More and more keep dying in Eritrea. The deaths are going up. Eritrea is located south of Saudi Arabia, in North Africa. The people who are imprisioned there, are placed in train like karts, in the desert. The believers imprisioned there are dying of the heat, and starvation. More than 10% of the believers in the country are in jail. On 9-11 another Saint got her crown of Matyrdom, and the headline doesn’t show anywhere. Another imprisoned Christian in Eritrea has been martyred. Voice of the Martyrs’ Canada’s Bernie Daniels says, “Nigsti Haile, aged 33, was tortured to death by Eritrean authorities in the Wi’a Military Training center in Massawa.”
She died September 5 after refusing to sign a letter recanting her faith, according to a report from Open Doors USA. Haile, an active member of the Rhema church, was one of ten Christian women who were arrested at a church gathering in Keren eighteen months ago and who have been under severe pressure to deny Christ.
Some 1,500 mourners called for revenge Friday as they buried the leader of the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, who was assassinated by a bomb after meeting with President Bush earlier this month.
[…] “We will take our revenge,” the mourners chanted. “We will continue the march of Abu Risha.”
The sheik was buried one year to the day after he organized Sunni Arab clans into an alliance to drive al-Qaida in Iraq from sanctuaries in Anbar province where the terror movement had flourished since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the second-highest ranking U.S. officer in Iraq, and several high-ranking government officials attended the funeral, including Iraq’s interior and defense ministers and National Security Adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie.
“We condemn the killing of Abu Risha, but this will not deter us from helping the people of Anbar — we will support them more than before,” al-Rubaie declared. “It is a national disaster and a great loss for the Iraqi people — Abu Risha was the only person to confront al-Qaida in Anbar.”
So, instead of confronting Al-Qaeda for a change and to really continue his march, they are going to take revenge.
Saudi Arabia is showing increasing signs of displeasure as Palestinian-Israeli preparatory discussions on a US-hosted multinational peace conference in November meander on without apparent achievements.
According to Agence France Presse (AFP) Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal warned Wednesday, “If this conference does not tackle the key issues such as Jerusalem, the borders, the Palestinians and other issues that were clearly stated in the Arab peace initiative, then the conference will be pointless.”
With time running out for the establishment of a firm basis for the conference, a deepening crisis in relations between Syria and the Saudis is throwing a pall over the upcoming discussions and Lebanese presidential vote.
Frosty relations
Fraught Syrian-Saudi relations plumbed new lows this week with the announcement Tuesday that a scheduled visit by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem to Riyadh had been called off.
Al-Mouallem was scheduled to meet Saudi King Abdullah II and other Saudi officials during a visit designed to ease tensions between the two regional powers in the wake of a public falling out last month.
Ties between Syria and the Saudis have been troubled for some time, with the kingdom feeling that its role in seeking to reconcile Lebanese and Palestinian factions has been undermined by Damascus. [Could it be because Syria is not interested in having peace between its neighbours?? What is gaining Syria with this confrontation?].
Nadim Shehadi from the UK-based think tank Chatham House told ISN Security Watch , “There has been a break in Saudi-Syrian relations for two years, which were sort of restored during the Arab [League] summit in March when President Assad was invited to Riyadh.”
But what do you know? There is also Iran-Iraq question between them:
Both Syria and Saudi Arabia are deeply involved in Iraq, where the correspondence or dissonance between their interests are far from clear, despite Syria’s close relationship with Iran.
Asked if there are differences between the Saudis and Syrians over Iraq, a source close to the situation told ISN Security Watch on the condition of anonymity, “Probably, but it is harder to say because neither of them has very transparent policies […] To the extent that Syria has a relationship with Iran it creates a problem for Saudi Arabia, but it doesn’t seem that in Iraq Syria has been backing the same parties as Iran.”
[…] Saudi Arabia saw the July-August 2006 Lebanon war and subsequent Lebanese political meltdown as opportunities to expand its sphere of political and economic influence in Lebanon, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into government reconstruction funds controlled by the rump anti-Syrian Fouad Siniora administration.
A leaked October 2005 draft report of the UN probe into the murder of al-Hariri fingered prominent Syrian officials with close ties to the Syrian president as involved in the murder plot.
According to the anonymous source, “Saudi Arabia was extremely close to the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated. They suspect a Syrian hand, if not more, in his assassination […] And I think that was a turning point in their relations with the Syrians.”
A bomb has exploded in front of a police compound in Algeria, killing three people and wounding five others, officials say.
The attack happened in the town of Zemmouri, about 50km (31 miles) east of the capital, Algiers.
It is the latest in a series of bombs attacks in Algeria that have killed more than 50 people in the past week.
The militant group calling itself Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said it was responsible for the earlier blasts.
In the latest attack, the bomb was placed in a plastic bag at the entrance to the compound where police officers and their families live, Algeria’s security forces say.
They said two people had to have their legs amputated after the incident. [INCIDENT!!! You’re a bunch of stupid morons. Three people get killed and five others wounded, including the two which have had their two legs amputated and you call that an INCIDENT??? ]
So far no group has claimed the responsibility for the attack.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Ahmad al Shayea is the rarest of truck bombers — he survived his suicide mission in Iraq even though the blast from his bomb was strong enough to kill 12 bystanders.
Ahmad al Shayea survived his truck bomb attack, but not without scarring to his face and hands.
Al Shayea, who was disfigured during the attack, claims al Qaeda tricked him into becoming a bomber by asking him to deliver a tanker truck, which they had rigged with a bomb.
“They told me to take it to an address in Baghdad. As soon as I got there the truck exploded,” said the native of Saudi Arabia. He survived by jumping out of the truck.
Al Shayea renounced terrorism and returned to Saudi Arabia, where he works to convince would-be insurgents and terrorists to give up their deadly ways. [At least that is something…].
“I think God took me out of death to show others what can happen,” he told CNN. “If you join al Qaeda, they will use you, and maybe you will die.”
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II has repeated his insistence that a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI (bio – news) should only take place after adequate preparation– and after the Vatican has complied with demands from the Moscow patriarchate to curb Catholic “proselytism” in the historically Orthodox countries of eastern Europe.
[…] Catholic officials have repeatedly denied such a goal. […] Catholic Church leaders explain that missionary workers aim not to convert Orthodox believers, but to attract the vast majority of Russian people who are not currently active in any church. But the Moscow patriarchate takes the stand that the Russian people are Orthodox, even if they do not attend any church servives.
So, instead of confronting the real danger, he is just quarrelling with other Christian denomination. Just work, Patriarc! If you believe your religion is the best, promote it, instead of groaning every year several times about it…
Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas has urged the Venezuelan government to show respect for critics of constitutional changes proposed by President Hugo Chavez.
Cardinal Urosa insisted that “no persons of groups should be disregarded or execrated simply because they disagree with the proposal.” He said that the proposed constitutional amendments deserve serious discussion, and encouraged a respectful hearing for all reasoned points of view.
In an implicit criticism of Chavez, who has charged that the country’s Catholic hierarchy is stirring up opposition to his government, the cardinal said that dissident political views should be heard without rousing “the ghosts of insurrection and destabilization.”
Hey, what a coincidence!!! Only the Spanish drivers were aware of the information. Why not the rest of them?? Oh, yeah, there’s Hamilton “I’m-calling-my-father-to-defend-me-from-Fernando-Alonso“…
Superb post from Kate about the situation of Venezuelan oposition. An excerpt:
These guys cannot get it through their skulls that there needs to be some sort of united front against Chavez, if for nothing else to create a legitimate opposition. Honestly, if I were chavista, I wouldn’t even bother to write about the opposition; I’d be laughing way too hard to be able to sit down and write something coherent. Primero Justicia wants to vote article by article; the student movement –which has been called sifrino by many in the elite political class– continues, albeit intermittently; COPEI wants to get rid of article 141; AD is nowhere to be found. All the meanwhile, chavistas and the administration are giving opposition forces the run-around by entertaining futile opposition attempts. The saddest part of it all? The opposition are buying into it! They are what my Italian grandmother calls stunods, which are essentially thick-headed people who are gluttons for punishment.
The accused conspirators in a bombing plot disrupted last week in Germany were part of what the authorities say is a small, but growing, flow of militants from Germany and other Western countries who are receiving terrorism training at camps in Pakistan.
Beginning early last year, at least five of the suspects traveled to the tribal regions of Waziristan, where they learned to prepare chemical explosives and military-grade detonators that they intended to use to build three car bombs, according to German officials and a confidential German intelligence document that details the allegations.
[…] As further evidence of traffic between Germany and the tribal areas of Pakistan, intelligence officials said six other men from Germany who had received similar training had been detained in Pakistan, and they suspect that numerous other Germans have attended the camps without being identified by the authorities.
German officials say they are troubled by evidence that Al Qaeda and other groups are training Western-born recruits whose passports allow them easy access to other Western countries.
“They started to look especially for people from Europe, because they wanted to train them and later to use them here in Germany for operations,” said a high-ranking German intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.
The accusations in Germany contain similarities to two high-profile cases in Britain.
[…] This summer militants released a 46-minute videotape depicting some 250 graduates of a Taliban training camp near the Afghan-Pakistan border, which included speeches in English by recruits who were grouped by the countries they had been trained to attack, including Germany and the United States.
“We are not only fighting in Afghanistan,” the Taliban leader, Mullah Mansoor, said at the end of the ceremony. “Those American, British, German, French, Canadian and others who have come to finish us, if God wills, we will destroy them with the power of strong faith in God. We will commit suicidal attacks and we will destroy their national assets.”
Read it all.
This also happens in Spain by the way, and specially in Catalonia.
For Islamist terrorist organizations this is something necessary… as they avoid better the police control and the possible suspicions from the neighbourhood.
A rabbi was stabbed in the stomach by another man on a Frankfurt street in what appeared to be a spontaneous attack, police said Saturday.
The 42-year-old rabbi, whose name was not disclosed, underwent surgery after the Friday night attack and appeared to be out of danger, police said.
The rabbi was walking with two other people when they encountered the assailant accompanied by two women, a police statement said. Witnesses said the attacker spoke to the rabbi — who was wearing a yarmulke — in what sounded like Arabic.
The rabbi did not understand, and the attacker then threatened in German to kill him and stabbed him once, police said. The attacker fled and the women who were with him ran in different directions.
So who is the murderer? De Der Spiegel (aquí el link en alemán a la noticia):
_____________________________
Here in Spain:
a) ETA has accused the Government of “not fulfilling their pacts” (oops, but the Government says there weren’t any…) and that they will continue with the “armed struggle“. Zapatero said that this year was going to be better that the previous one, and the next day the Barajas’ T4 terminal exploded after an ETA’s device went off, killing two persons. Just a few days ago, Zapatero in the independent diary of the morning, that is, EL País, in an interview, blamed on Popular Party the lack of success of the peace process. And today he is accused of not fulfilling his pacts with ETA… Now, that for those who deny Zapatero is a jynx. And a liar….
b) the Government wants to impose on the citizens a new subject, which would be taught at the schools: Education for Citizenship. Roughly speaking, this is a subject whose aim is to teach children, leftists are lovers of the arts, peaceful, good in essence, while right-wingers are militarists, professional haters and so on. I will write about that, as it is an important thing to consider for next generations. But if you speak Spanish, you can go here to know more about it.
it was about time that someone tells us the truth about what happened. I am going to advise them to include, at least, these fundamental facts which had been systematically manipulated or hidden:
1) Calvo Sotelo was not killed by assault guards who were supporters of Socialist PSOE. He committed suicide shooting himself twice in the back of his own head.
2) Franco made his Moor forces cross the Strait of Gibraltar in makeshift vessels (=pateras).
4) Andreu Nin escaped to Brasil with the Bank of Spain’s gold. Only the fascist propaganda said that he dissapeared because the stalinists have killed him and that he gave the gold to Stalin so that the latter could guard it.
5) The Republicans (Reds, communists…) won the Ebro’s Battle. But when they were attacking it, they positioned themselved on the wrong side of the river.
6) The Republic won the war, but the Franco’s propaganda achieved its goal: no one had been able to discover that till now.
7) It is not true that Hemingway and Dos Passos ended with all the reserves of gin in Madrid. What is true is that they were stinking with a known smell, because, when they have just arrived in Madrid, an unknown and not very careful waiter, stinked their clothes with a Beefeater Gin’s bottle and, considering the bad state of finances in the capital then, they weren’t able to change their clothes throughout all the war.
d) the agressions against PP members continue: a New Generations’ militant (New Generations is the association for youths of PP) has been hurt after being beaten heavily. A group of violents have already attacked the PP stand in Alcorcón (celevrating now its patron’s holidays). The party’s spokerperson in Alcorcón, Fernando Díaz, has also suffered some contusions in the face, arm and hand, and has denounced the facts to the Police.
According to their statement, at 7:30 pm, around 15 youths began “to insult and menace the people who were there working inside the stand. When the latter considered what was happenning, they abandoned what they were doing and scaped running“, he said.
But the agressors run after them, pursuing the hurt man, an Italian national, who was beaten severely, and was later driven to Hospital, although he was discharged from hospital later.
The agressors were identified as okupas, “belonging to anti-system groups who came from another caseta with republican flags“.
e) the Prince of Asturias’ daughter has begun going to school. But not to a normal/ordinary school. After repeating in all TV shows, that the Prince and his family are “youths of their age” (though they don’t have to pay mortgage..), the Infanta Leonor is going to a school built for her, whose companions are sons and daughter of the Civil Guard. The school has been built by the Defense Ministry (as if it had a huge budget…) and a third part of it is paid by the Autonomous Community of Madrid (as if they were Kings only of it, instead of Spain… something which would not reduce the general criticism against “the capital”, just because it is the capital…). 🙄
If this proves something is that the Law of Full Protection against Gender Violence has had very little effect in preventing this kind of acts. From my point of view, there are two very interesting things in this law: first, that if a woman beats her husband he has not the same protection as she would have in the same situation; and that if it is a same-sex marriage, the partners are also excluded from the law. And secondly, considering the measures the law imposes, the budget to really make them possible should be enormous. But the budget is not so important as to make that possible…
In fact, this is not a problem of huge budgets or of engaging more policemen or civil servants, but of education. Intelligence, goodness, beauty, honesty, etc. are valors which are not given by nationality, height or sex, but that appear in some individuals while are not present in others. But if both chauvinists and feminists keep on saying their sexes are above the other -while neither of them is right-, the situation will be maintained in the long run. Situation which is aggravated by the immigration which normally comes from places which are even more chauvinistic than Spain.
So some men are suffering mistreatment in silence, aren’t they? No one speaks about this… and campaigns are normally aimed at mistreated women, but no mistreated man is mentioned. And in the present state of things I feel we will have to wait to see that This is not equality, really. At least, from my point of view.
g) The socialist Major of Sevilla has supported the Chaves‘ initiative of giving free apartments in Andalucía and has announced that he will raise the Tax on Real State a 50% to the unnoccupied houses. He maintains that his objective is “to make more attractive the renting market” to ensure that the appartments are a “fundamental right” and not a “business“. He has not outlined what criteria will be used to decide if a house is or not occupied. From PP, Javier Arenas considers the Chaves’ initiative a “joke of the worst taste“.
NOTE: Chávez is the Venezuelan Bolivarian blablabla President. Cháves is the President of the Autonomous Community of Andalucia. I know, I also mix them up.
After landing in Islamabad he was charged and put on board a plane bound for Saudi Arabia, Religious Affairs Minister Ejaz ul-Haq told BBC News.
Mr Sharif says he wants to challenge President Pervez Musharraf, who ousted him in a 1999 coup, ahead of elections.
Mr Sharif arrived in Pakistan weeks after the country’s Supreme Court affirmed his right to return.
On board the plane which flew him to Pakistan from London, Mr Sharif told the BBC he wanted to help restore the rule of law.
“It’s democracy versus dictatorship,” he said.
Once the plane arrived in Islamabad, paramilitary troops surrounded it and there was a stand-off on board as Mr Sharif refused to hand over his passport to immigration officials for nearly two hours.
Eventually he agreed to leave the plane and was escorted to the airport’s VIP lounge.
But shortly afterwards, he was separated from his entourage, returned to the tarmac and put on board a helicopter. Later, he was transferred to a plane bound for Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
Officials said he had been charged with money-laundering and corruption.
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.
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
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 bastardspeaceful 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:
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.
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…
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:
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!
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.
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. 😯
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.
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.
“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?
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
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…]
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.
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. 👿
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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. 😦 😡
The Taliban agreed Tuesday to release 19 South Korean church volunteers held captive in Afghanistan since mid-July, the South Korean government announced, signaling an end to a wrenching hostage crisis that had gripped the country for almost six weeks.
“Together with the families of the hostages and with all South Korean people, we welcome the agreement to release 19 South Koreans,” said Cheon Ho-seon, a spokesman for President Roh Moo-hyun. Mr. Roh, who steps down in February, has been under intense domestic pressure to win the safe return of the hostages, most of them women in their 20s and 30s.
In Afghanistan, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said all 19 hostages would be released over the next several days. “We will release them in groups,” he said Tuesday.
Mr. Cheon said that in return for their release, South Korea had agreed to keep to its earlier plan to withdraw its 200 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and to stop all evangelical activities by Christian groups from South Korea in Afghanistan.
Just look at the Taliban’s faces of the photo in the link above: a smile on those faces is a blow to all people who sustain and support democracy, freedom and Human Rights for Afghanistan.
Related to the Taliban read this (there is a video also inside) h/t ExtremeCentre.org:
Never mind that they don’t even allow street signs with the little symbolic walk or don’t walk figures with heads on them, here’s a video/photo show of the pretty boys of the Taliban. Black eye-liner and hand-holding and pretty long hair are evident in the photos, although homosexual behavior is strictly banned. The Taliban actually turn young boys into sex slaves. Here’s an excerpt from an article on that from Jamie Glazov from FrontPageMagazine.com:
But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters.
[…] Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.
The fact that Taliban militants’ spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality — and puts her out of mind and sight — is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.It is no surprise that John Racy, a psychiatrist with much experience in Arab societies, has noted that homosexuality is “extremely common” in many parts of the Arab world. [1] Indeed, even though homosexuality is officially despised in this culture and strictly prohibited and punishable by imprisonment, incarceration and/or death, having sex with boys or effeminate men is actually a social norm. Males serve as available substitutes for unavailable women. The key is this: the male who does the penetrating is not considered to be homosexual or emasculated any more than if he were to have sex with his wife, while the male who is penetrated is emasculated. The boy, however, is not considered to be emasculated since he is not yet considered to be a man. A man who has sex with boys is simply doing what many men (especially unmarried ones) do. [2] And this reality is connected to the fact that, as scholar Bruce Dunne has demonstrated, sex in Islamic-Arab societies is not about mutuality between partners, but about the adult male’s achievement of pleasure through violent domination. [3]
😯 Hypocrisy… hmm, a word these men have not known about…, eh???
Officially, frankly, I don’t know where we stand now, about the supposed “peace process” with ETA. Apparently, the Government just broke it off, but there are reports that confirm that the conversations never ended, only were just called officially off:
According to sources reached by Hispanidad, the Government would agree to offer a referendum of autodetermination in two years, in the next political term after 2008 elections. Before, that should be preceded by a process of negotiation (another one or just the same?). To go where? (important question: before beginning a walk you must know your destination…). To the Ibarreche planning (uff, the same one which was rejected by Spanish Parliament two years ago…). On the other hand, the pro-ETA supporters are clinging to their project of autodetermination which would include 4 provinces, as it was pointed by Otegi last February. That is, an extended autonomy (more autonomy? You’re kidding… Just make a comparison of the competences that NOW has the Basque Country with any other Autonomous Region and then tell me about…), but including Navarra.
But as Navarra has not agreed with it, ETA terrorists are worried. But the Government has continued with the negotiations, although they have not obtained the desired result. So ETA has decided to stop and give a great punch: the terrorist attack against the house-police station of the Civil Guard. Fortunately without any victims, even when its directors underlines that “they wanted to kill us“. A thesis also named by Vice-President De la Vega. Anyway, what really puzzles about this statement, is that the car was situated at a very great distance from the building.
Something absolutely amazing but true here, is that the Minister of Justice considers that the Spanish citizens don’t have any kind of right to know about the contents of negotiations. As the Spanish MSM are as good and accurate as in every other part of the world, there is not a lot of real information except to say how well the Government is doing everything. There are always exceptions, though, as we have seen.
Another car-bomb exploded in Les Coves de Vinromá (Autonomous Community of Valencia). :
ETA terrorists who exploded the van bomb -with 150 kgs of explosive- in Les Coves de Vinromá could have caused the lack of electricity to Castellón and Valencia, because the high-tension tower that gives electricity to these two provinces from the nuclear power plant in Vandellós is situated just 30 meters away from the place where the two ETA terrorists exploded the charges which they pretended to use in Valencia. More or less, three million people could have been affected by the lack of electricity. Yesterday, the experts from the Civil Guard finished to collect all the proofs, elements which could be used to discover what was the kind of explosive which they were transporting in a new operative phase, which aims at a new long-term and bloody offensive.
Experts in anti-terrorism fight, while pointing out that ETA has a full capacity to kill -it has now a hundred “activists” in its “ranks”-, also advise to be cautious because these “activists” do not receive a lot of training courses. They consider that if they would have been trained, they would have exploded the Mercedes Vito in the high tension tower.
So the question is: if they were so tracked down, how could they possibly cross all Spain without no one stopping them?
And the next question is: in both attacks, the car-bomb was placed very far from the supposedly correct target. Ergo, why are they not targeting people? Is there any profound reason for that? Are they just frightening every citizen to get what they want? And what is the Government’s position in all of this?
I feel like if someone is permanently laughing at us… 😡
The Mercedes Vito had been stoled from a married couple, who were kidnapped with their 4-year-old boy by 5 ETA terrorists. They were released after the explosion after being held for 72 hours. Magnificent, eh???
“The child has become so vested with importance, such a huge burden requiring so many changes to one’s way of life that having one has become inhumane, so my advice to people is don’t have any,” says Maier.
I really believe there is little comment needed. After reading this, I just doubt that the human beings can be considered as “rational” anymore.
You also introduce changes to yourself along your life. Just commit suicide and save us of your stupidity. My goodness!
When I was a little girl, I asked why the people died. Of course, no one answered me in a very logical and understandable way, so I begun to think about it. I reached a conclusion: the cause of death was that your brains had got totally tired of hearing and reading stupid things.
Conclusion: I am going to stop reading the news, just in case… 😈
There is no suggestion that any of the organizations are directly involved in violent crime, but they do promote ideas that feed violence, Kozhevnikova says.
Some of the groups espouse anti-Semitism; many are overtly racist and xenophobic. There are also hundreds of so-called skinhead gangs. Police investigations have found skinheads to be behind the frequent attacks on people with dark skin on the streets of Russian cities.
They may be at the extreme end of the spectrum, but the mainstream shares some of their views. A recent survey carried out by the Levada Center, which monitors public opinion, found that 55 percent of Russians agreed with the statement “Russia should be for Russians,” while 20 percent of young people did not consider the activities of skinhead or neo-Nazi groups to be dangerous.
Kozhevnikova cites a number of reasons for the growing nationalist mood among Russians. “The peak of this xenophobic mood on a domestic level was fixed by sociologists in 2005; [this] domestic xenophobia was first blamed on poor social conditions and then on conflicts,” she says.
“There’s no doubt that the war in Chechnya played a role – the second Chechen war. It was taken as being a war of Russians against Chechens, Orthodox against Muslims. Of course, that played a very big role,” Kozhevnikova adds.
Part of the problem, Kozhevnikova says, is that many nationalist organizations are starting to promote themselves as civil movements, whose aim is to improve social conditions.
Aleksandr Belov, the spokesman for the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, says the group’s goals are “to put a stop to the number of illegal immigrants moving to Russia and to repatriate people with Russian roots living outside the country.”
“We’re a democratic movement made up of people who have their own opinions and who want to live freely in their own country. They want laws to be obeyed. You could call ussocial democrats,” Belov says.
It is worth underlining that Putin has been a supporter of Iranian regime, with which has agreed about nuclear plants as we already know. Then the Orthodox Church’s Patriarch, Alexei II, said (link in Spanish) that Orthodox Christians and Muslims should unite to prevent the existence of a one-polar world, to the Iranian parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel when the latter visited Moscow.
And Putin has also stated: “Russia has always been the most faithful, reliable and consistent defender of the interests of the Islamic world,” he told Chechen lawmakers, to applause. “Russia has always been the best and most reliable partner and ally.”
This is a proof of what I have been saying: if the Governments are silly and do not act within the law to stop a sector’s radicalization, the rest of the society will also create (and follow and obey) their own radicals. We are going to a polarization of the societies which is very dangerous, because that only implies that the law of the strongest is going to be imposed on the weak. If Governments do not respect the law, and the citizens do not compel and oblige them to be compelled by it (that is what democracy is about), the results will be a return to darker times.
I remember when I began blogging nearly two years back, as a result of Paris Nov 2005’s riots. Pastorius was then very worried about the consequences that a lack of action against Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism could have in and for Europe. I was also but for different reasons: Pastorius thought back then that European future was Islamic or Fascist; mine was just that this kind of news did not have any publicity, they were just buried. I have been seeing a progression here in two directions. The first is that most people now know about the danger and understand the nature of it. The second is that, while politicians do not act against it, the public is divided: while some don’t really how to act, others are beginning to get nervous and to demand courses of action which are a little surprising, desperate and possibly, at his moment, totally unnecessary.
But, just let time elapses with the present situation. We can be in the dawn of a new (and not very pleasant) era. Hope I’m not right, though.
Arson has been widely blamed. Six people have been charged with deliberately setting fires. Arson suspects are rarely convicted. Where cases are proven, the motives are typically profit, revenge against neighbors, or the clearing of pastures by shepherds.
As much as 469,000 acres were laid waste between Friday and Tuesday alone — 10 times the annual average for the past 50 years, according to the European Commission’s European Forest Fire Information System, or EFFIS. A total of679,000 acres — an area almost the size of Rhode Island — has gone up in smoke since the start of the year.
“There are still some fires burning, but definitely the speed of increase of the fire front in the areas burnt is much, much smaller than in the first three days, which was very, very fast mainly due to the strong winds,” EFFIS researcher Paulo Barbosa said.
“The conditions are better and I think in the next few days the situation will be under control,” he told The Associated Press.
Some say it was the worst catastrophe since a Turkish army ravaged the Peloponnese in 1825, during the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Apart from the blow to the Peloponnese’s fragile ecosystems, Greenpeace Greece director Nikos Haralambidis warned that mountain populations could end up as internally displaced “environmental refugees.”
“There will be several thousand people faced with the choice of staying in a burnt land or moving to the cities,” he said. “Their main source of income was olive oil production … and new olive saplings need at least 15 years to produce a decent crop.”
[…] The fires are dominating political debate before the elections. Criticism that the government failed to respond quickly enough — and its suggestions the fires resulted from an organized attack — could hurt Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.
Hmmm…
By the way, the Pope has condemned both the Greek and the Italian arsonists. In Italy four people have been killed last week when a wildfire consumed a hotel where they were staying, near Messina. Two shepherds have been detained as the culprits.
Archbishop Baltazar Porras Cardozo warned Venezuelans this week that the constitutional reforms proposed by President Hugo Chavez are leading the country towards a dictatorship similar to the Castro regime in Cuba or the Pinochet regime in Chile.
The archbishop recalled that democracy is based on the balance of powers and that many of the reforms proposed by Chavez are inspired by Communism. What is even more dangerous, he said, is that the proposals would make Chavez another Pinochet or Castro, “who are not the models of democratic virtues.”
If you want to laugh and understand Spanish, you should read this. An excerpt:
My admired Chávez: Bolívar was of an Spanish Imperialistic origin. He had no aboriginal blood. He does not merit to give his name to an emancipated native people. He only created a new criollo regime (NOTE -thanks Kate-: criollo is the Spanish word for the people whose parents were born on the Iberian Peninsula but who were born in South America, while mestizo were the descendants from both Indians and Spanish in South America 😳 ). The country shouldn’t also be called Venezuela, which comes from Little Venice, as Américo Vespuccio named it following Spanish orders.
Venezuela was a prosperous conventional democracy, but it had a lot of corruption. Now there is more corruption, true, but there is also another thing which compensates it: an Anti-system Revolution.
Fortunately, you are the most important thing, you, who, full of revolutionary spirit, gave a coup d’état in 1992. It went wrong, but afterwards you were victorious in the elections. Just the same as another exemplary nationalist and socialist: Adolf Hitler.
Paolo writes: Ahmadinejad is centered in achieving a force, specially in Ortega’s Nicaragua, to counter-measure all the US force, in the case of an air attack against nuclear laboratories and Iranian missiles’ positions. Considering that Sarkozy has menaced Iran with action, this is necessary to prevent any change in the Iranian surroundings (which are mainly, and besides South America, Moscow and Pekin).
In Africa, there is still the belief that, if a grown-up man who has been infected by AIDS, maintains sexual relationships with a girl under 15, he is going to be cured. If he is not cured, the treatment is repeated. This is how most girls are becoming infected with AIDS. Psycologists also say that these girls normally adopt promiscuous sexual behaviour or end working as prostitutes.
In spite of the brutality of the practice and of the negative consequences, it’s complicated to measure the importance of this practice, as “men do not want to be identified (the cowards…) and the victims fear the shame, they prefer to be silent on the matter. Anyway, African newspapers often report about this practice“. “The consequences of them are normally the stigma and the discrimination“, according to Félix Fuentenebro, director of Medicus Mundi, underlining that the poverty is the culprit of a lot of insane habits.
“Poverty alsomeans the survival of several negative cultural practices, as the one that obliges to inherite the dead brother’s wife. 😯 In a lot of places, when a man dies, the older brother inherites his wife. If the dead was infected by AIDS or died as a result, it’s probable that his wife is also infected with the virus, and so, her new husband and his other wife or wifes, could also be infected“.
BETHLEHEM Mayor Victor Batarseh yesterday attacked Israel and angered members of Australia’s Jewish community within hours of arriving in Sydney – just as Australian immigration officials in the Middle East warned would occur if he was granted a visa.
Dr Batarseh told The Australian Israel’s construction of a security wall was about grabbing Palestinian land, not stopping suicide bombers. “If you want peace, you build bridges of love and understanding between people, you don’t build walls of hatred,” he said.
The mayor of Bethlehem is still a Christian, as always. Eight out of the fifteen seats on the city council are still reserved for Christians. But in the latest municipal elections, which took place in May of 2005, a coalition with crucial support from the Muslims of Hamas emerged victorious.
The leader of the Hamas contingent in the municipal council of Bethlehem, Hassam El-Masalmeh, exalts the suicide attacks against the Jews, and asserts that these will continue until all of Palestine, including the territory of Israel, is under Palestinian control.
But mayor Victor Batarseh, a practicing Catholic, condemns the terrorist attacks and wants Hamas to stop carrying them out. He says that he is ready for a territorial compromise with Israel in order to bring about a true Palestinian state. But even before the latest municipal elections, he chose Hamas as his main ally, together with another extremist group called Islamic Jihad.
A magnificent and very coherent Catholic. Uaghhhh!
Tiberge writes about a marvellous French Christ from the XVIth century which has been mutilated (most possibly, deliberately) to portrait the image making an obscene gesture. 😯
A French gossip magazine has been ordered to pay €15,000 damages to the lover of France’s Socialist Party leader François Hollande.
A court ruled that the images Closer published of M. Hollande frolicking on a Moroccan beach with journalist Valérie Trierweiler were a breach of her privacy. Mme Trierweiler hit the headlines in June when Hollande’s long-term partner Ségolène Royal booted him out of their family home for his affair with the reporter.
The photos of the alleged “intimacy violated” are here. I really do not see any intimacy as they were in the beach and both of them are public figures… if you don’t want to be pictured, stay inside. And if not, you are risking that they take your pictures…
Police had been alerted to jokes he cracked about the Kor-an and the Ar-ab language in an attempt to stop him entering the country for a show tomorrow night.
Fearing the local press would whip up a frenzy of protest against Meo, his agent and the organisers of the gig decided it would be safer if he didn’t perform.
Meo’s agent said: ‘It was a mutual decision between us. There was a small but still unacceptable risk to his safety.’
She comments:
We, here in the West..well ya see..We don’t get our panties into a bunch so quickly and um…….we actually believe in laughter.
Especially our ability to laugh at ourselves at times.
Needless to say, this takes self esteem and inner strength. (hint hint)
Yesterday, I wrote about illegal immigration in Spain and the misunderstanding between Spanish PM Zapatero and French PM Fillon about the massive regularization. Well, it looks like that Fillon has phoned Zapatero to calm him down and to tell him that he understands truly well why he had to do it.
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.
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.
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… 😡
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 immigrantswithout 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].
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.
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.
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.”
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….
“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.”
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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… 😈
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).
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.
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.
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“.
“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“.
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. 😆
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.
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.
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.
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.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is inMoscow for discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin about apossible arms deal and expanded economic ties between the twocountries. VOA Correspondent Peter Fedynsky reports from the Russiancapital.
Hugo Chavez speaks at opening of Venezuela’s cultural center in Moscow, 28 June 2007
PresidentChavez is expected to meet with his Russian counterpart Thursdayevening in the Kremlin. Speaking during the day at the opening of aLatin American cultural center in Moscow, the Venezuelan leader said hedoes not rule out the development of nuclear energy in his country. Ina swipe at the United States, Mr. Chavez also said American troopsshould leave Iraq, and that Iran has a right to nuclear technology.
Mr. Chavez says that Iran has the right to a peaceful atomic energy industry, because it is a sovereign state.
His Moscow agenda includes the possible purchase of Russiandiesel-electric submarines, armed with missiles. Mr. Chavez is alsointerested in buying the Russian TOR-1 missile defense system.
Last year, Mr. Chavez signed a deal with the Kremlin to purchase $3billion worth of weapons, including helicopters, fighter planes andsmall arms.
But Mr. Chavez said weapons are not the aim of his visit.
He says his priorities are culture, ideas and cooperation in energy as well as the military.
Daniel from Venezuelan News and Views, has posted about the draft of the new Venezuelan constitution summing it up with the words “the path to an eternal Chávez dictatorship“.
No more private property besides your personal belongings. That is, there will be some private sector allowed with business of reasonable size but the sate will have the right to expropriate or confiscate at will if it thinks it is necessary to its interests (NOTE: even if it is all made in the name of the “people”, since it is the state that translates the “real will” of the people, well, you know which are the interests truly served). The air borne media will have rights to emit only if they serve educative purpose. The state decides which are the educative goals. The autonomy of Universities is done with. The state will be deciding which careers should be offered and which is the right curriculum to follow. You can decide on your own how creativity and free thought in a controlled university will prosper. Decentralization will be done with. Governors and Mayors will be subordinated to special vice presidents. Mayors can be removed almost at will by the National Assembly. And anyway, elected Governors and Mayors will be gutted of most meaningful power they might have. That is, they will be left with picking up the garbage and be blamed for anything else that doe snot work.
Basically, then, a socialist/communist dictatorship. As we have feared.
If you understand Spanish, just watch this video. Very interesting to see, how Chávez has changed.
Canarian and Galician farmers have been denouncing kidnappings and the invasion of their lands by peasants paid by Venezuela. Today the Catalan newspaper “La Vanguardia” runs in its Sunday edition, an important report in the situation. Newspaper El Mundo also takes a look to this matter.
Marbella Rodríguez was nearly burnt alive when she tried to defend the lands of her father. “They are not importing Cuban model but Zimbabwean model. Hugo Chávez is not bringing communism but chaos, robbery, kidnapping. They want Spanish out of the country, they are making us leave it“, says Luis Valdés, an unhopeful 67-years-old farmer (51 spent in Venezuela).
He is one of the 66 Europeans – Spanish, Italians and Potuguese- who have been kidnapped in the last one year and a half in the state of Yaracuy by armed bands, who, according to different statements, are connected with oficialist political leaders. There are not more kidnapping counted by police, because the families not only do not denounce them, but also deny them because of the possible retaliation. Dozens of Spanish farmers have seen their lands stolen in moments of full production by false cooperativists who, after stealing harvests, livestock and machinery, abandon the lands.
[…] “Spanish people -states Phandor Quiroga, ex-Major of San Felipe, Yaracuy’s capital- have prospered because they are very hard-working types. Emigrants, now with Venezuelan sons and grandsons, revitalised the lands. They were greeted as brothers. Now they are called oligarchs, even if they have little lands, with an average extension of 120 hectares. For the most part they are little landowners who, with a lot of sacrifice and making huge savings, bought some lands“.
[…] The method they use repeats itself: outsiders invade a land, in less than a week they are given an stay pass, they are given tractors and other tools. In less than a month they are given 39 millions of Bolivars (15.500 €) in money and 59 millions (24.000 €) in products and tools. Everything is wasted. Nothing is produced there any more”.
After lots of negotiations, and thanks to the good relationship between Chávez and the Spanish Ambassador, Raúl Morodo, some of the Spanish farmers received a little compensation for the lose of their lands. Portuguese, Italians and a lot of Venezuelan have received nothing. The Canarian Edmundo Rodríguez received only 110.000 € for a 100-hectares land. “I am totally broke. I cannot even pay the first instalment of an apartment in Spain with that money”, he comments with an unhappy expression.
Edmundo and his daughter Marbella are the true image of the two generations dedicated to work. In Venezuela the census lists 175.000 Spanish and 250.000 descendants. Totally sick of the agressions, a lot of the farmers are considering the idea of going back to Spain. But for the most part, they are modest people who, stripped of their lands, do not have enough money to begin a new life.
“Spanish, Portuguese and Italians, we are all annoying the Government. They want us to leave because we are uncomfortable witnesses. They do not want complaints. We cannot go on like this. Do we wait till they shot us in the head? You feel totally defenceless, you are not from there, not from here– says Rosaura Ibáñez, a distressed Canarian. Some names cited in the report are fictitious to preserve the security of the interviewed-. I never though that the hate against the foreigner could be used as a political tool. When Chávez is on TV, I turned it off, because I do not want to get all his hate”.
A judicial representative from the state of Yaracuy exposed with all the cruelty to La Vanguardia, that there is a campaign to make the Spanish people emigrate from Venezuela. “A lot of the kidnappings are politically caused. The pro-Chávez MP Braulio Álvarez is the responsible of the invasions of the lands owned by Spanish, Italians and Portuguese. He is protecting them, he promotes and supports them. Europeans are annoying, because they have the protection of their embassies. They do not like that the foreign Governments defend their people. The huge part of kidnapped and subjects of expropiations are Europeans or of European origins. There is not a single kidnapped which has been solutioned. Justice is just a sham”, according to the same judicial source.
There haven’t been reactions from the Spanish Government that I know of.
You can also read the students manifesto translated by Kate here, who has also sent me the tips -except the link to the video-. And a beautiful composition of the students can be seen here.
UDPATE: Writing the post in the Spanish blog, I have found that José María Aznar has said: “I prefer the photo of the Azores (the one in which he appeared with Bush and Blair) than the Spanish photo with Castro and Chávez“. h/t Prevost. Me too.
The head of an opposition-aligned TV station in Venezuela banned by President Chavez has said he may air programmes from Mexico.
Marcel Granier, the head of Radio Caracas TV (RCTV) – taken off the air on 27 May – said he would broadcast to Venezuelans by any means possible.
He said he had “good friends” in Mexican broadcasting, though he did not specify a deal.
President Hugo Chavez replaced RCTV with a state-funded broadcaster.
“Our commitment… is to re-establish that contact [with Venezuelans], either from Venezuela or from abroad, by any means possible, by cable, by satellite, by internet,” Mr Granier told reporters in Mexico City, according to the Associated Press.
The distance would be too great for television broadcasts, unless RCTV can get repeaters closer to Venezuela to carry their signal. Cable seems problematic, as Chavez can probably keep providers from carrying the new station. RCTV’s best opportunities will be satellite and Internet ventures.
This will force Chavez to impose ever-stricter state control over the media if he expects to block them. Those kinds of censorship will only inflame opposition even further, creating a vicious circle of despotism that will undo Chavez in the long run.
Hmm, what I see is that he is going to divide the Venezuelan society even further. And that is not a good path to walk on.
PSOE has rejected, with the help of the radical left, a proposition defended by Popular Party, Convergence and Union (Catalan Nationalists), Basque Nationalist Party and Canarian Coalition, in which the latter defended the support for the statement “Unity for freedom” promoted by the main leaders of the Cuban democratic oposition. The debate again has underlined the alliance between Zapatero’s Government and the Comunist regime and his total contempt for the Cuban people who are risking their lifes in their fight for freedom and democracy. Sevilla, with Socialist Major, is one of the cities that contribute more to the Cuban regime. Some days ago, when Condoleeza Rice came to Spain, she defended the need to boost the contacts with dissidents to seek for a democratic solution to the Castro-ist regime and she only found, the deafness, or to say more accurately, the hostility of our Government. Doing so, PSOE puts itself openly, not only against USA, but also again the Human Rights and common sense, and our basic international alliances, which are the democracies of this world, and not the Bolshevik last resorts, even when our President prefers them in a folk sentimental way.
Prevost links to PP MP Moragas who says that the motion was lost only for 8 votes. Moragas adds:
Each day there are more MPs and parlamentarian groups which support the Cuban freedom and in the end we will succeed in giving, from Spanish Parliament, the support that Caribbean Perle’s democrats merit.
Hmm, so Zapatero is again doing the contrary to what Aznar said. Aznar was, with Nathan Sharansky and Vaclav Havel, the organiser of a conference in Prague about dissidence and peace. In it, they defended a hard policy towards Cuba in order to support Human Rights and democracy:
“There is an appeasement policy towards Cuba“, said the Czech President and ex-dissident himself. “This conference should send a message to EU leaders: this is not the way“. Aznar reminded that his Government incited a Common Position reached in 1996, with which the EU asks Havana to respect Human Rights and to do some changes towards democracy. For Aznar, with this Agreement, Europe said: “nothing in Cuba without dissidents“.
You can read what Gateway Pundit wrote about the conference, in which dissidents from all the world (Iran, Bolivia, Russia, Sudan, Iraq….) spoke about their experiences. They agreed that Human Rights are not only for some people but for all.
Related news:
Cuba is wanting to meddle in the Colombian internal affairs. From EldiarioExterior.com: Cuba wants FARC leader Granda to live in Cuba if that’s good for the peace process -each time I hear that words, I get worried-. Pérez Novoa said that Cuba “always has supported peace processes -while killing and mistreating/torturing dissidents- and “that because of the respect Cuba has for Colombian internal affairs, they are at his disposition“.
“Democracy is government of the people,” Chavez said. “I think if we’re going to compare the extent of power that the people have, without a doubt Cuba is more of a democracy than the United States.”
“In Cuba there is no child that isn’t in school, no sick person who isn’t tended to,” Chavez said.
Despite his admiration of Cuba, Chavez denied that Venezuela’s emerging socialist system is being modeled after the island’s. “We’re in the middle of building it, like an artist painting a picture,” Chavez said.”We aren’t copying anything.”
[…] Chavez shares Castro’s affinity for hours-long speeches and spontaneity. During the four-hour drive, Chavez abruptly broke away from his motorcade at one point, saying he wanted a glimpse of the Apure River swollen by rains – “a magic river,” he called it.
When he stopped his Toyota (nyse: TM – news– people)4Runner at National Guard checkpoints, troops snapped to attention and saluted, reciting Castro’s trademark slogan, now adopted by Chavez:
This article is from March but it is really important to read
If any doubts remained about President Hugo Chvez’s plans for Venezuela’s destiny, they have been erased by his decree to “rescue” unproductive lands and assign them to “groups of the population” and “organized communities” from rural areas. Private property is history, so Chávez is proceeding to strengthen the failed agrarian reforms of socialist Venezuelan governments from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, renaming them the “agrarian revolution.”
The new Land Law authorizes the government to expropriate land that bureaucrats consider underutilized and to do the same in those cases in which the government discovers an error in a title of land. Venezuelans already know the modus operandi of Chvezs bureaucracy. In trying to obtain a birth certificate, an identification card, a passport, a certified copy of any legal document and even in registering the elderly to receive pensions, each “mistake” represents a potential source of income for each official, and at the same time, a delay of several months for each citizen’s request.
At the same time, you can read about the similarities between Ibero-American populism and fascism here:
The Iberoamerican nowadays populism have a lot of things in common with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. For example, the discredit of former regimes, the organization of confrontment groups (such as Bolivarian guards, associations of “owners of no-land”, “Cocalean Unionist Policemen”…) the racist retoric, the revolutionary militarization of the society, etc.
These tendencies are very dangerous because, using the motions of numeric control and the electoral manipulation, they only have one and only destiny: the the cult of the personality of the “supreme leader”. The closing of RCTV is another proving evidence that these iberoamerican supporters of populism have adopted the nazi-fascist methods. Their announced purpose to establish the model of the so-called “socialism of the XXIst century” to perpetuate themselves in power is another symptom of their totalitarian raptures.
At the same time: the Venezuelan channel Globovisión continues its critics against Chávez. Its president said yesterday that in Venezuela, the decadence of Hugo Chávez has begun. This is not the first time, Mr Ravell targets Chávez: when RCTV was closed he stated: “I prefer to die standing than to change only to satisfy Hugo Chávez“. Bolivarian President threaten then to close Globovision.
Also see this two videos posted by The Devil´s Excrement, in which we see the National Guard blocking the students to prevent them from demonstrating for freedom of expression.
See also the Bolivarian V-P saying: “Of course, we want a dictatorship, the dictatorship of democracy, of the Government of you and of us. We want to build a new country“. Found here.
Morales, far from changing his position in front of the strike announced for last Tuesday by the Judicial Power, has said that with this measure a “new unjustice is made upon the Bolivarian people”. The Bolivian President condemned the actions of the Judicial Power and said that it normally resolves for the people “with money” and very rarely by those who don’t have money.
Demagoguery in pure style…
Ecuador’s President Correa has also menaced with judicial measures against the newspaper Diario la Hora, which had accused him of governing with “tumults, sticks and stones”. The President of Diario la Horahas announced that he will not ask for forgiveness to Correa, who has asked for a compensation of $5 million, while questioning his fellow countrymen where should be invested. He said he is not interested in money, but that “he is really disturbed by impunity and bank abuse. We have them furious and I am not going to abandon to impunity this matter, but I will do with the money what you want, fellow countrymen“.
A lot of or several State Chiefs are trying to divide the society, of making the people live in confrontation, and they have blamed this confrontation on the MSM, specially in their owners and on the journalists, who have already problems in those countries.
Related News: Bolivia, infiltrated by Islamists according to Bolivian politician José Brechner, who has had to fled Bolivia due to security concerns.
This video is from the night when RCTV was closed. The guys with the red cups are Chávez’s supporters who have rifles with which they shoot the protestors:
"In necessasariis, unitas; In dubiis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas" - St Augustine.
De nos jours plus que jamais, la force principale des mauvais c'est la faiblesse et la lâcheté des bons, et tout le nerf du règne de Satan réside dans la mollesse des chrétiens". Saint Pie X
"A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him." Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong (La Rouchefoucauld)
]
So, instead of confronting the real danger, he is just quarrelling with other Christian denomination. Just work, Patriarc! If you believe your religion is the best, promote it, instead of groaning every year several times about it… 
Eat that Chávez, you, moonbat! 
to both!) wrote this comment [my translation]:
And in the present state of things I feel we will have to wait to see that 
She really deserves it. 
Spanish Pundit 
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