This morning Spain won the gold in Voleyball’s final at the European championship, because Zapatero was not able to attend the match.
This night Spain has lost 59-60 to Russia in the final of European Basketball Championship in the last minute and Zapatero WAS at the match!!!
So, err, considering he supported Kerry for 2004’s USA elections and lost, supported Schröeder for Germany’s elections and called “unsuccesful” to Merkel, and Merkel won. And he supported Ségolène Royal and Sarkozy won….
Definitely, my little sister is right: Zapatero is a Complete JINX!
Around 1.200 people who wanted to cross the frontier from Melilla to Morocco caused the closing of the frontier post of Beni Enzar after some incidents were registered between Moroccans.According to the Government’s Delegation of Melilla, yesterday in the main frontier post of the autonomous city, a large concentration of Moroccans gathered in the gate. They wanted to cross to Spanish land to go to the last day of Melilla’s local holidays.It was then when, after the Police stopped them and did not allow them to pass, when it was discovered they lack any identification, they began throwing stones, and as a result the gate was closed.[So, who they were throwing stones at? It was not between them, it was at Spanish police… speaking about MSM accuracy 😈 ].
According to the Government’s Delegation, and considering the facts that were happening, they asked for the collaboration of the Moroccan police, who arrived at the place, “in great numbers” and helped to end the incident.
Imagine this in your own country: there are parts of Spain where official buildings don’t display the Spanish flag! They are not fulfilling the law and say they are not going to do it at all. So how on earth they are asking citizens to do it?? (specially with taxes…)
And then if I don’t like you, I’m just going to menace you, but telling you, you’re the culprit of the menaces, not me. A real swap in the responsibility, isn’t it? Well, that happened last week-end and again yesterday.
And after transport competences have been transferred to other Autonomous Communities , now it’s Madrid the one which is going to receive it. Really? Well, we don’t know. In the first place:
So, as Catalonian statute has it (it is contested before the Constitutional Tribunal), the rest are asking for it…From my point of view, this is insane. It’s good to transfer some competences but not ALL, as the equality for all citizens is not really guaranteed then. And the citizens get confused…
as Muskens pointed out, Allah is a lovely sounding word. Thus, in the spirit of Christian charity and Western tolerance, I’ve been trying it out with mixed results.
The Doxology of my Protestant childhood is problematic with the two-syllable Allah instead of the monosyllabic God, but not impossible: Praise Allah, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Not perfect, but workable.
Changing Western language, symbols and making other accommodations to ease relations between old Europe and new isn’t only a conciliatory gesture or even mere appeasement. It is submission by any other name.
America ‘s familiar childhood blessing is downright euphonious: Allah is great, Allah is good, let us thank him for our food. But the Apostle’s Creed is a mess: I believe in Allah the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son … . Oops.Contrary to Hooper’s one-God claim, Christians and Muslims don’t really worship the same God. Although both religions are monotheistic — and if there’s just one God, there’s just one God — Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God and Muslims think otherwise.That’s not a small doctrinal difference. In fact, at the risk of exhausting the obvious, Christianity doesn’t exist without, um, Christ. Of course we could rewrite the Apostle’s Creed to include Muhammad: “I believe in Allah the Father Almighty … and in Muhammad, his favorite prophet …
My God -not Allah-! Praying for Muskens’ sanity… Because if it weren’t for Christian charity, this would be my own answer: .
Luis says something basic about examples like Muskens’: The root of the Islamist problem in Europe is not on Muslims’ groups. We have to search for it in European circles, as a result of Appeasement. […] It is only our cowardice, our absolute fault of civil courage, of determination, of faith in ourselves and our own capacities. Muslims are not responsible for that.
The latest videotape, of the hijacker’s testament, had not yet been posted on extremist web sites. But IntelCenter, a monitoring group in suburban Washington, said it had obtained the 47-minute video and provided it to Associated Press Television News.
In the tape, bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he “recognized the truth” that Arab rulers were “vassals” of the West and had “abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation.”
“It is true that this young man was little in years, but the faith in his heart was big,” he said.
“So there is a huge difference between the path of the kings, presidents and hypocritical Ulama (Islamic scholars) and the path of these noble young men,” like al-Shehri, bin Laden said. “The formers’ lot is to spoil and enjoy themselves whereas the latters’ lot is to destroy themselves for Allah’s Word to be Supreme.”
“It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues,” he said.
Bin Laden:
is re-emerging to tout his leadership — whether symbolic or effective — of the jihad movement. While past anniversary videos featured old footage of bin Laden, the latest appears likely to include a newly made speech.
Bin Laden had not appeared for nearly three years until a new video was released over the weekend. In that video, he addressed the American people, telling them the war in Iraq is a failure and taking on a new anti-globalization rhetoric. He urged Americans to abandon capitalism and democracy and embrace Islam.
Al-Qaida’s media arm, Al-Sahab, announced the impending second video Monday with an advertising banner posted on an Islamic militant Web forum where the group often posts its messages.
The video was likely to be released within 24 hours to coincide with Sept. 11, said Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors and analyzes militant messages.
He even has not changed clothes:
The Web banner included a still image of bin Laden from the upcoming video. Shown raising his finger, he wears the same dyed-black beard and the same clothes — white robe and round cap and beige cloak — that he had on in the video posted on the Web on Saturday.
Well, err, not impressed yet. That beard does not make you more attractive… Or is it that bitter expression?
Six years after the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network is bleeding the U.S. military in Iraq while regrouping with an avowed aim of another strike on the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies and other analysts say security improvements and international efforts against al Qaeda have helped prevent another major U.S. attack.
But the network’s ability to attack the West is rebounding, they say, and already it has met what some analysts describe as a goal of luring the United States into a damaging Middle East war that would cripple U.S. influence in the region.
Al Qaeda has inspired cells and sympathizers who may be unable to strike on the scale of September 11 but can nevertheless cause death and destruction.
“They have regained a significant level of their capability,” National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said of al Qaeda during a Senate hearing on Monday, the eve of the sixth anniversary. “The threat is real,” he said.
And well, not attacking his ideology in the war of ideas happening just now, just condemns the rest to fight these jihadis for a long time. See:
“To us, war is a finite undertaking with a clear beginning and a clear end,” says Brian Jenkins, a senior adviser to the president of RAND Corp. in Arlington, Va. “To our jihadist foes, war is a perpetual condition.”
[…]In Western media much time and space has been devoted to analyzing the appearance of the terrorist leader himself, notes author and former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer. Was his black beard – which was obviously dyed – a sign of some sort? Did it mean his health was better, or worse?
But the debate on cable TV news might better have focused on bin Laden urging Americans to embrace Islam, says Mr. Scheuer.
In the US, that rhetoric might be rejected as silly; in the Islamic world, it could be seen as an offer that goes the extra mile. It might allow bin Laden to later say that he did all he could before he launched further attacks.
“From their perspective the world is going their way. It was a very confident speech,” says Scheuer, a former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden tracking unit.
“it could be seen as an offer that goes the extra mile“… let me see, yeah, “I’m going to make you an offer you could never reject“, The Godfather. Well, Bin Laden, even if you dye your beard, you’re no Marlon Brando (and no, I do not like Marlon Brando very much, but compared with Bin Laden… ).
Osama bin Laden himself has not attended this council in two years, says Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University. Instead, it is run by his long-time deputy, Mr. Zawahiri.
Zawahiri now has placed key allies in charge of such crucial missions as communications with the outside world. He has engineered affiliations with radical Islamic groups in Algeria and elsewhere.
“He has become the driving force behind Al Qaeda, and is probably content that we are still obsessed with Osama bin Laden,” says Mr. Hoffman.
Al Qaeda’s rebuilt organizational capacity may be revealed by the recent arrests in Germany that alledgedly derailed a plot to bomb US-related targets.
Hmmm, so basically, Zawahiri is hiding after Bin Laden. Dangerous…
US man jailed for Al-Qaeda links. A US federal judge has sentenced a Californian man to 24 years in jail for attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and lying about it. The judge said Hamid Hayat, 25, had returned home ready and willing to wage violent jihad (hmm, is there another one in terms of security? ). He was arrested in 2005 after returning from a two-year trip to Pakistan. Prosecutors said he received terrorist training and plotted against targets in California, including banks, hospitals and government buildings.
The African Union spokerperson –African Union has deployed 7.000 soldiers in Darfur–, Noureddine Mezni, confirmed he has received similar reports about what happened. An African Union soldier in Haskanita confirmed to AP that “real combats” happened there during all day.
“We heard air bombings and constant shootings very near”, the soldier explained, asking to be kept annonymous. “I don’t know how many victims there are, but the city was severelly attacked”, he added. He also confirmed that the AU contingent did not take part in the fight, justifying that measure because of the redeploymeny of all forces to a reduced complex in Haskanita since June and due to the violence in the region.
So, just to explain here: soldiers, sent to ensure there is no fighting, do not meddle between the fighters because there is violence in the region. Hmm, so what are they doing there then??? Speaking about international organizations effectiveness…
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.
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.
This little Iraqi girl’s entire family was executed. They intended to execute her also and shot her in the head, but they failed to kill her. She was cared for by John Gebhardt’s hospital and is healing, but has been crying and moaning The nurses said John is the only one she seems to calm down with, so John has spent the last four nights holding her while they both sleep in that chair. The girl is coming along with her healing
The clips, some lasting almost 10 minutes, posted on the internet video-sharing site depict Muslims being attacked by Western forces and asks “for how much longer?”
Produced by the group’s Malaysian branch, the clips call on Muslims to “arise and shake off the dust” of European colonialism and show members marching in support of Palestinians to the commentary “O armies of the Muslim world, we wait for your help.”
Well, this is is something not very rare considering what role Syria has been playing.
To continue with the Global Caliphate:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Tuesday that rule of Islam on mankind is the only way for salvation of human beings.
“There is no truth on earth but monotheism and following tenets of Islam and there is no way for salvation of mankind but rule of Islam over mankind,” said Ahmadinejad in a meeting with Afghan Sunni and Shiite ulama at Iranian Embassy in Kabul.
By the way, we were the other day watching Anastasia and it struck me how much the bad guy, Rasputin, resembles Ahmadinejad:
Both of them very attractive… 😈
One Ahmadinejad is attractive (for his mother maybe). But not as attractive as a lot of armed clerics marching:
The victim, Naglaa Khamis, went into a coma and suffered severe hemorrhaging after the removal of part of her genitals, but was saved after being taken to hospital by her parents.
Police took the woman who carried out the mutilation in Minya, south of Cairo, into custody.
The health ministry said, last week, that a law to toughen penalties against female circumcision will be put to parliament when it reconvenes in the autumn, after two young girls died during such operations in recent months.
Tom Burnett, Sr., from Minnesota – whose son Tom, Jr. died on Flight 93 – and others continue criticizing the design of the memorial (and I agree with them), for its structural designs which appear to honor Islam and the terrorists instead of the all the passengers on Flight 93.
Nearly two years after the design of the United Flight 93 Memorial was changed to eliminate any perceived Islamic symbolism, the father of one of the people killed in the crash has asked that his son’s name be withheld from the monument.
Six weeks ago Ms. Larisa Arap, a 49 year old Russian journalist, went to the doctor’s for her annual physical. While there her doctor discovered that she wrote an article entitled “Madhouse” that exposed the alleged child abuse at the Murmansk Regional Psychiatric Hospital. So, as any normal paranoid freak would do, the doctor summed the police and had Ms. Arap committed to a psychiatric hospital herself.
“[The doctor] said, ‘It’s not possible to write such things. It’s forbidden.'” Doctors also told Taisiya Arap that her mother needed “long term treatment and might never leave the clinic,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.
The fact that an independent panel of three psychiatrists have found Ms. Arap to be of sound mind and should be released has made no impression on the state doctors.
You know I have been writing about the Spanish UN peacekeepers/soldiers killed in Lebanon. Well, Zapatero (Spanish PM) told the father of the of the soldiers in the funeral: “What a pity! He had gone to Lebanon to buy himself a car, hadn’t he?“. Imagine the expression of the father’s soldier. And imagine mine when I read it.
Multinational Merck is going to change Barcelona for Madrid as its social address. This has enraged the Catalan nationalists who consider that Spain “is much too centralised“. Hehehe, imagine for example: Health care: EVERY DAMNED PART of it is a competence of the Autonomous Community. Education is also a competence -mainly- of the Auonomous Community -so you can see in the text books things like “Castilla y León had a relationship with the Romans“, when Castilla y León is a kingdom in the Reconquest and during Roman dominion it was under the same province: Lusitania, of the three that Romans made here (the other were Tarraconensis and Baetica). The Generalitat has passed a law creating a self-Tax Agency which will make in not a very distant future, everything related to taxes. Yeah, of course, very centralised. The problem is that a lot of people is beginning to leave Catalonia thanks to the pressure of the nationalists. And that hurts.
After the invention of the Little Red Star -that only thinking about it, makes me shiver-, the young Spanish Socialists ask for the legalization of the euthanasia and the vote at 16 years-old. About euthanasia, I’m totally opposed: it cannot be undone. About the vote at 16: if we have so many idiot voters, just have some more, totally influenced by the Education for Citizenship -anti-militar, pro-homosexual -in the worst sense of the world-, pro-Socialist, pro-Alliance of Civilizations, etc-.
Vice-President De La Vega has asked MSM not to informe about what they know if it has something to do with ETA. Yeah, it’s much better to have everything under the blanket, specially if we consider that French PM Sarkozy already has the ETA-Spanish Government negotiation’s papers. Oh and if someone thinks he is going to be a good guy and denounce PM Zapatero for the contents of those papers, just read this post by Mike -really good blogger 😀 – and then think again. No, he is just going to use it in the EU negotiations against Zapatero… sooo, against Spain.
Porn star to become [Episcopalian] priest: “He [Boyer] was tired of performing in sex movies, but even now doesn’t condemn it. “Not one time did Jesus refer to pornography, or homosexuality,” he observed on the Internet show, which he began as a co-host in May. “Jesus could have commented. He didn’t.” Well, I am sure there were homosexuals when Jesus lived (Greek general Epaminondas lived before and yet he was homosexual…), but I am totally sure there was no porn-movies back then.. This Jesus was no profet… 😀 This people are so idiot that… ehhh… well, they make me laugh, at least…
“Beware of suspicious medicine men” about the recent bombs in UK and Glasgow, a stupid journalist called Gary Keillor writes: “It may seem craven to say so, but a person really had to wonder at the inability of trained medical personnel to hook wire A to battery B to alarm clock C and detonate a car loaded with gasoline and nails in London. An then having to resort to the rather amateurish alternative of crashing a Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow airport terminal – the suicide bomb alumni association must be shaking their heads“.
Nobel Price Winner Saramago wants Portugal to be a province of Iberia, in a union with Spain. This man is the perfect example of an idiot with a Nobel Prize. Totally antisemitic and against Aznar -who he considers a mixture between the Antichrist and the Demon-/anything on the right, globalisation, free-market…., he is totally in love with Zapatero -normal consequence-. Look here, we have a problem with Basque nationalists, with Catalan Nationalists, with Galician Nationalists and it looks like we are going to have it also with Andalucian regionalists. So, just please, we don’t know how to live Spanish people together, imagine with Portuguese, toutes ensembles, in a new country called Iberia. I just laugh at the perspective. There is another question though: if a right-winger ever wins again in Spain, would he maintain his project or would then reclaim the independence?
Bin Laden’s son (27) marries a British grandmother (51). “I just married the man I fell in love with — to me he is just Omar,” she told The Times. “I hope people will take a step back and think what it is like when they fell in love.”
Lastly, I want to use this post to thank Kate for her praise here. It’s been a very hard week-end (among other things, my grandmother is not well) and that has helped me really.
Oops, I was forgetting: Jason, a reader, about whom I do not know anything but the email, has asked me about the photo of Benedict XVI “rock on Papist, dudes” in my blogroll. I found it on American Papist in the sidebar -a very good Catholic blog-.
after ZP won the general election in 2004 following the Atocha atrocities, he decided to present himself to the world as Blair had done in Britain – as the Great Peacemaker. Blair and his group had won the peace in Ulster, and ZP was going to do even better in the Basque Country – by hook or by crook. No-one, and especially no political party, would be allowed to block this crusade. If the chief opposition party found the peace process potentially explosive, or farcical, or a devilishly clever means by which ETA could recover from its then crippled and bankrupt state, and made this view public knowledge – then ZP and his companions would denounce the chief opposition party. They would be hounded in the socialist media, and on the Government-owned TV channels. They would be turned into an ogre by the Administration’s spokespeople. We would be taught to hate the Partido Popular.
Read it all. And yes, a lot more people than MSM tells -but not so many as I would like- are angry at this process.
Cuban dictatorship was used as a post office between Zapatero’s Government and ETA in their negotiations. According to El Mundo newspaper, the Government transmitted to some regime civil servants of the “precriminal detentions” the messages it wanted to send the gang. Cuba wrote them and handled them to the terrorists. This messages, even after the T-4 terrorist attack, were maintained till last april.
[…] The newspaper, in the editorial, maintains that the meddling of the Castroit dictatorship in the negotiations shows the “frailty of the relationship’s ways in which Zapatero was based to put into effect that ETA has already abandoned the weapons“. And reminds that “the president was depending on an intermediary, who was not only a dictatorship, but who has repeatedly shown their sympaties for a band with whom it has a common Marxist ideology“. It concludes that “if we were asking favors of this class to the Cuban government, it is logical to think that there was a price to pay. And that explains our shameful relationship with the Cuban dictatorship and their defense of the international institutions“.
And do you know why this was made? To prevent people to know what they were talking about.
This contact wasn’t direct at all, because the President Zapatero named a person with reknown international prestige who has been given important posts in other precedent Governments.
The Supreme Tribunal President, Hernando has spoken about this piece of news:
[He] has assured that the ETA’s post office exists and also confirmed that a judge is investigating the relationship between the Government and the terrorist band.
Hernando, who was inagurating in Aranjuez a course about ‘The Judicial Power and the other State Powers“, was asked about the journalistic informations which appeared in relation with the judicial investigations related with ETA.
He did not wanted to comment on them, stating that “normally those news reflect the truth, but in other occasions they are only mere speculations“.
Interior Minister Rubalcaba has stated that, in the course of the negotiations, there has been contacts with several countries. He also spoke about the latest ETA terrorists’ detentions:
The detentions made a week ago in Paris, were also the object of some questions to the Minister, who assured the journalists that the detentions of Iker Beristain and Liher Rodríguez, summed up to the great quantity of material used to falsify documents, can be considered as the end of the “falsification organization of the terrorist band”. Rubalcaba also told that the police operation has offered “lots of information” which is being analysed and could be relevant.
The Government also asked France to free two ETA terrorists with whom it wanted to negotiate last March. The petition was made on August 2006.
The answer from the French Government was negative. “The problem”, says El País, “is that, in the moment of their detention, the two ETA terrorists were driving a car who had false registration and one of them was armed. No mecanism of emergence can ever serve to protect people who are caught in a criminal act in French territory“.
El País, left-leaning Spanish newspaper, is surprised that in France the law is applied against terrorists. But then foreign people consider it the epitome of independent thinking and journalism…
By the way, tomorrow it’s the anniversary of the brutal kidnapping of PP Councilman of Ermua Miguel Ángel Blanco. He was found with a bullet inside his brain two days later and died that same night. A bus has been travelling throughout Spain remembering him.
The reaction to his death was unanimous. ETA felt the grasp of decent people for the first time. Policemen had to defend Batasuna’s offices.
Well, I have to say that being in the coutryside, I am not going to have much time to post these days. Anyway, I will manage to post something everyday.
Today the most horrible news I have read -I confess I have not read much- comes from Always on Watch blog:
The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family...
Yes, in case you have not taken care of what this people are doing, Al-Qaeda served baked and stuffed 11-year-old boys to families they wanted to convert into their way of thinking.
Repulsive and beastly. And yet there are people who wants to negotiate with these beasts… What? The taste of the sauce your boy is going to be cooked??? Excuse me if I sound not very moderate, but this is really disgusting.
And by the way, if they choose that way to convince me, I think they would succeed… in convincing exactly to do the contrary they would ask me to.
Also FT published yesterday an article about Al-Qaeda linked to operations from Iran:
Evidence that Iranian territory is being used as a base by al-Qaeda to help in terrorist operations in Iraq and elsewhere is growing, say western officials.
It is not clear how much the al-Qaeda operation, described by one official as a money and communications hub, is being tolerated or encouraged by the Iranian government, they said.
Anyway, Iranian diplomats have visited the Iranian captives in Iraq, accused of belonging to the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
I also have to point you to a blog post in Pajamas Media which describes the situation in Spain nowadays. Basically, it says that while we are beginning to consider the danger, we are stuck because we do not know what to do. My own experience has taught me that 3 years ago when I talked of these things to people here, they looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Now those same people just tell me they are trully worried. We have to be realistic: the threat is real and is great. And people are not prepared that their comfortable lifes with their home, their cars, their apartment at the beach and their winter holidays skiing are menaced. And yet to discover how to fight and counterrest it at the same time.
No, I really think there are improvements. Where I really do not see much improvements are in the politicians’ ideas. They are afraid of what is coming -or just do not look farther than their noses-. Europe cannot live on past glories: we should and must evolve into the future. And we must do it, without fear but also being realistic. We cannot being stuck on the past, because then we are going to be destroyed as a civilization.
At least nine people have been killed after a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into a tourist convoy in Yemen. Seven Spanish tourists and at least two Yemenis died in the blast at the Queen of Sheba temple in Marib. About seven others were injured in the attack which the Spanish foreign minister said he “totally condemned”.
Yemen has faced continuing unrest in recent years, which the government often blames on al-Qaeda operatives. An interior ministry official was quoted by the country’s state news agency as saying that the attack appeared to have been carried out by al-Qaeda. “Preliminary information indicates that the al-Qaeda organisation is behind the cowardly attack,” the official told the Saba news agency.
Witnesses said a vehicle entered a gate at the site, known in Yemen by its Arabic name Balqis, before it ploughed into the convoy of tourist cars and exploded. The victims were reported to belong to a group of around 14 Spanish tourists visiting the site, some 170km (110 miles) east of the capital, Sanaa.
Witnesses said the bomb went off at around 1800 (1500 GMT) on Monday as the visitors were finishing a tour of the temple, built 3,000 years ago at the time of the Queen of Sheba. In recent year’s Yemen’s government has been fighting Islamists with the help of US special forces based in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. Al-Qaeda has demanded the release of militants jailed in the country.
Attacks in Yemen:
October 2000: Seventeen US sailors die in suicide attack on USS Cole in Yemeni port
October 2002: A similar attack against French tanker the Limburg kills one Bulgarian and wounds 12 others
March 2003: A Canadian is killed and another wounded after a Yemeni gunman opens fire at an oilfield east of Sanaa
September2006: Four bombers and a security guard die when Yemeni security forces foil suicide attacks against two oil refineries
As I have posted in the Spanish blog, the two Yemenis dead are the guide and the interpretor.
The others are wounded but only one of them is in the Intensive Care Unit, a woman in her thirties.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities have blaimed it on Al Qaeda, whose leader, Bin Laden has Yemeni origins.
Spanish FM Moratinos has maintained constant contact with the Yemeni Foreign Viceminister who has given him the terrorist attack’s data and the condolences of the Yemeni people.
Judge Fernando Andreu (Instruction Judge nº4 of the National Court) has begun an investigation into the case.
Foreign Affairs Ministry has recommended “extreme caution” to tourists travelling abroad.
Spanish newspaper ABC.es writes:
In its slow progress through times, the Yemeni Republic has rigin laws. Their women maintain the most strict black clothing, which covers them all the face but their eyes [Note: that is called “niqab”] and its legislations includes the death punishment for homosexuals.
Yes, it is certainly an slow progress.
Anyway, we have to see the profound joke this means for Spanish Government. It is not Iraq, it is not Afghanistan, it is not … It is just ourselves, our history, our own past and present what makes us be the targets. Till Europe, US, Australia, etc. do not take into account that this is not of what we do, but what we are, the measures Government will take, will not be sufficient or will be directly incorrect. And people will continue dying. And the terrorists will continue their horror campaign.
– Ibiza airport was evacuated on Saturday, after a bomb warning upset the start of the peak holiday season on the Mediterranean island, Spanish police said.
Local media said the Interior Ministry had stepped in to deny earlier reports of a controlled explosion at the airport. Police, government and airport officials were unavailable for immediate official comment on the media reports.
Police evacuated the airport after Basque newspaper Gara, used by the armed separatist guerrillas ETA to distribute information, received a telephoned warning of a bomb, Gara said on its website. But the caller did not say who they represented, which is usually the case with ETA.
Ibiza has long been a magnet for thousands of British and German holidaymakers and flights were diverted from the airport.
Basque rebels said on June 5 they were calling off a 15-month-old ceasefire, which the group had already effectively broken by bombing Madrid airport in December.
It’s good that AP has taken notice that ETA effectively broke the ceasefire on Dec 30th when two persons where killed -something Zapatero does not-, but it does not say Socialist Government has been negotiating with ETA -that we have proof of- till the week before the last May elections, negotiations which began two years before Zapatero came to power. But we suspect they are continuing just now.
UDPATE: Experts consider that both Syria and Iran can be the responsibles of the attack. [Scroll down]
«This is not fair!»
PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero approached the Crown Prince Felipe and wife Letizia to take his leave when in between the relatives of the soldiers a voice came up totally full of pain: the voice belonged to the mother of one of the parachuiters. «This is not fair. Give more security to these kids!», she stormed against the President. The security services tried to prevent her from approaching to Zapatero, but in the end it was him who wanted to pay attention to her. [about time too….].
With a mixture of ire, pain, frustration and impotence, her firm voice was broken as she was also crying, what did not prevent her from continuing with her speech. «There is no valor to protect the vehicles of these lads. They were people who had their full lives to live!», she shouted to Zapatero before asking him to fight for «Spanish youths» and shout «¡Viva Esperanza Aguirre!» (President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, from Popular Party, won the last elections with a huge absolute majority and has been the only one who really has helped the relatives). The President bear the way he could the uncomfortable situation with the help of VP María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, while Defense Minister Alonso just did not pay attention to the incident.
But this was not the only critic to Zapatero. Ramón Luján, Yeison Alejandro Castaño’ uncle, one of the dead, complained about the “lack of tact” of the Government. «They should have been nearer the relatives». While he could barely speak, Luján remembers that if his nephew died it was, precisely, “because of the sentiment he had, so high, for the Spanish Army“. Castaño has also a cousin, Soldier Pino, also deployed in Lebanon, that yesterday, minutes before the funeral, spoke about his firm decision to end his mission for him and for the dead companions. You do not know never where death is, he has told his mother.
The Government had some initiatives since March in Congress to inform about the troops deployed in Lebanon. Pending to answer, there were two petitions in which it was asked the presence of the Defense Minister, one of them based on article 18 of the Law of National Defense (passed by Socialists under Zapatero), which obliges the Government to inform about the development of the operations abroad in periods no longer than 6 months (last time was in March 2006) and 9 questions to be answered orally in Commisions. There are also 42 written questions about the troops’ situation which were resolved in an inconcrete and fleeing-like way, according to PP.
Ex-Defense Minister Bono -the one who awarded himself a medal for fleeing from Iraq- mentioned the accident of the Yakovlev (42 soldiers dead) which was an ACCIDENT, while this has been an AMBUSH inside a WAR.
The wounded don’t know yet their companions are dead. Even if do not think it’s good to publish the photos of ailing people, in this case it is necessary for all to see, how they are now. The 2nd grade burns have gravely damaged their eyes. They can be more wounded because of Zapatero’s decision not to have aid helicopters deployed as in that case the number of Spanish troops in foreign mission could be well above the 3.000 that was the top number to which he compromised when his term began.
By the way, Lebanon has awarded Spanish soldiers with THREE WAR MEDALS. Spanish Government has awarded them with the medal “Dead on Humanitarian Work“.[NOTE: I do not have the link, I have heard it on the radio this morning. When I have the link I will post it]. More indignity…
Thanks, Spanish soldiers. That’s all I can say right now.
You can read also the reflections of my friend Mike over at Lamplighter News. He explains some very interesting things about UNIFIL mission and about the C4 explosive. Worth reading.
More commenting at Spanish blog Etimologías. Don’t worry most of the post is in English. But Syria appears to be THE culprit, as Blacksmith Jade commented here.
Spanish MSM are reporting that instead of helping the dead and the wounded, Italian soldiers made photos, while Lebanese Army helped them. h/t Anghara. Don’t know if that’s true, but if that’s the case, .
UPDATE: Are Syria and Iran the real responsible of the attacks?
Syria:
The first consideration that can link Fatah al Islam to Syrian Government is that the Lebanese PM, Fuad Siniora said “I have confessions of some of the people who surrendered with links to the Syrian Security Services. It is probable it was ordered by Damascus“. Syrian intelligence has denied any links with the group and has blamed CIA and Mossad just as usual. Crossed accusations that do not lead to Al-Qaeda.
Fatah al-Islam was born in the end of 2006 when it parted from Fatah al-Intifada (Fatah del levantamiento), a Palestinian group backed with Syria and Lebanese based. It’s believed that Fatah al-Islam has between 150 and 200 armed men, all of them based in refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, in Tripoli, North Lebanon. Lebanese refugee camps are normally used as refugee by armed groups. Government’s security forces do not enter and only guard their perimeter.
Fatah al-Islam’s leader is Shakir al-Abssi, a re-known Palestinian militant. Abssi has denied any link with al-Qaeda.
But he has important links with Syria. Suspicions lie on the fact that he was sentenced in 2003 to 3 years in prison after being accused of planning attacks against the country. That is a very small punishment, considering that Syrian accused of belonging to Muslim Brotherhood normally receive punishments of 12 years. When he was freed, he appeared between the pro-Syrian groups of the Fatah-Intifada in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, and in very short time he emerged as the leader of the new Fatah al-Islam. That is one of the reasons why general Ashraf Rifi, the leader of the Lebanese Security Force concludes that all the violence is a Syrian creation to create chaos.
Also international antiterrorist experts consider that Fatah al Islam has nothing to do with Al Qaeda neither in financial terms nor in logistical ones. But they do not deny the possibility of Fatah al-Islam being supported and financed by Syria.
The thirdreason is the great easiness with which the group moves within the Hizbullah territory. We have to underline the very narrow relatiosnhips of Hibullah with Damascus and Teheran. The place where the Spanish patrol suffered the attack is one the most important places of Hizbullah presence in Lebanon. The investigators do not understand this kind of easiness throughout Hizbullah’s territory without belonging to Syrian security services. And their explanation is plausible: Supposedly Fatah al Islam is integrated by Sunni Jihadists who hate the Shiites, and do not make any exceptions with Hizbullag, a Damascus’ ally. “If Fatah al Islam is not related with Syrian Government, Hizbullah will forbid its jihadists from being in their territories”, they say.
In this moment, the investigation maintains there are two great suspects: Fatah al Islam and pro-Iranian groups. What these investigators do know is that “the authors had the permission of Hizbullah to move throughout their territories what implies that both Iran and Syria should be aware of the operation. And consider also that C4 is an explosive used by Pro-Syrian groups and Hizbullah“
Seyyed Davud Salehi, Iranian Ambassador in Madrid, has critisized the lack of support of Spain to “help the coalition Government in Palestine and to lift the embargo imposed on Palestinians“.
In a recent interview to the Iranian Agency Irna, he advised (…hmmm, menaced) the Spanish Government to take care of a new virus which could influence negatively the good bilateral relations. The investigators are considering the possibility that that virus is the terrorist attack against Spanish troops near Syrian frontier, using that supposed diplomatic confrontment as the excuse to launch the attack.
So, where is now the Alliance of Civilizations, Zapatero? What are you waiting for asking some questions to Iranian and Syrian representants in Madrid? And what are you going to do if they are behind the attack?
The Civil Guard has located today a car full of explosives in the city of Ayamonte (Huelva, South of Spain), according to sources from the armed institution.
The agency Vasco Press said that there were 100 of explosives and there were detonators, but a speaker from the Civil Guard in Madrid did not say what was the quantity.
Vasco Press informed that the car could have been abandoned by ETA, which ended the cease-fire this month and announced that it will begin a campaign “in all fronts“.
These last years, before the ceasefire, the band put several explosive devices in tourists resorts in their “summer campaing”.
The Government and ETA agreed on the statement of the permanent ceasefire of the band, and of the announcement of the PM, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, on June 29th in the Congress, when he officialised the beginning of the contacts with the terrorists, according to what the “abertzale” left’s newspaper says in its edition of today.
The newspaper points out that any of the two initiatives were unilaterally made and that both questions were “largelly debated, matured and agreed” by the speakers of both sides between July and November, 2005. it also adds that they also agreed the so-called “warranties” and the conditions on the next paragraphs.
According to “Gara”, the agreement to search for a peace process were held in a distant European country between July 2005, with the assistance of an ETA’s delegation and Government’s representatives.
‘Gara’ says that they subscribed compromises of “political importance” which were ratified 4 months later. The agreement also included the declaration of ETA’s ceasefire and the fundamentals of the message adressed by Zapatero, and some warranties about what “Gara” informed a year ago.
Among the warranties, Zapatero agreed with ETA that he would not detain any ETA terrorists during the ceasefire. We have both De Juana case and Otegi’s to know that this is basically true.
Today a ETA terrorist, Iván Apaolaza Blanco, has been detained in Canada. He is the responsible of killing the Major Coronel Pedro Antonio Blanco with 200 kilos-explosive-car. Mr Blanco had signed an agreement to give his organs when dead. ETA terrorists even forbid him his last will of generosity to his fellow human beings.
[The rest of the post is mainly on capital letters. Please consider that she sent it to me to make the translation differ from the original. Don’t assume anyone is shouting at you 😀 ].
Catholic schools in Spain refusing to allow parents to opt kids out of controversial course Madrid, Jun 20, 2007 / 12:03 pm (CNA).- The civil rights watchdog organization HazteOir.org has reported that a number of schools run by religious congregations are not allowing parents to opt their children out of the controversial Education for Citizenship course. The EcP course blatantly promotes the normalization of homosexuality and the societal acceptance abortion among other issues. The website has published a list of schools with how they rank in allowing parents to conscientiously object to the government-sponsored class. The data for the list comes from several associations that are promoting the right of parents to exercise conscientious objection. Several Catholic schools in Madrid, Toledo, Majadahonda, Valdemoro and Huelva are listed among those not allowing parents to exclude their children from the course.
Well, the reality is that Catholic schools are going to be controlled hardly by the Government. And that the boys are going to fail the course and not going to pass if they do not study and pass the subject, while you need 2 other subjects to be forbidden to pass to the next course.
Of course, I do not agree with them, but I understand them, very well indeed.
Probably, you are thinking “hmm, why she hasn’t written about the meeting about the end of the ETA’s ceasefire?“. Well, the reality is that I do not know what to make of it. Rajoy went to see Zapatero at Moncloa’s Palace. Zapatero, even if it’s normal to do so, did not walk down the stairs to greet him, but stayed in the door, till Rajoy reached him.Before the meeting Zapatero had told in a TV interview that he “considers that he has the “moral authority” to ask the Popular Party for its support because he supported a lot the Government when he was in opposition“. That is really striking specially considering that pro-Socialist newspaper El País published an article in which they confirmed that Basque Socialists had been negotiating with ETA since 2002. So while Zapatero was signing the Antiterrorist Pact with Aznar.
Zapatero: “Uy, I am going to get my pen, it has fallen again“.
Aznar: “This is the 25th time it has fallen. You look like an idiot, José Luis“.
ETA terrorist under the table: “I would much more say that he is too clever by half“.
The situation in Basque Country is so grave that the negotiators with ETA have begun to use the services of bodyguards, something that they have never needed.
Of course, international press has mentioned the support Rajoy stated, after the meeting. And the happiness of the socialists who thought he was going to maintain his tough stance.
So, why I do not know what to make of it? The lack of any kind of information about what happened in the meeting. Terrorism is a matter of national security, but also of citizens’ security. I want to know the ideas and why a change of them. Anything was cleared afterwards. And socialists are beginning to claim that ETA should not be named as if nothing happened.
The reality is that ETA has, in its hands, the result of next Spanish elections, something that was totally predictable following the breaking of Antiterrorist Pact and the ETA’s negotiation:
The duplicity that implies having supported the meetings between Eguiguren -the wife beater, must I add-Otegui, while promoting theAntiterrorist Pact which implicitly forbid them and expressly obliged the undersigning parts to informed each other about them, opens severe doubts about the credibility and honour of the president, not in a moral level -we are not asking that from the politicians at this stage! [*]- but in the simple eficiency level in administration where we have to judge Zapatero.As Ignacio Camacho writes for ABC, “we are in the worst of all posibilities”:
ETA is in the center of the stage, lord of the initiative and of the timings. We do not know if it’s stronger than before, but our State is less strong, as it is not united.
And as an important proof of that statement, Camacho writes that, from last Tuesday, when ETA made public the end of the ceasefire, the major states of both the main parties were doing polls about who is going to be the first probable victim of ETA.
Well, Camacho does not take into account that the statement that ETA is now more powerful has been repeated throughout the last days. The last one to say that has been Mesquida, General Director of Spanish Police and Civil Guard. There is even a report that says there are more than 70 not-filed-by-police members and that they can have more than 2.000 kilos of explosive. It also confirms the possibility of a high-profile terrorist attack.
ETA had plans to attack Almería’s airport, according to the documents police obtained from Donosti commando. The past elections showed that Popular Party allied with Almería’s Independent Group had again won the elections.
I’m going to be implacable. This is not the moment to blame anyone for anything… [Zapatero=Mr.Bean says]
[*] I think that‘s the real problem of Spanish democracy: instead of pursuing elevated moral principles -without imposing them on nobody, just because it’s the correct thing to do-, we are just not asking them from the politicians, who are, in general, a total mess and shameful group. The reality is that there are not many to choose. 😦
"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)
). The Catholic Education Resource Center has an 
Praying for Muskens’ sanity… Because if it weren’t for Christian charity, this would be my own answer: 
.
), and considering that another loooooooooooooooong speech quoting Noam Chomsky, would definitely get all the human beings to sleep 
, he has decided that it’s better to let one of the suicide terrorists speak.
Well, err, not impressed yet. That beard does not make you more attractive… Or is it that bitter expression?
). He was arrested in 2005 after returning from a two-year trip to Pakistan. Prosecutors said he received terrorist training and plotted against targets in California, including banks, hospitals and government buildings.
So what is going to do Ban 
to both!) wrote this comment [my translation]:
My friend Mike has posted 
.
Spanish Pundit 
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