Dialogue with Al-Qaeda?, EU Dhimmi Franco Frattini, Six Taliban Killed, AQ in Islamic Maghreb recruiting teenagers, Pakistani lawyers threaten w/ suicide bombing and NYT reporter freed in China

Some “experts on negotiation“, that Spanish Reuters edition qualifies as “cautious“, are asking why we don’t negotiate with Al-Qaeda (in Spanish), because “history shows that the extremist movements are better neutralised using negotiation and not force“.

Specially dedicated for them this video:

See how Hitler answered to negotiations?? This is what Annakin Skywalker, in Chapter II: The Attack of the Clones, before being Darth Vader, calls “aggresive negotiations“, so aggresive that in fact was WWII.

The article also states:

1. “There are also rational ingredients in Al-Qaeda, but it also attracts psycos” (Of course, every rational and normal human being is inclined to commit suicide bombing… ).
2. The negotiator, Jan Egeland, is a reknown anti-Israeli Norwegian, who claims having taken part in secret negotiations between Israel and PLO, Colombian “guerrilla leaders” (that is, FARC) and in Uganda (Lord’s Resistance Army: 20,000 children abducted to serve as soldiers or as sex toys, 12,000 killed directly by war, plus the non-accounted by desertification, illnesses…). All conflicts have been solutioned as you see.
3. “Al Qaeda is not an organization, it’s an idea“. You see? That’s why thinking is not good for your health, because ideas can kill you.
4. “Al Qaeda wants to restore the Muslim Global Caliphate“. How on earth can be restored something that has never existed before?

In the end they have to recognise that there are serious difficulties in negotiating with Al-Qaeda because of their goals (creating an Islamic Global Caliphate and convert everyone -including USA- to Islam) which of course is not very realistic and would imply that all the world’s Governments had to agree on the plan.

There is no place for another moonbat in this world…

Just this day AlQaeda has menaced Iraqi Sunnis…:

An al-Qaeda front group warns it will hunt down and kill Sunni Arab tribal leaders who cooperate with the U.S. and its Iraqi partners in the wake of the assassination of the leader of the revolt against the terror movement.

In a separate statement, the Islamic State of Iraq announced a new offensive during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting that began this week. The statement said the offensive was in honor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June 2006.

But hey, just put a little flower power in your life … And let’s dialogue!!

New cartoon of Mohammed the Dog: VH writes Mo’s Days of Summer. Al Qaeda has offered a bounty of $100.000 to kill artist (in their words, to “slaughter him like a lamb“). Let’s dialogue….

Stop this world; I’m getting out of it (Groucho Marx).

“War cannot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the other’s advantage“. Niccolo Machiavelli (I’m not a fan of him, but he was really a bright guy).

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But there are other idiotic moonbats around. Take for example EU Dhimmi Vice-President Commissioner Franco Frattini, the one who, in the midst of the Mohammed’s cartoons’ furore, stated in an interview to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, that EU will be writing down a code of conduct which “would encourage the media to show “prudence” when covering religion“. And he added:

“The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression,” he told the newspaper. “We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.”

Afterwards, he repented:

Mr Frattini thinks I misconstrued what he said. He has issued a stern press release, putting his side of the story….

Eeh, no, he just blamed the journalist.

Well, now he doesn’t want you to use Internet to search for “dangerous words, like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorist“… h/t Ignacio and la Frase Progre.

Internet searches for bomb-making instructions should be blocked across the European Union, the bloc’s top security official said on Monday.

Internet providers should also prevent access to any site giving instructions on how to make a bomb, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said in an interview.

“I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector … on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism,” Frattini told Reuters.

The EU executive is to make this proposal to member states early in November as part of a raft of anti-terrorism proposals.

So, if I search for “Armenian genocide” that means I want to make one myself. And if I search for “Islamic/Islamist terrorist” is that I am also one of them…. And searching for “Sex bomb” (remember the Tom Jones hit?) will also be forbidden.

Do they really think that someone who is in a terrorist cell doesn’t have any other preparation so he/she has to search in Internet how to do a bomb?

But it continues:

The Internet has taken on huge importance for militant groups, enabling them to share know-how and spread propaganda to a mass audience, as well as to link cell members.

Oh, yeah, and also it has a huge importance for anti-EU groups. Or more accurately to anti-this EU group, hasn’t it? So today we block terrorist and bomb and tomorrow we block information that we don’t want the people to know.

He is so damned politically correct that he does not use “terrorist” but “militant“…

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In France Rights groups slam plans for immigrant DNA tests h/t Hodja:

French rights groups and left-wing politicians Thursday slammed an amendment to a new immigration bill that would introduce DNA testing for would-be immigrants seeking to join their relatives in France.

The National Assembly’s legislative committee Wednesday approved an amendment that would offer long-term visa applicants the option of a DNA test to prove their family ties.

The amendment’s author Thierry Mariani, a deputy from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, says it aims to root out bogus visa requests, arguing that in parts of Africa up to 80 percent of identity papers submitted by applicants were fake.

He says the tests would be a voluntary way to speed up visa procedures for immigrants’ relatives.

But Socialist deputy George Pau-Langevin, the only black MP from mainland France, called the plans “unacceptable.” “This is a significant and unacceptable step in the violation of the right to a private family life, out of all proportion with the goal of fighting paperwork fraud,” she said. “Would we consider doing the same for French people?”

Right to a private family life??? This is just a measure whose aim is to prevent that people who do not belong to the same family, come to Europe claiming the right of reagroupment.

And what is more: the test is OPTIONAL. If you want, you do it and the process ends quicker. If you don’t, well, everthing is slower… Just your own decission, mate.

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Remember the South Koreans who were kept as hostages by the Talibans?

Afghan and US-led troops on Friday raided the hideout of a Taliban commander linked to the July abduction of 23 South Koreans, killing six militants, police said.

Taliban commander Abdullah Jan however escaped the raid in the southern province of Ghazni, provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai told AFP.

The US-led coalition confirmed there had been an operation in the province but said only that “several suspected militants” had been killed and one arrested.

“Abdullah Jan fled the raid but six of his associates were killed and an unknown number were detained by the coalition forces,” Ahmadzai told AFP.

The bodies of three of the dead were left at the site, he said.

The coalition said one person was detained in the operation in the Qarabagh district, the area where the South Korean aid workers were abducted on July 19.

Troops kill six Taliban linked to alleged SKorean abductor – Yahoo! News

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Some days ago I wrote that Al Qaeda had recruited teenagers for the suicide attacks and that they were educated to be like “little A-Zarqawis“. Well, over 50 have been recruited and trained by now:

The al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb between December and April recruited over 50 children aged under 16, the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper reported on Friday, quoting Algerian intelligence sources.
Police were alarmed that a 15-year-old suicide bomber carried out a deadly attack earlier this month in the Algerian port city of Dellys. The boy managed to pass unnoticed through security checks.
Radical imams have recruited to al-Qaeda around 15 under-16s from poor districts of the capital, Algiers, to join its fighters hiding in the mountains of Algeria, police said.
Police said the US-led war in Iraq was being used as pretext to radicalise youngsters in Algeria and persuade them to join militants. They said many had been given training in carrying out suicide attacks either in Iraq or in Algeria.
The al-Kalitius neighbourhood of the village ofBourama on the outskirts of southern Algiers is a particular ‘hotspot’ for Jihadi recruiters, according to police.
After being taken into the mountains, the youngsters have come into contact with Tunisian and Libyan militants and have been trained alongside them to carry out car and truck bomb attacks, police said.

Speaking of children abuse…. What outrage in the MSM and in NGO’s there is after knowing this?

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And seeing that the suicide attacks are feared, what do you think Pakistani lawyers plan to do if colleagues are tortured? Exactly…

Peshawar High Court Bar Association President Abdul Latif Afridi on Thursday warned intelligence agencies and the army to avoid torturing lawyers or “face suicide attacks by lawyers at forces’ headquarters”.
At an emergency meeting, the PHCBA passed a resolution denouncing a report that intelligence agencies arrested Advocate Ghulam Nabi on Thursday night and tortured him at a detention cell. Afridi said that if the army and spy agencies did not change their attitude towards lawyers and citizens, the people would “ban the entry of military and agencies personnel to bazaars and main roads”. He said the lawyers would charge secret agencies under sections 6 and 7 of the Anti Terrorism Act as “they tried to terrify the entire lawyers’ community by torturing a lawyer”. The lawyers later staged a protest outside the corps commander house in Peshawar.

I do not like torture, but I also don’t like suicide bombings…

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NYT reported freed:

A Chinese journalist jailed while working for the New York Times has been released. Zhao Yan had been sentenced to three years in prison for fraud in August 2006. He was detained in 2004 on charges that included leaking state secrets. International human rights groups had severely criticised his imprisonment, saying the Communist Party was using secrecy laws to stifle news.

For a retrospective on Zhao Yan, see HRW:

July 2004
Zhao Yan writes a four-line note for the New York Times sketching out a reported conflict between President Hu Jintao and ex-President Jiang Zemin over senior military appointments.
September 7, 2004
The New York Times publishes an article predicting that former President Jiang Zemin will step down from his position of head of the military. A reference to political jockeying between Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao is included as background material in one of the final paragraphs of the article.

[…] October 5, 2005
The Washington Post reveals that Zhao’s case relies almost entirely on a copy of an internal New York Times memo obtained by the State Security Ministry, according to a confidential ministry document urging prosecutors to indict the researcher. It is unclear how the agents gained access to the memo, of which a copy is included in an inventory of evidence collected in the case. [Who gave that copy then? ]

But at the same time detains other two AFP reporters h/t Status of Chinese People:

The arrest of two Agence France-Presse reporters on 12 September is the latest in a string of cases of foreign journalists being obstructed in their work. They show that the less stringent regulations introduced in January are being applied erratically and only when less sensitive issues are involved. At least 32 foreign journalists have been detained or prevented by police from doing reports since January.

“The way the authorities have treated journalists from Agence France-Presse, the BBC World Service and other international news organisations in recent weeks do not bode well for the ability of the foreign media to work during the Olympic Games,” the press freedom organisation said.

“These are not unfortunate blunders,” Reporters Without Borders continued. “They are the result of a clear lack of goodwill on the part of the police, who refuse to let reporters travel and investigate freely. We call on the International Olympic Committee to intervene with the Chinese authorities to ensure that the rules introduced in January are finally respected.”

Just keep waiting…

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Sri Lanka kills Tamil tigers:

Sri Lankan soldiers killed 15 Tamil Tiger rebels in a clashes in the north and east of the island while six military personnel were also killed, the military said on Saturday.

The latest spike in violence in the country’s long-running civil war follows the launch of a new offensive by government forces to drive guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from the northwesterly Mannar area.

Just in case, Tamil Tigers are the “inventors” of suicide bombings. It’s said that Bin Laden copied them.

In 1987 the LTTE established the notorious Black Tigers, an elite unit of the LTTE responsible for conducting suicide attacks against political, economic and military targets,^[9] and launched its first suicide attack against a Sri Lanka Army camp, killing 40 soldiers, still its not conformed.

Of course, they are only “militants”…

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Other news:

1. Selling and drinking alcohol is still legal in Iraq, but since the rise of religious parties in this predominantly Muslim country, the trade has come under severe pressure. Aside from legal restrictions, many liquor shops have been bombed in the past four years. But the people still but it…
2. Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Austria for a three-day pilgrimage, saying Christianity was not just the legacy of Europe’s past but “the way to the future.”
3. Japanese Shinzo Abe’s resigned. The main reason of his decission is that the Liberal party’s candidate had different views about the way to conduct negotiations about the continuation of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force’s refueling operations in the Indian Ocean in support of the Global War on Terrorism. The front-runner to become Japan’s next prime minister vowed Saturday to extend his nation’s support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan. Ruling party veteran Yasuo Fukuda also said he would take a softer line with North Korea over its past abduction of Japanese nationals, a row that has threatened to upset negotiations over the communist country’s nuclear weapons.
4. Putin, again: British and Norwegian jets intercepted Russian military aircraft Friday after they breached NATO airspace close to the U.K. and Finland, defense officials said. So far!!! Surprise, surprise: Putin does not rule out presenting himself to 2012’s elections. But this is not hurting his sucessor’s perspectives… No…
5. After I wrote these last days about the Deobandi sect in Britain and its overwhelming influence there, we have some fresh news about Tablighi Jamaat and their London’s mega-mosque: “The mega-mosque complex would become a flagship for Tablighi Jamaat’s mission to indoctrinate Muslims with a hatred of the West and the kuffar [non-Mulims].” But wasn’t the Mega-mosque cancelled? But there is more: Irfan al Alawi, international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, says the missionary work of Tablighi Jamaat acts as “a recruitment agency for jihad” in Afghanistan, the occupied territories and Iraq. “They go around deprived areas of British towns and cities, knocking on doors and urging young Muslims to come to their gatherings,” he said.

Sent to Open Trackbacks by Dumb Ox.

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Islamic terrorism update: German and Austrian plots, Saudi donors and Pakistani inaction against Al-Qaeda, 3rd Bin Laden’s tape announced and 15-year-old trained suicide bomber

I have been writing about the German Al-Qaeda plot for some days now. Militant Islam Monitor.org has a magnificent summary about some other aspects which are terribly significant about what happened. Here is an excerpt, below is the link.

Operation Alberich began last October, when the US National Security Agency, the NSA, began intercepting suspicious emails between Germany and Pakistan. It ended last week in the central German Sauerland region, with the arrests of two German converts to Islam, Fritz Gelowicz, 28, the son of a southern German doctor, and 22-year-old Daniel S., who had learned how to handle weapons during his military service in the western German city of Saarlouis. His neighbors in nearby Saarbrücken had noticed that he prayed to Allah “often and very loudly.” The third man arrested in the sting was Adem Y., a 28-year-old Turkish national. The trio was caught in the act of mixing chemical ingredients to make explosives at a vacation house in the mountainous Sauerland region.

When they searched the house, German investigators found military detonators from Syria  that a courier had smuggled into Germany, as well as 60 liters of hydrogen peroxide. The materials were apparently intended for use in three car bombs that the group may have planned to detonate in front of a US military base in Germany, a nightclub or possibly a major airport. When troops from the GSG 9 elite commando unit stormed the house last Tuesday, the pungent stench of chemicals was already in the air. According to investigators, what the men were planning could have been one of the bloodiest attacks in European postwar history — worse than London or Madrid. In addition to the three terror suspects, German authorities are investigating more than 45 people.

Since the conversation with Bush during the G-8 summit, the Chancellor knew that the diabolic plot not only threatened people’s lives, but that if US soldiers were killed in Germany, it would endanger the trans-Atlantic relations that were so important to her. America feared a new spectacular attack from a resurgent al-Qaida — possibly even a second Sept. 11. Another attack against America planned on German soil had to be prevented.

These experiences and fears explain why Operation Alberich was conducted from both Berlin and Washington, with a joint CIA and German task force set up in Berlin. US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told SPIEGEL last week that cooperation between the two countries was “the closest it’s ever been.”

But from the US perspective the German investigation was also a trial by fire. American authorities kept ramping up the pressure on the Germans, with both CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and US Ambassador William R. Timken meeting with authorities in Berlin. In early June Chertoff traveled to German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble’s hometown of Gengenbach and over dinner urged him to do everything he could to prevent a possible attack. “We care,” Schäuble assured him.

Operation Alberich :How the CIA helped foil the German terror plot – 45 suspects still being sought – Militant Islam Monitor – Militant Islam Monitor

Read it all…

Austria arrests three in latest Islamist Terror Plot in Europe.

Austrian Interior Minister Günther Platter said on Wednesday, Sept. 12, that the trio suspected of producing the video had confessed to having links to al Qaeda. The video demanded German and Austrian soldiers leave Afghanistan.

The three, however, had not established an independent terrorist cell, and at no time was Austria directly in danger, he added.

“Austria was not under threat of an attack at any time,” Platter told a news conference. “We could determine that based on the actions of the three.”

Video relates to Afghanistan mission

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Austrian Interior Minister Güther Platter said there were no concrete threats against Austria

The three, who were under covert police surveillance for months, were arrested by anti-terror forces in Vienna. All of them are second-generation Austrian citizens with Arab origins. They include a 20-year-old man, his 21-year-old wife and another man of 26.

The online video, aired in March this year, showed a masked speaker urging Austria and Germany to cease their support of the United States in Afghanistan.

Of course, US authorities are concerned:

During an interview yesterday with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell stated that U.S. authorities are concerned about “sleeper cells” of Islamic terrorists inside the United States and admitted that since 9/11, several plots against the United States have been thwarted. “We’re safer but we’re not safe,” stated McConnell about the current threat environment.

[…] This and other non-governmental web sites have been recently urged by intelligence agencies to alert the public to report any instance of suspicious activity that including individuals taking video, photographing, or sketching various locations, including but not limited to federal buildings, law enforcement locations, areas of critical infrastructure such as subway and train stations, dams, bridges, airports, railways, power facilities, military bases and recruiting locations, and sea ports.

In this climate, it’s normal that there are people writing some theories about what Al-Qaeda is going to do now. The other day I linked to an article in The Midnight Sun, in which they consider the probability of a nuclear attack in US soil.

Yesterday I found in Hyscience and Noisy Room.Net another theory: Could US (and the rest of Europe…) suffer an attack like Beslan?

Glenn Beck is running a series on CNN called “The Perfect Day,” in which Glenn describes a plan that the DHS, FBI, and CIA have been following and for the most part sitting on for some time. Apparently, these agencies have discovered several bits of evidence that point to the possibility that a plan for a Beslan type assault on schools in America is very real, so real that it is in motion as we speak.

[…] Beslan was a first attempt. There are aspects of the assault on the Russian School that have heretofore not been revealed to the public. First and foremost, the assailants were not Chechens as have been described, there were several nationalities there, including Pakistanis, Taliban Afghans, and others. Secondly, All the female children were raped and tortured before being killed. Beslan was intended to inflame the Russians into committing retaliatory attacks on muslims of all stripes.

Continue reading. The link contains a disturbing video about what happened in Beslan. WARNING: IMAGES DISTURBING. THE VIDEO WAS FILMED OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL.

Noisy Room.Net has more.

From my point of view -and I am no expert-, I really believe that all measures must be taken to prevent such things, though I also believe that if there are published reports that mention it, the terrorists may (not must) change strategies, because this one has been uncovered. If a terrorist plot is clear, then it’s no plot.

Anyway, it’s interesting this information is released to have more information about how they act. Just to be prepared…

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Al-Qaeda’s Saudi donors are still not pursued by Saudi authorities:

Despite six years of promises, U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia continues to look the other way at wealthy individuals identified as sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda.

“If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,” Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing, told ABC News.

Despite some efforts as a U.S. ally in the war on terror, Levey says Saudi Arabia has dropped the ball. Not one person identified by the United States and the United Nations as a terror financier has been prosecuted by the Saudis, Levey says. 

“When the evidence is clear that these individuals have funded terrorist organizations, and knowingly done so, then that should be prosecuted and treated as real terrorism because it is,” Levey says.

Among those on the donor list, according to U.S. officials, is Yasin al Qadi, a wealthy businessman named on both the U.S. and U.N. lists of al Qaeda financiers one month after the 9/11 attacks.

Al Qadi, who has repeatedly denied the allegations, remains free, still a prominent figure in Saudi Arabia.

Al Qadi’s London-based attorney, Guy Martin of Carter-Ruck law firm, said the United States has never produced any evidence in support of the allegations against his client.

The best thing in that link is when the Al-Qadi’s attorney – – says his client is in a “financial Guantanamo“.  Can they please change the motto?

But Pakistan is not trusted either:

U.S. officials say they are equally frustrated with what they call the empty promises of Pakistan to go after al Qaeda’s sanctuaries in their country.

Pakistan says it is willing to take action if the U.S. provides details. 

“If they had specific information, they should share it with us, and we would go after them,” Pakistani Ambassador to the U.N. Munir Akram told ABC News.

When asked whether the U.S. can trust his country, Ambassador Akram said, “Well, if the U.S. doesn’t trust Pakistan, how can Pakistan be an ally of the U.S.?”

A question echoed by many in the U.S.

With fresh funds and a safe haven, al Qaeda has been able to recruit and train a new class of terrorists as well as send out a stream of new propaganda tapes.

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After the 1st and the 2nd tape, Al-Qaeda (this time without Bin Laden, I wonder why… Must be his dyed beard was not at all fashionable… ) is going to release another tape .

Al-Qaeda will release a third video to mark the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to postings on Islamist websites on the Internet on Wednesday.
The websites said that the video will be entitled, “The two expeditions to New York and Washington, causes and motives“, and is expected to be a documentary which will explain the reasons why the terrorist group carried out the attacks on 11 September 2001 in the United States that killed close to 3,000 people.
Other reports, quoting US monitoring groups, say that the new video will will show Al-Qaeda’s chief in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, also known as Sheikh Said.

But in Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden is more popular than Musharraf! Now I understand why Pakistan should not be trusted. Remember they have nukes!!

“We have conducted 23 polls all over the Muslim world, and this is the most disturbing one we have conducted,” said Ken Ballen, the group’s head. “Pakistan is the one Muslim nation that has nuclear weapons, and the people who want to use them against us — like the Taliban and al Qaeda — are more popular there than our allies like Musharraf.”

Well, Musharraf is not Bin Laden, but he is not my idol either…

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Al-Qaeda in Algeria: accused of recruiting teenage bombers (speaking about children abuse… )

Al-Qaeda has been accused of recruiting 40 teenage youths in Algeria for suicide attacks in Iraq.
According to a report in the Algerian newspaper, al-Khabar, the youths were being trained to become ‘little Zarqawis’.
It said one 15-year-old boy who had joined the group at the beginning of April was one of two bombers blown up in last week’s suicide bombing in Dellys.

Where is the international outrage here? I repeat: ONE OF THE SUICIDE TERRORISTS WAS A BOY AGED 15-YEARS-OLD, TRAINED TO BE A LITTLE AL-ZARQAWI. 

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Other news:

Putin threatens Czechs over US missile shield. Putin wants POland and Czech Republic to wait for 2008 because he does not exclude “that a new administration in the United States will re-evaluate the current administration’s decisions on missile defence“.

Russia tests the “mother of all bombs” (video inside) and announces it is environmentally friendly.

Ahmadine-jihad pushes peace for all, except Israel. Of course, it’s logical… from his point of view…

Killed 45 Talibans in Afghanistan and 30 in Pakistan.

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"’Radical’ changes for EU neighbours", China, Somalia, Bin Laden’s new hair color, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, homosexual paedophiles sheltering children, Pakistan and the Muslim Cinderella (+)

 Alarming news indeed:

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, on Monday outlined what it called “radical” changes to its relations with the countries that border on the union.

Addressing a conference that included ministers from the 16 neighbour countries and the 27 EU members, European Commission Vice President Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the Commission proposes to open up the European markets to workers, services and goods from the EU’s neighbours.

The Commission’s proposal calls for instance for better legal migration, a tougher approach to illegal immigration. In the area of energy, it tables the idea of regional energy partnership that would eliminate the need for the bilateral pacts currently in place with some countries.

EUX.TV – Brussels Minute: ‘Radical’ changes for EU neighbours h/t Millenium Notes.

So, they are going to open all the borders to mainly our Mediterranean brothers, just in case they were not crossing the Mediterranean fast enough. 😡

This is released about the same time in which a suicide bomber has blown up himself in Algeria, killing at least 22 people. The suicide attack aimed at President Bouteflika. When he saw he has been detected by the people around him, he exploded himself before the scheduled moment. (En español)

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From BBC:

Doctors in China have discovered 26 sewing needles embedded in the body of a 31-year-old woman.

They think they were inserted into Luo Cuifen’s body when she was a baby by grandparents upset she was not a boy.  😯

[…] The needles were discovered only when Ms Luo went to hospital complaining of blood in her urine. She was given a routine X-ray, which revealed the needles. Up until then she had been in good health.

Some of these needles have penetrated vital organs, such as the lungs, liver and kidneys. One has even broken into three pieces in the woman’s brain.

[…] But there is no way to confirm this theory, as the grandparents are now dead.

In many rural areas boys were – and still are – valued more highly than girls. One reason is that they can carry on the family name.

Well, the main reason is not that rubbish about the family name, but the one-child policy which favoured during a lot of time, the boys over the girls. The consequence is that there is a great disproportion between the percentage of women and men in China nowadays.

A problem aggravated with a return to an ancient past within China, when mistresses were normal in the higher circles:

Chinese anti-graft investigators have found that 90 percent of the country’s most senior officials brought down in corruption cases in recent years had kept mistresses, drawing a link between sex and misconduct.

Mistresses and “second wives” are common among government officials and businessmen in China and are often blamed for driving officials to seek money through bribes or other abuses of power.

A report by China’s top prosecutor’s office said that of 16 provincial-level officials punished for “serious” graft in the last five years, most were involved in “trading power for sex”, along with gambling, money-laundering and shady land sales to developers, the Beijing News said on Monday.

“Nearly 90 percent kept mistresses, some keeping several,” the paper said.

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In Somalia, while the insurgents (err, well, Al-Qaeda linked tipes…) and the Government are going to talk, one of the insurgents hideouts has been raided:

Nine people have been killed and 20 others seriously injured in Somalia’s capital during a raid on a house by government forces targeting insurgents.

Explosions and gunfire rocked Bakara market in Mogadishu as security forces battled insurgents defending the house thought to be sheltering their leader.

On Wednesday six people were killed during another raid against insurgents.

Mogadishu has seen a rise in violence since Ethiopian-backed government troops ousted Islamists last December

The UN refugee agency says some 400,000 people have fled the fighting in the capital in the past four months.

The BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says most of those injured during the fighting are civilians who were caught in the crossfire.

Transitional government forces have been carrying out operations against insurgents for the past two months, but this was the first time a house was targeted, our correspondent says.

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Bin Laden urges American to convert ( 😆 ). Well, I really feel that he is not cool enough no matters how much henna he uses… I mean, with that look, he is not going to be a masses’ idol:

It appears that a texture effect has been added over the entire image. Perhaps the intent is to hide what appears to me to be a very sickly man. The shoulders are pronouncedly slumped, as if he has lost all muscle tone.  It shows serious wasting which many times occurs in Alzheimer patients. (As if we didn’t already know that he was demented). The flesh of his face is sagging. I think this IS a new picture. In November of 2001 Salon.com  conjectured that Osama might be suffering from Marfan syndrome.

Well, perhaps for some leftists-Chomsky-lovers, and such… he is attractive.

(+) More on Bin Laden’s hairdresser’s work.

Characteristically, no one is picking up on the significance of the dye job. The Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence forbids men and women to dye their hair black “except when the intention is jihad…as a show of strength to unbelievers” (‘Umdat al-Salik e.4.4). Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in his The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, says essentially the same thing: “Some of the early Muslims, including some sahabah [companions of Muhammad] such as Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas, ‘Uqbah ibn ‘Amr, al-Hassan, al-Hussein, Jarir, and others permitted the use of black dye. Some scholars, on the other hand, do not consider the use of black dye as permissible except during time of war, when the enemy might be impressed by the fact that all the soldiers of the Muslim army look young.“

As I said, I am not impressed by his hairdresser’s work youthness..

What is significant though is that he thinks he is in war… Now, let’s see if the rest also begin realising we are in a war too…

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President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan) revived the possibility of an alphabet switch last fall, requesting that the Ministry of Education and Science examine the experiences of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which have all changed to Latin letters. The ministry’s proposed action plan is based primarily on the model used in Uzbekistan. It calls for a six-step program, outlining cost estimates for retraining the country’s workforce to read Latin script, and changing signs on streets and public buildings. The overall cost of switching is estimated at US$300 million.

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Turkmenistan’s role in energy:

The pipeline expansion, provided it actually comes into being, could deal a substantial blow to western interests in Turkmenistan. In particular, it has the potential to deter a long-held goal of the United States – construction of a Trans-Caspian Pipeline that would carry Central Asian energy to Azerbaijan, where it would be distributed to the West.

As one Pentagon official said prior to the announcement of the Russian-Turkmen pipeline agreement: “If there is a new Great Game being played in Central Asia, the most important part is Turkmenistan.”

Western officials in Turkmenistan, however, deny that they have “lost” anything to Russia. “We don’t see it as a zero-sum game, as Russia and other countries in the region do,” said one Western diplomat.

But the diplomat acknowledges that Russia has an advantage in dealing with Turkmenistan; that Moscow doesn’t make the same demands on human rights and democratization as do Washington and Brussels. “We would love to know the real reason [that Russia was awarded the pipeline deal], but that seems to be the logical explanation,” the diplomat said.

Another Western diplomat said a major factor was connected to the fact that Russia devotes more high level attention to Turkmenistan than does the United States or European countries. “When Berdymukhammedov calls the Kremlin, it’s [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who picks up the phone; when he calls Washington it’s a deputy assistant secretary of state. And the presidential level is where you get things done,” the diplomat said.

Exactly the same as China in Sudan, about HR and democratization… 😡

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Two maids beaten to death in Saudi Arabia, accused of practising “black magic” h/t NMJ:

The brutality of attacks on four Indonesian maids last month in the Saudi town of Aflaj shocked even the most hardened observers in this kingdom, where employers have a long history of mistreating their domestic workers.

Accused of practicing black magic on the son of their Saudi employers, these domestic helpers were beaten over a period of two days beginning Aug. 3. Siti Tarwiyah Slamet and Susmiyati Abdul Fulan were killed. Tari Tarsam and Ruminih Surtim survived, but were taken away by Saudi police from the hospital just days after being admitted once they were deemed well enough to be questioned.

Since then, seven Saudi males from the same family have been arrested and are under investigation. The Saudi government never officially informed the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh of the crime, and only after migrant groups and relatives of the maids held two demonstrations outside the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, did the Saudi ambassador to Indonesia issue a statement saying that authorities in Riyadh needed more time to complete their investigation before they could send the two surviving maids and the remains of the two slain women home.

😯 Speaking of transparency of the Government… And of inaction:

The brutal killings of these Indonesian domestic helpers occurred in an atmosphere of impunity fostered by government inaction,” says Nisha Varia, senior researcher in the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in New York. “Not only do the authorities typically fail to investigate or prosecute abusive employers, the criminal justice system also obstructs abused workers from seeking redress.”

Go and read it all: it’s shameful. And this people want to teach others morals and good behaviour??

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Hmm, more cowards. And who pays it? The people who are less strong… in this case the children:

A homo-sex-ual foster couple were left free to sex-ually abuse vulnerable boys in their care because social workers feared being accused of discrimination if they investigated complaints, an inquiry concluded yesterday.

G-ay couple left free to abuse boys – because social workers feared being branded hom-ophobic

… one of the first homo-se-xual couples in the country to be officially approved as foster parents.

With no previous convictions, they came across as respectable men who simply wanted to help boys with a variety of problems.

In reality, they were paed-ophiles, who repeatedly abused the children in their care.

My reaction was of 😯 at first, but after reading it entirely (and once I realize what had happened -af first, I could not believe my eyes) was of 😡

And please, go and see the photos. I have not posted them, because I do not want any reader killed after seeing them…

Not all homosexuals are like this, BUT if someone makes such acts must be stopped before it’s too late. What are going to be the consequences for the poor child, hein?

My Pet Jawa links to other case, as gruesome as this one:

Judge Christopher Critchlow heard last week that Howitt and Rae, lovers for more than 10 years, repeatedly sexually abused the tot over a four-year period – simulating sex acts with him and forcing him to have oral sex while he slept.

Look here, I don’t care the sexuality, the gender or whatever. We are very careful about not upsetting grown-ups, just in case they get offended. And the little boys? What happens with them? They get not offended, but raped. What is a bigger problem, then? ________________________________

In Pakistan:

Suspected Islamic militants in north-western Pakistan have beheaded two women they accused of being prostitutes, police say.

The bodies of the two women were found by villagers on the outskirts of the city of Bannu.

A note found on the bodies accused the women of “acts of obscenity”, a term that usually refers to prostitution.

The region is a known base for militants who want to impose their interpretation of Islamic law.

Police said the women were travelling in a three-wheeled vehicle when masked and armed men overpowered them and bundled them into a car.

Senior district police officer Dar Khattak told Reuters news agency it was the first time militants had directly targeted and killed women in the region.

The note read: “We have started doing this to end obscenity in the area.”

First, they even don’t know if the women were actually prostitutes.

But in case they were, prostitutes don’t make “acts of obscenity” alone, but with men (in a 99% of the cases…) and because the men pay for them to do such “acts”. So, if they really want to fight obscenity, just don’t use them. Oohh, yeah, I know, err, yes, well, then don’t blame prostitutes!! You, hypocrites… 😡

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Cinderella, Muslim style h/t Kate: “I’m not going to be able to contradict him. But this is a fairy tale come true” says the bride ( 😯 ). The bridegoom is already married and has five children. He belongs to Dubai Royal House. She is a hotel waitress. Both are Muslims.

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