Who said China wasn’t dangerous?, religious offenses, Bangladesh cartoon arrest and other items

 

Iran’s interior minister said China renewed its support Friday for negotiations over his country’s disputed nuclear activities, and he warned that new U.N. sanctions could force Tehran to adopt “other means.”

 Mostafa Pour Mohammadi said he had reached a consensus on the issue in meetings in Beijing with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and senior foreign policy adviser Tang Jiaxuan. “The two sides agreed that other methods such as sanctions are inappropriate and ineffective,” Pour Mohammadi told reporters at the Iranian Embassy. Asked whether China had urged more active cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Pour Mohammadi replied, “It’s natural that our friends in other countries hope that talks conclude successfully.”

China’s official Xinhua News Agency quoted Yang as saying China supported a negotiated settlement and opposed the spread of nuclear weapons. “China would like to continue its efforts to push forward the peaceful resolution of Iran’s nuclear issue,” Xinhua quoted Yang as saying. China, one of five permanent veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, has urged Iran to cooperate with U.N. inspectors but has thwarted attempts by fellow permanent Security Council membersthe U.S., Britain and Franceto impose harsh U.N. sanctions on Iran.

Iran Says Chinese Give Support on Nukes

So China is supporting Iran. It makes sense.

Kouchner, after saying “the world must be prepared to go to war over Iran’s nuclear program” (what a brave French man I am! ), now he is saying that he “is ready to go to Teheran”, if he was invited and to “give the necessary time” for the International Agency for Atomic Energy verifies if they are fulfilling the aggreements.

Ahmadine-jihad in a clearly propgandist photo: I’m so good that I go to have a meal with some orphans… politicians are the same wherever the country you look at!!!!  (In the case of Ahmi there are some very distinctive qualities, that’s true ).

Ahmadinejad with some orphans on Ramadan’s 1st day.

All photos found at Kamangir.net.

Plateau has emailed me with some tips. Very important ones (thanks!  ). Ahmadeni-jihad has also promised to get rid of the Infidel’s influence at University (wow, the infidels, uuuhhhhhhhh…  ) mobilising a special militia to ensure it (well, both the Infidel and the influence… ) disappears:

The radical president refers to his “academic cleansing” plan as “The Second Great Islamic Cultural Revolution.” The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini closed the universities and launched the first “Great Islamic Cultural Revolution” in 1980. A committee created to “cleanse” academia purged more than 6,000 professors and lecturers, virtually destroying Iranian academia. Dozens of academics were executed as hundreds fled into exile. The committee also expelled thousands of students on charges of monarchist or leftist tendencies. It also censored or totally rewrote dozens of textbooks to conform to the Khomeinist ideology.

Iran also has an important place in WOT. The problem is the strategy built to fight terrorism, is mainly built to fight Al-Qaeda, but “is not prepared to fight Hizbollah“:

Ever since its start six years ago, the United States has been waging the War on Terror chiefly on the Sunni side of the religious divide within Islam. The principal targets have been Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

By contrast, the vision articulated by the president in his 2007 State of the Union Address is substantially broader. It encompasses not only Sunni extremists, but their Shi‘a counterparts as well. And, for the first time, it clearly and unambiguously identifies not just “terrorism” but a specific state sponsor — the Islamic Republic of Iran — as a threat to U.S. interests and objectives in the greater Middle East.

So far, however, this shift is still more rhetoric than reality. “Our strategy to combat terrorism is really only a strategy to combat Al-Qaeda”, Congressman Jim Saxton (R-NJ) pointed out in these pages not long ago. “We are not prepared to deal — in the event hostilities occur — with terrorist organizations that are built differently, like Hizballah.”

Related news: Iranian police takes vicious criminals to the state into custody. You know, very vicious ones…

Iran’s Internet restrictions. Read it all.

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From NYT:

“Even though we’ve prevented one terrorist attack, we know that there are still people in Denmark and abroad that have the capacity, the will and the ability to carry out terrorist attacks in Denmark,” Jakob Scharf, the head of Danish intelligence, said in an interview in his office here.

[…] With Europe again focused on the threat posed by terrorist plots, Denmark illustrates the powerful interplay between foreign agitation and domestic discontent. The country became a target of foreign Islamist terrorist groups two years ago after a conservative newspaper here published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, drawing worldwide attention. At home, the children of Muslim immigrants complain of job discrimination and integration problems, feeding the disenchantment of the small but growing Muslim population.

“In the schools, Danish teachers are always talking about democracy and human rights, but now they see what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan and what they did here with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad,” said Imran Shah, 31, who leads a youth group at a local mosque. “They ask themselves, is this a democracy or are they talking about double standards?”

Double standards?? I don’t know what they are teaching them to consider that “what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan” (why not in Iraq??) is against democracy and Human Rights. And about the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad:

1. it’s normal in democratic and free country to laugh and make jokes about beliefs. That way, no one thinks he/she is above the rest, and those jokes makes us question ourselves about our own ideas something that is extremely good.
2. Is someone of another religion asking to kill the cartoonists which draw that cartoons? I have not heard of any. And in any case, if there are, the own believers are going against them.

Some days ago, my friend Cruzcampo () from Spanish blog “How to be a right-winger and not die trying“, sent me this link:

In her speech, Griffin said: “A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”

Kathy Griffin poses backstage with her Emmy after her show ‘Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List’ won Outstanding Reality Program at the 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday. (Chris Pizzello/AP)

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-colour remark about Christ and proclaim: “This award is my god now!”

The comedian’s remarks were condemned Monday by Catholic League president Bill Donohue, who called them a “vulgar, in-your-face brand of hate speech.”

Well, he asked me what I thought about it. And I answered:

1st this speech speaks more about Kate Griffin than about the religion in itself. Looks like she is more happy because of telling others that they are wrong thanking Jesus because of an award, than because she has been awarded with it.

And secondly, paying attention to that kind of speech, made precisely to arouse criticism, is making her achieving his objective. If I would have been Bill Donohue -and I have a lot of respect for this guy, he is in the first front of the fight against Islamism- I would have said: “Hey, some Catholic Bishop has said some days ago that God can be called Allah. Why she did not say “This award is my Allah now?”. But not considering it as a matter of high importance. Certainly, it’s vulgar but I do not think this is “hate speech”, is more an idiot and inmature speech of someone who wants to attract attention.

So is there a double standard? Yes, but because people are so afraid of Muslim fundamentalism that they dare not say anything against them….

To continue with the subject: In Spain now, there is an exhibition in which late Pope John Paul II is pictured as the passive man in an homosexual trio, in pedophile attitudes, etc. The Ibiza’s Bishop has answered that “he condemns this as an offense to Catholics“, because the exhibition is held in a Catholic church, Santa María de Gracia (if it was not sufficient). So he has threatened the Major with legal measures to end the agreement to use that church to make exhibitions, as they have not fulfilled the terms of use.  He added that never “this Bishop or the Foundation -that manages the exhibition if the church- would have given permission for such an exhibition“. But the Culture responsible of City’s Majorship, has said “she would never use censorship against this…

I maintain my position: a) this people only want publicity and no risk: that’s why they are always touching the balls of Catholics but never of Muslims. b) the bad things here are two: first this is an exhibition paid with the money of all citizens including Catholics and secondly, that perversion of exhibiting these pictures in a Catholic Church is of very bad taste.

As Mª Luisa Cava de Llano, First Advisor to the Spanish Ombudsman Adjunta Primera del Defensor del Pueblo, says:

It’s not very much provoking or brave, pretend to offend the people who have been educated not only to forgive every time they are insulted but also to love the ones who offend them. What merit would there be if we would love only the people who do us some good?

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But not only Western cartoonists are been prosecuted, detained… just because of the humor they use in their cartoons: Bangladesh authorities arrest cartoonist.

* Boy, what is your name?

– My name is Babu.

* It is customary to mention Muhammed before the name.

* What is your father’s name?

– Muhammed Abu

* What’s this in your lap?

– Muhammed cat

😯

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladeshi authorities Tuesday arrested a cartoonist after drawings that Muslims said insulted their religion were published in a national newspaper, police and the government said.

A Home Ministry statement said Arifur Rahman’s sketches — titled “Name” — that came out Monday in a weekly supplement of the Prothom Alo — “hurt the religious sentiments of the people.”

[…] “This is a grievous offense, this is dangerous,” said Obaidul Huq, head cleric of the National Baitul Mukarram Mosque.

For saying what?? Muhammad cat?? Uuuuhhhh, what an offense!!  Look here, you’re all ridiculous. The problem is that you have power. If not, these stories would be good in a Groucho Marx’s movie.

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Other news:

1. Big Pharaoh (who is posting again!) is angry at Daily Kos’ gleeing over the death of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the Iraqi sheik who confronted Al-Qaeda and was killed because of that. Another crazy Western bunch of moobats!
2. Condolezza Rice is called “black snake” by Hamas’ TV. Hmm, yeah. I really think that Muslims get really impressed that she is sexy, intelligent -yes, she has screwed up sometimes, but she is intelligent-, is single (so, she has never married, no need of a man to be Secretary of State ), is a woman -very important fact- and is Black. Hmm, yeah, doh!! She is a liberated Western Black woman! What a danger!!!  

Read Full Post »

China, Russia, new Mohammed’s cartoon, Islamism in US, Sarko & Merkel, France regarding Turkey in EU and other items

From Financial Times h/t China Daily:

China criticised Taiwan’s ruling party on Sunday for mobilising its supporters in a rally demanding United Nations membership for the island.

A day after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in two rival marches in support of UN membership, the Taiwan Affairs Office – the Chinese government’s policy body – said that the Beijing authorities were “preparing for a serious situation” without giving any further detail.

China has a standing threat to take military action against Taiwan if the island were to declare formal independence.

Chinese don’t like democracy:

Chinese values exist in a parallel universe, one in which our white is their black and their black our white. The United States and China can form a symbiotic relationship, one that benefits mankind and stabilizes the rest of the century, but only if the U.S. rejects cultural absolutism. When we open our eyes to how they perceive things, we will not like what we see. But we have no choice, unless we prefer conflict to co-existence.

China is not evolving towards democracy in the Western sense (i.e., one-man-one vote, not merely distaste for corruption). Even more unsettling to Americans is that “new generation” Chinese, in some ways so much “like us,” do not want democracy. Advertising folk fancy themselves as quasi-anthropologists, perched at the intersection of Commerce and Culture. During my nine years in Shanghai, I have learned how to sell Nikes to mainland teenagers (avoid brash, U.S.-style rebellion) and HSBC Premier accounts to the nouveau riche (alchemize superior service into life advancement). By probing minds for “insight” – i.e., deep motivations that explain behavior – we can sell more Kellogg’s cold cereal and Lipton milk tea. But we can also, almost inadvertently, uncover riddles that lie at heart of China’s surging, irrepressibly dynamic economy.

Hmm, interesting defense of relativism. If we consider that our values are the best, why on earth are we not going to defend them?

If we assume that we have no choice but to recognise our values are not universal, that our values are not natural to human beings, that they are not given by birth to each and all human beings just because they are such, then we are recognising that we consider that not all human beings are equal. And that we can divide them between 1st class ones and second class ones.

And that would be against human dignity and, as such, totally unjust.

Whatever this professor says about China -and knowing that the reality is that Chinese are both very nationalistic and have a culture of more than 3000 years-, Western countries must stick to our values, and defend them wherever they can be defended. The rest of the world is not going to do it. If we value our civilization and its values and consider that they are worth the effort, that is.

At the same time, China does not want an open conflict with the Vatican and is going to install the new Vatican-approved Catholic Bishop.

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From Russia: after Putin, is going to be another ex-KGB in the Kremlin?

The Russian wanted by Britain on suspicion of killing Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko said on Monday he would stand for election to parliament and would like to become president of Russia.

Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB security service officer, said he would represent the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), which is headed by ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. (that moron who wanted to oblige single Russian women to marry in polygamy with Russian men, because that way Russian blood was not mixed with foreign people and Russian single women would marry at last... and supported Chechen #@€#@€ Kadyrov in polygamy. I repeat: WHAT A MORON! -un badulaque total – ).

He denied seeking immunity from prosecution that election to parliament would give him. Russian prosecutors have said there was no basis for a criminal case against him, he said.

When asked by a reporter what other political aspirations he had beyond being a member of parliament, Lugovoy said with a smile: “Like any other citizen of the Russian Federation, I would like to be president.”

😯

You get the picture. 😡

American Thinker Blog compares Lugovoy with Catherine de Médici. 😆

Interview (very interesting) to Rostislav Vylegzhanin, the founder of Real.info news, the first Russian citizen journal in the internet:

Can you tell me about your Citizen Journalism activities? How did it get started? How is it doing? How does traditional media view what you are doing?

If it is ok, I will quote my report for OhmyNews International Forum 2007. [Shel note: I did some extracting and condensing to the following portion-SI]

Practically all Russian TV is state-owned and “censored” (I use quote marks because censorship is Constitutionally prohibited but exists de facto). Most Russian national newspapers are also controlled by authorities. Most regional media is controlled by regional governments.

There are only a few independent national radio stations, as well as a few national independent newspapers. Some regions have independent media, but practically all of them are under pressure.

Freedom of press has been gradually worsening since 2000, when Vladimir Putin took office.

I have to state that we have no freedom of expression and freedom of press in today’s Russia. It means that mass media doesn’t play a watchdog role for democracy and doesn’t serve public interest as they must.

Only the Internet still remains as an absolutely free mediasphere in Russia where all viewpoints can be expressed, where all political leanings are represented. [well, this is familiar to me… in Spain happens more or less the same… ).

I don’t know why authorities haven’t tried to control the Internet yet. Maybe because only one-third of Russians use it, so the Internet is less influential than TV.

Thus, it’s not surprising that blogs became popular for hosting public discussions on topics the traditional mass media ignore and for spreading information that cannot be published or broadcast by Big Media.

The American blog-hosting service LiveJournal.com has become especially popular in Russia. Today it hosts about one million Russian blogs who come form intellectual elite, journalists, politicians, active citizens and so on. LiveJournal represents Russian civic society as it is. That’s why the roots of citizen journalism and citizen reporting in Russia are in LiveJournal.

Until last November, there were no citizen journalism sites in the Russian part of the Web, ones like OhmyNews and many other sites that attract user-created news stories just weren’t here.

I graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations in summer of last year. My diploma work was about blogs and citizen journalism. Being inspired by successful examples of citizen journalism sites in the US and, of course, by OhmyNews, I had strong desire to launch the first Russian site that would attract citizen reporting and become a mass-medium without any kind of censorship that affects traditional media.

[…] 3. So, is there a future for citizen journalism in Russia?

What makes me optimistic is the speed of growth in the Russian blogosphere.

But still, there is a long way to go before we can bring the culture of citizen journalism to Russia. Because citizen journalism isn’t only blogging.

Realno.info will continue work in this sphere. Now we’re preparing the second Moscow conference on citizen media, which will take place in Moscow next spring. I hope, we’ll be able to invite some of you to this conference to speak about your own experiences in citizen journalism.

Real.info news (in Russian).

And both China and Russia are spying heavily on US:

– China and Russia are spying on the United States nearly as much as they did during the Cold War, according to the top U.S. intelligence official.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, says in testimony prepared for a Tuesday congressional hearing that a law passed last month expanding the U.S. government’s eavesdropping power is needed to protect not just against terrorists but also against more traditional potential adversaries, such as those two Cold War foes.

“China and Russia’s foreign intelligence services are among the most aggressive in collecting against sensitive and protected U.S. systems, facilities and development projects, and their efforts are approaching Cold War levels,” McConnell says in his testimony. “Foreign intelligence information concerning the plans, activities and intentions of foreign powers and their agents is critical to protect the nation and preserve our security.”

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I have written about the new Mohammed cartoons, Muslims have protested about. Al-Qaeda has menaced the cartoonist “with slaughtering him like a lamb“, peaceful and merciful and … way of expressing dissent. Now the cartoonist has been obliged to go into hiding.

The Swedish cartoonist at the centre of a row over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad says police have taken him to a secret location for his own safety.

Lars Vilks said he was only able to pick up a few things when he returned from Germany at the weekend before police escorted him from his home.

The purported head of al-Qaeda in Iraq has offered $100,000 (£49,310) to anyone who kills Mr Vilks.

Muslims regard visual representation of the Prophet as blasphemous.

Several Muslim countries have protested against the cartoon.

Mr Vilks said the Swedish secret services considered the threat against him as “very serious”.

“The police guard was non-existent before this. It’s 100% now,” Mr Vilks said in a telephone interview with Associated Press agency.

“I can’t live in my home, I’ve only been allowed to pick up some things.”

Makes me feel wonderful…. 😡 Mr Fundamentalist/Muslim/ whatever you want to call yourself, look quietly and directly into my eyes: It is only a cartoon. Don’t you think that Allah, if he was really angry, would not kill him immediately, without any of you meddling in the affair?

From Counterterrorism Blog: there are some questions to make about this affair:

1. Why would al Qaeda Iraq and not another branch offer such a bounty? The Cartoonist is Swedish and the al Qaeda Iraq fights against the US in Iraq. Where is the link here? Many voices in the debate on the War on Terror have been saying that al Qaeda came to Iraq just because the US invaded the country. What about Sweden? (No, Sweden is not in Iraq 🙄 ).
2. Why is al Qaeda-Iraq offering a bounty for the killing of an editor in Scandinavia? Why offering money for Jihad? Well, when a Jihadi group begins to offer financial rewards, it means that the ideological reward isn’t enough. Hmmm….
3. Will such a call be heeded in Sweden? Does al Qaeda have cells -dormant or not- that far north? Reports tells us that the Salafists are propagating this ideology across Scandinavia. Very few realized that an assassination of a film maker in Amsterdam was imaginable before Theo Van Gogh was killed.

4. Will al Qaeda or other Jihadists attack Swedish companies or individuals worldwide? In fact orders were given but it depends on whom would consider themselves the “infantry” and actually take action. It will also depend on what the Swedish Government and Multinational Corporations would state in public or do in private. Sweden has had decades of neutrality regarding many challenges in international relations, and its foreign policy wasn’t comparable at all to NATO countries in their struggle against Terror. However, this is the greatest litmus test yet to be addressed.

We will see how this evolves.

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American Thinker blog writes about US swifting slowly into the Umma (my goodness):

One small step at a time, America is joining the umma, the global community of nations dominated by Islam. The latest example comes from Indianapolis, where the new billion dollar-plus airport terminal will include foot bath facilities designed specifically for the use of Muslim cab drivers performing ritual ablutions.
The blog Advance Indiana raises the right questions about this misguided enterprise:

If the foot baths are for everybody’s use, as [airport spokesman] Dawson contends, why aren’t they being installed in all of the bathrooms at the new airport? And if they are being installed to accommodate Muslim taxi cab drivers as is obviously the case, then why aren’t similar accommodations being provided for Muslim airline passengers who patronize the airport? It looks like a slippery slope to me. What do you think?

[…] While it may seem harmless to some to enable Muslim cab drivers to perform this ritual, the fact is that similar accommodations would never be tolerated for other religious groups (how about Holy Water founts for Catholic passengers praying for safety prior to boarding flights?). This is evidence that will be understood by Muslims seeking to establish the Global Caliphate that America lacks the will to oppose their domination, so long as it takes one step at a time. Treating Islam more favorably than other religions is demanded by Muslims and accommodated whenever they attain a critical mass. It is a sure indicator of Dhimmitude.

As Dumb OX says “We’re surrounded by idiots. Defend yourself“.

Jihad against schools: Jihad Boom Postcards with threatening cartoons sent to nine schools h/t Pamela:

Investigators in Marion County, Fla., are searching for the author of nine postcards sent to different schools on the same day with the words Jihad-Boom and handwritten cartoons of a building apparently exploding with people inside.

Investigators released the postcards with the threatening drawings on them Monday in hopes of generating leads in the case. Officials said that the postcards are made up of various and traditional themes, and each one has a distinctive hand-drawn cartoon on it. Several of the threats arrived on postcards featuring Walt Disney World. Detectives said the threat-maker crossed his or her No. 7s and attached a suffix to the address. Six of the nine postcards spell the word “Jihad” correctly, while the others are incorrect.

Go and read her post.

Related post: Could US suffer a new Beslan?

This would be a slight modification from the plan…

And no, nothing has been said of this in Spain.

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Sarko offers nukes to Germany but Merkel refuses citing Non Proliferation Treaty h/t I think therefore I err:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t mention the bomb right away. Instead, he took a little detour by way of atomic energy: Whoever is serious about averting global warming should build more nuclear power plants, he told Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during last week’s informal meeting in Meseberg palace (more…), the German government’s guest residence north of Berlin. Then came the surprise offer.

Seeing as they were discussing the benefits of all things atomic, the French president continued, he had another suggestion as well: Because the French nuclear umbrella protected France’s neighbors as well as La Grande Nation itself, perhaps the Germans would consider taking a political stake in the French atomic arsenal?

Both the chancellor and her foreign minister were speechless. The idea of possessing nuclear weapons is taboo in Germany. Sarzoky’s predecessor Jacques Chirac cautiously brought up the issue 12 years ago, but he quickly realized it was pointless to pursue it.

Steinmeier was the first to regain his composure, explaining that Germany did not seek to become a nuclear power, which is why the country had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1975. Merkel offered a friendly smile and backed up her foreign minister.

Hmmm, don’t know what to make of this really…

From Gallia Watch:

An article in Le Figaro brings us the not-unexpected news that France may be actively aiding and abetting the entry of Turkey in the EU. Until now, article 88-5 of the French Constitution required a referendum before a new candidate country could be officially admitted to the body. However that may be changing:

During a meeting of Edouard Balladur’s committee on institutional reform, secretary of State for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet’s suggestion that article 88-5 of the Constitution be eliminated came as a bolt out of the blue.

The referendum had been sought by Jacques Chirac, then voted on by French parliamentarians at a convention in 2005 in Versailles, and is supposed to apply to all new memberships following that of Croatia in 2010, hence Turkey in particular. “Is it necessary to keep this requirement, or should we eliminate it?” asked Jean-Pierre Jouyet, who quickly added that it would be rather “delicate” to go back on a commitment that lies at the heart of the Constitution. The secretary of State declared that he was expressing his own personal opinion. Huh!

😯

Related news: Kouchner, French FM, says world must be prepared to go to war over Iran’s nuclear program. The ayatollahs answer:

“The occupants of the Elysee (the French presidential palace) have become the executors of the will of the White House and have adopted a tone that is… even more inflammatory and more illogical than that of Washington,” IRNA news agency said.
On Monday Mr Kouchner said even in the absence of UN action, the European Union should prepare its own sanctions against Iran.
Following talks in Paris, his Dutch counterpart Maxime Verhagen said his government would be willing “to apply EU sanctions in common with the United States sanctions“.
Mr Kouchner later travelled to Moscow, where he is to hold talks with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday.
Russia has a UN Security Council veto over any new sanctions, and its support is seen as vital for any new approach to try to force Iran to give up enrichment.

But, hey, from Deustche-Welle:

In a bid to play down the controversy, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Monday, Sept. 17, that tensions with Iran were “extreme” but insisted there was still room for diplomacy in the nuclear stand-off.

“Everything must be done to avoid war,” Fillon told reporters. “The Iranians must understand that tension has reached an extreme point.”

While saying that Kouchner was right to call the situation with Iran dangerous, Fillon added that a confrontation was “the last option that any political leader would want.”

The French foreign minister called on the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Tehran outside of those imposed by the United Nations.

“These would be European sanctions that each country, individually, must put in place with its own banking, commercial and industrial system,” Kouchner said.

And now, the hilarious part, considering that Iran keeps on menacing Israel (and please take a look at the photo in the link ):

Iranian Vice-President Reza Aghazadeh, who is also the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Western countries “have always chosen the path of confrontation instead of the path of understanding and cordial relations.”

Of course Ahmi has ever chosen the peaceful way with Israel….

And lastly, two photos. A lady reciting a poem to Ahmadine-jihad (how many whiskies, ehh, well, you understand me, has she had before that…):

Uuuyyyyyyyy, Ahmi, what a smile….  You must be careful: Do you remember Khatami shaking hands with a young lady in Italy and the following scandal? Well, he has a legal suite awaiting for him at court. 😆

And now the ayatollah (I think it’s Rafsanjani…), learning to use a computer:

Hmm, take care, it’s a Western computer. What are you going to search with that?

Both pictures thanks to Kamangir.net.

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About Syrian-North Korean affair, read this entire post by One Free Korea, because it analyses the different theories about the Israeli strike on Syria last week. I’m only reproducing an excerpt which is interesting enough about what we really know:

North Korea is believed to be the source of North Korea’s SCUD-C missiles and precursors for its chemical weapons, but the transfer of nuclear weapons, equipment, or technology would be a major escalation of that relationship. Diplomats have noted considerable escalation in the cooperation betweent the two nations recently. Both the Times of London, quoting Israeli sources, and Fox News, quoting American sources, note increased sightings of Syrians moving in and out of North Korea by air and by rail, via China . It wasn’t all whispers and surveillance, either:

On August 14, the North Korean minister of foreign trade, Rim Kyong Man, was in Syria to sign a protocol on “co-operation in trade and science and technology.” His delegation held the fifth meeting of a “joint economic committee” with its Syrian counterparts. No details were disclosed. [Times of London]

We had previously heard that Iranians were present at the July 4, 2006 missile tests in North Korea. The Times now reports that Syrians were present, too (you can’t help wondering how they know that). Readers may even recall that after the Ryongchon explosion, one theory had it that the explosive substance was Syrian-bound missile fuel, and that the explosion killed several Syrian scientists.

Finally, the Times claims that Syria has served as a transshipment conduit for missiles components and technology headed from Iran for Syria. IMHO, that one just defies logic. Iran has plenty of perfectly fine seaports, while Iran and Syria don’t even share a land border. (doesn’t seem very logical, no… )

The world’s going nuts… And what suprises are in the making?

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Other news:

1. Augean Stables wants you to sign this petition.
2. Instapundit: GOOD THING WE HAVEN’T abandoned them yet. “American commanders in southern Iraq say Shiite sheiks are showing interest in joining forces with the U.S. military against extremists, in much the same way that Sunni clansmen in the western part of the country have worked with American forces against Al Qaeda.” 😆

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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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Islamism round-up: Russian Muslims vs. Orthodox Church, USA in African horn, UK mosques, praising 11-9 suicide bombers, a bath at the sea, a courageous Catholic Bishop (+) and another Pakistani Buddha nearly destroyed

Oopssssssssss, the seeds planted by Orthodox Patriarc Alexis weren’t fruitless. After defending the Iranian-Russian relationship as a way to build a new multipolar world and stating that “it is only adherents to traditional religions, first of all the Orthodox and Muslims, who can give ‘an appropriate response to the challenges of the time“, now the Orthodox Church is confronting a new challenge by … Muslims.

The Government wants to introduce a new optional subject about Orthodox culture. The no. 2 of the Orthodox Church, Kirill, has said that “In URSS there were a lot of people who was taught atheism. They were professional atheists. This people did not disappear. As there are also ultraliberals. But the overwhelming majority of the Russian people is backing this new subject“.

But the religious Muslim authorities have united themselves with the laicists, to prevent the introduction of this subject in the Russian teaching system. The VP of the Russian Muftis’ Council has accused the Orthodox Chruch of “clericalising” the Russian society. One of the most known teologians of the Russian Orthodox Chruch, Father Andrei Kurayev, has proposed the expulsion of the Mufti to the Gulf Persian States, where they practise the secularism that he likes so much.

But the curious thing is that, while the Muslim religious authorities want to prevent the teaching of this optional subject of Orthodox Culture, in the Russian republics where Islam is majority, as Chechenya, the Muslim traditions are taught in schools. What is more, the Muftis consider that some ethnic (!!!! Isn’t this racism???) groups like Tartars, wherever they live, have a right to receive Muslim education, because historically they have belonged to Muslim religion.

ACTUALIDAD » Los musulmanes rusos se oponen a que se enseñe en las escuelas la religión cristiana

Related news: Putin dissolves Russian Government. h/t Kate.

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America is quietly expanding its fight against terror on the African front. Two years ago the United States set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with nine countries in central and western Africa. There is no permanent presence, but the hope is to generate support and suppress radicalism by both sharing U.S. weapons and tactics with friendly regimes and winning friends through a vast humanitarian program assembled by USAID, including well building and vocational training. In places like Chad, American Special Forces train and arm police or border guards using what it calls a “holistic approach to counterterrorism.” Sgt. Chris Rourke, a U.S. Army reservist in a 12-man American Civil Affairs unit living in Dire Dawa, in eastern Ethiopia, says it comes down to this: “It’s the Peace Corps with a weapon.”

Let’s hope this is not like Somalian campaign.

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Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect, whose next possible leader loathes Western values and calls on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, reports The Times of London.

Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain.

The ultra-conservative (yes, you know, it’s a mixture between Bush, Aznar and Sarkozy What a moron!) movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.

Ul Haq, 36, was educated and trained at an Islamic seminary in Britain and is part of a new generation of British imams who share a similar radical agenda. He heaps scorn on any Muslims who say they are “proud to be British” and argues that friendship with a Jew or a Christian makes “a mockery of Allah’s religion”.

Seventeen of Britain’s 26 Islamic seminaries are run by Deobandis and they produce 80 percent of home-trained Muslim clerics. Many had their studies funded by local education authority grants. The sect has significant representation on the Muslim Council of Britain. It is strongest in the towns and cities of the Midlands and northern England.

Marvellous…

Richard has posted about it here, where he underlines that in US more than 80% of the mosques (2002) were funded by Saudi Arabia and were preaching Wahabbi ideology.

Now a question: how many Spanish mosques are in this situation?

Cult of Death h/t Eursoc:

Gathering what we can from the works of such thinkers as Sayyid Qutb, Abul Ala Mawdudi, and Abu Bakr Naji (the author of The Management of Savagery), and from various pronouncements, fatwas, ultimatums, death threats, and suicide notes, we may compare radical Islam with the thanatoid political movements we know most about, namely Bolshevism and Nazism (to each of which Islamism is indebted). Of the many affinities that emerge, we may list, to begin with, some secondary characteristics. The exaltation of a godlike leader; the demand, not just for submission to the cause, but for utter transformation in its name; a self-pitying romanticism; a hatred of liberal society, individualism, and affluent inertia (or Komfortismus); an obsession with sacrifice and martyrdom; a morbid adolescent rebelliousness combined with a childish love of destruction; “agonism”, or the acceptance of permanent and unappeasable contention; the use and invocation of the very new and the very old; a mania for purification; and a ferocious antiSemitism.

“But these are incidentals. Thanatism derives its real energy, its fever and its magic, from something far more radical. And here we approach a pathology that may in the end be unassimilable to the nonbelieving mind. I mean the rejection of reason – the rejection of the sequitur, of cause and effect, of two plus two. Strikingly, in their written works and their table talk, Hitler and Stalin (and Lenin) seldom let the abstract noun reason go by without assigning a scornful adjective to it: worthless reason, craven reason, cowardly reason. When those sanguinary yokels, the Taleban, chant their slogan, “Throw reason to the dogs”, they are making the same kind of Faustian gamble: crush reason, kill reason, and anything and everything seems possible – the restored Caliphate, for instance, presiding over a planetary empire cleansed of all infidels. To transcend reason is of course to transcend the confines of moral law; it is to enter the illimitable world of insanity and death.”

Eursoc has also some thoughts about the Committee of Ex-Muslims I posted about yesterday.

__________________________________

From Red Alerts:

The Jihad Fields are Calling has a post up celebrating the terror attacks of 9/11 and lavishing praise on the attackers and Osama bin Ladin. It’s long and as tedious as anything else Mujahid writes, so I’ll excerpt the only part that will interest you:

On the 6th Anniversary of the Blessed Attacks of September 11 it is our message to all the Americans and their allies. The Blessed Attacks of September 11 was just the beginning, by these blessed attacks we drag you to your graves in Afghanistan and Iraq, your countries and governments faced in these lands the worst humiliation in their history. But all what is happened to your countries yet is nothing.

But “The Jihad Fields are Calling” has been erased. No more calls. Why the authors deleted the blog? I’m just wondering…

__________________________________

And now, a photo: “Sea-bathing”

What a perspective!! Don’t know what this commenter would say about this photo, but I just can only say about dressing like that: She is even wearing GLOVES… for sea-bathing….

Both burqa and niqab produce severe health problems, as you can see here, here, here, here .

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Catholic Bishop urges to defend Europe and avoid Euroarabia:

Warsaw, Sep. 11, 2007 (CWNews.com) – During a Mass celebrated on September 11 to mark the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US, the head of the Polish military chaplaincy appealed for a defense of Christian culture, particularly in Europe.

Bishop Tadeusz Ploski, the head of the military ordinariate, said that the Christian heritage of the European continent should be preserved and warned against the development of “Euroarabia.”

With representatives of the Polish military leadership in attendance along with Orthodox and Lutheran chaplains, Bishop Ploski issued a reminder that September 11 is also the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, which he described as “Islam’s greatest defeat.”

Thank God, Muskens is not the only Catholic Bishop…

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Fausta posts about the attack on one Pakistani Buddha.

Suspected pro-Taleban militants have tried to blow up an ancient carving of Buddha in north-west Pakistan.
…
The area has seen a rise in attacks on “un-Islamic” targets in recent months.

Are we listening, UN??? Are we going to do something this time?

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September 11 (+)

Because the Pentagon was also attacked on Sept 11. (I know that the Twin Towers are a symbol, but everyone I have read is remembering them. And the people who died on the Pentagon also deserve a remembrance).

😳 I was forgetting. A group of young ex-Muslims are launching today a campaign for the right to abandon Islam, without reprisals. h/t O Insurgente.

Ehsan Jami, the committee’s founder, who rejected Islam after the attack on the twin towers in 2001, has become the most talked-about public figure in the Netherlands. He has been forced into hiding after a series of death threats and a recent attack.

(+)  Lawhawk has a magnificent post with updates about Ground Zero. h/t Carl in Jerusalem.

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Terrorism update: Algeria, Pakistan, Germany and Bin Laden’s new hair color (+) (+)

At least 28 people have been killed and many others injured after a car bomb exploded at a barracks housing coastguard officials in Algeria. The country’s official news agency quoted local officials who said the explosion occurred in the northern coastal town of Dellys. That’s about 50 kilometres from Algiers. The attack came just two days after another bombing killed at least 20 in a crowd of people in eastern Algeria who were waiting to see visiting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Car bomb kills 28 in Algeria | At a Glance | Deutsche Welle | 08.09.2007

Bombing in Algeria Kills 28

Forbes – 3 hours ago
By HASSANE MEFTAHI 09.08.07, 2:39 PM ET A car bombing killed 28 coast guard officers in Algeria on Saturday, just days after a blast ripped through a crowd waiting for the president.

[…] Although there was no claim of responsibility in either attack, al-Qaida’s North African affiliate has carried out a spate of recent bombings that have shattered the Algerian government’s efforts – successful until recently – to restore calm after a 15-year Islamist insurgency.

The government has responded by intensifying military crackdowns on Islamic militants hiding out in remote scrubland. Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni warned terrorists Friday that they have “one choice: turn themselves in, or die.”

In Saturday’s blast, explosives planted in a van ripped through barracks in the northern coastal town of Dellys, about 30 miles from the capital, Algiers. The bombing appeared timed to kill as many officers as possible, when they were grouped together to raise the flag.

It was not immediately clear whether the bomber was killed in the blast or escaped.

The 28 victims were all coast guard officials, hospital authorities said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. About 20 others were injured.

Suicide bomb kills 28 in Algeria AFP
Second bombing hits Algeria CNN
Euronews.net – magharebia.com – Xinhua – Voice of America
all 738 news articles

According to abc.es, it has killed 30 and wounded 47.

Noisy Room.Net has more.

UN has condemned the attack. The terrorists must be trembling … 😦

About North African affiliate, the Al-Qaida organization for the Islamic Maghreb, click here. (+) It has already claimed both attacks.

For implications for Spanish national security, click here.

For other attacks on Maghreb by the same group, click here.

Related news about Algeria: 5 sentenced for preaching Christianity. “Five people were sentenced earlier in June for charges related preaching Christian doctrine and public order offences by virtue of the law on the religious practice in Algeria approved by the government in 2006. The sentences vary between one year sentence with no remission and one year suspended sentence with a 5000 AD fine.”

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Pakistan has been placed on high alert:

Pakistan’s airports have been placed on high alert, with officials saying the threat of a terror attack is imminent. The government has also banned gatherings of five or more people near Rawalpindi’s international airport. The moves come just days before exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is expected to return to Pakistan to challenge President Pervez Musharraf in elections, despite a call from a Saudi official urging him to stay away.

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About the German plot:

German media report that the three suspected Islamist militants accused of planning attacks against American targets in Germany had orders to act by September 15 and knew police were hot on their trail before their arrest. According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men were given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by German police in late August. The plan was foiled on Tuesday when police arrested two German converts to Islam and a Turkish national in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Prosecutors say the men had obtained material to make bombs with power equal to 550 kilograms of TNT.

As a result of the plot, Germany considers increased spying on Muslims.h/t Stefania.

This was “something new, and not in a good way,” said Col. Christopher Langdon of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies . They “came from the white German population. They were very traditional German residents who converted and radicalized. These bombers were not Pakistani or Moroccan. That is raising eyebrows.”

Anti-terror forces had been concerned primarily with first or second generation Muslim immigrants – not white Europeans.

Guenther Beckstein , the interior minister in the German state of Bavaria and a conservative leader of the southern wing of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party , has called for a new law authorizing online surveillance of Islamic converts.

“Germans converting to Islam should be watched because they tend to show particular fanaticism in order to prove worthy of their new religion,” he said Thursday.

The number is growing, according to the German Islam archive. In the last decade, only about 300 Germans each year converted to Islam. But in 2005, the number rose to 1,000, and it jumped to 4,000 in 2006.

Well, the fanatism in new converts is not new. Normally they were used to guard the non-converts, as they were much more cruel than the Muslims themselves. And for the same reason…

And Bin Laden has been searching for “blue-eyed terrorists” since the beginning: less police control, less suspicions arisen in the neighbourhood…

US intercept key in German terror plot
Police News – 22 hours ago

By Dirk Laabs, Sebastian Rotella and Josh Meyer BERLIN, Germany – A US intelligence intercept of suspicious communications between Pakistan and Stuttgart was the initial break that ultimately led to the arrest this week of three suspected Muslim accused of plotting massive car bomb attacks here against Americans, U.S. and German officials said Thursday.

The communications detected last year referred to apparent terrorist activity, the German and U.S. officials said in interviews. The German officials characterized the communications as specific and alarming. All the officials asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

American authorities passed the lead to German police, who conducted a painstaking investigation that led to the arrests of the three suspects, two of whom are German converts to Islam. Police here suspected that militants were communicating with Pakistan from an Internet cafe, a frequent strategy to avoid detection, but they did not know which one. So they deployed surveillance teams at several dozen Internet cafes around the city, officials said.

The stakeouts paid off when police spotted a 28-year-old convert who was already known as an associate of Islamic militants and has been identified as Fritz Gelowicz.

And:

About 300 investigators worked round-the-clock for nine months to monitor the alleged plotters. Using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment of their own, the Germans watched and listened as the suspected cell coalesced and amassed a stash of bomb-making materials.

Oops, they were listened! For months! And they only had some hairdresser’s equipment to dye hairs! (perhaps bin Laden’s… ) .

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You’ll never guess who is thought to be the author of the new Bin Laden’s video….

More about the video:

Osama bin Laden’s latest message is a hodgepodge of anti-capitalist vitriol, impassioned Islamic evangelism and what can best be described as a twisted attempt at reconciliation: Join us, or we’ll kill you.

Analysts say the video that came out days before the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is more about timing than substance, an attempt by history’s most wanted fugitive to thumb his nose at the forces arrayed against him and remind the world that he hasn’t been caught.

He ridiculed President Bush on Iraq, saying events there have gotten “out of control” and comparing the American leader to “one who plows and sows the sea: He harvests nothing but failure.

infidels are Cool has the video with its complete transcription. Hmm, by the way, Mr. Bin Laden (looks like a Castro’s speech, soooooooooooooo boring), could you just name Al-Mansur’s razzias? Oh, yeah, the Inquisition was a very bad invention, BUT at least they had tribunals. Al-Mansur -to name one of the worst- killed people with no tribunals, Mr, and when it was a woman with a baby, he ordered that her breasts should be cut, so that if she survived, the boy was to be killed by hunger, under the attentive (and painful) look of his/her mother. So, just spare that tone of moral superiority. Spain knew what was like that kind of “we are morally superior, so pay jizya or die“. Although that was long enough and… a lot of people have forgotten…

There was another thing that is very interesting, Mr Bin “even-the-flies-get-sleepy-with-my-speech” Laden, and that you forgot to name it. Spain was, during most of the Islamic “ruling” considered as “apostate“, “heretic“… because it “independenced” itself from Damascus/Baghdad’s rule. So our Muslim brethren from Morocco came here twice (almoravids and almohads) to teach aborigines morals, peaceful way. You know, whether they were Muslims, Jews, Christians or just weren’t interested in religion, they were killed because they were not in the same line of thought.

It’s curious, Mr Bin “even-the-flies-get-sleepy-with-my-speech” Laden, almoravids and almohads are, ideologically speaking, your ancestors. They also had Mujahideen, they wanted to get the Earth into a Global Caliphate and so on. The only difference is that they did not have Internet, nor TVs, etc, so once they got here, they got tempted by wine, beach and the sunshine, and in one generation, they had totally became like the aborigines….

Yeah, I know, very disagreeable for you, isn’t it? You’re stuck in the XIth century while the rest have evolved.

And no, I don’t get at all impressed by your hairdresser’s work as I told you yesterday… 😈

By the way, it’s curious who was the man who told you about 9-11:

The idea of using suicide pilots to obliterate the skyscrapers of Manhattan originated in 1940s Berlin. “In the latter stages of the war, I never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in a delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame,” wrote Albert Speer in his diary. “He described the skyscrapers turning into huge burning torches and falling hither and thither, and the reflection of the disintegrating city in the dark sky.”

Not only Hitler’s fantasy but also his plan of action foreshadowed September 11: He envisioned having kamikaze pilots fly light aircraft packed with explosives and with no landing gear into Manhattan skyscrapers. The drawings for the Daimler-Benz Amerikabomber from the spring of 1944 show giant four-engine planes with raised undercarriages for transporting small bombers. The bombers would be released shortly before the planes reached the East Coast, after which the mother plane would return to Europe.

😯 Well, well, well… who could have guessed that Al-Qaeda was not even original? Just copying Hitler theories…

(+) An Osama’s cartoon:

Related news: Someone told me once, being mentioned here was like being on CNN. Well, I would never run this show…

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Look who says is going to be very tough on Pakistan… You guessed it right, it is Mr. “I-use-a-SUV-but-citizens-cannot-to-protect-the-environment“… Bwahahahahaha! 😆

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My goodness, what a foolish world we live in… 🙄

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German terrorist plot, Jihad, China, Thompson runs, demonstrations on Muslim world, Chávez, scandal in F1 and Pavarotti

So, after 8 Islamist terrorists were arrested in Denmark (in 11 raided locations), now the target were US nationals in Germany:

THREE men arrested in Germany had formed a terror cell to carry out “massive” bomb attacks, among the biggest on German soil, authorities say. “They were planning massive attacks,” federal prosecutor Monika Harms told reporters today. She said the suspects had amassed vast amounts of the chemical needed to make the bombs used in the suicide attacks in London in 2005 which killed 56 people.

They planned to attack Frankfurt’s international airport along with the Ramstein Air Base, a key US military hub, Harms said. They also planned to hit and nightspots popular with Americans. “As possible targets for the attacks, the suspects named discotheques and pubs and airports frequented by Americans,” she said.

The trio had trained at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group, officials said. They had procured some 700kg of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. Officials said the 35-per cent solution of hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 550kg of TNT. “This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,” Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s Federal Crime Office, told reporters.

Frankfurt airport terror plan ‘massive’ | Herald Sun

More about the plot in Yahoo.com:

The men — two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a “profound hatred of U.S. citizens” — allegedly obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.

[…] Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.

Islamic radicals “treat the whole Western world as their enemy,” said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.

Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer who is an analyst at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the radical ideology embraced by Islamic militants outweighs national loyalty, noting that many of those arrested in alleged European terror plots in recent years grew up here

A fourth man has been arrested in Lebanon in connection with the German plot to bomb trains and the Lebanese authorities have filed preliminary charges against another five Lebanese and a Syrian.

One of the three suspects (of this September’s plot) was arrested for spying on a U.S. military base in December but was released soon afterwards, federal police Chief Joerg Ziercke said. 😡

[…] German federal prosecutors in June charged a suspected mastermind behind a failed plot to bomb two passenger trains using bombs packed in suitcases last year which failed to explode because of faulty detonators.

Six Lebanese men are currently standing trial in Lebanon over the plot, which  targeted trains in western Germany.

[…] Germany’s elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a town of some 900 people in central Germany, officials said. The third suspect fled out a bathroom window but was caught about 300 yards away, they said.

The suspects were taken before a judge in closed sessions Wednesday at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe and ordered held pending trial.

Prosecutors said the three — identified only as Fritz Martin G., 28; Adem Y., 28; and Daniel Martin S., 21 — first came to the attention of police when one or more of them carried out surveillance of U.S. military facilities in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in late 2006.

Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives — as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.

In diluted form hydrogen peroxide is commonly used in hair coloring and as a disinfectant, but the more than 1,500 pounds obtained by the suspects could have made a bomb with the explosive power of some 1,200 pounds of dynamite, officials said.

😯 /irony on/ But no, you’re thinking very wrongly of these bastards peaceful and loving and caring guys. They perhaps wanted to begin a hairdresser’s business, so they needed a lot of hair coloring… /irony off/ 😈

But that is not the only news coming from Germany today:

German technology has made it into an Iranian nuclear power plant despite an export ban. Prosecutors are investigating the case and the German Foreign Ministry is concerned about the damage to Germany’s credibility.

Dmitry S. is one of those Russian businessmen with a knack for quick deals. A native Uzbek and Russian citizen, he has just completed a major deal in Moscow for beef shipments from Brazil. In his last deal, he supplied half of Siberia with CD players and TVs from Berlin.

But Dmitry S.’s deals are not always so trouble-free. A deal involving industrial equipment attracted the attention of prosecutors and customs investigators to S., who has been doing business in German for more than a decade. The electromagnetic brakes, switchgear, spring elements and special cables that the 46-year-old businessman bought up in Germany between 2001 and 2004 were bound for the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr — a central project in the nuclear program of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Dmitry S. case has since evolved into more than just an ordinary criminal case. Indeed, it touches on highly sensitive international political issues. Proliferation experts working for German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have shown a keen interest in the investigations by prosecutors in Potsdam, near Berlin. And this is not just because, once again, a number of German companies, working hand-in-hand with foreign dealmakers, are suspected of circumventing export bans.

This is marvellous, hein? And the control on weapons, on materials of double use (military and non-military) or their components, where it is???

And by the way, is there any liaison with Putin?

The case’s true political explosiveness lies in the structure of the business relationships it involved. The Potsdam prosecutors now believe that they can prove that Dmitry S. and his now-liquidated Berlin company, Vero Handels GmbH, were involved in the acquisition of illegal material from Germany on behalf of the partially state-controlled Russian nuclear company Atomstroiexport (ASE) — material intended for export to Iran. “It looks as if Putin’s nuclear firm deliberately violated German law,” says one investigator.

Hmm, this does not look any good. Chinese Army hacking computers AND Russian public corporations lying to the same hacked Government about deals with Iran… It puzzles me extremelly… 

Anyway, read this post by Debbie about the link between China, Russia and Iran.

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The Jihad’s objectives: Jihad demands the killings of infidels or their subjugation under Islamic law. Read it all.

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Anyway, in China they are very worried about the bath houses and massage parlours, because of the “growing sex trade“. But, well, they should be happy about it, because the abortions focused mainly on female fetuses (and infanticide on girls) have saved the Chinese environment. [Well, no, not really, China has one of the most poluted atmospheres in the world h/t China Digital Times…].

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And, at last, ex-Law and Order Fred Thompson is running. 😆 I would like to see the expression in Zapatero’s face if he wins… Dumb OX has written a very funny post about this. 😆

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The Hillary Clinton’s fundraiser, Mr. Hsu, has failed to appear in court after the Judge set him for bail reduction hearing. An extraordinary judicial decision, as Fausta notes, considering that he has been a fugitive from the law these last fifteen years:

Hsu turned himself in to authorities last week after more than 15 years on the run from a felony conviction of grand theft. He admitted to defrauding investors of $1 million in a bogus investment scam.

He failed to appear in court for sentencing on that 1991 conviction, a revelation that prompted high profile Democrats — including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — to return thousands of dollars donated by Hsu.

Hmmm,  I would like to see what would have happened if this would have been made by any republican. You know, I haven’t seen this very underlined on Spanish press, but the Craig’s scandal… oh, yeah…

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Yemen: You could be punished by a slogan:

Demonstrations that began in May are continuing in Yemen as the regime takes increasingly repressive and violent measure to quell dissent.

Security forces made mass arrests of demonstrators, prompting more demonstrations. A new law criminalizes slogans. A newspaper is facing terrorism charges for reporting war news in the Sa’ada War. A top member of the Yemeni Socialist Party has been “seized” by security forces.

Interesting development. Normal people in Yemen -don’t think at first it’s the most developed society..- are demonstrating

demanding the release of more than 200 veterans and their sympathizers detained for protesting earlier this month, a police official said.

The protesters are mostly southern Yemeni veterans who lost their jobs after a defeat by northern forces in a civil war 13 years ago.

So, basically they have been jobless for 13 years because they lost a civil war. And now they are detained for demonstrating!! And when others protest that, they are also imprisoned!! 😯

Don’t know what happens today with the demonstrations:

Prominent Saudi reformist Abdullah Al Hamed and his brother brother have been ordered to appear in court on charges including inciting protests by women.

Wow, what a danger, eh? Women demonstrating… by themselves. Oops…

But the best is why they were demonstrating -well, trying to…-: because they want a man to be tried or released from prison. Charges? After the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he was imprisoned for calling for a constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia!

Yes, that’s right. Saudi bombers spreading everywhere, but people calling for democracy are imprisoned on terrorist charges. Pfrrrrrrrrrrrtttttt!

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“Chávez is a danger for democracy“, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa says. Link in Spanish.

He stated that [Chávez] has a “messianic vocation” and blamed his attitude on the petrodollars, which he uses in an irresponsible manner to spread his bolivarian phylosophy, de-stabilising a Hispanic-American democratic Governments“.

He also distinguished between the nearly-dictatorial (or fully-dictatorial as @€#€@# Castro’s brothers) and the democratic left in the area.

But Chávez maybe also a danger for another freedom (yeah, one more, looks impossible… but ): the freedom to name your children as you wish. Now they are going to obliged to choose between 100 names if a new law passes through Parliament. Yeah, I know some of the names are a little bit critizable:

Software searches of the voter registry find more than 60 people of voting age with the first name Hitler, including Hitler Adonys Rodríguez Crespo; eight Hochiminhs, among them Hochiminh Jesús Delgado Sierra; and six Eisenhowers, including Dwight Eisenhower Rojas Barboza.

Who can name Hitler to his son? I would be horrified…

But this measure is a little idiot. I mean, you can forbid that people name their children after famous people. But you cannot impose a list to choose from there.

Another thing is the discrimination this future law makes: the Indians and the foreigners are excluded from the measure. I understand about foreigners -they normally are ruled by the laws of their own country-. But Indians? What happens?? Are they different from the rest?

Then they would say that they have been discriminated and bla, bla, bla…. So, now they are discriminating the non-Indians. 😯

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A little bit of motor sport:  (in Spanish here)

It began innocuously enough with what looked like a patch of soap powder sprinkled across the floor below the two Ferraris awaiting Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa for this year’s Monaco grand prix. From this unlikely starting point it accelerated into arguably the biggest scandal in recent formula one history, possibly blighting Lewis Hamilton’s efforts to win his first British grand prix at Silverstone on Sunday [poor guy who has to ask for help to his daddy against Fernando Alonso… :twisted:, well, if you’re English, err, well, I’m Spanish, 😆], potentially jeopardising the careers of two respected engineers and forcing the McLaren-Mercedes team into such a humiliating corner that they offered up their world championship-leading MP4-22 to a detailed examination by the FIA ruling body in an effort to prove that no element stolen from Ferrari had been incorporated into its design.

The crisis reached its peak on Tuesday morning when Ferrari sacked their British engineer Nigel Stepney on suspicion of industrial espionage and a few hours later McLaren suspended their chief designer, Mike Coughlan, after hundreds of drawings and other technical data relating to this year’s Ferrari F2007 were allegedly found at his home in Surrey. It is understood that Coughlan acquiesced in the search and no legal compulsion had to be sought.

😯

(By the way, in Iran the racing Queen Sedigh has been banned from entering the stadium for the national competitons. What happens, ayatollahs? Do you think she was going to win again? Well, yes… 😡 ).

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Pavarotti has died.

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Beslan, China on hacking, 100th birthday for helicopters, Nike campaign, Ireland, Martyrs’ Monument, Iran and other items (+)

I forgot to write about the Beslan’s anniversary. So I’m linking to Pastorius’ post at IBA about it.

Chechneyan Muslims (with connection to Al Qaeda) stormed an elementary school in Beslan, Chechneya, taking over 1,100 teachers and students hostage. During the ensuing standoff with police, the Jihadis raped young girls, shot teachers, strung the entire school with explosives, and forced children to drink urine.

From the comments:

Beslan is not in Chechya, but in Ingushetia. It is a small autonomous district populated by related but different people, chrystian by their faith.

RIP. And let’s see if Putin learns something…

Infidels are Cool has also another very good post on the subject.

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China denies hacking Pentagon’s computers:

“Some people make groundless accusations against China” that its military attacked the Pentagon, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing.

“China has all along been opposed to and forbids criminal activities undermining computer networks, including hacking,” she said. “China is ready to strengthen cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in countering Internet crimes.”

The Financial Times report said the Pentagon was still investigating how much information was stolen, but cited an unnamed person as saying that most of it was probably unclassified.

[…] The Pentagon warned earlier this year that China’s army is emphasizing hacking as an offensive weapon. It cited Chinese military exercises in 2005 that included hacking “primarily in first strikes against enemy networks.”

The Associated Press reported in July that the State Department was trying to recover from large-scale network break-ins affecting operations worldwide. The hackers appeared to target the department headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea, it was reported.

However, experts have said that China is home to a large number of insecure computers and networks that hackers in other countries could use to disguise their locations and launch attacks.

Well, it’s a good way to disguise an attack from other people, such as terrorists… BUT for China is a golden oportunity: not only they can claim they are innocent, but they can do it and blame others! AND they have been trained for that…

Also UK has complained because the caring and loving and peaceful Taliban are using Chinese-made weapons. This is the most laughable line in all the article: The authorities in Beijing have promised to carry out an investigation. Bet they will say they are sold without permission?

(+) It appears that UK computers have also being hacked from China. What is happening here???

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This year helicopters are 100 years old. See the image gallery from CNETNews.com. The first helicopter was something like this:

In 1907, only a few years had passed since the Wright brothers’ first flight, and automobiles had yet to make much headway against horse-drawn carriages. In France, a number of tinkerers were trying out another novel mode of mechanical locomotion: the helicopter. Well, something vaguely resembling modern helicopters, anyway. But the contraptions did count as the first successful steps, however brief, along the way to manned flight powered by rotary wings. And that makes 2007 the centennial of the helicopter.

Designs by Maurice Leger, Jacques and Louis Breguet, and Paul Cornu all got off the ground in 1907–just barely, and for just a very few seconds. These earliest machines also tended to require steadying from people on the ground. Cornu’s craft, shown here, got airborne in November of that year for as long as 20 seconds at an altitude, if you can call it that, of somewhere between knee-high and eye level. It featured two rotors at opposite ends of the airframe that turned in opposite directions to balance out the torque.

Caption text by Jonathan Skillings, staff writer, CNET News.com Credit: Branger/Getty Images

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New Nike’s marketing campaign. “Being Spanish is not an excuse, it’s a responsibility“.

Just wait and see: all the nationalists from all the autonomous Communities, which call themselves “historic“, are going to boicot Nike…, calling it a “remnant of imperialistic Spain“. 😈

[the man in the picture is Spanish tennis-player Rafael Nadal…]

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Ireland to allow police to wear turbans?

If the uniform requirements of the Garda Reserve were to be waived for a Sikh officer, then they would have to be waived for everyone else who pleaded cultural or religious custom. Male Jewish officers would be allowed to wear the yamulke instead of the cap; female Muslim officers (if their husbands allowed them out) would wear the veil instead of the cap; some might even cover their uniforms with a burqa. Buddhist members (although I’m not sure if their beliefs would allow them to join a force which might be required to use even limited violence against violence) would be able to wear a yellow robe. The possibilities are numerous, and while they might make for a more colourful air around the Phoenix Park and Harcourt Square, it would be the end of uniformity and the discipline it both implies and requires.

Even more to the point, it would further endorse our skewed version of multi-culturalism. The idea of having people of various cultural traditions and ethnic minorities in our defence and garda forces is to ensure integration, not reinforce difference.

I hope they are not revising their previous policy about the uniform…

As Steve says:

Britain opened that Pandora’s Box many years ago when Sikhs were first allowed to ride motorbikes without crash helmets and to work on building sites without hard hats. Their heads are no harder than anyone else’s but health and safety, it seems, took second place to religious feeling.

This reflects our peculiar attitude to cultural minorities which, as I have said before, is a legacy of the Empire. The British establishment would prefer to do deals with the leaders of minority groups than ask them to integrate.

The Met, with its fourteen different minority pressure groups and its concessions to religious demands, is hardly a model to emulate either.

Bad thing altogether. A uniform, as its name says, is to make everyone being the same, to uniform, make all of them of one form, whaever their background. 👿

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from the Persecution Blog: the Martyr’s monument:

More than 70 million Christians have been martyred for their faith since 33 AD. This year an estimated 160,000 believers will die at the hands of their oppressors and over 200 million will be persecuted, arrested, tortured, beaten or jailed. In many nations it is illegal to own a Bible, share your faith, change your faith or allow children under 18 to attend a religious service.

Here is a photo of the monument:

1. See more photos of the monument here.

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More on Iran: Haleh Esfandiari leaves Iran. by Vicki. But as she says:

Continued prayers for the other Iranian-Americans still detained in Iran: Ali Shakeri and Kian Tajbakhsh, who are still imprisoned, and Parnaz Azima, who is free on bail but is being prevented from leaving Iran.

From FFDB:

Iran President Ahmadinejad states he has “PROOF” that the United States will NOT attack Iran.

But, not to be seen as WEAK, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls the United States and West names – “drunken and arrogant” and says that Iran would never yield to Western pressure over its nuclear program.

And this is how Iran could inflict pain on Western countries:

Other interesting fact: new Head of the Revolutionary Guard IS one of the Iranian who kidnapped US Nationals on Nov 4th, 1979.

The appointment of somebody who was involved in taking US hostage, as the commander of a 200,000 strong military force can be interpreted as a provocation in the current cold war between Tehran and Washington. The important question to ask is: how long before such provocations turn into open confrontation? With the massive breakdown in communications and trust between both sides, one could be forgiven for fearing the worst.

Some quotes from Jafari here. Just read them: peaceful, loving guy…

Meanwhile, the former Head of the Revolutionary Guard has stated: “There are 200,000 vulnerable American forces in the region and we have information about all their bases”. 😯

Ayatollah Mojtahedi. “I wish I was a chick“. 😯 He says that then, all the taxis would stop when he wants one.

Ahmadinejad:

“Iran’s telecommunication service should transfer the message of our revolution across the whole world….He said it’s vital that we complete this network of communication and from inside these networks, love, hope, faith and modesty should be suggested and the message of Islamic revolution should be transferred througout the world.”

😯

Do you remember Khatami shaking hands with a young lady in Italy and the following scandal? Well, he has a legal suite awaiting for him at court. 😀

And lastly, a link to laugh about Ahmadinejad:

Hi, my name is Mahmoud Admadinejad. I know it is hard to pronounce so you guys can just call me “Spanky.” After all that is what my Iranian school yard chums nicknamed me.
Listen, I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I’m not all that bad of a guy. Sure the Bush administration is out to paint me as a tyrant and a fascist, but hey, we all know he is really the evil one. Right? Good, now that we have the pleasantries aside, I have some important things to talk about with you, the American people.
If you’ve been too busy ogling scantily clad women in the streets of your American cities you might not have noticed that I’ve been spending some time with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But our alliance isn’t about taking over the West or usurping America’s place in the world, and it isn’t even about how good “Vladi” looks without his shirt off.
Umm, not that I’ve noticed or anything…I just…err…we were just attending this Democratic debate and well…don’t ask, don’t tell.

😆 Just read it all…

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Other interesting posts to read:

Terrorist attack hits Pakistan. by Sheik Yermami.

5000 new rifles, but no milk from Venezuela. by John Lilyea.

The Dying Soar of a Syphilitic Hunchback. by Scipio. About Russian situation. A very interesting post, really.

Danish police arrest suspected terrorists. by Astute Bloggers.

Abortions on demand in the UK. by David Vance. “in some cases, with the procedure just being carried out by a nurse“. 😯 And the health of the mother how is protected is these cases? -the unborn, well, I even don’t mention that little detail. But as abortions are mostly done to protect the mothers’ health…-.

His “Crime”? He wasn’t a Muslim. by Jeremayakovka. WARNING! Extremely graphic image of this slaughter in Southern Thailand. 😦 😡

Last but not least, to laugh a bit, read this post by Kate. 😆

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Chinese hackers on Pentagon, Sudan, Microsoft, Che’s hair, desecration of cemeteries, photos, Iran, Jihadi “love”, censorship, SIOEC and Muslim clerics vs kisses

Some days ago I wrote about Chinese hackers on German computers, now it’s on US Pentagon’s computers:

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.

Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.

One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence…trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.

China Military Hacked Into Pentagon « Status of Chinese People

😯

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So now, NYT is worried about Arabs kiling Arabs in Sudan…:

Some of the same Arab tribes accused of massacring civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan are now unleashing their considerable firepower against one another in a battle over the spoils of war that is killing hundreds of people and displacing tens of thousands.

In the past several months, the Terjem and the Mahria, heavily armed Arab tribes that United Nations officials said raped and pillaged together as part of the region’s notorious janjaweed militias, have squared off in South Darfur, fighting from pickup trucks and the backs of camels. They are raiding each other’s villages, according to aid workers and the fighters themselves, and scattering Arab tribesmen into the same kinds of displacement camps that still house some of their earlier victims.

United Nations officials said that thousands of gunmen from each side, including some from hundreds of miles away, were pouring into a strategic river valley called Bulbul, while clashes between two other Arab tribes, the Habanniya and the Salamat, were intensifying farther south.

Darfur’s violence has often been characterized as government-backed Arab tribes slaughtering non-Arab tribes, but this new Arab-versus-Arab dimension seems to be a sign of the evolving complexity of the crisis. What started out four years ago in western Sudan as a rebellion and brutal counterinsurgency has cracked wide open into a fluid, chaotic, confusing free-for-all with dozens of armed groups, a spike in banditry and chronic attacks on aid workers.

No, honey, this is just racism, because the Arabs from the North are white while the Arabs on the South are Black. (By the way, they are not Arabs, they are Muslims…)

By the way, Ban Ki-Moon is in Sudan to press for new talks:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is in Sudan to “give a push” for a new round of talks to end the four-year regional conflict and mobilize support for the speedy deployment of a new 26,000-member peacekeeping force, a top U.N. official said Monday.

Ban was expected to have dinner with President Omar al-Bashir before heading to southern Sudan on Tuesday to assess implementation of the 2005 agreement that ended a separate 21-year civil war between Sudan’s Muslim government in the north and the mostly Christian southern rebels.

He was then due Wednesday in Darfur to visit a camp for some of the 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict there, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives.

“It is important to move on several fronts,” Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, told reporters traveling with Ban. This is why the secretary-general has come to Sudan at this time, he said.

After his behaviour with NK, I don’t quite consider him really pushing for anything anywhere…

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Microsoft copying Google:

This week, it plans to turn that strategy upside down, making available free software that connects its Windows operating system to software services delivered on the Internet, a practice increasingly referred to as “cloud” computing. The initiative is part of an effort to connect Windows more seamlessly to a growing array of Internet services.

The strategy is a major departure for Microsoft, which primarily sells packaged software for personal computers. With this new approach, Microsoft hopes to shield its hundreds of millions of software customers from competitors like Google and Salesforce.com, which already offer software applications through the Internet.

Microsoft’s new Windows Live software suite includes an updated electronic mail program, a photo-sharing application and a writing tool designed for people who keep Web logs.

The new service is an indication that Microsoft plans to compete head-on against archrival Google and others, and not only in the search-engine business where it is at a significant disadvantage. Instead, Microsoft will try to outmaneuver its challengers by becoming the dominant digital curator of all a user’s information, whether it is stored on a PC, a mobile device or on the Internet, industry executives and analysts said.

Well, this is not a surprise…

Brian Hall, general manager for Microsoft’s Windows Live services, said, “We’re taking the communications and sharing components and creating a set of services that become what we believe is the one suite of services and applications for personal and community use across the PC, the Web and the phone.”

The Windows Live service — which will be found at www.live.com — includes new versions of the company’s Hotmail and Messenger communications services as well as Internet storage components. Microsoft executives said there were roughly 300 million active users each on the Hotmail and Messenger services, with some overlap.

The software release will offer PC users the option of downloading a set of the services with a single Unified Installer program, or as separate components. The individual services are Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Windows Live OneCare Family Safety, a computer security program.

We will see…

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Shameful:

Gustavo Villoldo, 71, was involved in Guevara’s capture in the jungles of Bolivia, according to unclassified U.S. records and other documents. He plans to auction the hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago.

“It’s time for me to put the past behind and pass these on to someone else,” said Villoldo, also a veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

The scrapbook also holds a map used to track down Guevara in Bolivia, photos of Guevara’s body, intercepted messages between Guevara and his rebels and a set of Guevara’s fingerprints taken before his burial.

let’s party afterwards.

Now if you understand Spanish, and want to vomit afterwards, read this interview by moderate centered and objective El País, “the independent diary of the morning“, to Adelaida Guevara, daughter of Ché (thanks Kate for finding it…). And then speak about “the imperialistic Spain in Cuba“. Buaff…

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tiberge writes about the desecration of some French Christian cemeteries with no one raising their voices and no important MSM reporting about it:

Satanic inscriptions in English and swastikas were discovered on Friday in ten vaults of a cemetery in Toulouse (…) Several graves were covered with the words “Damned the Christ” or with swastikas, while flower pots were turned over and signs pointing to various sections of the Terre-Cabade cemetery were damaged,” according to an AFP report.

Elentir writes that in Spain some far-leftist vandals desecrated the cemetery of Paracuellos -where the victims of Communists in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War are buried- and a fascist web published a map of red (=communist) toombs and monuments to desecrate and destroy them.

What surprise me of this people is that they attack the dead. They should see the Dead of Lord of the Rings… You know: “This path is guarded by the Dead. The dead do not suffer the living to pass“. 😈 And this people so brave with the poor dead people were going to run at a huge speed. 😈

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Now for some photos: This is the Bolivarian Embassy in Peru before and after Chávez. And this is the new Bolivarian 5-star hotel in Caracas. 😈 I wonder what the grand-daughter of its owner would think of the move…

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From Demediacratic Nation:

Provisional Friday Prayer Leader of Tehran Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani sermonizing before a standing room only congregation said:

“US administration is propagating a certain version of Christianity that is not based on Jesus Christ (PBUH) teachings, but after securing Zionists’ interests. 😯 [US administration is propagating a version of Christianity not based on Jesus Christ?? Well, then, how would you call that? 😉 ].

Based on this mentality, the Jews must gather in Palestine and then in the course of a revolution two thirds of them to get killed, and the remainder should see the reappearance of Jesus (PBUH).

Therefore, they are after gathering the entire Jews of the world in Palestine, which is definitely a move with political and Satanic roots, but the idea is put forth in the framework of an idea behind the hope for reappearance of Messiah. US President George W. Bush is the standard bearer of that mentality. That man is loathed to an extent in the United States today that the mentality he supports, too, has very limited number of supporters.”

Hey, this man should write script or something. What an imagination!! Heh. 😈

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You can also read this post from Red Alerts:

The second YouTube video in as many months where a fairly young guy argues for marrying children based on Islamic values. His argument is straight from the undergraduate liberal arts textbook. He’s preaching moral moral relativism, the flip side of social science doctrine to view cultures without your inherent ethnocentrism. His argument is that since our (westerners) ethics aren’t universally accepted, it isn’t “ethical” to judge other cultures using our moral compass, but we should use the morals and ethics of the society we’re judging to judge them.

[…] Watch to be disgusted, it’s in two parts so settle in. Vid one starts slow, but the last three minutes will make any feminist worth their salt go ballistic. It’s also the verbatim argument made by Jihadi Pervert one who was from California. Odd that the someone from Canada would be repeating the same tripe. It’s almost as if their being self radicalized by hanging around a jihadi propaganda outlet.

And watch the videos inside… 😡 You know, just like the female professor I wrote about yesterday about FGM.

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About censorship to Atlas Shrugs, read 1389 Blog: she has been clasified as “Violence/Hate/Racism blog by SonicWALL, a site of rating for blogs.

Anyway, she has had as ever a beautiful response from readers. Blogpower!

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Announcement from Vigilant Freedom / 910 Blog:

Baron Bodissey of The Gates of Vienna is seeking assistance in producing a Counter-jihad Calendar. Each month of the calendar will feature pictures of famous scenes from various countries under threat from Islamisation, along with a series of links for anti-Islamist blogs in those countries. The following countries will be represented: Britain, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Greece, India, Australia, and the USA. Search your blogrolls for your favorite blogsites which focus on the Islamist threat in these countries, and forward them to Baron at vigilantfreedom dot com.

I’m doing a list on Spanish anti-Jihadi sites. If you’re Spanish and you have an anti-Jihadi blog, you can write a comment in this post with the link and your name so I can forward the complete list in a fortnight. According to Baron this is a summary of what this calendar is about:

The calendar was started to supplement the SIOE demonstration at the EU Parliament in Brussels on September 11th, 2007, to protest the ongoing Islamization of Europe.
SIOE asked me to help with graphics and logos for their efforts, and I was glad to comply. In the process I decided to launch a parallel enterprise, one which fits in with the Brussels demo but which will continue afterwards. I call it the “Counterjihad Calendar Project”, and it will include an iconic image of a notable Western monument for each of the twelve months.
One of the themes of the SIOE rally is “Enough is enough!” With the help of people from the various countries involved, versions of the slogan in nine different European languages were created.
Bearing in mind what has happened to Cordoba Cathedral in Spain, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and an uncountable number of Hindu temples in India, I wanted to associate a well-known Western building or monument on each page of the calendar. I’ve finished seven months, and have five more to go.
Since our focus at Gates of Vienna is not just on Europe, but on the ongoing Islamization of the entire civilized world, the countries on the calendar will include India, the USA, and Australia.
Some of the monuments used in the images will be well-known to everyone; others will be familiar mainly to the citizens of the countries involved. If all goes well, when the last month is ready, I’ll create a wall calendar that will be sold at our Café Press store.

The kinds of sites I want are those that spend a least 25% of their time posting about Muslim and jihad-related issues. I want to exclude anti-Semitic sites or those that hate Israel, and antything that is truly racist. The issue is the religion and ideology of Islam, and not race.

Thanks for your collaboration.

By the way, please, enter the name of your blog or of someone who has give you express permission. I do not want that later some bloggers complaint about being in the Calendar without their express consentment.

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And now, something pleasant: Let the Kissing begin by Angel. Je:

SARAJEVO (AFP) — Organisers of an event in which almost 7,000 couples kissed simultaneously in a Bosnian town on Saturday said their effort deserved a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Bosnia claims world kissing record
Mus-lim clerics in Tuzla called for a boycott of the event, arguing it was not in line with Mus-lim tradition.

“it doesn’t appear in the Quran!!” Bwahahahaha!! Must be because there are no boys kissing old men… 😦

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More on Talibans and SK Missionaries, NK nuclear plant, war against Iran?, Solutions, Global Warming and FGM

Welcome Reuters readers.

With Taliban’s release of Korean Christian hostages, caution for missionaries | csmonitor.com

Views on missionaries whose chief aim is sharing the gospel in hot spots vary widely among the nongovernmental (NGO) and religious communities. But even those who accept missionaries argue that good intentions, enthusiasm, and bravery must conjoin with a professional approach.

“To work in dangerous areas you need … deep networks, and deep knowledge,” says Jerome Larchu, a director of the Paris-based Médicins du Monde (Doctors of the World), which has volunteers in 55 countries. “You bring in skilled people, lots of locals – and only then do you send people in.”

In February Médecins du Monde pulled its team out of Darfur for security reasons. But the doctors felt their mission wasn’t over. This summer they put scouts into Sudan for eight weeks to travel, talk with locals, and assess risk – before going back in.

If missionaries or aid workers do not have the proper help and concept, “it is a problem for us,” says Mr. Larchu. “I think anyone has a right to proselytize if they want to. But to locals, an NGO is an NGO; they don’t know who we are. They don’t make a lot of distinctions. They don’t know who is legitimate. So NGOs are interdependent, whether we realize it or not. We have to gain local trust together.”

[…] In the past decade, the number of NGOs has risen sharply, as have incidents of violence against them, say Larchu of Médecins du Monde and Martin of Mercy Corps. “More than 80 humanitarian workers were killed in 2006 – that’s more than UN soldiers,” says Larchu.

The number of religious groups is also rising and work closely with secular groups. “Worldvision, the Aga Khan Foundation, Catholic Relief Services – which makes no attempt to hide its name – they channel their faith into humanitarian efforts,” says Martin. “When they come into a dangerous place, they either sit at the table with us, or work at cooperation. If, like the South Koreans, we don’t know them, and they don’t know us, that makes it more difficult for everyone.”

[…] [Marian McClure, former director of worldwide ministries for the Presbyterian Church (USA), says that] a public misconception abroad is that Christians want to “foist” their beliefs on others. “On the contrary, most Christians today suffer not from a tendency to foist our faith on anyone, but from a tendency to be excessively private about our faith,” she argues. “I have never met a follower of a non-Christian religion who would respect someone who could not and would not express his or her beliefs.”

And she is right… 😦

But doesn’t it look like that the NGOs are blaming the missionaries for their own deaths?

You can read also One Free Korea (there’s an interesting photo inside also):

Various news agenies are reporting that the South Korean government paid a ransom of either $2 million or $20 million. Taliban sources are claiming that it was the higher of those amounts. Either sum is enough to build plenty of IED’s to kill American soldiers. [Another update: Seoul has finally gotten around to denying that it paid ransom — yeah, and Larry Craig’s still denying a few things, too – while the Chosun Ilbo publishes a photograph of the Korean spy who probably negotiated it, and who posed arm-in-arm with the terrorists.]

😯 With these friends who needs enemies??? 😡

We forget that the Taliban helped kill 3,000 Americans in our own country. If our government is serious about halting material support for terrorism, the Treasury Department will track down the South Korean and Saudi entities that funneled this money to the Taliban, invoke Executive Order 13,224, and freeze all of their assets colder than Hillary Clinton’s smile. Ideally, that will happen before the money paid by our “allies” is used by our enemies to kill our soldiers. Government entities, too? Yes, especially government entities.

Now, that would be a good start, if USA want to be considered really tough on terrorism. I personally believe that the war on terrorism is not focusing really hard on the finances of the terrorist groups and there are a lot of people who are making a lot of money with weapons in here. And with markets’ unstability…

Are they going to do it? I doubt it. Both South Korea and Saudi Arabia are allies…

[…]our alliance with South Korea today is one of the world’s most lopsided in terms of the mutual flow of benefits. South Korea has been useless or worse as an ally against the terrorists, extraordinarily unhelpful with North Korea, an irritant in our regional security framework (since Japan is a part of that), and a self-declared neutral in checking China’s regional ambitions. South Korea is actually cutting its own military, leaving American taxpayers to take up the slack. There doesn’t seem to be much South Korean gratitude for this expensive commitment, either, judging by displays like these, or polls that consistently show South Korea to be one of the most anti-American countries in Asia.

Hmm, curious, isn’t it?? 😡

Were SK women sexually assaulted by the Talibans?

Something that has been left un-said in the media but on most people minds was if the Taliban sexually assaulted the women or not. The hostages are not talking yet but reports are filtering out of Afghanistan that at least four of the hostages were sexually assaulted by Pakistani Taliban which set off a fight between two Taliban groups. The sexual assault of the Korean women would be highly damaging to the Taliban’s effort to cultivate an image of being mujahadeen fighting for a Muslim cause in Afghanistan when they are going around kidnapping and raping women. I’m sure we will find out sooner or later if the report is true or not, but I would not be surprised at all if some of the women were sexually assaulted by these Taliban criminals.

Afghan Lord has more:

Taliban strongly rejected allegations regarding sexual assault on four female Korean captives. Militant spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi told to media they were waging jihad against obscenity, immorality and un-Islamic acts in Afghanistan.

Hmm, so they wage jihad against obscenity, immorality and un-Islamic acts by sexually assaulting girls??? 😯

In a sense, and if you just think about it for a minute, cold way, it’s logical considering their ways…

ABC NEWS: I just get sick when I read this kind of comments:

When adherents of any religion are so ill mannered as to venture into another’s area, be it your home or country, with the expressed intention of convincing their targets that they are pursuing the wrong philosophy or way of life, and should adopt the true ways of the proselyte’s, then they should expect, at the very least, rejection. When confronting such as the Taliban,and fundamentalists of any religion, then they should be prepared to reap the harvest of their own ignorance.

Look here. There is NO REASON to kidnap any person, whatever their conditions. And this people are peaceful for God’s sake! They weren’t going to do any harm: if you are Afghan, and don’t want to convert just say so. It’s very simple. It’s called freedom: you use it each time you must decide which option you must follow.

In Spain, there are the famous pairs of Mormons -nearly in all cities-. Well, no one has kidnapped them or anything. Are they proselytising? Yeah. But if they come to me and ask for conversion (I think that three or four times more or less, I have had to hear them 😛 ), just answer them: “I’m a convinced …. I do not want to convert”.

To support the Taliban in what they have done, equating peaceful missionaries with bloody killers and terrorists, is one of the worst equations I have been seeing later.

Last news: From Yonhap:

ANYANG, South Korea, Sept. 2 (Yonhap) — A pastor at the South Korean church whose volunteers were held hostage for six weeks by Afghanistan’s Taliban said some of the captives were “severely beaten” by the insurgents when they refused to convert to Islam.

As JW says, “Feel the love”. 😡

According to the link in Spanish posted below, the Talibans’ spokesman has said that the ransom payed is going to be used to buy weapons and pay for suicide attacks. It also reminds that there are 1 German and 5 Afghans in their power. The German is an aid worker, whose companion had already been killed by peaceful and loving and caring Talibans (hey, Brian, when are you going to film this kidnappings??? 😈 ). The Talibans are also asking Germany to withdraw from Afghanistan and one of their speakers have already said they will not attack citizens from countries which do not have troops on Afghanistan.

Eeh, Zapatero, are you hearing? 😈 What would happen if they kidnap an Spanish? Will you cave in again? What about the Civilizations’ Alliance? Is it also for the Talibans or only for Erdogan’s “Moderate Islam is an offensive and ugly term“? What shocking news, eh? Because it means that “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it“. And if you don’t like what there is, hmm, well, just bear it… 😈

Para los que no entienden inglés, podeis leer esta noticia de Reuters:

Lo consideramos (el secuestro) como un brazo que nos puede permitir dar un golpe al enemigo”, declaró a Reuters por teléfono desde un lugar desconocido el portavoz talibán Qari Mohamad Yusuf.

“El secuestro (…) y asesinato de (ciudadanos) cuyos países han venido para la aniquilación de la nación de Afganistán son obras que suprimen al enemigo”, añadió.

Yusuf, uno de los dos portavoces de los talibanes, dijo que no atacarán a los ciudadanos de países que no tienen tropas en este país.

Según el acuerdo alcanzado la semana pasada, Corea del Sur dijo que a finales de agosto retiraría a todos sus ciudadanos de Afganistán, así como al pequeño contingente de 200 soldados e ingenieros a finales de año. La retirada de la misión estaba prevista. [¿A que existe parecido con la retirada de las tropas de Iraq? Si al final han sido los musulmanes integristas…].

[…] Un alto mando talibán dijo hablando a petición de no ser identificado que el acuerdo también incluyó el pago de un rescate de más de 20 millones de dólares (unos 15 millones de euros), que se usarían para comprar armas y financiar atentados suicidas.

[…] En sus manos sigue un cooperante germano secuestrado el mes pasado, al igual que otro alemán secuestrado junto a un compatriota y cinco afganos. Uno de estos dos alemanes fue asesinado por los talibanes, que exigen la retirada de los soldados alemanes.

😯

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Good news from NK:

North Korea has agreed to fully account for and disable its nuclear program by the end of this year, the top U.S. nuclear negotiator said on Sunday.

“We had very good, very substantive talks,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill said after two days of meetings in Geneva to tackle the next phase of an international deal to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear technology and facilities.”One thing that we agreed on is that the DPRK will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007,” Hill told reporters, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim Kye-gwan, Pyongyang’s chief nuclear envoy, told reporters he was pleased with the talks.

Now we have to wait to see if this is true or is a new strategy of Kim Jong-Il…

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Father Samir Khalil Samir: Islam: a plan of world domination? His conclusions:

The Muslim World is going through is greatest crisis. The confrontation with modernity, represented and promoted by the West, which has always been viewed as Christian, a competitor and very often an enemy, chips away at Islam’s stable and uncontested order.

Centuries of intellectual stagnation have made this confrontation visible to all. After Islam’s much vaunted greatness in the period running from the 9th to the 11th century, a feeling of decadence has set in!

Some have escaped into the past when Muslims threw themselves into conquering the world (7th century), giving rise to Islam’s ‘Golden Age.’ Others have sought strength through violence and slid into terrorism in God’s name, thinking that this way they would be defending both Islam and God. Others still have sought a way out of Islam, seen as dead weight, a stranglehold or a prison, opting instead for practical form of atheism and sometimes even Christianity.

In turn the Western World, which is rooted in Christianity no matter what negationists might say, is going through its own great crisis. With God treated as a human invention and religion as an addiction (as the opium of the masses), the West has fallen into an ideological and spiritual vacuum. Some who are idealist find refuge in believing in a brighter future, dreaming a better world; others pursue a form of rationalism devoid of an ethical values and spirituality. Then there are those who seek total freedom, even at the cost of self-destruction. Finally, many simply live by relying on a practical form of materialism.

A clash of civilisation is inevitable under the circumstances. Treating conversion (from Islam) as a betrayal worthy of killing someone is one sign of this. Dividing the world into two camps, separating Good from evil, has turned into an obsession. This is the analytical framework that Professor Ratzinger (who now happens to be Pope Benedict XVI) elaborated and presented in his lecture in Regensburg on September 12, 2006. In it he pointed out that in the West we have a form of rationality that lacks a spiritual content (reason without faith), whilst in Islam we find a type of rationality that has turned into violence (faith without reason). These temptations oppose one another but also run parallel to each other.

The solution lies in the hands of believers who are not fanatical—be they Muslim, Christian or from others traditions. Their openness to all that is human can be the basis on which to build, along with others who may or may not believe, a better world.

Related posts about Samir Khalil Samir: About the Egyptian Convert who wants his conversion to appear on his own Identity card.

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There are a lot of people very worried about a possible Bush’s plan to attack Iran. You can read Debbie and Michael.

Last news:

“We have more than 3,000 centrifuges working and every week a new set is installed,” Mr Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by Iranian news agencies.

“[The world powers] were thinking that with each resolution the Iranian nation would retreat. But after each resolution the Iranian nation presented another nuclear achievement.”

The installation of 3,000 centrifuges is seen by Iran as a key medium-term goal – which it had hoped to reach by March this year – for its nuclear programme.There has been no independent verification of Iran’s claim.

The UN has already imposed two sets of sanctions and the US is leading the call for a third set if Iran’s uranium enrichment does not halt.

Only last week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had agreed a plan with Iran to clear up key questions about its past nuclear activities, calling it a “significant step forward”.

The IAEA has said 3,000 centrifuges would represent a point of no-return for an industrial-scale production of enriched uranium.

But it also suggested last week that Iran had 1,968 operational centrifuges – significantly short of the breakthrough President Ahmadinejad has now announced.

As if Ahmadinejad has also told the truth to UN inspectors….

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The new solution for all your problems. Whether if it is a headache, a heartache or that you’re losing your hair, you can blame it immediately on this. 😆

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Some days ago, I blogged that some Western professors were defending female genital mutilation. Today I have found this article, in which the author quotes Janice Boddy, a female Canadian Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department in Toronto, who defends the practice, calling people against it “Crusaders” and “moralising and polemical“. She also says that the campaign against the practice is  “sustained by imperialistic logic and spurious empathy“.

the women in the village she chose for her anthropological research insisted that she should learn about this practice and see it performed if she hoped to understand them. She followed this advice and eventually concluded that circumcision validates the village women’s lives, safeguards their fertility and establishes “the meaningful parameters of their selfhood.” 😯 [has she passed the experience herself?…]

[…] she boldly addresses this question with her new book, Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (Princeton University Press). The fact that she then falls on her face, academically speaking, does not necessarily diminish her bravery.

Her readers discover, almost at the beginning, that she has a limited idea of academic detachment and fairness. A chronology of events at the front of her book twice uses the politics-laden term “propaganda” to describe Britain’s efforts in the 1940s to publicize the harm done by genital cutting. But then she quickly buckles down to her own propaganda project, a storm of disapproval directed at those who argue against the ritual cutting of female genitals.

She also wants the term “Female genital mutilation” changed to “Female genital cutting” (just as abortion should be called free-willing interruption of pregnancy 👿 ) :

She sets the terminology firmly in place, so that she can argue in her own terms. She thinks “female genital cutting” (FGC) properly describes the issue. Apparently she considers that a relatively neutral term. But “female genital mutilation” (FGM) is improperly censorious — an “invidious” label, according to one scholar Boddy approvingly quotes.

As Boddy sees it, those who take a passionately anti-FGM position have no understanding of the context [ 😯 So, what about torture, rape, genocide…??? Well, if you do not endorse them you are not understanding their context?? 😯 ]. She doesn’t much like the argument that FGM can be fatal, particularly when executed by people without medical training, though she won’t quite say it’s false. Nevertheless, that warning is “inflicted on ignorant and powerless women by sadistic men.”

And the article ends:

She obviously can’t endorse FGC, but a careful reading of her book demonstrates that she’s embraced one of the great lies of modern liberalism: Any culture is as good as any other culture and its tradition-endorsed practices (no matter how misguided, harmful and dangerous) deserve respect. Civilizing Women reads in many places like a grotesque parody of academic tolerance but its coherence and its highly detailed account of Sudanese culture reflect years of hard work. The fact that it expresses sympathy for an outlandishly cruel and appalling custom will probably do Boddy no harm in the world of contemporary anthropology.

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Now playing: Howard Shore and Ben del Maestro – Minas Tirith
via FoxyTunes

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Opium in Afghanistan, HR group sues Yahoo over China, Italy, Spain, Islamism, Turkey, terrorism, Greek fires (+), Israel and Pastorius’ reflections

As I wrote some months ago:

Opium production in Afghanistan has soared to record levels, with an increase on last year of more than a third, the United Nations has said.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says the amount of opium produced there has doubled in the last two years. It says Helmand province is now the biggest single drug-producing area in the world, surpassing whole countries such as Colombia. Afghanistan now accounts for more than 93% of the world’s opiates.

Despite billions of dollars of aid and tens of thousands of international troops, the report says 193,000 hectares of opium poppies are being grown in Afghanistan.

[…] The report says growing opium poppies is now closely linked to the insurgency and the instability in the south. And what is to be done? The report recommends more determined efforts to bring that security. It urges the government to get tough on corruption, which it says is driving the drugs trade and it lists poor governance, a weak judiciary and failing eradication programmes for these new frightening record levels.

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World Organization for Human Rights has sued Yahoo! over its policy in China: Look at Yahoo!’s hypocrisy:

Yahoo is being sued by the World Organization for Human Rights for sharing information about its users with the Chinese government. The information has led to the arrests of writers and dissidents. One journalist cited in the case was tracked down and jailed for 10 years for subversion after Yahoo passed on his e-mail and IP address to officials.

In its 40-page response to the lawsuit, filed with a federal court in San Francisco, Yahoo acknowledged releasing information to the Chinese government. But it argued that there was little connection between the information the firm gave and the ensuing arrests and imprisonment of its users.

[…] But Morton Sklar of the World Organization for Human Rights said the company had failed to meet its ethical responsibilities. “Even if it was lawful in China, that does not take away from Yahoo’s obligation to follow not just Chinese law, but US law and international legal standards as well, when they do business abroad,” he said.

Barely, Yahoo! claims this is a merely political case. 😡

At the same time, Angela Merkel reminds China the West would like to see progress on freedom of the press and Human Rights’ matters (where it has not progressed really):

“The world will be looking at China to a greater extent than it has in past years,” Merkel said. “And people will also be looking at how China presents itself in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”

Chinese critics of Beijing welcomed Merkel’s remarks.

“Unlike her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel does not run and hide from this topic,” former university professor and dissident Liu Xiaobo told Deutsche Welle. “She tells it like it is. The pressure she’s put on the Chinese government has already had significant effect.”

Well done, Merkel!

It’s logical, by the way, Merkel’s position. Looks like that the Chinese Government has hacked Merckel’s chancellery and three other Berlin ministries h/t Barcepundit.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, discovered the hacking operation in May, the magazine reported in its new edition, published Monday.

The Chinese government has vehemently denied the report, with the Chinese Embassy in Berlin describing the accusation of state-controlled hacking as “irresponsible speculation without a shred of evidence.”

But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured Merkel that measures would be taken to “rule out hacking attacks.” During a news conference in Beijing on Monday, Merkel didn’t comment on the specific allegation but said it was important that “common rules of the game” were observed in a globalised economy.

Well, there has been reports before about industrial spying on Canada, also vehemently denied by China. And on Australia, where they have targeted exiled dissidents.

So worried about foreign lands and yet China is searching for 8 kgs of “missing” uranium. Take a little more care about things which are really dangerous and stop targeting dissidents and foreign governments… 😡

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In Italy, a mother pregnant of two daughters, went to a clinic to see the state of both fetuses. In the clinic, she was informed that one of them has Down Syndrome so she asks for the abortion of that fetus. In the operation, the fetuses change places and the healthy one is finished. After that, she asked again for the abortion of the unhealthy one, which was done by injecting a solution of digoxine. This method which causes a cardiac stop, is used only in grown-up fetuses, while in this case, they were in the 30th week of pregnancy. The scandal in Italy is great. For a link in English, click here.

Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has already condemned the abortion of the twins:

L’Osservatore Romano reported: “Two girls have died, assassinated as a consequence of selective abortion. A radical decision has brought about another abortion, that of the little sister that still had life.” No one “has the right to eliminate another life. No person has the right to take the position of God. Not for any motive.”

But that’s not all. In Spain, as I wrote days before, there is a “problem“: doctors working in public health system are not practising abortions as they think it’s a matter of conscience and have objected. Some leftist MSM -specially world-known as very objective El País– began saying that people had a lot of problems to get themselves an abortion, with statements like: “They told me abortion was a crime“, “Leny and Fátima had succeeded in achieving their right (¿? Really didn’t know that was a right) to have an abortion in private clinics paid with public money” or “I had to go to have it to another Autonomous Community“.

There are three causes for legal abortion in Spain: rape, grave illnesses of the fetus or grave danger for the physical or psychological health of the mother. More than 98% of all the abortion held in Spain use this last cause.

So the Spanish Ombudsman, Enrique Múgica, has begun an investigation about the “great difficulties to have a free-willing interruption of pregnancy practised in the public health system“. He also asks to “adopt the pertinent measures to let the users have the guarantee the attention in the Community of residence and in the main hospitals of the National Health System“. So how are they going to do that? Are they going to hire pro-abortion doctors? Or are they going to make pro-life ones make abortions against their conscience and will? I really have a bad feeling about this…

Meanwhile, the Spanish Schools’ Council has passed a resolution by which the State can educate the children on affective-sexual matters without any consentment from parents ( 😯 ). But at the same time, “it rejected to include Cervantes in the minimum required to pass Literature, the Catholic Kings in History and the inversion of €1000 millions in the infants’ education from o-3 years-old (which was in the PSOE’s electoral program) and to liberalise the prices of the books (as stated in the Law passed in the terms requested in this respect from the Culture’s Ministry)”.

Regarding immigration, Zapatero denies it (hmm…) but French Prime Minister maintains that he is totally repented from the immigrants’ regularization.

Zapatero spoke yesterday about the statements of French PM, François Fillon, about the content of the summit between both of them last July in Madrid, to contradict his ally and ask for an immediate rectification which has not happened and most probably, won’t in the future. Fillon has stated that Zapatero admitted then that the regularization of more than 600.000 immigrants in 2005 was an error of which he repented “bitterly” and that he won’t make more in the future (repentance and modification of behaviour: we’re on the right track! Eehh, no, not quite). The President contradicted yesterday French PM, insisting on all the good things that his policy of open borders have brought and said that France was going to “make things clear because it was all probably a bad interpretation”. Sources near Fillon assured EL MUNDO that «there hasn’t been nor there is going to be any rectification in any way». The more similar to tinging his words, was some statements made by the entourage of the French PM, according to which Fillon understands that Zapatero supported the policy of “papers for all” because “he had no options… because of circumstances” (there is always another option, even if it’s very difficult or harder to follow. And in this case, there is). It is not clear if Zapatero has or hasn’t a communication problem or of interpreters when he has to speak about his analysis and compromises over immigration, as Zaplana (PP, center-right) laughed about yesterday, but it is clear that the President puts at risk again the diplomatic relations between France and Spain, because of the massive regularization which affected all Europe because of its awful “calling” effect.

Look here, I do not know who is responsible for this misunterstanding. But if he is not a total idiot -and I don’t think he is, he is just convinced he is going to save Spain from fascism (¡!), yeah I know…-, he knows he was stupid enough to let a lot of immigrants without any kind of control (not even medical, and there are illnesses which did not existed in Spain, which have appeared afterwards). Border control is not a characteristic of being a fascist, it’s just a consequence of common sense. Does Spain need immigrants? I really don’t know, but it’s possible. But what is certain is that we need some kind of immigrants, not every immigrant in the world. Ergo, select them according to the needs here and their qualifications -if we need truck drivers and the people who come are cookers, they are going to be jobless… with all the dangers that implies-. So, please, stop blaming others for your own bad policies’ results, move your ass and begin working on something more profitable than in denying what it’s clear as clean water: it was a HUGE ERROR.

[A friend of mine told me: With all my heart aching, I have to acknowledge that I trust more Fillon than Zapatero… Ejem].

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Christianity’s greatest menace:

Christians around the world suffer daily because of their faith, and it seems the persecution is intensifying.

CBN News looks at the top two offenders– North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Countries that persecute Christians usually fall into two camps: those with communist governments and those where Islam as the dominant religion.

That is: where there is no freedom, no respect for Human Rights…

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Looks like that Chávez has bought both the military and the Majors from… Evo’s paradise:

One of the accomplices of Hugo Chávez, the head of one ghost Ministry of all that Venezuela has nowadays, has stated to Venezuelan press that Hugo Chávez’s regime has given $6 millions to pay Bolivian military. Meanwhile, the sheepy Bolivian President, Evo Morales, has been photograpphed while giving money checks to Bolivian majors who are Venezuelan friends. The shameless says: “Chávez gave me the money to give it away“.

They do not refer to woodcutters. I wonder if this has something to do with it h/t Kate. 😈

But Chávez wants also to infiltrate himself in other weak South-American democracies, like Ecuador or Paraguay. In the latter, the so-called “Yearly operative Planning of the Foreign Relations Ministry of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” (wow, what a name 😯 ), reveals that he wants to give “Bolivarian indoctrination” to Armed Forces, energetic firms, students and peasants; even it speaks of the recruitment of young doctors from rural areas.

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USA and Europe: Another terrorist attack inevitable. h/t Extreme Centre: Newsweek interviews Redd, Head of the US National counterterrorism center. An excerpt:

Tell us about the threat that emerged earlier this year.
We’ve got this intelligence threat; we’re pretty certain we know what’s going on. We don’t have all the tactical details about it, [but] in some ways it’s not unlike the U.K. aviation threat last year. So we know there is a threat out there. The question is what do we do about it? And the response was, we stood up an interagency task force under NCTC leadership. So you have all the players you would expect: FBI, CIA, DHS, DIA, DoD, the operators—the military side comes into that—participating in an integrated plan, but integrated in a much more granular and tactical way than we’ve ever done before. This is my 40th year in government service, 36 in uniform and almost four as a civilian. This is revolutionary stuff, and it is affecting the way we do business.

Earlier this summer, there was talk that people were picking up chatter that reminded them of the summer before 9/11. The Germans basically said this is like pre-9/11. They said, “We are very worried.” What do you make of this?
We have very strong indicators that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the West and is likely to [try to] attack, and we are pretty sure about that. We know some of the precursors from—

Attack Europe?
Well, they would like to come West, and they would like to come as far West as they can. What we don’t know is…if it’s going to be Mark Hosenball, and he’s coming in on Flight 727 out of Karachi, he’s stopping in Frankfurt, and he’s coming on through with his European Union passport, and he’s coming into New York, and he’s going to do something. I mean, we don’t have that kind of tactical detail. What we do have, though, is a couple of threads that indicate, you know, some very tactical stuff, and that’s what—you know, that’s what you’re seeing bits and pieces of, and I really can’t go much more into it.

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Yesterday I wrote about Abdulah Gül’s being named new Turkish President. Today I read dissapointing news from French PM Sarkozy:

If this essential inquiry on the future of our Union is undertaken by the 27 member nations, France will not oppose the negotiations between the EU and Turkey that are to take place in the months and years to come,” said the French president addressing the 15th Conference of Ambassadors.
These new discussions must, he stressed, “be compatible with the two visions of future relations between Europe and Turkey, i.e., membership in the EU, or as close an association as possible.”

French blogger Tiberge writes commenting this:

It isn’t clear what Nicolas Sarkozy means by a “close association”, but it is clear that he accepts Turkey as much more than a trading partner or a tourist attraction. A close association implies an alliance, with attendant loyalties and military implications.

With Islamist Gül in the Presidency? Uuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyyyy, Sarko….

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More about Greek fires: from NYT:

“Up the hill, workers were preparing the grave for Athanasia Karta-Paraskevopoulou, a 35-year-old teacher, and the four children she shielded as the flames closed in on them: Angeliki, 15; Maria, 12; Anastassia, about 10; and Constantinos, 5. They had been on vacation from Athens”.

Requiescat in Pace. She was brave enough and she died to protect these children, while they were waiting for rescue. Unluckily, it ended in a very sad way.

And it is more worrying as:

The danger had by no means passed. In the village of Grillos, just over a ridge from here on the western peninsula, a couple who own a restaurant watched in tears as flames advanced from three directions while fire trucks spewed water in the flames’ path.

“All we need is one of those,” said one owner, Iannis Drakopoulos, 72, as a Russian plane carrying an industrial-sized water bucket passed. “If he dropped it here, it would all have been fine.”

In Artemida and here in Makistos, the flames were already out, and Monday was instead a day for tallying the damage and preparing to bury the dead.

[…] The descriptions from people who saw it were the same: flames moving at an unimaginable rate and no one apart from the police to help.

[…] The fire reportedly came over a ridge first to Makistos, a village of 60 homes. Antonios Kokkaliaris, 80, a farmer, said he had been reading his newspaper, underlining parts he liked, when he heard the bell in St. John’s church ring. “I went out and I saw the flames before me and people running,” he said. He could not leave, he said, because his wife, Koula, 82, is severely disabled. “I told her, ‘Stay put, we’re going to fight this out.’ I grabbed onto the hose and I started dousing left, right and center.”

The town emptied, with only him, a herdsman and Mr. Dimopoulos with his wine staying behind. Mr. Kokkaliaris managed to douse his home, and two next door, well enough that the fires howled past, leaving his house intact.

But when it was over, he did not feel relief.

“I was disappointed, honestly,” he said, “because not only was there no one to help me, there was no one in sight. ‘Am I just standing here alone? What happened to all my townspeople? What is the purpose of life if I am all alone?’ ”

I can only say: 😯 A brave old man.

But we continue:

The region normally produces 10,000 tons of oil, but nearly all the olive trees are now destroyed, along with countless livelihoods. Charred donkeys and chickens litter ruined farms.

“This village is literally wiped out,” Ms. Bammi said. “It’s not just those who have been killed. Those who are left have no fields to work in, no olive trees. They have nothing to look forward to.”

It is already a tragedy. And if finally it’s proved they did that with mobile phones, well, the punishment for these bastards must be … great.

More from the Astute Bloggers:

DAY 4 of deadly fires: Fires rage in Greece as SEVEN PEOPLE CHARGED WITH ARSON.
They remain nameless. Why? Those depraved savages set a country on fire, the public deserves to know no matter who it is. I have searched all news sources. Any Atlas readers have a clue?

Well, can it be because they can be charged with terrorism? I really don’t know. Seems strange to me too.

(+) If you want to read a magnificent post about the political consequences of the Greek fires, just go over to Cassandra’s blog.

The other usual suspects in the EU are exploiting the crisis to call for more integrated emergency cooperation, in other words: continued deepening of federal structures. Strangely, among the first countries to send fire-fighters and airplanes were Israel and Switzerland; both countries aren’t EU members.

The press from hell continues: “‘The village of Artimeta in the Peloponnese has become known as the ‘crematorium’, says the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant who is in the village near the town of Olympia.” I have serious doubts about this piece of atheist cynicism! Considering the fact that Greece is 96% Orthodox, a Christian denomination prescribing interment, I ‘d be surpised if most Greeks even know what a crematorium is, as the first is still to be build; it’s highly unlikely that local Greeks would describe a much loved village in such terms!

😯

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Chaim writes that “More than 5000 Kassam rockets have been fired at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip which Israel abandoned to the PLO two years ago, the Sharon government brutally throwing thousands of Jews out of their homes“. Very critical of Olmert as ever:

Israel’s government, as any other government, has an obligation to defend its people. As long as Ehud Allmerde and his cohorts are running at the top they are going to do little more than a few symbolic gestures to make it look like they are defending Israelis. Rather, they seem obsessed with appeasement. Obsessed with a policy that invariably has failed miserably time and again. They seem intent on giving everything up to the terrorists, little realizing that the more they give, the less they get and the more is demanded!

Olmert spoke on Tuesday 28th with Mahmoud Abbas to “agree on measures against terrorism“. As I linked yesterday, this policy is not going to bring them any good.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders are building themselves shelters to protect them in case of attack. Everyday’s tale…

Also, on related news, the Israeli government’s tourism ministry has reached an agreement to cooperate with the Vatican’s new charter-flight service for pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the Ynetnews agency has reported.

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And now for the thinking post of the day. Pastorius has written it -the scene of Patton is priceless-:

[…] you have to ask yourselves, do you want a world which is ruled by men, or by women?
Hmm???
Obviously, rationality is not arbitrated by force.

Read it all. It’s worth it. (Chauvinist males: this post is not very recommended for you 😈 ).

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North Korea, Iraq’s PM Maliki vs H. Clinton, Rosa Regás on Chávez, Egypt, Greek fires were a terrorist attack?, Turkey, Afghanistan and "Modestly Yours" blog (+)

There has been 600 people killed or dissapeared in North Korea as a result of the floods. There are also thousands of hurt people.

Iraq’s PM Maliki vs. H. Clinton:

Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are democrats but they don’t respect democracy. They speak about Iraq as if it were their property”, Malike said in a press conference. He added that both senators “have never lived controversies like the ones we are knowing in Iraq. When they speak, they don’t know what reconciliation means”.

Maliki reacted like that to some statements made by Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton -favourite of his party to the 2008’s presidential career in USA- who asked the Iraqi MPs to choose another person to leader a national unity government, after the extinction of the Iraqi coalition government.

He also critisized Bernard Kouchner, French FM, who visited Iraq some days ago, and whose visit was considered a success at first.

Bernard Kouchner had also advised him to resign. But he has said France is ready to make an apology about this:

Last week Mr Kouchner said the Iraqi government was “not functioning” and was quoted saying he had told the US that there was strong support in Iraq for Mr Maliki to resign and he “has got to be replaced“. 😯

In an interview with RTL radio on Monday, Mr Kouchner said: “I think that he [Mr Maliki] misunderstood, or that I was not clear enough that I was referring to comments I heard from Iraqis I talked to.” [Do you really think he was misunderstood???].

“If the prime minister wants me to apologise for having interfered so directly in Iraqi affairs, I’ll do it willingly,” he said.

Mr Kouchner visited Baghdad last week to promote France’s role in efforts to solve the Iraq crisis and mend relations with Washington damaged by France’s opposition to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

So what do Iraqis think about the intervention? h/t Desde el Exilio.

America should finish what it started.

Spanish National Library’s President, old Rosa Regás, is now a fan of Chávez -well, err, not now, this is something which we have known in Spain for so long-:

Her article is compulsory. Her analysis is a panegyric to Chávez, with numbers very far from reality, which nowadays does not belong to the Venezuelan people as it never happened in the last 50 years, sunk in the most cruel misery, where a citizen dies each half an hour killed by gangs, with a record of being one of the most corrupt places in the world, no.170 these days, according to the Corruption Perception’s index. An expert regime in manouvring to sell lies, while at the same time it’s proclaiming himself the poors’ saviour.

[…] When Rosa Regás tells us “Why against Chávez?” with the conviction that she does it, with a bad tempered arrogance, it looks like, with Zapatero, the Spain of democracy and progress is menaced. I’m convinced that she does not wish this country to be reflected in Venezuela’s mirror.

I should say that depends on who was going to exert power… I really believe some of them, at least, think, that just as Franco was 40 years in power, they have a right (non-written one) to be another 40 years, whatever the means for that. I’m not saying even that all Socialists think that, not even that the majority of them think it, but some of them do -of course, they never say that publicly…-.

At the same moment, two world maps of 1482 have been stolen from the institution she is in charge. 😡 And she has presented her dimission because she “does not feel the new Minister of Culture, César Antonio Molina, trusts her“. 😈 These are good news, indeed…

In Egypt the dictatorship creeps each day to a more frightening stand h/t Desde El Exilio:

On Aug. 8, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights reported that it had confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths — three of which took place this year — that the group “strongly suspects were the result of torture and mistreatment.” The organization previously found that while Egypt‘s population nearly doubled during the first 25 years of Hosni Mubarak‘s regime, the number of prisons grew more than fourfold and that the number of detainees held for more than one year without charge or indictment grew to more than 20,000.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have corroborated chilling accounts of torture in Egyptian prisons. The independent daily Eldestour recently published two important facts: that the annual budget for internal security was $1.5 billion in 2006, more than the entire national budget for health care, and that the security police forces comprise 1.4 million officers, nearly four times the size of the Egyptian army. “Egypt has become a police state par excellence,” the paper’s editor noted.

For the people who uses bloglines, there is a new beta version for you to try.

More about Iranian Government’s savages, go and see the photos that Stephania has posted.

Al Fatah uses now the Lion King to attack Hamas. And Disney still says nothing about this.

The new cause of anger in Aghanistan: a ball with the Saudi flag. You know, the one with the Islamic declaration of faith?

A demonstration has been held in south- east Afghanistan accusing US troops of insulting Islam after they distributed footballs bearing the name of Allah.

The balls showed the Saudi Arabian flag which features the Koranic declaration of faith.

The US military said the idea had been to give something for Afghan children to enjoy and they did not realise it would cause offence.

Last news from Venezuela: now Chávez wants to move the country’s time zone to “offer a more equitable distribution of sunlight“. The socialism of XXIth century also distributes the sunlight in a more equitable way… This sounds like the Galizian Nationalist Party asking to change the time zone of Galizia as if Spain was the USA and had huge need of several time zones… 😈

A very interesting post: On “racial” profiling:

Islamism, Islamist militancy, and Islamist militant terrorism are very adept at converting people to Islam and to Islamist terrorism. And so not only do we need to worry about the usual suspects, so to speak, but also those who have been converted. Our obliviousness to this is exploited by Islamist terrorists, as can be seen by a number of the people involved in the plot by Britons to attack American and British trans-Atlantic flights from London. One was even a white (that is, British) pregnant woman, someone who would not register on anyone’s counter-terrorism radar.

[…] My suggestion is that while focusing on the usual suspected ethnicities or people of suspected ethnic origins (Arab, especially Saudi, and South Asian, especially Pakistani), we need to watch for suspicious behavior by any and all people. Besides, Islamist terrorism is not the only threat: some people are simply deranged and up to no good. We should, thus, be able to stop not only Islamist terrorist attacks but also attempts by anyone, for any reason, to conduct lethal attacks of any sort. And, who knows, maybe by cracking down on people who show an inordinate interest in information and data regarding our infrastructure, we might be able to help counterintelligence efforts as well. Preventing Iran, Russia, China, or any of the host of our enemies from getting intelligence will help The Republic.

Well, in my case, I do not think this is a problem of ethnicity nor do I consider this an ethnic problem. It’s an IDEOLOGICAL one: it’s based on an ideology that wants to rule the world, using a religion. I’m not going to discuss now if this is the religion in itself or it’s being used, but clearly not all Muslims are terrorists or want to rule the world. The problem, as I have said before, is that if the extremers are supported -as it’s happening in most of the West-, the people who are not, do not feel supported at all, in the end, that’s going to cause a surge in support for extremism in both sides.

And when I say Westerners are supporting several madnesses/extremisms, it’s because it’s true:

Academia’s fixation on cultural sensitivity is changing the debate around female genital mutilation, with a growing number of professors and women’s rights activists becoming hesitant to condemn the practice.

Where feminists rallied against the operation from the pages of Ms. magazine in the 1970s, today’s critics are infinitely more cautious, with most suggesting that the Western world butt out until Muslim African communities are ready to reconsider what they are doing to their daughters.

The shift in attitudes about the practice– which in the worst of cases involves the carving out of a woman’s clitoris and inner labia and can cause lifelong urinary tract infections, sterility and even death — comes at a time when high-profile victims of the operation such as writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and model Waris Dirie, both Somalis, have launched very public campaigns against the practice.

To know more about this practice, click here. It’s a shame someone cannot or doesn’t comdemn that practice.

A reward is offered in Greece to capture the culprits of the fires which were provoked and which had already killed at least 60 people.

Fire in the countryside and smoke surrounding Athens.

Statue of Victory at Olympia surrounded by smoke.

Map of the fires.

More about the Greek fires by Paolo. Impressive the NASA’s satellite image of the fire he has posted. Last news are that there are two possibilities: the first being it was caused by organised criminality, the second being it was international terrorism to influence in Greek elections, in which the center-right’s margin has been slightly reduced these last weeks. So a prosecutor on Monday ordered an investigation into whether arson attacks could come under Greece’s anti-terrorism and organized crime laws. (CNN).

An update about the fires: From Infidels are Cool, I reach this post from a Greek blogger:

There were at least a couple of instances where the ones trapped called the TV and radio stations, got on the air, said their final goodbyes to their families, and then were burned alive. While the stations were doing their best to send aid, the fact that the emergency reponses are streched so thin made rescue efforts near impossible.

My grandmother’s village was completely burned down. It was one of the worse hit and there is nothing that remains. The local authorities say that it’s completely erased off the map.

[…] There is a video of two men setting one of the fires. That is now fishy since we now know that the fires were started remotely via cell phone bombs.

More here by Pastorius.

How affects Jewish self-criticism to the actual view of International affairs:

I have dealt with the problem of hyper-Jewish self-criticism repeatedly in the past, including issues concerning the Alvin Rosenfeld Controversy. Among other things, I emphasized the role of a kind of “prophetic” criticism that uses high rhetorical excess to “whip” the Jews/Israelis into the right path. When combined with a desire to “please” fellow, non-Jewish progressives by showing how “non-tribal” one is, this produces a lethal combination, documented by Rosenfeld, that makes some Jews willing to confess to anything (racism, apartheid, Nazism, the illegitimacy of the State). They do this not only to urge their fellow Jews to mend their ways, but also to pursue a kind of “therapeutic” dialogue where, if they are sufficiently magnanimous in accepting blame, then maybe their enemies, say, the Palestinians, might also respond by being a bit more self-critical.

Hmm, yes, I understand this very well. And I mean it. Well, the result is just the opposite: whatever the Israelis do in this direction, is not going to grant them anything but even more problems.

Read it all: another great post from Richard Landes.

Private clinics are profiting from abortions in Spain:

In response to the refusal by gynecologists of the public health care system of Andalusia to perform abortions, a considerable number of women are being sent to private clinics that have agreed to collaborate with the Council for Health Care.

I wrote some months ago about a platform whose objective is to send Aznar to the International Criminal Court because of “his support to the illegal Iraqi war”. Another platform, called “Aznar for ICC” is preparing a “hot autumn“, as United Left’s MP from Andalucia’s Autonomous Community Antonio Romero has said. He added:

Neither Aznar, nor Bush nor Tony Blair can go away without punishment after causing an illegal and immoral war, which has produced the death to 700.000 Iraqis, the majority of which were civil, more than 2 million of people in exile, the complete destruction of the country’s infraestructures, of its historical and cultural heritage and the absolute looting of its natural resources, specially, of oil”.

For you to consider the personality of this man: he was condemned some years ago, because in a strike, he beat, insulted and menaced an old man, owner of a little cafeteria, and one of the clients because he did not want to go on strike. He shouted at both: “fascist, son of a bitch, asshole”, after yelling at them “you’re going to shut whether you like it or not, or you’re going to shut por cojones“. You know, a peaceful, respectful and calm guy… But the best is what he said: “I only wanted to defend their rights -whether they liked it or not-, telling him how marvellous it was to close all the shops for Andalucia’s rights“.

Gül has been elected Turkish President. Oh, my!!! 😦 He was elected in the third round as was predicted some weeks ago. The Turkish military has spoken: Secularism is under attack:

“Nefarious plans to ruin Turkey’s secular and democratic nature emerge in different forms everyday,” Buyukanit said in his statement. “The military will, just as it has so far, keep its determination to guard social, democratic and secular Turkey.”

Russian man detained in Afghanistan carrying 500 kilos of explosives and, in a rapture of manliness, wearing a burqa. His two other companions were also wearing a women’s clothes. If they like so much being a woman, why they do not change their sex? Yes, I think that, for these chavinist male … individuals, that would be a good punishment. Imagine Bin Laden … 😈 There was a joke here some years ago: the worst fate for Bin Laden would be to catch him -US SEALs could be employed for that-, transport him to a clinic, change his sex and then set him loose in Saudi Arabia. Je. With an inside camera to see his reaction: “Hey, I’m Bin Laden”.

Gordon Brown will not allow a referendum about the EU Constitution, after he promised to do so. He faces 120 Labour MPs who have rebeled against him, although David considers that Brown will not allow it, “as he knows he can lose it“.

Read also this post by Angel: A planned Ar-abic-themed public school in Brooklyn has prompted polarized reactions. Critics warned Monday that students could be “indoctrinated” with radical Is-lamic beliefs and supporters called such statements “racist”.

Some weeks ago I discovered a very good blog called Modestly Yours, entirely written by women (where I discovered a book I would like to read…, when I have finished reading all I have to read now, but the title is promising: “Girls gone Mild. Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find that it’s not Bad to be Good“). Well, just read about the “Sexy Crazy Cancer” movie:

The film itself actually looks quite interesting. As described on her website, the idea for the documentary came about in 2003 after the “31-year-old actress/photographer…was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer. Weeks later she began filming her story. Taking a seemingly tragic situation and turning it into a creative expression, Kris shares her inspirational story of survival with courage, strength, and lots of humor.”

As the author says, I don’t know how the sexy thing fits in there.

There is another very good blog post called: “The War on Vulgarity“. Thank God, someone is saying this loudly. Looks like it’s better to be vulgar and really there is no need. There are people who consider that to be manly (I must be tough), to speak out better the truth (that is, to be more sincere) or just because it sounds much more direct. For me, that is only foul language… 😈

Lastly, after the scandal surrounding Sarkozy about his lack of fitness, look at this cartoon. 😆

Looks like Sarkozy is menacing Iran: Either Iran suspends the uranium enrichment or will be bombed! Well, this is unexpected… Will be continued!

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World’s going nuts, Pro-lifer attacked, India’s sex-selective abortions and new terrorist attack, Moroccan Islamists,Children’s forced work in Haiti, Iranian new bombs, religious persecution in China and Uzbekistan, Musharraf, H. Clinton’s on terrorism and some Catholic news

Hmm, these are the kind of news that make me vomit. How on earth people can be sooooo brute???? I’m going to name this kind of news “World’s going nuts” 😡

A security video from an apartment hallway shows at least 10 witnesses ignored a woman’s cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors in Minnesota said.

The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the woman was assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

Police said they responded to a call of drunken behavior and found Somali immigrant Rage Ibrahim, 25, and a woman lying unconscious in the hallway early Tuesday. The woman’s clothing had been pulled up and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh, according to the criminal complaint.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Crime Center.

Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding, according to Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, who spoke on Ibrahim’s behalf.

FOXNews.com – Cops: Tape Shows at Least 10 Witnesses Ignoring Minnesota Woman’s Cries for Help During Sexual Assault – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

“Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding“. Yeah, right. And I believe that.

More about this here: It should be noted that this Jamal slug was convicted of lying to immigration officials and should have already been deported. Law was not fulfilled and a woman was attacked. The every-day’s tale… 😡

And father of 7-Year-Old Boy accused of biting Son’s Toes. He bited his son “hard enough to cause deep bruising and crack his toenails“. My goodness, the world is going nuts… 😡

From Life Site.Net:

A peaceful pro-life witness was violently assaulted outside an abortion site on Tuesday. Police responded late to his 911 after he was beaten by an unknown visitor to the clinic.
Early on Tuesday morning August 21, three Rockford pro-lifers-Ken Plez, Pat Brady and Kevin Rilott-were praying quietly in front of the Northern Illinois Women’s Center (abortuary) for an end to abortion. A large white truck pulled into the clinic parking lot, and without setting foot on the clinic property, Rilott approached and tried to talk to the people inside.
In a detailed account of the event Rilott described how the pro-choice man got out of his truck and approached him, saying, “You shouldn’t be here, you’re upsetting my wife.” He then began to hit Rilott in the chest, ribs, and stomach. Rilott did not strike back at the man, but managed to call 911. As he was being beaten, he begged for immediate police assistance.
He told his pro-abortion attacker that the police were on the way, but the man said he didn’t care. The assaulter also said that “after he bonded out” he would come back and get him. After breaking Rilott’s sign, the man then went into the abortion clinic.

In India, sex-selective abortions are rocketing. The reason?

A large portion of the Indian population believes that male children enable families to survive and ensure that their parents will be taken care of. Female children are considered a burden for whom parents will have to shell out expensive dowries, which leads many to elect to abort them.

On the other hand, a 2001 census revealed that there were 927 girls for every 1000 boys among children younger than age 7, as opposed to 945 in 1991. Last month, police discovered thirty bags full of aborted and newborn babies in a well near a clinic in eastern India.

Meanwhile, a huge explosion in India has killed at least 44 people. According to CNN, “militants” were responsible for it:

“These are things that will not be openly discussed … we can comment when the investigation is complete,” Home Secretary Shivraj Patil said at a news conference in Hyderabad.

In earlier news conferences, local officials placed the blame squarely on Islamic militants.

“Available information points to Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups being behind the blasts,” Y.S.R. Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state told reporters. The minister earlier said “this is definitely terrorist activity,” and urged everyone to stay calm.

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Moroccan Islamists support pragmatism (well they are going to present themselves to the elections, so it’s better for them to seem moderate. Link in Spanish):

The Party of Justice and Development (PJD), the main Islamist party in the oposition, is going to present a program in which the daily worries of the voters will be the first objective instead of religion in the campaign for the parliamentary elections of September 7th, according to its leader.

Experts consider it’s possible the party will obtain more MPs and could be the main group in an election where more than 30 parties will concur to.

Observers see the result as a measure of the level of disillusion with the liberal and laic elites who have been in charge in Morocco for the last 50 years.

The Parliament only has limited powers in the North African country, where the King Mohammed VIth, controlls all the main sectors from the Army to the religious affairs, and can name the Prime Minister and “veto” laws.

Some analysts say that in any case the elections will help to revitalise some aspects of the body of the governing elite.

“Our agenda is inspired without doubt in our Islamic surrounding, but in an Islamic surrounding linked to the voters’ needs”, told Reuters the PJD’s leader, Abdelilah Benkiran.

[…] “Frankly, the citizens won’t vote for us if we go to the elections to impose the veil on women, the bears on men and to all the people to make them go to the mosque”, he added.

Just let them take power. After four or five years, we speak about this.

About children abuse: Kids forced into domestic servitude in Haiti:

Evans Antoine wakes at 7 a.m. and dusts himself off from his night on the floor. While other children in his middle-class neighborhood overlooking the Haitian capital head to school, the 15-year-old puts on toeless sneakers and gets to work washing dishes, scrubbing floors and running errands at the market. He also works in the yard and sometimes wields a scythe in the family’s fields.

There is little reward for his toil, except for food and a roof over his head. And often, the quality of his work isn’t good enough; his caretakers sometimes hit him with a switch or slap him on the back of the scalp. Once they tied his hands and put a bag over his head before beating him with a stick.

This has been his life for the past three years.

Read it all. Specially interesting is this paragraph: “Haiti revolted against French colonial rule and became the first “black republic” in 1804. With newly emancipated slaves in power, it also became the first nation to outlaw slavery. Dependent on coffee and sugar, however, Haiti kept the plantation system after the revolution, requiring “mandatory labor” of many citizens. The masters were no longer white, but working conditions improved only marginally“.

The proof that changes sometimes don’t change anything really. Just another people step on charge.

More news from Iran: as ever not very promising:

Iran vowed Sunday to use a new 2,000-pound “smart” bomb against its enemies and unveiled mass production of the new weapon, state television reported.

The government first announced development of the long-range guided bomb Thursday, saying it could be deployed by the country’s aging U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 fighter jets.

“We will use these (bombs) against our enemies when the time comes,” Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on state television Sunday.

Iran often announces new weapons for its arsenal, but the United States maintains that while the Islamic Republic has made some strides, many of these statements are exaggerations.

In China they continue with their magnificent view of Human Rights:

A prominent bishop of the underground Catholic Church in China was arrested on August 23, apparently to prevent him from distributing the Pope’s message to the Church in China.

Bishop Jia Zhiguo of the Zheng Ding diocese was taken into custody on Thursday morning, the US-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reports.

The bishop’s arrest came after several days of tight surveillance in his residence. The Cardinal Kung Foundation reports that visitors to the bishop’s home were held and interrogated by police before being released.

But religious persecution does not only exist in China. In Uzbekistan:

When seven police officers with a video camera raided his home on Sunday morning, 29 July, Nikolai Zulfikarov was away. But this did not stop prosecutors launching a criminal case to punish him for “illegally” organizing a religious community, with a possible sentence of five years’ imprisonment. The small Baptist congregation that meets in his home in the eastern Namangan Region refuses on principle to apply for state registration. One local Baptist told Forum 18 News Service that prosecutors wanted to sentence Zulfikarov immediately, but now there is “total silence”. He added that “it is not clear if this means they will abandon the attempt or if they are moving stealthily behind the scenes”.

More worrying news for Musharraf:

Another defeat for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan’s Supreme Court has narrowed the options for the U.S.-allied military leader as he seeks to extend his rule.

Thursday’s ruling that his arch rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted in a 1999 coup, can return from exile leaves the general vulnerable at home and abroad ahead of crucial elections.

Talks with another ex-prime minister on a pact that would keep Musharraf in office are proving tough. And U.S. impatience with his failure to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds near the Afghan border is growing.

Driven by a clamor for the restoration of democracy, the military-led government has responded with calls for national reconciliation.

But Musharraf “is hardly talking from a position of strength,” the Dawn newspaper said in a weekend editorial. Talks with his opponents “must have a one-point agenda: a truly free and fair general election.”

In Brussels they are forbidding Sept 11th’s demonstration against Islamic terrorism, and yet they are letting a Pro-Hizbullah group’s demonstration:

The Arab-European League (AEL), a pro-Hezbollah organization of Arab immigrants in Belgium and the Netherlands, is rallying its members to march in Brussels on 11 September “against Islamophobia and racism in Europe.” The AEL demonstration is a response to the request by the Danish-British-German organization Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) for permission to demonstrate on 9/11 in front of the European Union’s buildings in Brussels against the introduction of Sharia laws in Europe.

Two weeks ago the SIOE demonstration was banned by Freddy Thielemans, the mayor of Brussels. According to Mr Thielemans the SIOE demonstration is a criminal offence because it “incite[s] to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia. [This] is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by the European legislation.”

Of course, Hizbullah’s members are peaceful, respectful of other people’s lifes and caring. As I said, the world’s going nuts…

Hillary Clinton’s remarks about terrorism are just very similar to the ones made by James Clayburn about Iraq:

“There are circumstances beyond our control, and I think I am better able to handle things I have no control over,” she said. “It’s a horrible prospect to ask yourself ‘What if? What if?’ But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world,” she said. “So I think I’m the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well.”

Nigeria: From Gateway Pundit: Angry Muslim Mob Storms Prison to Lynch Homosexuals. A prison guard has been injured. Will all the Gay Pride’s organisers say something about this? Eehh, no, that’s only said if they are Christian and preferably Catholics the ones who critisize the right to marry. That is an offense grade A. But if fundamentalist Muslims do it, ehh, welll, then it’s only an offense grade Z, at the most…

More about HuT and the Global Caliphate: Hyscience. And it’s not the only group claiming for it: specially in Internet, this kind of ideas are proliferating.

Ten people arrested in Russia over Politovskaya’s death.

70% of Iraqi suicide terrorists are Saudis. And Iraqis protest about this:

More photos on the link.

And now for some Catholic news:

Pope Benedict XVI explains last Sunday’s Gospel:

The way to eternal life is narrow because it is demanding, requires commitment and denial of one’s own selfishness, Pope Benedict XVI said today in his Sunday angelus address. He was referring to today’s Gospel in which Jesus calls on his followers to strive to enter the “‘narrow gate’ to eternal life, because many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able”.

“What does the ‘narrow gate’ mean?”, the Pope asked pilgrims gathered in the courtyard of his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. “Why do many not succeed in entering through it? Is the way reserved for just a few elect?”

The Pope said it is often a trap and a temptation to interpret this passage as a reference to religious practice as a source of privilege or security. But in reality, “the message of Christ is actually quite the opposite”, the Pope explained. “All can enter eternal life, but for everyone, the door is narrow. They are not privileged. The path to the eternal life is open to all, but it is narrow because it’s demanding, asks for commitment, abnegation, and the mortification of selfishness”.

As a result of the stress and lack of tranquility of modern life:

More and more Italians, tired from the routine and noise of the city, are opting to spend their vacations in monasteries and convents that offer them a time of reflection and contact with nature.

Many religious communities—even cloistered convents–have opened their doors to young people and families to join in their daily life of prayer and activities, as well as to listen to their concerns and provide them spiritual guidance.

I think I’m going to book a holiday like that… when I have time for it! 😆

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More about the UK plot: UK defends its border procedures

 

The UK government has defended itself against claims by Interpol’s head that it is failing to check visitors against a database of stolen passports. Ronald K Noble, the police agency’s chief, said there was a “clear link between stolen passports and al-Qaeda linked terrorist activity”.

Mr Noble told the BBC’s Today it was “extraordinary” the UK was not making use of the information at its disposal. The Home Office has insisted border officials were aware of the list.

It said any name on the list which was also regarded as a threat by police forces or the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) would be passed to border authorities.

Mr Noble said in an open letter that only 17 out of Interpol’s 186 member countries systematically checked the passport numbers of incoming travellers against the database. “On the other hand, all countries systematically check our bags to see if we are carrying bottles of water or other liquids,” he said. “These priorities seem misplaced.” He also warned that a British “watch list” had not been passed to Interpol.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK defends its border procedures

More about Australia connection:

Police in Australia have carried out further searches in connection with the suspected car bomb attempts in London and at Glasgow Airport.

Officers have searched the home of Mohammed Haneef, 27, who was arrested as he tried to leave Brisbane international airport late last Monday.

The Indian doctor is related to two of the six people being held in the UK.

Another man, Bilal Abdullah, 27, was remanded in custody on Saturday charged with conspiracy to cause explosions.

The Iraqi doctor is the only person charged over the suspected attack attempts. The charge carries a maximum life sentence.

Over the weekend, anti-terror police were also granted more time to question five of the six other people detained in the UK.

The sixth person, Kafeel Ahmed, is in a Glasgow hospital suffering from severe burns.

According to his lawyer in Brisbane, Dr Haneef has not been interviewed since a magistrate granted police 72 hours of so-called dead time – which allows them to review the evidence and pursue other lines of inquiry – three days ago.

Police will then have 12 hours of interviewing time left available to them, although they could seek a further extension.

However, they have returned to Dr Haneef’s top-floor apartment, close to the hospital where he worked on Queensland’s Gold Coast, to carry out further searches and have towed away his car, a blue Honda Jazz.

Thanks to Stefania, I reach a Daily Mail article: Eight Al Qaeda fanatics working for the police (but they don’t dare sack them):

The dossier was drawn up with the help of MI5 amid fears that individuals linked to Islamic extremism are taking advantage of police attempts to increase the proportion of ethnic staff.

Astonishingly, many of the alleged jihadists have not been sacked because – it is claimed – police do not have the “legal power” to dismiss them.

We can also reveal that one suspected jihadist officer working in the South East has been allowed to keep his job despite being caught circulating Internet images of beheadings and roadside bombings in Iraq.

He is said to have argued that he was trying to “enhance” debate about the war.

Classified intelligence reports raising concerns about police staff’s background cannot be used to justify their dismissal, sources said.

Australia has extended the terror inquiry on Haneef.

Also in UK:

Three men accused of taking part in an extremist Muslim plot to carry out a series of suicide bombings on London’s transport system in July 2005 have been convicted of conspiracy to murder.

Police issued these closed circuit television images of the suspects soon after the events of July 21, 2005 on London trains and buses.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Yassin Omar, 26; and Ramzi Mohammed, 25, were found guilty Monday of plotting to bomb London’s public transport system on July 21, 2005. Later, Hussain Osman, 28, was also found guilty of conspiracy to murder for taking part in the plot.

The jury, still deliberating on two co-defendents, was sent home for the night after failing to reach verdicts on Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 33, and Adel Yahya, 24.

Earlier, Judge Adrian Fulford told the jury of nine women and three men he would accept 10-2 majority verdicts on the remaining three defendants, The Associated Press reported.

[…] The July 21 failed attacks happened 14 days after the July 7 London suicide attacks, which killed 52 commuters and four bombers.

The defendants — all from London — denied charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.

Four of the men claimed the devices, made from liquid hydrogen peroxide, chapati flour, acetone and acid, were a hoax. Another claimed they were real bombs but that he was duped while the sixth man denies having anything to do with the alleged conspiracy.

During the trial the jury was told by prosecutor Nigel Sweeney that the conspiracy “had been in existence long before the events of July 7” and did not appear to be some “hastily arranged copycat.”

Each bomb was placed in a large plastic container in a knapsack and screws, tacks, washers or nuts, were taped to the outside to “maximize the possibility of injury,” Sweeney said.

Angel has more about Islam in UK.

Other news include:

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Sunday Post

Well, I have to say that being in the coutryside, I am not going to have much time to post these days. Anyway, I will manage to post something everyday.

Today the most horrible news I have read -I confess I have not read much- comes from Always on Watch blog:

The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family...

Yes, in case you have not taken care of what this people are doing, Al-Qaeda served baked and stuffed 11-year-old boys to families they wanted to convert into their way of thinking.

Repulsive and beastly. And yet there are people who wants to negotiate with these beasts… What? The taste of the sauce your boy is going to be cooked??? Excuse me if I sound not very moderate, but this is really disgusting.

And by the way, if they choose that way to convince me, I think they would succeed… in convincing exactly to do the contrary they would ask me to.

Also FT published yesterday an article about Al-Qaeda linked to operations from Iran:

Evidence that Iranian territory is being used as a base by al-Qaeda to help in terrorist operations in Iraq and elsewhere is growing, say western officials.

It is not clear how much the al-Qaeda operation, described by one official as a money and communications hub, is being tolerated or encouraged by the Iranian government, they said.

Anyway, Iranian diplomats have visited the Iranian captives in Iraq, accused of belonging to the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

I also have to point you to a blog post in Pajamas Media which describes the situation in Spain nowadays. Basically, it says that while we are beginning to consider the danger, we are stuck because we do not know what to do. My own experience has taught me that 3 years ago when I talked of these things to people here, they looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Now those same people just tell me they are trully worried. We have to be realistic: the threat is real and is great. And people are not prepared that their comfortable lifes with their home, their cars, their apartment at the beach and their winter holidays skiing are menaced. And yet to discover how to fight and counterrest it at the same time.

No, I really think there are improvements. Where I really do not see much improvements are in the politicians’ ideas. They are afraid of what is coming -or just do not look farther than their noses-. Europe cannot live on past glories: we should and must evolve into the future. And we must do it, without fear but also being realistic. We cannot being stuck on the past, because then we are going to be destroyed as a civilization.

Other news include:

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