on in the EU, critically admired (at least by the Guardian and Le Monde) but not making any money, and clinging to the theory that if you merge enough weak economies they add up to one global superpower. The big story of the past three decades is that the more it's mired itself in the creation of a centralised pseudo-state, the more "Europe" has fallen behind America in every important long-term indicator, from economic growth to demographics. "Europe" is an indulgence the real Europe can't afford. The followers recognise that, even if the leaders don't.

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But Pyongyang would need to "understand that they're not going to have normal relationships with the outside world in terms of commerce, industry and trade if they become a nuclear power".

It has also quietly ended food aid to the regime amid suspicions that the North Koreans were using it to feed the country's elite.

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JALALPUR, Bangladesh - A Baptist lay pastor has been beheaded in Bangladesh, the second Christian leader to lose his life in that country in a year, according to a Christian news organization.

Dulal Sarkar, 35, was attacked as he returned home from discussing his faith with local villagers, reported Compass Direct, which tracks incidents of Christian persecution. One source later identified the assailants as a group of 10 local Muslim extremists. After reporting the incident, Sarkur's wife, mother and five children have been forced to move from place to place in fear for their lives.

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But I am not a film critic; I am a historian. As a historian it naturally irritates me that there are people who will leave theaters certain that Scott and his writer, William Monahan, have served up something that approximates reality in the Middle Ages. They haven’t. In fact, there is very little that is medieval about The Kingdom of Heaven. It is instead a mixture of 19th-century Romanticism and modern Hollywood wishful-thinking. The real Crusades began in 1095 as a response to centuries of Muslim conquests of Christian lands. Their purpose was to restore those territories, including the Holy Land, to Christian control. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was established by the First Crusade in 1099, was an outpost of European Christians planted in a largely Muslim world for the purpose of safeguarding the holy sites. Subsequent major Crusades were called in response to subsequent Muslim conquests.

Ridley Scott has repeatedly said that this movie is “not a documentary” but a “story based on history.” The problem is that the story is poor and the history is worse. Based on media interviews, Scott, Monahan, and the leading actors clearly believe that their story can help bring peace to the world today. Lasting peace, though, would be better served by candidly facing the truths of our shared past, however politically incorrect those might be.

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An Israeli military source said the strike targeted militants who were preparing a mortar attack.

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The Yemeni Ambassador to Syria, Ahmed Abdullah al-Hasani, is attempting to defect to the UK. He says that members of Al-Qaeda are in the highest ranks of Yemen's military and security forces. Al-Hasani says that it is very likely that President Ali Abdullah Saleh "knew in advance of the Cole explosion" which killed 17 U.S. servicemen. Indeed, Freedom House in 2003 reported that Saleh refused to even investigate the Cole bombing until the United States threatened military action. Also in 2003, al-Qaeda praised President Saleh as the only Arab and Muslim leader who is not an agent for the West or the East.

Currently President Saleh is refusing to act against terrorist financing, probably earning him more praise. Only one bank account in Yemen was frozen in response to a 2003 UN Security Council Sanctions Committee directive to freeze 144 terrorist affiliated accounts of persons, companies, and organizations. The other 143 terrorist associated bank accounts in Yemen remain fully functional. In 2004, the UN Sanctions Committee list of al-Qaeda owned Yemeni bank accounts was not even issued by the Yemeni government to Yemeni banks...

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Washington: The Canadian Council of Muslim Women has welcomed the Quebec National Assembly’s unanimous adoption of a motion declaring that no Muslim tribunals for family matters will be allowed in the province, and that the laws of Quebec will apply to all its residents, regardless of religion, ethnicity or culture.

The Council said, “This public motion is a courageous act and though it may be criticised by some, its message is strong that religious women will not be isolated and placed under any other form of law. Quebec has clearly understood that different laws for different citizens lead to discrimination and have nothing to do with multiculturalism or Quebec’s Charter of Rights and Freedom. Our regret is that the motion did not include a statement that no religious laws shall be used. This move towards separate laws, according to religion, is being advocated by other religious groups and is not restricted to Muslims only. We hope that Ontario will follow the same reasoning and demonstrate courage to state unequivocally that all Ontario families must be treated equally under the laws of the land.

Earlier, Liberal Party member of the Quebec Assembly Fatima Houda-Pepin, who introduced the motion, said sharia law would discriminate against women. She said fringe Muslim religious groups are seeking to use the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to impose religious values that undermine Canada’s democratic institutions. “Demanding the implementation of the sharia in Canada is a tantamount to a takeover attempt aimed at undermining our democracy, our system of justice.” Ms. Houda-Pepin, who is a Morocco-born Muslim, said that for the last few years, Canada has become the stage of an intensive battle for control of the Muslim community.

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Lebanon's Jama'a Islameyya has asked its supporters to boycott the forthcoming parliamentary elections because "they are fixed by the American and French governments".

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Last week the 2008 presidential hopeful suggested he wanted to review his full Navy file to make sure of "what is in the record and what isn't in the record" before signing Form 180.

"I'm going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn't in the record and we'll put it out," he told "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert.

Kerry did not explain his reference to "what isn't in the record," though questions arose late in the campaign about why he received his honorable discharge six years after leaving the service.

2. Restrictions on release of information. Release of information is subject to restrictions imposed by the military services consistent with Department of Defense regulations and the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act of 1974. The service member (either past or present) or the member’s legal guardian has access to almost any information contained in that member’s own record. Others requesting information from military personnel/health records must have the release authorization in Section III of the SF 180 signed by the member or legal guardian, but if the appropriate signature cannot be obtained, only limited types of information can be provided. If the former member is deceased, surviving next of kin may, under certain circumstances, be entitled to greater access to a deceased veteran’s records than a member of the public. The next of kin may be any of the following: unremarried surviving spouse, father, mother, son, daughter, sister, or brother. Employers and others needing proof of military service are expected to accept the information shown on documents issued by the military service departments at the time a service member is separated.
Form SF 180

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Basic Industry Minister Yadira Garcia had a somewhat discouraging bottom line: Cuba's power plants are obsolescent and require complex maintenance, which adds to the number of blackouts.

She said there are no spare parts readily available for the mostly vintage 1960s and 1970s Soviet- and Czech-technology plants. "You have to special-order them," which also contributes to blackout woes, she said.

Yet "May and June are very difficult months, with a lot of tensions," she said, and power simply will not be able to be kept flowing at all times.

She said blackouts would continue for now, but did not give a date as to when they might stop.

Castro grilled state power company officials on the program, and they revealed that they need to replace 17,000 kilometers (10,563 miles) of power lines and 44,000 power line poles to modernize the country's distribution system.

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BAGHDAD, May 28 -- For four days this month, U.S. Marines were onlookers at just the kind of fight they had hoped to see: a battle between suspected followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a foreign-born insurgent, and Iraqi Sunni tribal fighters at the western frontier town of Husaybah.

In clashes sparked by the assassination of a tribal sheik, which was commissioned by Zarqawi, the foreign insurgents and the Iraqi tribal fighters pounded one another with small weapons and mortars in the town's streets as the U.S. military watched from a distance, tribal members and the U.S. military said.

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This is a key moment in media history. So far NO ONE in MSM is covering this but my Chicago Sun-Times story and an item in the Washington Times. WHY? How do you account for it? Are you going to let this drop?

I take my membership in the Guild very seriously. That's why I was dismayed to learn that you, the president of my union, made a speech on May 13 in which you asserted that the US military has deliberately killed journalists. The relevant portion of the speech was videotaped and is available for viewing here.

Since then, you have failed to provide supporting evidence for your remarks, but neither have you retracted them. I spoke with you at 11:10 AM today by telephone; union secretary-treasurer Bernard Lunzer was also on the call.

When I told you that I would publish your response to me on the Internet, you declined further comment--except for the following: "I am not going to discuss this with you on the eve of Memorial Day weekend."

This remark strikes me as extremely odd. I can't think of a better time to redeem the honor of the US military by beginning a serious investigation of outrageous conduct on its part. If our soldiers are deliberately killing journalists, it's our duty to publicize it, so that such a terrible stain on our nation's integrity may be quickly cleansed.

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Flipping cable channels yesterday afternoon, I chanced upon a CNN feature that astonished me. It was a roundup of opinion by leading blogs. Is this where the 'news' stations are headed? The screenshot sampler predictably began on the hard left, with Daily Kos, then it edged reluctantly rightward -- calling Andrew Sullivan a 'conservative,' which might be true in Britain, but not in the US. Eventually CNN reached the neo-cons of Power Line. It even included USS Neverdock, a site reciprocally linked by Fresh Bilge. Perhaps I should have gone wholly into politics from the start, like these other bloggers. Then I could get quoted by CNN. But I would not be free to describe Doggy Heaven, or to snarl like the Imperial Rottweiler, although I rarely do that. Poor CNN doesn't even rate a curled lip any more. It would be cruel to snarl at a chihuahua.

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Still, maybe the creators of "24" deserve a medal, considering the total silence of their fellow movie- and television-makers when it comes to the war on jihadist terror. War, what war? Culture clash? What culture clash? Freedom — what kind of freedom? Hollywood and the media may be "brave" and "bold" in fearlessly depicting sexuality, violence and the perversions therein, but they're cultural cowards when it comes to depicting — even mentioning — matters of war, Islam and jihad. Call it dhimmitude, Hollywood-style.

While the term dhimmitude, coined by historian Bat Ye'or, refers to the inferior status of Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule, she also points to disturbing signs of dhimmitude throughout the free West. These range from the politically correct fear of giving offense, which curtails freedom of speech (think Fox punting Islam), to the fear of jihadist violence, which curtails freedom of movement, and even the free practice of religion (think armed guards at synagogues).

An unlikely moviemaker who refuses to accept dhimmi conditions is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ms. Ali is the amazingly courageous 35-year-old [tk] Somali-born ex-Muslim and Dutch parliamentarian whose first foray into moviemaking is a provocative 11-minute film called "Submission." Directed by Theo van Gogh — who was ritualistically murdered on an Amsterdam street last fall, his head nearly severed from his body, a jihadist rant pinned to his chest with a knife" — Submission" depicts the brutalized plight of all too many women at the hands of men under Islam, a political issue championed by Ms. Ali. For exercising her freedom of speech, Ms. Ali now lives under an Islamically imposed death sentence (fatwa). She also lives under lock and key, guarded 24 hours a day, and transported everywhere in an armored vehicle.

Such is the going price of freedom in Holland, just another ultra-liberal, Western country besieged by jihadists. "This fatwa isn't just directed against me," she explains, "but against Holland, against the entire Western world. We are all targets. In the eyes of radical Muslims, any country in which Muslims can be criticized openly is an enemy of Islam."

"Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type cannot be carried over to any part, and these concepts are out of sync with the principles of Islam..."

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What is remarkable is that what began as an alliance of convenience between Christians, Sunnis and Druze to expel Syria has not only survived Syria's departure, but has deepened into an alliance of shared convictions. Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik and likely the next prime minister, is running an interdenominational slate of candidates in the parliamentary elections tomorrow. Across nearly the entire political spectrum, candidates advocate the same things: Eradicate what remains of Syria's influence in the army, intelligence services and the government; establish an independent judiciary; use the discipline of Lebanon's $34 billion debt to trim the budget and privatize state-owned assets.

"We need to keep this momentum for reform going," says Yassin Jaber, a Shiite parliamentarian. "To the Arab world, the revolution in Ukraine meant nothing. But Lebanon really means something. If we're going to be the ones carrying the message of change, we have to make sure the change is good." Even more surprising is how wide the support is for ending the confessional system. "Muslims as well as Christians consider that they need to rebuild a country based on freedom and democracy beyond the logic of communities," says Amin Gemayal, a Maronite former president whose community has the most to lose from ending the system.

But perhaps the apparent nonchalance of most Lebanese is warranted. Wherever I go here, the impression is of a people intent on making up for lost time, and determined never again to be dragged down by extremism. It is these Lebanese, one senses, and not Hezbollah, who are making the country anew, and who are doing so, at long last, in the absence of fear.

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"Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type cannot be carried over to any part, and these concepts are out of sync with the principles of Islam," said Hasani, the imam who led Friday prayers in the main city of western Iranian Azerbaijian.

"Islam always spoke with the sword in the hand and I don't see why now we have changed attitudes and talk with the other civilisations."

"You need to vote for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani," said Hasani. "This way we will finally be able to have for ourselves the atomic bomb to fairly stand up to Israeli weapons," said Hasani.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Wisam Younis' sole ambition in life, he said Friday, is to kill Americans. So he claimed surprise when he discovered his car bomb had killed eight Iraqis and wounded more than 80 outside a Baghdad restaurant. Younis and brothers Badr and Yassin Shakir are charged with murder and face the death penalty in the May 23 attack.

``We did not know that the attack would target innocent people and we were deceived. We were eluded by enthusiastic ideas and money,'' said Younis, barefooted and with bruised and swollen hands. An insurgent leader promised him $1,500 for the bombing, he said.

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Foley had the advantage of seeing what happened to Jordan and, as the head of a powerful union of 35,000 journalists and media workers, she knew anything she said about targeting journalists would likely be scrutinized. So one would expect that she has a pretty solid case for her revival of the discredited Jordan charges? But one would be wrong. Her spokesperson, Candice Johnson, told me Foley can provide “no evidence” to support her charges either.

Sherlock Holmes’s key clue to who stole the racehorse in “Silver Blaze” was a dog in the stall that didn’t bark. And something equally odd happened on the way to the Foley firestorm: To date, not a single pundit, editorial writer, or newspaper ran anything, with the exception of the Chicago Sun-Times story I wrote, a St. Paul Pioneer Press column by Mark Yost, and a Washington Times column item.

Clearly Foley was correct in assuming the Right was the only danger to her repetition of the statement that got Eason Jordan canned. The Mainstream Media couldn’t be bothered to cover “Easongate: The Sequel.” And positioning Foley as the gallant defender of the lives of journalists targeted by the U.S. military was inspired PR. After all, Sherlock Holmes’s dog didn’t bark because he was good friends with the thief.

If the most basic tenets of Journalism 101 are now no longer important enough for the media itself to honor and defend against their own members who violate them, where is the professionalism and the authority that is our main claim to writing the indispensable “first draft of history” – much less its value for sale? And if we lose sight of that irretrievably, who needs us? There are bloggers out there today with more credibility than Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Eason Jordan, and Linda Foley combined, and their audiences are growing.

If Foley is allowed to walk unchallenged from what Mencken might have called “a clear, simple, and” unproven statement, it will only accelerate the speed at which her members lose what is left of their credibility--and then their jobs. (Look at The New York Times newsroom downsizing this week.) If the press isn’t going to take its own standards seriously, it is hard to think of why anyone should take the press seriously enough to pay for it. In the meantime, Rupert Murdoch’s and Roger Ailes’s success offers a constant unpleasant reminder: the media market prefers dogs that bark.

This is a key moment in media history. So far NO ONE in MSM is covering this but my Chicago Sun-Times story and an item in the Washington Times. WHY? How do you account for it? Are you going to let this drop?

If we do… are you ready to support a Eason Jordan’s suit for reinstatement? HE did exactly the same thing as Linda Foley at the Newspaper Guild. Why the separate and unequal treatment?

Email me back off the record. I’d like your opinion as to what is going on here.

Good for Editor & Publisher for having the guts to run this...

I hope this helps tee up the issues… this is something we all better look into seriously before former American MSM employees are blogging for pennies.

And if we let this pass...we don’t deserve much more.

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BEIRUT: A Syrian intelligence officer detained in Baghdad has admitted to launching the missile attack on the late premier Rafik Hariri's Future Television in June 2003, according to Al-Rai al-Aam Kuwaiti newspaper. In an article published on Wednesday, the newspaper said Hussein Ahmad Tah, 32, was arrested by Iraqi police when he was attempting to assassinate employees in an Iraqi public institution. Following his arrest, Tah decided to admit to his previous crimes, among which is the Future TV bombing.

Tah said he worked for Syrian intelligence services, adding that he worked for a long time in Lebanon where he perpetrated several attacks. He then moved to Iraq, where he committed several attacks against mosques and Iraqi civilians. Security sources in Iraq said that Tah recounted the details of the attack on Future TV. The television station, situated near Raouche in Beirut, was attacked on June 15, 2003, resulting in the destruction of one of the newsrooms. No casualties were reported. The attack was considered as a message to then-owner of the station, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Sources said the car used to perpetrate the crime was stolen in 1997 and hidden in a garage until the date of the attack. A previously unknown group called Jamaat Ansar Allah had held itself responsible for the attack in a statement issued the next day. However, Tah told Iraqi police that the group did not exist and that he had written and issued the statement.

If this can be substantiated -- and that may be a tall order -- it would corroborate our intelligence that Syria has at least assisted in the insurgency that has gripped the Sunni Triangle in Iraq since the end of the war. Once substantiated, then we need to take some action against the Syrian dictator that will push him from power. In the meantime, I think we can afford to wait for further evidence to support or refute this claim.

If Syria has, in fact, been able to arrest more than a thousand insurgents in just the last few weeks, why hasn't it been doing that for the last two years? Syria, in its braggodocio, has implicitly confessed that it has been able to stop insurgents from crossing the border all along, and effectively admitted the charges against it.

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The Associated Press, it seems, has written this story upside down. If Syria has, in fact, been able to arrest more than a thousand insurgents in just the last few weeks, why hasn't it been doing that for the last two years? Syria, in its braggodocio, has implicitly confessed that it has been able to stop insurgents from crossing the border all along, and effectively admitted the charges against it.

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Quebec — Quebec has rejected the use of Islamic tribunals, which can be used to settle family disputes, in the province.

In a unanimous vote Thursday, the Quebec legislature passed a motion against allowing sharia to be used in the legal system.

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All religions are not the same, and do not have the same capacity to inspire violence. As un-PC as that is, it is the truth. It must be faced. Regan reflects conventional PC wisdom, to be sure -- views that are held across the spectrum, from the New York Times to National Review -- and until this wisdom is seen for the hollow and deceptive thing it is, we are all that much more vulnerable.

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While the sheer audacity of our Saudi "allies" to propagate these morally repugnant publications on American soil may have come as a shock to some, no less disconcerting was the failure of the US offices of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to join Freedom House Chairman of the Board R. James Woolsey in condemning the Saudi Arabian authorities for advocating and propagating an ideology of hatred that has "no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration." Given that any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence is prohibited under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the unwillingness of HRW and AIUSA to respond to these human rights violations appears to be yet another consequence of the increasing politicization and ideological drift that is undermining the effectiveness, reliability and credibility of these organizations, as well as the defense and promotion of human rights here in the United States.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

I'd have to say that Amnesty International's Report claiming the US is the world's worst human rights violator condemns itself far more than it does the United States. Anyone who has lived in the Third World or any of the places which Amnesty International purports to care about knows -- and I mean knows for a fact -- what police abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, etc. really are and that it cannot be compared in any wise to the "Gulag" in Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, anyone who has lived in such places knows that the last place where victims can find practical help is from Amnesty International.

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Recent sermons by Mr. Mudeiris include one from April 15, 2005, in which he said that Muslims prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan were forced to convert to Christianity. In his sermon on February 4, 2005, he called for Palestinians to conquer Israel. This year's New Year sermon was devoted to the destruction of America: "America has reached the top and we admit it, but it is headed for a bottomless pit, Allah willing. America, which is being led by its current president, to a bottomless pit. He leads it to death and destruction, Allah willing. America's grave was dug by Bush the day he invaded Afghanistan. Bush prepared this grave on the day he invaded Iraq."...

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BAGHDAD -- When he belches around Baghdad's old quarter on his spotless Harley Davidson, Kadhem Sharif, a power-lifting champion sporting wraparound sunglasses, makes for an unlikely sight.

And the 53-year-old is fully aware that his passion for one of the most recognizable symbols of the American way of life is not to everybody's liking in post-war Iraq.

But his garage is a carbon copy of any Harley aficionado's den in the United States, complete with posters of naked "babes on bikes".

And his collection of 40-plus motorbikes provides a condensed history of 100 years of national turmoil.

"This Norton was built in 1914 and became part of the escort of King Faisal, Iraq's first monarch," says Sharif as he proudly gives a tour of his modest garage.

About half of his motorbikes are Harleys. "I was 12 when I sneaked out on my father's Harley for the first time. I bought my first one eight years later, a 1966 Fatboy," Sharif recalls.

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A teenager has been banned from wearing a hooded top or cap in public for five years after terrorising residents in a Manchester suburb.

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Hundreds of Shiite worshippers staged angry protests at the shrine and clashed with police after officers baton-charged the crowd to clear the way for ambulances.

Many of the Shiites also chanted, “Down with America!”

For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations across the country. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability.

In other words, it's a mistake to focus on the Newsweek article as the cause of the recent demonstrations in Afghanistan. Instead, the reason was President Hamid Karzai's May 8 announcement that Afghanistan would enter a long-term strategic partnership with the United States.

Such an alliance discomfits Afghanistan's neighbors. Pakistan, for one, is used to treating Afghanistan as an all but subject territory. The events of Sept. 11 and the sudden arrival of the United States changed all that, to the muted chagrin of Islamabad. Although Pakistani officials have mastered their role as allies in the "war on terrorism" and play it convincingly, they would like nothing better than to see the United States pull out of Afghanistan. What better, then, than to project Afghanistan as a volatile place, hostile to Americans?

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Insurgents in Iraq attached explosives to a dog and tried to blow up a military convoy near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

The canine bomb went off but the only casualty was the unfortunate animal, said police.

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UK academics have voted to overturn a boycott of two Israeli universities accused of complying with anti-Palestinian polices.

That on May 15, 2002 Dr. Ilan Pappe, senior lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University, was sent a letter notifying him that he faced trial and possible dismissal from his position. The charge was that he had violated 'the duties of an academic member of staff', that he had 'slandered departments and members in the humanities faculty, damaged their professional reputation and endangered the possible promotion of some of them.'

That these accusations related to Dr. Pappe's efforts to defend a 55 year old graduate student, Teddy Katz, whose Master's thesis was under attack by an Israeli veteran's organization because it documented a massacre of 200 unarmed civilians by the Haganah (the pre-state army of Israel) at a village called Tantura, near Haifa.

That the recriminations are still continuing and Dr. Pappe's job is still being threatened.

The sponsors of the boycott maintain that Haifa University is threatening to sack a lecturer for supporting a student's thesis on an alleged Israeli massacre in 1948, and that Bar Ilan has links with a college based in a settlement in the West Bank. They say the academic boycott is a protest against discrimination, as valid as the widely supported ban by British universities on links with South African institutions during the apartheid years.

Such a claim is as laughable as it is inaccurate. Whereas many South African academics supported outside pressure on their government and almost all black students complained of discrimination, in Israel neither is true. In both universities, Jews and Arabs study together, and in Haifa especially there is a substantial number of Arab lecturers and students. Moreover, if Palestinian students themselves are not calling for a boycott, what is the point of such tokenism by the AUT?

Link posted by Marc @ 9:33 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

American laws will protect us.

Democrats and Leftist will support us.

UNO will legitimize us. (United Nations Organization)

CAIR will incubate us. (Council on American-Islamic Relations)

ACLU will empower us. (American Civil Liberties Union)

Western Universities will educate us.

Mosques will shelter us

OPEC will finance us

Hollywood will love us.

Koffi Annan will pass politically correct sympathetic statement for Jihadists.”

Then stop being afraid to offend them. Stoning women, honor killings, attacks on Christians and Jews, and lack of women's rights are all wrong. Say so!

Killing or issuing death threats to those that criticize Islam is wrong and so are laws banning such criticism. Stand up to them.

Link posted by Marc @ 9:00 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Guantanamo detainee who told an FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

"We've gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn't happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn't happen," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

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CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) — A Marine Corps general dismissed all charges Thursday against a lieutenant accused of the murder of two Iraqis, the military announced.

The decision of Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, commander of the 2nd Marine Division, ends the prosecution 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano.

Link posted by Marc @ 2:12 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

To add insult to injury, the latest issue, “O”'s June 2005 edition, demands that we understand the pain and turmoil of Yusra Abdu, a teen-age Palestinian would-be homicide bomber, fiancée of Hani Akad, leader of Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group. Akad’s group, funded by Libya (one of “O” Mag’s “Five Places to See in Your Lifetime”), murdered 27 children and injured 134 when they attacked a Jewish school in Ma’a lot, Israel. Note the map of hate and swastika in the group’s May 22, 2005 Syrian-based newsletter.

But in Oprah’s world, Muslims aren’t terrorists, and terrorists aren’t Muslim (more on that, below). Instead, “O” calls Akad “a charismatic and young rebel.” “O” describes the cold-blooded, hateful Abdu and Akad as “a Shakespearean tragedy.” Yes, in Oprah’s world, Islamic terrorists aren’t terrorists. They’re James Deans, Romeos, and Juliets.

And it’s not their fault that they’re homicide bombers. Or Islam’s fault. “O” quotes Saudi-funded Islam apologist John Esposito blaming not Islam, but the desperate “context” of their lives. Reality: Most Palestinian homicide bombers, like the 9/11 hijackers, come from wealthy families, but they hate Jews, Christians, and Americans. That’s the “context.”

Link posted by Marc @ 12:27 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

This is the beginning of the fall of Europe. Anti-Islamism is not the same as anti-Semitism. Islam is a belief system, Semites are a race. We can’t equate a race to a doctrine. Racism is sheer evil. Apart from the fact that no race is better or worse than other races, unless one is Michael Jackson, one can’t change his race. Instigating hate against a race is instigating hate against mankind. Doctrines that instigate racial hate must be condemned and those who engage in racial slurs must be brought to justice.

Prohibiting criticism of Islam is like prohibiting criticism of Judaism or Christianity. No one in his right mind would suggest criticism of these religions should be banned. The very fact that these religions have reformed and have adapted to modern times is because they were criticized. Only during the inquisition, criticism of Christianity was against the law. Are we trying to introduce Islamic inquisition to appease Muslims? Are we trying to institute the blasphemy law that is practiced in Saudi Arabia , Pakistan and Iran to make Muslims happy? This is insane!

The very fact that these religions have reformed and have adapted to modern times is because they were criticized.

Link posted by Marc @ 12:15 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

A US army announcement confirmed that Mullah Kamel al-Assawadi, who is described as "one of the most wanted people in northern Iraq", was captured while trying to bribe his way past an Iraqi checkpoint in Balad town 70 km outside of Bagdat (Baghdad).

"The Iraqi security forces backed by US troops captured on Monday Agha Umar, a top aide for Zarqawi, in Baquba, some 60 km northeast of Baghdad," the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Link posted by Marc @ 6:43 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Beirut may be the only place in the world where you can buy a necklace with a Christian cross and a Muslim crescent moon fused together as one. It's an unofficial symbol of Lebanon's nascent national unity. What other country would even think of making something like this? I've never seen one before. But now I own two. After growing up in the 1980s with sectarian Beirut as the poster child for urban disaster zones, it was really something to see.

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The goal of Media Slander is to hold journalists and bloggers to high ethical standards regarding coverage of the War on Terror and other military-related issues. We plan to achieve this by highlighting bias, rumor and falsehoods that have been creeping into military coverage under the guise of objective news.

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Finally, the question was rephrased again — Do you believe that the Germans and their allies engaged in a systematic program to kill Jews during World War II?

"If there was a systematic program to kill Jews, it was done in collaboration with the Zionists," Christensen answered.

Link posted by Marc @ 4:17 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Ismael Ahmed, chief of Islamic welfare agency ACCESS (which has strong terror ties), blames me for losing his bid to become University of Michigan Regent. In his zeal to pander to Ahmed and attack me, Lessenberry described Ahmed's Army "hitch in Vietnam" to show that Ahmed is a "A Real American" and defame me as a "vulgar . . . creature" who tells "lies." Lessenberry again presented Ahmed's lie as fact in another column: "He enlisted and was sent to Vietnam".

Problem is, Lessenberry and Ahmed made it up. (It’s a lie Ahmed’s lawyer, Shereef Akeel, repeated in a threatening letter, trying to silence me.)

If Ismael Ahmed ever went to Vietnam, it was as a tourist. His military record shows his service was mostly spent at Fort Knox—perhaps bravely guarding the gold. At least Dan Rather “tried” to verify the details of Bush's military service (and HE was forced to resign).

Link posted by Marc @ 10:41 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Iraq is yielding another asset crucial to winning the War on Terror: a friendly Arab intelligence service that is highly motivated to destroy al Qaeda. Iraqi agents, trained in the culture and languages of the Middle East, have a much better chance than Americans at infiltrating al Qaeda's network and providing valuable intelligence on its membership, communications and operations.

Link posted by Marc @ 10:19 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

In an interview with Editor & Publisher magazine, Foley offered a clarification: "I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military."

It may be legitimate to investigate whether there may or may not have been an incident in which U.S. troops have targeted journalists, but there is no question at this point that major media figures are targeting the men and women of the United States military in Iraq, repeatedly and with no evidence,"

Link posted by Marc @ 8:12 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

But all this is only a means to confuse the real and pressing issue facing the media, government and military. This issue is not who is most honest and who has what agenda, but what is to be done about Islam. No one from any institution of American life has as yet enunciated the dangers of failing to demand that Muslims the world over take control of their religion and either reform or eliminate those that would destroy a centuries-old spiritual path that boasts peaceful adherents in every country on earth, a tradition of scientific and cultural innovation and at least, a history of tolerance and peaceful respect of other religious practices.

When the president tosses yet another off-handed "Islam is Peace" remark he does no service to the thousands who have been slaughtered and oppressed so "peacefully." When the media refuses to use certain words (e.g. "terrorist") for fear of insulting Muslims and seeming to be on the side of the US government, thus inciting yet another Islamist riot, it hardly demonstrates an understanding of the stakes in this fight. Neither the government nor the media wish to call out the foe, no matter that that very same foe yells in our face each and every day what its intentions are.

We may be winning or losing this war; it's getting harder each day to tell. But if we lose, it will not be because the enemy is superior in strength, morality or guile. It will be because we have failed to take the threat with the seriousness and dead calm that an existential crisis demands. We have failed to identify the enemy and in doing so have turned the fight in on ourselves. The current spat between the government and the media would make for lively entertainment in another time. As we grow towards what is likely to be a showdown with thousands, maybe millions, of radicalized religious fanatics it might be a good idea for us to come to some agreement on whom we fight before it is too late.

A planned lecture by Islamic dissident Irshad Manji at the UK's University of Leicester has been cancelled for fear of Muslim-sponsored violent reactions.

Link posted by Marc @ 6:51 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Throughout Europe, people are standing idly by as Muslim women are being murdered for having the audacity to date, or to not wear their head scarves outside, or to yearn for a life outside of the home. The problem is most pronounced in Germany. Last month six German women were murdered by their Muslim families for flirting with Western culture. Most recently, Hatin Surucu, a twenty-three-year-old Turkish woman who had been forced into marrying her cousin at age 16, was gunned down at a German bus stop. The attack had been planned. The motive-- Surucu had divorced her husband, discarded her religious head scarf, and had begun dating German men. This was too much for her family to bear. So her three brothers killed her, and orphaned her five year old son.

Very simply, the culture of another people does not have to be accepted when it is subhuman! "Honor killings" are subhuman! And human rights activists need to address the situation in no uncertain terms. The practice of killing women for wanting to have lives of their own needs to be held up to public scrutiny. At the same time, the German government needs to engage in outreach programs to Muslim youths. They need to make sure that Muslim kids are not so alienated from mainstream society that they can simply be programmed by Mosques to hate and degrade women. Most of all the government needs to provide sanctuary to oppressed women and girls, instead of allowing Muslim extremists to hide their abuses behind a disingenuous veil of cultural relativity. Democratic societies like Germany can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning. In a democracy, we simply cannot allow the word “honor” to be attached to such brutal and archaic religious practices.

Link posted by Marc @ 5:47 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Hamza Adnan, 8, Jinan Jassim, Ayah Faiz, 5, and Duha Munaf, 16, from left, watch Dubai-based satellite television station al-Arabiya in a house in the Karada area of Baghdad, Friday May 20, 2005, as it broadcasts Friday’s front page of Britain’s mass circulation tabloid newspaper, the Sun, showing Saddam Hussein standing in his white underwear while folding what appears to be a brown pair of trousers.

Link posted by Marc @ 5:18 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

BAGHDAD, May 21 -- More than 1,000 Sunni Arab clerics, political leaders and tribal heads ended their two-year boycott of politics in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq on Saturday, uniting in a Sunni bloc that they said would help draft the country's new constitution and compete in elections.

Formation of the group comes during escalating violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has raised the threat of sectarian war. The bloc represents moderate and hard-line members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and other main groups of the disgruntled Sunni minority toppled from dominance when U.S.-led troops routed Hussein in April 2003.

Sunnis have remained on the sidelines of the Iraqi government since then. Most Sunnis boycotted national elections in January that put the long-suppressed Shiite majority in charge. Meanwhile, a Sunni-led insurgency appears to have become increasingly unpopular among ordinary Iraqis as the death toll from bombings and other attacks climbs.

"The country needs Sunnis to join politics," Adnand Dulaimi, a government-appointed overseer of Sunni religious sites and a leader of the drive to draw Sunnis into the rebuilding of Iraq, declared at the conference Saturday where the bloc was assembled. "The Sunnis are now ready to participate."

"The last elections brought a major turnaround in the political representation of Sunnis,'' Dulaimi said. "We think it's time to take steps to save Iraq's identity, and its unity and independence. . . . Iraq is for all, and Iraq is not sectarian.''

Link posted by Marc @ 4:07 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Absent from this blame exchange is any recognition that many Muslims can be incited to violence by anything or nothing. It's as if they live poised for outrage. In 2002, the Miss World Pageant had to high-tail it out of Nigeria after rioting took more than 200 lives. Angry Muslims rampaged through the streets after a young fashion writer penned an article wondering how Muhammad would have reacted to the pageant, and suggesting that the Prophet (who had 14 wives) might have chosen a wife from among the assembled beauties. The offices of the newspaper were firebombed. A few weeks later, after many deaths, the Islamists remained unsatisfied. The deputy governor of a northern Nigerian province issued a "fatwa" declaring it the duty of religious Muslims to track down the 21-year-old author of the story and kill her.

Easily aroused to fury, Muslim fanatics are correspondingly difficult to court. Nowhere has there been acknowledgment on the part of Muslim leaders that the United States has again and again put its servicemen in harm's way in order to rescue or aid Muslims. We did so in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. We poured out our hearts and opened our wallets when Indonesia was struck by a tsunami. It isn't just that they've failed to say thank you. No, the U.S. is unrelentingly accused of making war on Islam. President Bush visits mosques, holds Ramadan services at the White House and declares (too optimistically?) that Islam is a religion of peace. And yet the U.S. is distrusted and reviled in many parts of the Muslim world.

In the course of our wide-ranging war on terror, Americans have certainly committed some acts that are needlessly inflammatory to Muslim sensibilities. Abu Ghraib is exhibit A. But Abu Ghraib is also the exception, not the norm. Detainees at Guantanamo receive religiously appropriate food, prayer mats and time for daily worship. The U.S. even provides Muslim chaplains. The underlying truth is this: We are at pains not to fight a religious war. The trouble is, our enemies are fighting a religious war, and there is nothing we can do about it. Al Qaeda's strongest suit is the sympathy it can tap among some of the world's 1 billion Muslims for a jihad against the unbelievers. Our strongest suits are freedom and the reality that we are the winning side.

The whole idea revolves around the radioactive level of anti-Americanism here. I once said on this blog that here a corpse with an Israeli or an American bullet in it is worth much more than 100 bodies that were torn apart by a suicide bomber in Iraq. This is so evident in the reaction towards the massacres of both the southern Lebanese city of Qana in 1996 and of the Iraqi Shia dominated city of Hilla this year. In Qana, over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed when an Israeli artillery shell hit a UN shelter (Israel said it was a military mistake). The entire region erupted in flames when this tragedy happened. On the other hand, more civilians were slaughtered in Hilla, yet unlike Qana, very few Arabs or Muslims are actually aware of where Hilla exists. Qana happened 9 years ago, Hilla happened 3 months ago. You see the trend? The Qana civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers so we shout and foam at the mouth, the Hilla civilians were killed by a Jordanian terrorists so we go along doing our normal business.

Are we heartless? No. Are we senseless? No. Then why this awful indifference to the lives of the same Iraqis whom we pretended we cared about when we demonstrated against the war in Iraq? The answer lies in the level of media induced Anti-Americanism that anesthetizes our feelings and prevents us from seeing the actual picture of Iraq.

The anti-Americanism* that is running like a drug in our blood stream cripples our ability to rationalize and view Iraq from an Iraqi and not of an American prism. ...

Link posted by Marc @ 3:29 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

"In a way, I quite agree with him, the "western media" is projecting the wrong image of Islam, they're far too sympathetic, apologetic, swooning, and ass-kissing in their coverage."

“There is no provision for terrorism in Islam. Terrorists have no religion. Islam is a religion of peace, brotherhood and tolerance,” he asserted.

Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.

“There are many problems that come up whenever we want to discuss anything to do with women in our country. We do not even know how to discuss things on their behalf since they are not allowed to express themselves in our society.”

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The red text at the left just above the “Newsweek” logo says:

“America forsaken.”

The big white and yellow text says:

“The Day America Died — The ideal of ‘freedom’ falls to the ground due to Bush continuing in office.”

Link posted by Marc @ 12:07 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Letters to the Editor for the U.S. print edition:

Letters@newsweek.com

Link posted by Marc @ 11:55 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

So now the pretence is stripped away. In London on Saturday, an unappetising collection of leftists and Islamists -- including 'Gorgeous' George Galloway, the Mosley of Mesopotamia whose career has been given such a welcome fillip by the US Senate -- called for the destruction of Israel. As the Jerusalem Post reports, there was no more pretence that the issue is the 'occupation' of the territories, or the security barrier, or the 'oppression' of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. They want Israel utterly destroyed.

What an advertisement for this once great country. Londonistan, capital of hatred, ignorance and prejudice in the free world.

The army spokeswoman said it was the 14th time in the past two months that a Palestinian teenager had attempted to detonate a bomb or smuggle arms and explosives through a military checkpoint despite a de facto truce declared in February.

Link posted by Marc @ 11:29 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

What I think is definitely an American failure is the inefficiency of their media, comparing with the anti-American media, like Algazira, and Alarabia, BBC (especially the Arabic department), Radio Monte Carlo, etc. This was a very serious point which gave a wide free space for all those who hate the Americans to ruin the deeds, changing continuously the scales of things, especially in such a critical period. This point cost us and the Americans much.

Link posted by Marc @ 11:18 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

This was exactly his demeanor when I ran into him last Tuesday on the sidewalk of Constitution Avenue, outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where he was due to testify before the subcommittee that has been uncovering the looting of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. His short, cocky frame was enveloped in a thicket of recording equipment, and he was holding forth almost uninterrupted until I asked him about his endorsement of Saddam Hussein's payment for suicide-murderers in Israel and the occupied territories. He had evidently been admirably consistent in his attention to my humble work, because he changed tone and said that this was just what he'd expect from a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay." It takes a little more than this to wound your correspondent--I could still hold a martini without spilling it when I was "the greatest polemicist of our age" in 2001--but please note that the real thrust is contained in the word "Trotskyist." Galloway says that the worst day of his entire life was the day the Soviet Union fell. His existence since that dreadful event has involved the pathetic search for an alternative fatherland. He has recently written that, "just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq's own Great Leap Forward." I love the word "scale" in that sentence. I also admire the use of the word "plotted."

There are only two ways this suffering could have been relieved. Either the sanctions could have been lifted, as Galloway and others demanded, or the regime could have been removed. The first policy, if followed without conditions, would have untied the hands of Saddam. The second policy would have had the dual effect of ending sanctions and terminating a hideous and lawless one-man rule. But when the second policy was proposed, the streets filled with people who absolutely opposed it. Saying farewell to the regime was, evidently, too high a price to pay for relief from sanctions.

Let me phrase this another way: Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam! This is repellent enough in itself. If the Saddam regime was cheating its terrified people of food and medicine in order to finance its own propaganda, that would perhaps be in character. But if it were to be discovered that any third parties had profited from the persistence of "sanctions plus regime," prolonging the agony and misery thanks to personal connections, then one would have to become quite judgmental.

Link posted by Marc @ 10:52 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

One memory I shall treasure: a visit to the National Assembly. From afar, there are reports of the "acrimony" of Iraq, of the long interlude between Iraq's elections, on Jan. 30, and the formation of a cabinet. But that day, in the assembly, these concerns seemed like a quibble with history. There was the spectacle of democracy: men and women doing democracy's work, women cloaked in Islamic attire right alongside more emancipated women, the technocrats and the tribal sheikhs, and the infectious awareness among these people of the precious tradition bequeathed them after a terrible history.

A lively press has sprouted in Iraq: There is an astonishing number of newspapers and weeklies, more than 250 in all. There are dozens of private TV channels and radio stations. Journalists and editors speak of a press free of censorship. Admittedly, the work is hard and dangerous, the logistics a veritable nightmare. But no single truth claimed this country, no "big man" sucked the air out of its public life. The insurgents will do what they are good at. But no one really believes that those dispensers of death can turn back the clock. Among the Sunni Arabs, there is growing recognition that the past cannot be retrieved, that it had been a big error to choose truculence and political maximalism. By a twist of fate, the one Arab country that had seemed ever marked for brutality and sorrow now stands poised on the frontier of a new political world. No Iraqis I met look to neighboring Arab lands for political inspiration: They are scorched by the terror and the insurgency, but a better political culture is tantalizingly close.

Link posted by Marc @ 9:24 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

It's not the mobs, so much as the determination of the elites to keep their peoples in a state of ignorance. The most educationally repressive form of Islam, for example, is funded and promoted by Saudi princes who, though not as handsome as Imran, also spend a lot of time in the West -- gambling, drinking, womanizing and indulging other tastes that even the wildest night on the tiles in Riyadh just can't sate. Whereas most advanced societies believe that an educated population is vital to the national interest, many Muslim elites seem to have concluded than an uneducated population is actually far more useful. And, when you look at Saudi funding of radical madrassahs in hitherto moderate Muslim regions from the Balkans to Indonesia, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're having great success de-educating hitherto relatively savvy parts of the world.

This disaster took a combination of factors. We can't do much about Muslim fanatics; we probably can't do much about our self-worshipping vanity media whose reflexive counter-tribalism has robbed it of all sense of perspective or proportion. But we ought to apply pressure on the link between the two worlds: the self-serving elites who enjoy the privileges of the West even as they exploit their co-religionists' ignorance of it. That's just not cricket, is it?

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Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:41 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

(7) This episode is yet another instance of Islamist organizations relentlessly seeking special privileges for Islam. At a time when American Catholics must endure "art" that consists of the crucifix in urine and a Virgin Mary made in part of elephant dung, why should American Muslims be indulged in their exquisite sensibilities? As Stephen Schwartz keeps repeating, if Islam is to flourish in America, it must adapt to America.

(8) Amazon should answer MPAC firmly in the negative, reinstituting Bellwether's right to sell Korans at Amazon, making no public condemnations, and not giving money to MPAC. If you agree with this conclusion, let Patty Smith at Amazon (psmith@amazon.com) know your thoughts.

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Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.

There were threats of "another 9/11" from militants angry at reports of the desecration of the Koran by US troops in Iraq.

Some among the crowd burned an effigy of Tony Blair on a crucifix and then set fire to a Union flag and a Stars and Stripes.

The protest was organised by groups including the Muslim Council for Britain and the Muslim Parliamentary Association of the UK.

One of the protesters called for the release of radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza. He shouted: "Your so-called democracy will fall under the sword of Allah. The day of judgment is coming."

Link posted by Marc @ 6:28 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia--where I come from--are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.[...]

The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year.[...]

The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries--especially the U.S.--provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.

The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.

Link posted by Marc @ 5:46 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

An outbreak of polio in Yemen has risen to 63 cases, making it one of the worst epidemics in the world, the UN health agency said.

The number of cases in Yemen will probably soon exceed 100, as many more suspected cases are being investigated, said Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation's polio eradication campaign.

"They are having a pretty big epidemic there," Rosenbauer said. "But we should be able to stop the virus relatively quickly."

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, which like Yemen was thought to be polio-free, two more cases have been confirmed, the WHO said. Indonesia, which reported its first case on 3 May, now has six.

Some Muslim clerics in northern Nigeria led the immunisation boycott, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a US-led plot to render Nigeria's Muslims infertile or infect them with Aids. Vaccination programmes restarted in Nigeria in July 2004 after local officials ended the 11-month boycott.

The virus has since spread to Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Togo.

Last year, 1267 people were infected in the world - 792 of those in Nigeria. The total new cases in 2005 stands at 198, according to WHO, with Nigeria and Yemen listed as the worst-affected countries.

Officials in Yemen said parents of infected children are planning lawsuits against the Health Ministry for failing to halt the spread of the disease.

Link posted by Marc @ 2:29 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Summing up, Obin explains his disturbing findings as the result primarily of indoctrination orchestrated over years by international Muslim organizations. From an early age, students are taught what to think, what to believe, and to regard their school teachers as liars. The goal of the radical groups seeking to segregate Muslim communities and denouncing integration as oppression, Obin writes, is to take the Muslim residents of France out of the French nation and make them think of themselves as part of the international Muslim community.

In a particularly interesting observation, Obin notes that it is the schools that have reached accommodations with the extremists that are most plagued by violence against girls, Jews, and teachers. Schools that refuse to tolerate the intolerable have coped much better with the problems described in the report. As a result, Obin calls for a policy of no compromise with Islamist demands.

This is London reports "It [Hizb-Ut-Tahrir] also advised Shabina Begum, the Luton girl who recently won a High Court ruling that she was entitled to wear a head-to-toe jilbab to school."

And who represented Begum at her trial? Mrs. Tony Blair!

Link posted by Marc @ 2:13 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to ''converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" -- and having only 50 people show up.

Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:15 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

UK University Cancels Manji Appearance

A planned lecture by Islamic dissident Irshad Manji at the UK's University of Leicester has been cancelled for fear of Muslim-sponsored violent reactions. And so the land of Shakespeare travels the dusty way to dhimmitude, with all their yesterdays lighted by fools like Ken Livingstone. Hat tip: Laban Tall.

Link posted by Marc @ 6:56 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

“Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or …ah, or… ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um…in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq.”

“They target and kill journalists…uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity…”

Link posted by Marc @ 6:36 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Muslim group on Wednesday demanded a public apology from online bookseller Amazon.com for its part in delivering a used copy of the Koran with the words “Death to all Muslims” scrawled across the inside cover.

Los Angeles graduate student Azza Basarudin, who ordered a used copy of the holy book through Amazon.com from a third -party, said that when she discovered the message “I actually dropped the book.”

Link posted by Marc @ 6:13 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Galloway, reported Wylie, was the "Braveheart" on Capitol Hill. Braveheart? Come off it. Even Gorgeous George’s most ardent supporters in Britain would shrink from romanticising him in this way. But not the gushing Wylie.

His presence in Washington begs two questions: why did BBC Scotland feel it needed to send its own man when (a) it is currently implementing drastic cost cuts and (b) the BBC’s Washington correspondent, Clive Myrie, was already there and more than up to the job?

Also, if BBC Scotland really, really had to send, why did it have to be Wylie, whose friendship with Galloway goes back years and who, as the Diary pointed out yesterday, received an acknowledgement in Galloway’s autobiography?

Wylie is not an expert on Iraq or on American politics. And in this case, he was clearly not impartial, and neither was BBC Scotland. Shame on them.

His media savvy shouldn't really surprise me. He pens a weekly column for the Scottish Mail on Sunday and "two or three" of his five closest friends are journalists. He has spoken to Seumas Milne of the Guardian and John Boothman, editor of BBC Scotland's Holyrood Live, every day for 20 years or more. BBC news correspondent Bob Wylie is another close friend, as is Ron McKay, the man who commissioned Tony Benn's television interview with Saddam. They, not his fellow MPs, are his political sounding boards.

Link posted by Marc @ 4:01 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

CAIRO (Reuters) - Many Arab Muslims on Thursday dismissed the religious justification for killing innocents given by al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, saying it was not the Islam they knew and any resistance had rules to protect civilians.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi defended the killing of innocent Muslims in suicide bombings against U.S. forces in a message on a Web site. He said Muslim scholars permitted such conduct for the sake of jihad, or holy war.

"This is a deviant notion and Zarqawi, with all due respect, is not an expert on Islamic jurisprudence. His views are illegitimate," said Saudi Islamic researcher Youssef al-Dayni.

"These people killed in Iraq are innocent and his description of them as martyrs is of no benefit. He is only trying to find justifications for his terrorism," said Bahraini Shi'ite Muslim cleric Sheikh Ali Salman.

Link posted by Marc @ 3:33 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

According to author and Islam scholar Robert Spencer, "a devout Muslim might very well mistreat a Bible, because traditional Islamic theology regards it as a corrupted and unreliable version of the genuine revelations that were given to Moses, Jesus, and other Prophets."

Spencer noted that in sura 9:30 the Koran says those who believe Jesus is the Son of God are under Allah's curse.

"Throughout history, most Muslim theologians have held that the New Testament has been tampered with since it teaches that Jesus is the Son of God."

Link posted by Marc @ 1:33 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

We Americans need to get our priorities straight. We are at war with Islam. I want President Bush, Secretary Rice, the media, and the bleeding-heart liberals to stop apologizing to Islam and I want it to stop right now. Islamics are slaughtering people all over the world. Islam has threatened to make our streets “run red with American blood.” A Saudi Islamic cleric gave bin Laden permission to detonate a nuke in a major American city. Enough already! [...]

Islam was not outraged as Saddam Hussain slaughtered his people. Islam was not outraged as the Taliban executed women for any number of imagined sins. Islam is silent as Iran stones 13-year-old girls to death. Islam is not outraged as thousands of young women die at the hands of their own families in brutal honor killings. Islam says nothing as its terrorist heroes butcher Iraqi Muslims on a daily basis.

What does it take to make a Muslim angry? Say something bad about Islam and you can lose your head. Drop the Quran in the dirt and you will be hanged. In Sudan, a hapless man named Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, dared speculate that Mohammed was not the son of Abdullah and is now on trial for blasphemy and he will probably be hanged. Mobs of foaming-at-the-mouth Muslims gather outside the courthouse demanding he be torn to bits for even thinking such a thing.

Islam seems to have no limit to the evil it will inflict on others. Because of this, Islam has lost all rights to protest an imagined injustice inflicted on it.

Link posted by Marc @ 11:16 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Mr Galloway said the businessman had given money to the charity but he, Mr Galloway, had never known where it came from.

The senators believe that it came from Iraq, but they could come up with no proof and their questions ended.

But in court Mr Galloway's legal team did not challenge the authenticity of The Daily Telegraph documents, which have been validated by forensic testing.

Granting The Daily Telegraph permission to appeal, the Court of Appeal said the documents were "deemed to be authentic".

Galloway kept no books or records of the Mariam appeal so the Commission concluded:

"...in light of the fact that the Appeal was closed and in view of the difficulties in obtaining the books and records of the Appeal, the Commission decided that it would not be proportionate to pursue its inquiries further."

Link posted by Marc @ 10:20 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

One wonders what it will take for old media to ignore CAIR's unreliable research and instead start reporting the words of Steven Pomerantz, a former chief of the FBI's counterterrorism section, that CAIR's activities "effectively give aid to international terrorist groups."

Link posted by Marc @ 9:29 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

An article last Sunday about surprises in politics referred incorrectly to the turkey carried by President Bush during his unannounced visit to American troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving. It was real, not fake.

Link posted by Marc @ 8:17 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

The State of Israel was created in a peaceful and legal process by the United Nations. The UN partition plan (resolution #181, November 29, 1947) created two states: the State of Israel for the Jews, and the State of Palestine for the Arabs.

The Arab refugees were people who fled because of the war that the Arab states started. The rulers of eight Arab countries whose populations vastly outnumbered the Jews initiated the war with simultaneous invasions of the newly created State of Israel on three fronts. Nascent Israel begged for peace and offered friendship and cooperation to its neighbors. The Arabs rejected this offer and answered it with a war of annihilation against the Jews, which fortunately failed. To this day, the Arab states and the Palestinians refer to the failure of their aggression and the survival of Israel as the Nakhba – the catastrophe.

Had there been no Arab aggression, no war, no invasion by Arab armies whose intent was avowedly genocidal, not only would there have been no Arab refugees, but there would have been a state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza since 1948.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:47 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

When foreign fighters poured into villages with jihad on their minds and weapons in their hands, some Iraqi tribesmen in western desert towns fought back.

They set up checkpoints to filter out the foreigners. They burned down suspected insurgent safe houses. They called their fellow tribesmen in Baghdad and other urban areas for backup.

And when they still couldn't uproot the terrorists streaming in from Syria, tribal leaders said, they took a most unusual step: They asked the Americans for help…

Al Qaeda is no longer an acceptable presence in Western Iraq, and the locals respected the United States enough to assist in their removal. This, and not car bombs, is the real story of progress in Iraq.

Link posted by Marc @ 8:27 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

To kill people thousands of miles away who had nothing to do with the act, and to fulminate with threats and murder against the entire Western world, all because of this alleged act, is not just disproportionate. It is not just excessive. It is mad. And every decent person in the world ought to have the courage to stand up and say that it is mad.

That’s right. The reason for the carnage is said — again and again, by media critics and government officials — to be a false report of Koran desecration. The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.

Is that what we really think?

Here’s an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.

We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relived of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:33 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Reverend Pourmand, who converted to Christianity in 1980, is a member of the Assemblies of God. At the time of his conversion he was a colonel in the Iranian army.

On February 16, he was found guilty of keeping his conversion a secret from his superiors.

Under Iran’s Islamic law, non Muslims are not allowed to be in the army as officers.

Following the sentence he was thrown out of the army, lost his salary and pension and his family lost their home.

Now he is charged with proselytising and apostasy. The judges accuse him of being part of “an underground church for many years, a church through which many people have betrayed Islam and joined Christianity”.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:16 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

"...in light of the fact that the Appeal was closed and in view of the difficulties in obtaining the books and records of the Appeal, the Commission decided that it would not be proportionate to pursue its inquiries further."

Greenblatt said a senior Iraqi official interviewed by the committee's investigators again in Baghdad on Monday, had confirmed allegations against Galloway and authenticated Iraqi oil ministry documents.

Link posted by Marc @ 1:52 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

The amendment to the Kuwait's electoral law means women can for the first time vote and stand in parliamentary and local elections.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:26 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

I think that a fairer take on Evan Thomas's article on the fiasco would be "Newsweek strikes again," or (consistent with the Newsweek convention) "NEWSWEEK strikes again."

More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come. Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years' lockup in Guantánamo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an. After the inmates screamed and protested, a U.S. commander apologized. Bader says he still has nightmares about the incident.

Mr. Bader Zaman Bader (assuming it's the same fellow) was released from Guantanamo Bay seven months ago. He was so distraught over the nightmare of watching the desecration of the Qur'an that, upon his release, he failed to mention the incident when questioned by journalists from the Associated Press and China's Xinhua.

Another former prisoner, Bader Zaman Bader, said he was interrogated "150 times" by his American jailers but never abused. - via Military.com 23 SEP 2004

One of the prisoners released from U.S. detention, Bader Zaman Bader, has demanded that the United States compensate him for three years of his life spent in custody, China's Xinhua news agency reported on 22 September. Bader said that he has a "right" to demand compensation since he "was innocent and the U.S. military failed to prove any charges" against him. According to the report, Bader is the first Afghan prisoner released from U.S. custody who has demanded compensation from the United States. - via Radio Free Afghanistan 23 SEP 2004

In an email message last night, the Indigent Pundit noted that Thomas appears not to have performed a Google search on Bader Bader before repeating his tale yesterday. I would add that none of the four (count 'em) NEWSWEEK reporters with whom Thomas collaborated on his story yesterday appear to have done such a search either.

Link posted by Marc @ 5:45 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.

It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.

Link posted by Marc @ 11:04 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

The Senate reports, based in part on interviews with former Iraqi officials and hundreds of pages of documents, said Russia topped the list of Security Council members whose support Hussein sought. More than 30 percent of Iraqi oil allocations ended up going to Russian officials, political parties and businessmen. [...]

At one point, Hussein ordered that Russians be rewarded for threatening in 2000 to veto a Security Council resolution to restrict illicit trade at Iraq's borders, the Senate reports said. The veto threat killed the resolution before it was formally considered, prompting more oil allocations for Russia as well as contracts for humanitarian goods, the documents said.

Much of the committee's information was provided by former Iraqi officials.

The Senate reports, based in part on interviews with former Iraqi officials and hundreds of pages of documents...

Tariq Aziz, the one-time Deputy Prime Minister, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Vice-President.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:44 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Yet, as the insurgents increasingly go after Iraqi civilians, one thing has become clear: Theirs is not, as many people maintained before the Jan. 30 elections, a struggle against American "occupation." It is a fight against a legitimate government trying to operate under the principle of self-rule -- and trying for the most part, notwithstanding terrible provocations, to include every ethnic group. As Mr. Rumsfeld said, their only strategy is butchery. That doesn't mean they are sure to lose; their barbarism can go a long way toward slowing the economic and political progress that Mr. Rumsfeld said is necessary. It does mean that the United States is right to help the Iraqis battle back.

The terror attacks are no longer about changing Iraq. They're about punishment.

Embittered and on the run, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi realizes that the tide has turned decisively against him. He and his international gang of terrorists couldn't dislodge the United States military or the Coalition, but only chipped at its edges. Their violence couldn't stop Iraq's elections. They couldn't prevent the formation of a new government.

Now they have to watch as their former allies, Iraq's Sunni Arabs, defect to the elected regime and turn in the foreign terrorists in their neighborhoods.

Link posted by Marc @ 6:53 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

So Isikoff relied on a telephone call with an anonymous government official paraphrasing a forthcoming report, confirmed by placing a draft of the Periscope item before another anonymous government official. Isikoff never saw the underlying report or even had it read to him.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:05 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

But there were no reports that they had entered Qaim, a town close to the border known for its insurgent activity.

The U.S. offensive began May 7 in Qaim, a town 200 miles northwest of Baghdad on the southern bank of the Euphrates River. [...]

When U.S. forces entered the village on May 8,...

The BBC's Jim Muir, in Baghdad, says the operation appears to have exacerbated tribal tensions in the area.

Numerous weapons caches containing machine guns, mortar rounds and rockets were discovered. Six car bombs and material for making other improvised explosive devises were also found, the statement said.

Residents acknowledged fighting in Qaim and surrounding villages began before the U.S. offensive, characterizing it as tribal clashes.

"I left al-Qaim with nothing. My five-year-old son was killed in the clashes," Hassan al-Kubaissi, 34, told the news agency.

Rival groups of terrorists also were fighting among themselves around Qaim, trading mortar, rocket and machine gun fire almost nightly, Pool said.

"Throughout the course of the operation, Marines strove to ensure the well-being of the local Iraqi citizens," the statement said. "According to commanders in the area, the Marines were greeted with greater hospitality from local villagers than is normally encountered."

The Hindustan Times backs up the assertion that there was a conflict between al Qaeda and the local tribes:

According to witnesses and the US military, the offensive triggered intense clashes in the town of Al-Qaim between fighters loyal to Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq and the most wanted militant in the country, and a rival Sunni tribe in the border city.

It must be remembered the local leaders in Qaim requested US intervention.

Link posted by Marc @ 10:24 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

THE invasion of Iraq and its aftermath caused the deaths of 24,000 Iraqis, including many children, according to the most detailed survey yet of postwar life in the country.

Link posted by Marc @ 4:54 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

The Parkhead club have granted fan Paul Brennan, 38, access to their Friday media conference from tomorrow.

Link posted by Marc @ 8:31 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

"...sources tell NEWSWEEK..."

Link posted by Marc @ 8:03 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Terrorism revealed its soul: merciless, vindictive and in love with death itself. There's no strategic plan behind the slaughter of Iraqi workers in a marketplace in Tikrit or the butchering of other Sunni Arabs in Hawija. Suicide bombings in a Baghdad bazaar don't have cunning goals.

The terror attacks are no longer about changing Iraq. They're about punishment.

Embittered and on the run, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi realizes that the tide has turned decisively against him. He and his international gang of terrorists couldn't dislodge the United States military or the Coalition, but only chipped at its edges. Their violence couldn't stop Iraq's elections. They couldn't prevent the formation of a new government.

Now they have to watch as their former allies, Iraq's Sunni Arabs, defect to the elected regime and turn in the foreign terrorists in their neighborhoods.

This isn't jihad. It's the mass murder of Muslims. In response to popular sentiment, even al-Jazeera has toned down its pro-terror propaganda.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:31 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Cunt of a website. You need to take this shit to the US as it doesn't wash here my enlightened freind.

Whats with all the 'Jihad Watch'? What Jihad?

We haven't had any terrorist attacks here so we aren't concerned with this.

In December 2000 German police raided a flat in Frankfurt and found bomb-making equipment. Four men were arrested. They also discovered a recent video of the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, with a commentary describing the crowds as “enemies of God”.

The German authorities had acted after a tip-off from British Intelligence which had intercepted a phone call between one of the men and Doha.

Four men, three of whom had lived in Britain, were jailed by a German court for the plot in March 2003.

Doha himself was arrested at Heathrow airport in February 2001 attempting to board a flight to Saudi Arabia with a false passport. A search of his London home recovered false passports and diagrams for bombs similar to those found in Ressam’s possession.

"Are you poor? Don't cry about it, but wage jihad, also by holding up banks," London-based Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, a well-known supporter of al-Qaeda, urged the faithful in a sermon.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, leader of the now officially disbanded Islamic militant group Al Muhajiroun told United Press International Saturday that as the covenant of security under which Muslims previously lived in Britain has been broken, Muslims must now consider themselves at war.

All three men have already been charged in the UK with conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:05 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Galloway stood before Saddam Hussein and said ‘Your Excellency, Mr President. I greet you in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq. "I greet you too, in the name of the Palestinian people…..I thought the President would appreciate to know that even today, three years after the war, I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam…Sir, I salute your courage, your strength your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory until Jerusalem." (The Times, 20th January, 1994).

Serious accusations have been made against Galloway and if they had been made against Tony Blair or any senior politician from a mainstream party there would already have been calls for resignation. Remember the fuss over Blunkett's rail ticket for his girlfriend? One domestic rail ticket. Then take a minute to browse through the information relating to the Mariam Appeal.

Link posted by Marc @ 2:51 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI agents posing as cocaine traffickers in Arizona caught 16 current and former U.S. soldiers and law enforcement personnel who took $220,000 in bribes to help move the drugs through checkpoints, Justice Department officials said Thursday.

Those charged include a former Immigration and Naturalization Service inspector, a former Army sergeant, a former federal prison guard, current and former members of the Arizona Army National Guard and the state corrections department, and a Nogales, Ariz., police officer, officials said.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:17 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

The "consequences" are assumed to be action by the UN Security Council.

Link posted by Marc @ 1:14 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

Now that Volcker has gone on record saying he has not cleared Kofi Annan of wrongdoing in the UN oil for food scandal, will you please remove this factually incorrect article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4538735.stm

Volcker's statement is here:

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20050427-120309-4065r.htm

"Asked point-blank whether Mr. Annan had been cleared of wrongdoing in the $10 billion scandal, Mr. Volcker replied, "No."

The same error is repeated in this BBC article as well:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4391031.stm

And this one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4232629.stm

From reading the BBC website one would get the false impression that Annan has been cleared of wrongdoing in the Scandal. This clearly is not the case and you owe it to the public to correct the record.

Link posted by Marc @ 12:58 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia Russia's Federal Security service said Thursday it foiled planned terror attacks ahead of Victory in Europe celebrations, discovering a truck packed with more than a ton of explosives and a cache of poisons allegedly intended for chemical attacks.

The Federal Security Service also said rebel leaders planned to use poisons and toxic substances for attacks in the capitals of the North Caucasus region and several large regional centers elsewhere in Russia.

The security service alleged that Daudov received the poisons from an Arab state, through [Jordanian] Abu Mujahid.

Link posted by Marc @ 10:34 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Smoking rights' groups, tavern owners and libertarian political parties in nine states are calling for a boycott of donations to major charities, saying their support of smoking bans is a threat to small businesses and civil rights.

"No more," says Audrey Silk, founder of NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, which is leading what appears to be the first-ever boycott of the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and American Heart Association.

Link posted by Marc @ 10:20 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

The general also said there are indications that some Sunnis in the region want to join the political process, and that the insurgents are engaged in what he called an 'intimidation campaign' against those people.

Link posted by Marc @ 9:50 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

A U.S. Senate committee probing corruption in the U.N. Oil-for-Food (search) program released new evidence Wednesday purporting to show that two leading politicians from Britain and France received millions of barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for their support of Saddam Hussein's (search) regime.

Citing contracts, letters and interviews with former Iraqi leaders, the probe set out evidence to back the claim that British lawmaker George Galloway (search) and former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua accepted oil allocations under the scheme. Galloway and Pasqua have denied any wrongdoing in the Oil-for-Food program.

"This report exposes how Saddam Hussein turned the Oil-for-Food program on its head and used the program to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway," Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, said in a statement.

New evidence suggests that a children's leukemia charity founded by Galloway was in fact used to conceal oil payments. [...]

The report includes what Coleman said was a copy of a contract from Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization that mentions Mariam's Appeal, a fund Galloway established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia, Mariam Hamze.

Such allocations could be sold on for a commission, although the report offers no evidence either men received money.

On 21 April last year, Mr Galloway told this newspaper that his Mariam Appeal fund had received money from Fawaz Zureikat, a Jordanian businessman. The fund was founded in part to help a young Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia.

But Mr Galloway also told this newspaper: "The Mariam Appeal is a political campaign which was involved in a life or death struggle with the might of the British and American state and against a tide of hostility from powerful newspapers like your own which were extremely hostile to it."

He also said: "[Zureikat] was an extremely generous benefactor of the Mariam Appeal."

"I have never traded in a barrel of oil," said Mr Galloway, re-elected as an MP last week after campaigning against the Iraq war.

He said he had "written and emailed repeatedly" requesting the opportunity to appear before the committee and rebut the claims, but they "have yet to respond".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been criticised over his son's work with the programme, but he himself, in an interim report by a UN committee issued in March, was cleared of wrongdoing.

"I thought we criticized [Mr. Annan] rather severely," Mr. Volcker said of his panel's interim report, released March 29. "I would not call that an exoneration."

Asked point-blank whether Mr. Annan had been cleared of wrongdoing in the $10 billion scandal, Mr. Volcker replied, "No."

One transaction in 2001 was described in a letter by the Iraqi state oil marketing organisation as having been signed with “Aredio Petroleum Company (Fawaz Zuraiqat — Mariam’s Appeal)”.

"[Zureikat] was an extremely generous benefactor of the Mariam Appeal."

Galloway spins that he was cleared entirely by the investigation. Well, the wonderful thing about the internet is that the findings are online in full here.

11. Apart from public donations it was established that the major funders of the Appeal were the United Arab Emirates, a donor from Saudi Arabia and a Jordanian Businessman Fawaz Zuriekat.

12. The Commission has been unable to obtain all the books and records of the Appeal. Mr Galloway, the first Chairman of the Appeal, has stated that this documentation was sent to Amman and Baghdad in 2001 when Fawaz Zuriekat became Chairman of the Appeal. Mr Galloway has informed the Commission that this documentation is no longer under the control of the original trustees of the Appeal and cannot be located by them. Mr Galloway confirmed that the Appeal did not produce annual profit and loss accounts or balance sheets.

19. Given that the political activities of the Appeal were capable of being viewed as ancillary to the purposes of the Appeal and in light of the fact that the Appeal was closed and in view of the difficulties in obtaining the books and records of the Appeal, the Commission decided that it would not be proportionate to pursue its inquiries further.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:53 AM Main Page| Digg This! | |

May 11, 2005; Terrorists continue to use suicide bombers to kill large numbers of civilians. Three went off in Central Iraq today, killing fifty and wounding over a hundred. Security officials believe that the terrorists are working off an inventory of car and personal bombs, prepared just for this "offensive." But it's also been noted that the quality of the suicide bombers has declined. Some have turned out to be people who were mentally ill (and easy to convince to kill themselves). In other cases, the suicide bombers are just carrying or driving the explosives, which are set off by remote control by someone else. It's suspected that some of the drivers in these cases had signed up to move explosives, not be there when they went off. This sort of thing has been done during other suicide bomber campaigns, and is simply a sign of difficulty in recruiting suicide bombers competent, or dedicated enough, to do the deed completely by themselves.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities say suicide drivers are invariably foreign fighters. Officers here said they knew of no documented case in which a suicide attacker turned out to have been an Iraqi.

Link posted by Marc @ 8:05 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

“Former Terrorism Suspect is Deported: Moroccan . . . Was Forced to Leave,” screamed a sympathetic headline in Gannett’s Detroit News, last week.

Problem is, the deportation of alleged Detroit terror cell member Ahmed Hannan never happened. Hannan is still here.

And other details in the apocryphal article by Detroit News reporter David Shepardson were also wrong or made-up. The May 3, 2005 article claimed that Hannan—who planned to blow up U.S. tourist sites and a U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey—was deported two weeks before the article ran. Yet, he’s still here. The article also reported that Hannan’s teeth were knocked out in a jailhouse fight, “last month.” But the fight happened on February 10, 2005, three months ago.

Shepardson knew about, but chose not to report that:

Terrorist lawyers, Richard Helfrick and Miriam Siefer, stole official stationery of then-Chief Federal Judge Lawrence Zatkoff, forging his signature on an accusatory letter to another attorney;

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (former Michigan Attorney General), when she was Assistant U.S. Attorney, stole official stationery of terror trial Judge Gerald Rosen, forging his signature on a letter;

Terror Judge Rosen recently allowed terror suspect Karim Koubriti, under indictment, freed to attend a National Lawyers Guild dinner honoring his lawyer, Siefer.

Link posted by Marc @ 7:43 PM Main Page| Digg This! | |

After the Iraqi government confirmed the appointment of a Sunni in the position of defense minister. Iraqi Arab Sunnis started heading for the army enlisting centers to join the new Iraqi Army. This was evident by the long lines and large crowds of young men outside these centers in the largely Sunni area of Baghdad. This is the main reason for the increase in the terrorist activities in and around these centers.

The general also said there are indications that some Sunnis in the region want to join the political process, and that the insurgents are engaged in what he called an 'intimidation campaign' against those people. "It is a region that is in turmoil, and in some regards in conflict with itself. And we're starting to see that, as a matter of fact, in some of the reporting, where even some of the Sunni elements are starting to have conflict with each other over which direction the province should go," he said.

But supporting the impression that a harder-core insurgent element has become more important, the officers say, is the fact that suicide missions have become more frequent and more ruthless -- many have been positioned and timed to kill civilians as well as Iraqi security forces. U.S. and Iraqi authorities say suicide drivers are invariably foreign fighters. Officers here said they knew of no documented case in which a suicide attacker turned out to have been an Iraqi.

"There are reports that these people are in uniforms, in some cases are wearing protective vests, and there's some suspicion that their training exceeds that of what we have seen with other engagements further east," he said.

"But he said these insurgents in western al-Anbar province are standing and fighting, and even launched a counter-offensive, rather than fleeing as many insurgents have done in the past when faced with a coalition offensive."

A Marine officer told a Los Angeles Times reporter, "These are the professional fighters who have come from all over the Middle East. These are people who have received training and are very well-armed."

The war's changing nature is also illustrated by the list of the high-ranking enemy announced as captured by the new Baghdad government. Virtually all of those caught since December have been identified as lieutenants of the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, not operatives for Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein.

"In the Muslim world and extremist world, this fight for Iraq is their key battle," said Gen. McInerney. "If they lose it, they lose the war. And so the imams are inciting young people, not particular well-educated, to head to Iraq. Most are going through Syria via Damascus.

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The inauguration of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain on January 4, 1992, was greeted by a frenzied attack from the British media and establishment. For some days, Dr Kalim Siddiqui was the most hated man in Britain, attacked by Conservative government ministers and opposition leaders alike, and vilified in the press. But Dr Siddiqui, who had experienced far worse while championing the Muslim case during the Rushdie affair, quickly turned the establishment attack back on themselves. It demonstrated, he said, precisely why British Muslims could not depend on the mainstream political system, but had to organize outside it to pursue their unique and particular interests. It also served, he said, as a 'big bang' to put the Muslim Parliament on the political map and create energy and momentum for the development of the embryonic Muslim Parliament into a genuine community political system.

The event is co-sponsored by the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (EALDH), London Metropolitan University's Human Rights & Social Justice Research Institute and the Institute for the Study of European Transformations, the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), and the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain. The event is also supported by The Green Party, Stop Political Terror, Voices, Justice and Peace in East London, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, Kurdish Federation UK, Sutton for Peace and Justice, Voices Refugee Forum, CARF, UK Zimbabwean Community Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers, Front for Rights and Freedom, Wolfe Tone Society, NO2ID and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC).

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What, you wonder, is the connection between these isolated oddballs? The answer becomes chillingly clear when, after Mark's garage is bombed, Gary is taken prisoner by Francis and tortured by the freaky estate-dwellers. This yields a scene of violent intensity which allows Kelly to hit a number of nails squarely on the head: that, in the current climate, dissent is suspect, nonconformity dangerous and any attempt to look at recent events from a non-western angle automatic proof of guilt. When doubts are raised as to whether Gary really did bomb the garage, Louise unnervingly replies: "You don't need evidence for terrorists."

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Interesting news, courtesy of Haider Ajina who translated this headline and article in the May 9 edition of the Arabic newspaper "Alsharq Alawsat":

"Iraqi Arab Sunnis head towards Army enlisting posts in spite of explosions"

After the Iraqi government confirmed the appointment of a Sunni in the position of defense minister. Iraqi Arab Sunnis started heading for the army enlisting centers to join the new Iraqi Army. This was evident by the long lines and large crowds of young men outside these centers in the largely Sunni area of Baghdad. This is the main reason for the increase in the terrorist activities in and around these centers.

The high unemployment amongst the Sunnis is due to non-participation in the electoral and governmental process. This is due to their religious leaders forbidding them from joining the government and the security forces in the past. This situation has now changed. We witnessed thousands of Iraqi Arab Sunnis coming from different provinces to military enlisting station in Baghdad.

The rivalry may have contributed to the arrest last week of one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, a Libyan described as al-Qaida's No. 3 and known to have had differences with Uzbeks. Captured Uzbek, Chechen and Tajik suspects have been giving up information about the movements of Arab al-Qaida militants in recent months, four Pakistani intelligence agents told The Associated Press, leading to a series of successful raids and arrests.

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Things are changing, however, both here and abroad. Thousands of American troops have left Europe. Its denizens now sense that the American people no longer wish to subsidize their defense only to earn ingratitude. The E.U. dream of heaven on earth may be mired in high taxes, low growth, high unemployment, and demographic and entitlement time bombs--not the sort of platform from which to hector a supposedly sinking U.S.

Things are even more evolutionary in the Middle East. Dissidents in Egypt or Beirut are not singing the praises of the E.U. or U.N. Nor are the new democrats in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is still too early to appreciate much of this shifting, but historical forces are now in play which are not conducive to vaunted European "soft power," so often a mask for crass profiteering.

Soon, freed Middle Easterners are going to make a few simple deductions: France profited mightily from Saddam; America removed him. The E.U. wanted nothing to do with the new democracy in Baghdad; Americans from pl