The Baluchi minority in southwestern Pakistan and southeastern Iran is increasingly marginalized, discriminated against by the state, and suffers from limited access to the benefits of citizenship, according to political observers and human rights groups.
Although the 6 million-8 million ethnic Baluchis in both countries live in a strategic location atop untapped hydrocarbon and mineral deposits and possible trade routes, it looks unlikely that their grim conditions will improve soon.
A report released on October 22 by the International Crisis Group argues that only free and fair elections are likely to encourage Baluchi participation in Pakistani politics. The Brussels-based think tank predicts that in the absence of political reconciliation, violence will continue unabated between Pakistan's military and Baluchi nationalist militants demanding political and economic autonomy.
"The Baluch people think their resources are being monopolized by the government, that their land and their resources are not their own, and that there is no freedom to express their opinions."
-- I.A. Rehman, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Baluchi leaders claim to be fighting for autonomy and control over their people's abundant natural resources, but Islamabad regards them as revolutionaries bankrolled by regional archrival India. Years of armed insurrection have killed hundreds of Baluchi militants, Pakistani troops, and civilians.
I.A. Rehman, the director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent group that monitors human rights abuses, says the fighting has displaced thousands of Baluchis in the insurgency-plagued districts of Dera Bugti and Kohlu. Rehman told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that the government's strong-arm tactics to suppress the insurgency have created a troubling human rights situation.
"There is the question of the suppression of all dissent. The cases of the disappeared people are only the tip of the problem," Rehman said. "The real issue in Baluchistan is that the Baluch people think their resources are being monopolized by the government, that their land and their resources are not their own, and that there is no freedom to express their opinions."
Displaced Or Missing
The International Crisis Group calls the Baluchi plight a "forgotten conflict." It maintains that the fighting has so far displaced 84,000 people, while thousands of Baluchi nationalist activists languish in jails and hundreds remain missing.
The Pakistani government meanwhile claims to be pouring billions of dollars into major infrastructure-development projects, including a new port on the Arabian sea coast at Gwadar, along with the construction of major roads, rail networks, dams, and new cantonments. Other ambitious projects are aimed at extracting gold, copper, oil, gas, and minerals in Baluchistan Province, which accounts for nearly half of Pakistan's territory and is home to some 8 million people, about half of them ethnic Pashtuns.
But many Baluchis oppose such projects and regard them as unfair efforts to exploit their land. Mariana Baabar, an Islamabad-based journalist and political commentator, says the Baluchis are among the most impoverished groups in the country, and require assistance to meet basic needs as well as longer-term development efforts.
"They do not have clean drinking water. They are not being provided with [basic] health care or education. And they are even regarded as not being part of Pakistan," Baabar said. The Pakistani government "is trying to build a port in Gawadar, but, again, non-Baluchis from Punjab and other regions are being taken there [to settle]. So that is why the people of Baluchistan are unhappy."
Poverty, Discrimination
Across the border in neighboring Iran, Baluchis are enduring similar woes. There some 2 million Baluchis concentrated in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province, representing about 2 percent of the country's total population.
Baluchi insurgents at a camp south of Quetta, in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province (AFP)Drewery Dyke, a Middle East researcher for human rights watchdog Amnesty International in London, told Radio Free Afghanistan that Iran's Baluchi population is subject to economic and cultural discrimination.
Sistan-Baluchistan is "certainly one of the poorest and most deprived provinces in the country. And it has suffered droughts and extreme weather conditions. And certainly -- with respect to the situation of women and schooling for girls -- there are shortcomings that the state really needs to address," Dyke said.
In a September report that Dyke helped research, Amnesty International documented rights abuses by Iranian authorities and the armed Baluchi and hard-line Sunni group Jondallah (which has reportedly been renamed the Iranian Peoples' Resistance Movement).
Since 2005, Jondallah appears to have carried out lethal attacks on Iranian security forces, and taken and executed hostages. Iranian authorities have blamed Jondollah for other attacks that resulted in civilian casualties, but the group has denied responsibility.
Amnesty International has criticized the arrest of suspected Baluchi militants who might have been subjected to torture to produce forced confessions. The group has expressed concern over special judicial procedures put in place by Iranian authorities, and a steep rise in the number of Baluchis who have been targeted.
Dyke said the Iranian authorities "have established a special court...almost like a security court to deal with what is obviously a very severe situation -- in some respects, an insurgency in the country. It appears to [have led] to a decline, an erosion of the safeguards, [of] the fair-trial standards and a massive rise in the implementation of the death penalty against the Baluchis."
The plights of their respective Baluchi minorities are unlikely to improve in the short term. In the best-case scenario, human rights advocates in Pakistan maintain that the coming national elections in Pakistan -- if they are sufficiently transparent -- might boost Baluchi participation in mainstream politics. That, they say, could provide incentives that help defuse militancy.
In Iran, Amnesty International warns that heightened global attention to the Iranian nuclear program might push attention to rights abuses off the international agenda.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
BOMB IRAN WHILE WE STILL CAN
By Joshua Muravchik
It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned.
Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions.
For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel — except for humanitarian or religious reasons — and outside countries would have been required to refrain from aiding some, but not all, Iranian nuclear projects.
But even this was too much for the U.N. Security Council. Russia promptly announced that these sanctions were much too strong. "We cannot support measures … aimed at isolating Iran," declared Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov.
It is now clear that neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever agree to tough sanctions. What's more, even if they were to do so, it would not stop Iran, which is a country on a mission.
As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it: "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen…. The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes and tyranny and injustice has reached its end…. The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."
There is simply no possibility that Iran's clerical rulers will trade this ecstatic vision for a mess of Western pottage in the form of economic bribes or penalties.
So if sanctions won't work, what's left?
The overthrow of the current Iranian regime might offer a silver bullet, but with hard-liners firmly in the saddle in Tehran, any such prospect seems even more remote today than it did a decade ago, when students were demonstrating and reformers were ascendant.
Meanwhile, the completion of Iran's bomb grows nearer every day. Our options therefore are narrowed to two: We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it.
Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that "if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it." We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb.
Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.
And in these pages, William Langewiesche summed up the what-me-worry attitude when he wrote that "the spread of nuclear weapons is, and always has been, inevitable," and that the important thing is "learning how to live with it after it occurs."
But that's whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that we cannot live safely with a nuclear-armed Iran.
One reason is terrorism, of which Iran has long been the world's premier state sponsor, through groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Now, according to a report last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden.
How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?
Koppel says that we could prevent this by issuing a blanket warning that if a nuclear device is detonated anywhere in the United States, we will assume Iran is responsible.
But would any U.S. president really order a retaliatory nuclear strike based on an assumption?
Another reason is that an Iranian bomb would constitute a dire threat to Israel's 6 million-plus citizens. Sure, Israel could strike back, but Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who was Ahmadinejad's "moderate" electoral opponent, once pointed out smugly that "the use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while [the same] against the Islamic world would only cause damage.
Such a scenario is not inconceivable." If that is the voice of pragmatism in Iran, would you trust deterrence against the messianic Ahmadinejad?
Even if Iran did not drop a bomb on Israel or hand one to terrorists, its mere possession of such a device would have devastating consequences.
Coming on top of North Korea's nuclear test, it would spell finis to the entire nonproliferation system. And then there is a consequence that seems to have been thought about much less but could be the most harmful of all:
Tehran could achieve its goal of regional supremacy.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, for instance, has warned of an emerging Shiite "crescent." But Abdullah's comment understates the danger. If Iran's reach were limited to Shiites, it would be constrained by their minority status in the Muslim world as well as by the divisions between Persians and Arabs.
But such ethnic-based analysis fails to take into account Iran's charisma as the archenemy of the United States and Israel and the leverage it achieves as the patron of radicals and rejectionists.
Given that, the old assumptions about Shiites and Sunnis may not hold any longer. Iran's closest ally today is Syria, which is mostly Sunni. The link between Tehran and Damascus is ideological, not theological.
Similarly, Iran supports the Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are overwhelmingly Sunni (and as a result, Iran has grown popular in the eyes of Palestinians).
During the Lebanon war this summer, we saw how readily Muslims closed ranks across the Sunni-Shiite divide against a common foe (even as the two groups continued killing each other in Iraq).
In Sunni Egypt, newborns were named "Hezbollah" after the Lebanese Shiite organization and "Nasrallah" after its leader.
As Muslim scholar Vali Nasr put it: "A flurry of anti-Hezbollah [i.e., anti-Shiite] fatwas by radical Sunni clerics have not diverted the admiring gaze of Arabs everywhere toward Hezbollah."
In short, Tehran can build influence on a mix of ethnicity and ideology, underwritten by the region's largest economy. Nuclear weapons would bring regional hegemony within its reach by intimidating neighbors and rivals and stirring the admiration of many other Muslims.
This would thrust us into a new global struggle akin to the one we waged so painfully with the Soviet Union for 40-odd years. It would be the "clash of civilizations" that has been so much talked about but so little defined. Iran might seem little match for the United States, but that is not how Ahmadinejad sees it.
He and his fellow jihadists believe that the Muslim world has already defeated one infidel superpower (the Soviet Union) and will in time defeat the other.
Russia was poor and weak in 1917 when Lenin took power, as was Germany in 1933 when Hitler came in. Neither, in the end, was able to defeat the United States, but each of them unleashed unimaginable suffering before they succumbed.
And despite its weakness, Iran commands an asset that neither of them had: a natural advantage in appealing to the world's billion-plus Muslims.
If Tehran establishes dominance in the region, then the battlefield might move to Southeast Asia or Africa or even parts of Europe, as the mullahs would try to extend their sway over other Muslim peoples. In the end, we would no doubt win, but how long this contest might last and what toll it might take are anyone's guess.
The only way to forestall these frightening developments is by the use of force. Not by invading Iran as we did Iraq, but by an air campaign against Tehran's nuclear *and military* facilities.
We have considerable information about these facilities; by some estimates they comprise about 1,500 targets. If we hit a large fraction of them in a bombing campaign that might last from a few days to a couple of weeks, we would inflict severe damage. This would not end Iran's weapons program, but it would certainly delay it.
What should be the timing of such an attack? If we did it next year, that would give time for U.N. diplomacy to further reveal its bankruptcy yet would come before Iran will have a bomb in hand (and also before our own presidential campaign).
In time, if Tehran persisted, we might have to do it again.
Can President Bush take such action after being humiliated in the congressional elections and with the Iraq war having grown so unpopular?
Bush has said that history's judgment on his conduct of the war against terror is more important than the polls. If Ahmadinejad gets his finger on a nuclear trigger, everything Bush has done will be rendered hollow.
We will be a lot less safe than we were when Bush took office. Finally, wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism?
Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.
After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, a single member of Britain's Cabinet, Winston Churchill, appealed for robust military intervention to crush the new regime. His colleagues weighed the costs — the loss of soldiers, international derision, revenge by Lenin — and rejected the idea.
The costs were avoided, and instead the world was subjected to the greatest man-made calamities ever. Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II.
Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him.
(Alan Note: we are already on the fringes of World War III and Ahmadi-Nejad's Islamic Iran is a suicide bobmer NATION, which will not be stopped by words, any more than a homicide bomber who has decided to die , will relinquish his explosive belt and can only be stopped by a bullet to his or her head.
I have often wondered if Ted Koppel has been corrupted by the Iranian lobbysists like Vali Nasr, Trita Parsi and others of their ilk who disinform on a regular basis to benefit the Mullahs).
It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned.
Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions.
For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel — except for humanitarian or religious reasons — and outside countries would have been required to refrain from aiding some, but not all, Iranian nuclear projects.
But even this was too much for the U.N. Security Council. Russia promptly announced that these sanctions were much too strong. "We cannot support measures … aimed at isolating Iran," declared Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov.
It is now clear that neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever agree to tough sanctions. What's more, even if they were to do so, it would not stop Iran, which is a country on a mission.
As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it: "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen…. The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes and tyranny and injustice has reached its end…. The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."
There is simply no possibility that Iran's clerical rulers will trade this ecstatic vision for a mess of Western pottage in the form of economic bribes or penalties.
So if sanctions won't work, what's left?
The overthrow of the current Iranian regime might offer a silver bullet, but with hard-liners firmly in the saddle in Tehran, any such prospect seems even more remote today than it did a decade ago, when students were demonstrating and reformers were ascendant.
Meanwhile, the completion of Iran's bomb grows nearer every day. Our options therefore are narrowed to two: We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it.
Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that "if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it." We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb.
Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.
And in these pages, William Langewiesche summed up the what-me-worry attitude when he wrote that "the spread of nuclear weapons is, and always has been, inevitable," and that the important thing is "learning how to live with it after it occurs."
But that's whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that we cannot live safely with a nuclear-armed Iran.
One reason is terrorism, of which Iran has long been the world's premier state sponsor, through groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Now, according to a report last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden.
How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?
Koppel says that we could prevent this by issuing a blanket warning that if a nuclear device is detonated anywhere in the United States, we will assume Iran is responsible.
But would any U.S. president really order a retaliatory nuclear strike based on an assumption?
Another reason is that an Iranian bomb would constitute a dire threat to Israel's 6 million-plus citizens. Sure, Israel could strike back, but Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who was Ahmadinejad's "moderate" electoral opponent, once pointed out smugly that "the use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while [the same] against the Islamic world would only cause damage.
Such a scenario is not inconceivable." If that is the voice of pragmatism in Iran, would you trust deterrence against the messianic Ahmadinejad?
Even if Iran did not drop a bomb on Israel or hand one to terrorists, its mere possession of such a device would have devastating consequences.
Coming on top of North Korea's nuclear test, it would spell finis to the entire nonproliferation system. And then there is a consequence that seems to have been thought about much less but could be the most harmful of all:
Tehran could achieve its goal of regional supremacy.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, for instance, has warned of an emerging Shiite "crescent." But Abdullah's comment understates the danger. If Iran's reach were limited to Shiites, it would be constrained by their minority status in the Muslim world as well as by the divisions between Persians and Arabs.
But such ethnic-based analysis fails to take into account Iran's charisma as the archenemy of the United States and Israel and the leverage it achieves as the patron of radicals and rejectionists.
Given that, the old assumptions about Shiites and Sunnis may not hold any longer. Iran's closest ally today is Syria, which is mostly Sunni. The link between Tehran and Damascus is ideological, not theological.
Similarly, Iran supports the Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are overwhelmingly Sunni (and as a result, Iran has grown popular in the eyes of Palestinians).
During the Lebanon war this summer, we saw how readily Muslims closed ranks across the Sunni-Shiite divide against a common foe (even as the two groups continued killing each other in Iraq).
In Sunni Egypt, newborns were named "Hezbollah" after the Lebanese Shiite organization and "Nasrallah" after its leader.
As Muslim scholar Vali Nasr put it: "A flurry of anti-Hezbollah [i.e., anti-Shiite] fatwas by radical Sunni clerics have not diverted the admiring gaze of Arabs everywhere toward Hezbollah."
In short, Tehran can build influence on a mix of ethnicity and ideology, underwritten by the region's largest economy. Nuclear weapons would bring regional hegemony within its reach by intimidating neighbors and rivals and stirring the admiration of many other Muslims.
This would thrust us into a new global struggle akin to the one we waged so painfully with the Soviet Union for 40-odd years. It would be the "clash of civilizations" that has been so much talked about but so little defined. Iran might seem little match for the United States, but that is not how Ahmadinejad sees it.
He and his fellow jihadists believe that the Muslim world has already defeated one infidel superpower (the Soviet Union) and will in time defeat the other.
Russia was poor and weak in 1917 when Lenin took power, as was Germany in 1933 when Hitler came in. Neither, in the end, was able to defeat the United States, but each of them unleashed unimaginable suffering before they succumbed.
And despite its weakness, Iran commands an asset that neither of them had: a natural advantage in appealing to the world's billion-plus Muslims.
If Tehran establishes dominance in the region, then the battlefield might move to Southeast Asia or Africa or even parts of Europe, as the mullahs would try to extend their sway over other Muslim peoples. In the end, we would no doubt win, but how long this contest might last and what toll it might take are anyone's guess.
The only way to forestall these frightening developments is by the use of force. Not by invading Iran as we did Iraq, but by an air campaign against Tehran's nuclear *and military* facilities.
We have considerable information about these facilities; by some estimates they comprise about 1,500 targets. If we hit a large fraction of them in a bombing campaign that might last from a few days to a couple of weeks, we would inflict severe damage. This would not end Iran's weapons program, but it would certainly delay it.
What should be the timing of such an attack? If we did it next year, that would give time for U.N. diplomacy to further reveal its bankruptcy yet would come before Iran will have a bomb in hand (and also before our own presidential campaign).
In time, if Tehran persisted, we might have to do it again.
Can President Bush take such action after being humiliated in the congressional elections and with the Iraq war having grown so unpopular?
Bush has said that history's judgment on his conduct of the war against terror is more important than the polls. If Ahmadinejad gets his finger on a nuclear trigger, everything Bush has done will be rendered hollow.
We will be a lot less safe than we were when Bush took office. Finally, wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism?
Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.
After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, a single member of Britain's Cabinet, Winston Churchill, appealed for robust military intervention to crush the new regime. His colleagues weighed the costs — the loss of soldiers, international derision, revenge by Lenin — and rejected the idea.
The costs were avoided, and instead the world was subjected to the greatest man-made calamities ever. Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II.
Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him.
(Alan Note: we are already on the fringes of World War III and Ahmadi-Nejad's Islamic Iran is a suicide bobmer NATION, which will not be stopped by words, any more than a homicide bomber who has decided to die , will relinquish his explosive belt and can only be stopped by a bullet to his or her head.
I have often wondered if Ted Koppel has been corrupted by the Iranian lobbysists like Vali Nasr, Trita Parsi and others of their ilk who disinform on a regular basis to benefit the Mullahs).
TEMPEST IN A TEACUP
Barbara Bush briefly tries on a headscarf she receives as a present - and runs into a furor of criticism for "bowing" to Islam. She took it right off again - but this gets no mention.
To prove she was being kind to the woman giving her the gift, the photo of her meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia shows she did NOT bow to Islam and did NOT cover her head. This would have been the moment of test, not the female meeting.
To prove she was being kind to the woman giving her the gift, the photo of her meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia shows she did NOT bow to Islam and did NOT cover her head. This would have been the moment of test, not the female meeting.
Monday, October 22, 2007
EVE'S ORIGINAL APPLE & A LOOK BACK
Al Qaeda in Iraq threatened street vendors with death if they did not separate tomatoes and cucumbers away from each other on their stands as morals required.
Wonder what they would think of this apple?
Creation being repeated! Adam's apple returns.
And what about these vegetables?
Wonder what they would think of this apple?
Creation being repeated! Adam's apple returns.
And what about these vegetables?
ALSO 100 YEARS AGO
THE YEAR 1907
One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some statistics for the Year 1907 :
************************************
The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles
Of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1907 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as "substandard."
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea
hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
Back then pharmacists said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."
Eighteen percent of households had at least
one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !
Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing
it myself, and posted it to you and others all over the United States,& Canada.
Possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
It staggers the mind?
WHAT IS MORE MIND BOGGLING IS THAT NOBODY SEEMS WORRIED THAT ISLAM and Sharia law WANTS TO TAKE US BACK 1,400 YEARS! Not just 100!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
RUSSIA IN FLUX - NEW CORPORATE KREMLIN
Inside the corporation: Russia’s power elite
Vladimir Putin may be a strongman, but he doesn’t rule alone. He’s the public face of a collective Russian leadership dominated by KGB veterans. They control the crown jewels of the economy. They have a lock on political power. And they have a plan. From RFE/RL.
By Brian Whitmore for RFE/RL (17/10/07)
In his mission to restore Russia’s pride and prestige, President Vladimir Putin has repackaged the Soviet national anthem, reinvented patriotic pro-Kremlin youth groups, and revived the cult of the suave KGB officer.
But despite bringing back these old archetypes, Putin isn’t interested in a Soviet restoration. This time around, Russia’s path to greatness lies in a modern authoritarian corporate state. Some Kremlin-watchers have even dubbed the country’s Putin-era ruling elite “Korporatsiya,” or “The Corporation.”
“I like using the term ‘Kremlin, Inc.,’” says Russia analyst Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow at the Nixon Center. “I think there are a number of boardroom strategies that apply to how policy in Russia is developed.”
Since coming to power eight years ago, Putin has carefully crafted an image of himself as the undisputed master of Russia’s political universe: a strong, stern, and solitary leader calling all the shots. His most recent moves - unexpectedly naming the heretofore unknown Viktor Zubkov as prime minister and announcing that he will lead the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia candidate list in December’s parliamentary elections - have only served to solidify this impression.
But in reality, Russia is run by a collective leadership - the Kremlin Corporation’s board of directors, so to speak. Putin is the front man and public face for an elite group of seasoned bureaucrats, most of whom are veterans of the KGB and hail from the president’s native St Petersburg. Together, they run Russia and control the crown jewels of the country’s economy.
All key political decisions in Russia, including Putin’s most recent bombshells, are the result of deliberation and consensus among members of a tight-knit inner sanctum many analysts have dubbed “the collective Putin.”
“These are people who have been with Putin from the very beginning,” says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Center for Elite Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology. “Together they thought up this model of the state and government that is in place now.”
The inner sanctum
Most Kremlin-watchers place four people with Putin at the epicenter of power: two deputy Kremlin chiefs of staff, Igor Sechin and Viktor Ivanov; First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov; and FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev.
All are KGB veterans, all are in their mid-50s, and all are St Petersburg natives. Moreover, Kryshtanovskaya says, this group is ideologically “completely homogenous” and its members view strategy for Russia’s development “in exactly the same way.”
At the heart of that strategy is the establishment of an enduring political system - a centralized, authoritarian, vertically integrated and unitary executive that can manage a thorough and comprehensive modernization of Russia.
“They want an authoritarian modernization. They want a strong authoritarian state of the Soviet type without the Soviet idiocy,” says Kryshtanovskaya. “The idiotic Soviet economy and the idiotic Soviet ideology were minuses. All the rest they want to bring back and preserve: a state system without a separation of powers.”
If they succeed, the West and the world will be dealing with an even more undemocratic, assertive and aggressive Russia for a long time to come.
Such a Russia would probably cease to even pretend to adhere to democratic norms at home, and would most likely abandon any facade of being a reliable partner of the West in international affairs. It would become more brazen about bullying neighbors, using their dependence on Russia’s energy resources as leverage.
The Kremlin would continue to try to undermine democratic reform in places where it has taken hold on Russia’s borders, like Georgia and Ukraine, and strenuously oppose such liberalization elsewhere in the former Soviet space.
But to establish their vision of modern superpower greatness, the “collective Putin” first must make sure they remain in power after the March 2008 presidential elections. And this means keeping the group cohesive, managing personal, political, and commercial conflicts among its members, and preventing any one faction in the ruling elite from becoming too powerful.
For Putin, this means a delicate balancing act - and one that he seems singularly equipped to perform.
The indispensable Putin
As his presidency winds down, Putin isn’t acting like somebody who is preparing to go quietly into retirement.
Speaking to a group of Western academics in September, Putin said he planned to remain influential in Russian politics after his presidency ends next year. And in a speech to the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party on 1 October, he gave the clearest indication yet about how he plans to do so.
Putin told cheering delegates that he would head the party’s list of candidates for December’s elections to the State Duma and that he would consider becoming prime minister in the future. The move sparked a wave of speculation that a new, powerful, super-prime minister’s office would soon displace the presidency as Russia’s key power center.
Whether or not this is indeed the plan, analysts agree that Putin is the indispensable man in Russia’s political system.
If Putin wants the system he created to remain in place and develop according to his wishes, he has little choice but to stay in the game - if for no other reason than to prevent open clan warfare from breaking out in the ruling elite.
“It is clear that some of the prerogatives Putin enjoys are because of who he is as a person, not because of the presidential chair,” says Gvosdev. “The worry is that there will be someone else sitting in that presidential chair who doesn’t have the same level of trust, isn’t able to mediate,” he adds.
And there is quite a bit to mediate.
Corporate power, political clashes
In addition to wielding near-absolute political power, Putin’s inner circle, or board of directors, also controls the commanding heights of the Russian economy.
Sechin, for example, is chairman of Rosneft, Russia’s massive state-run oil company. Sergei Ivanov heads the newly formed aircraft-industry monopoly United Aircraft Company.
Viktor Ivanov chairs the board of directors of both Almaz-Antei, a state missile-production monopoly, and Aeroflot, the national airline. Patrushev’s son Andrei is an adviser to Rosneft’s board of directors, and his other son, Dmitry, is vice president of the state-run bank Vneshtorgbank.
Just below the top tier of the Putin elite is a group of leading officials who, while not enjoying the same influence and access as the president’s inner sanctum, are nevertheless considered key players in the system whose interests must be taken into account.
Among them are Vladimir Yakunin, the chairman of Russian Railways; Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Antinarcotics Agency; Sergei Chemezov, general director of the arms export monopoly Rosoboroneksport; and First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is also chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors.
Other key figures include Yury Kovalchyuk, chairman of the board of directors of Bank Rossiya; Aleksandr Grigoryev, director of Gosrezerv, the state reserve agency; Dmitry Kozak, the regional development minister (and former presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, which includes Chechnya and the remaining North Caucasus republics); and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin, who is chairman of the board of the Channel One television station and deputy chairman of Rosneft.
Such a concentration of commercial and political might has led to conflicts, despite the group’s ideological homogeneity. This has been most visible recently in Cherkesov’s long-standing and bitter feud with Patrushev and Sechin, which went public in early October.
Cherkesov has long coveted Patrushev’s post as FSB chief. Patrushev and Sechin are wary of Cherkesov’s rising clout and Sechin and Sergei Ivanov are also fierce rivals for Putin’s ear and influence in the Kremlin.
Sechin’s interests as Rosneft chairman have also clashed with those of Medvedev’s at Gazprom. A proposed merger between the two state-controlled behemoths was abandoned in 2005 due to rivalries between the two men’s power bases in the Kremlin.
The two sides also clashed over the division of the bankrupted Yukos oil company’s production assets - the majority of which were eventually acquired by Rosneft.
Sechin’s interests also clash with Yakunin’s at Russian Railways - mainly over whether oil will be transported by pipeline or rail.
“They have problems among themselves,” says Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank. “They are afraid of each other. They are seeking somebody they can trust with the throne. Everybody trusts Putin. They don’t know what will happen with his successor,” Pribylovsky adds.
Top-down governance
Putin’s Moscow-based team sits atop what Russians call the power vertical, a sprawling pyramid of political and economic might that stretches deep into the country’s far-flung regions and republics.
Provincial governors are appointed by the president, and confirmed by elected local legislatures - which in turn are dominated by Unified Russia. Presidential representatives with sweeping authority keep governors and local officials loyal to the Kremlin line.
Those who cross “the Corporation” can expect to feel the full weight of Russia’s heavily politicized law-enforcement bodies. For those who are ready to play ball with the Kremlin, however, there are spoils.
Through the governors and presidential prefects, the Kremlin controls a vast network of patronage that Kryshtanovskaya calls “a hierarchy that resembles the Soviet state nomenclature,” in which the Communist Party would dole out coveted posts, privileges, and favors to loyal members.
Putin’s emerging nomenclature has a distinctive KGB flavor. According to Kryshtanovskaya’s research, 26 percent of Russia’s senior bureaucrats and business leaders are siloviki - veterans of the security services or military structures.
If the 1990s were dominated by robber-baron oligarchs, then the reigning figure of this decade, according to political scientist Daniel Treisman, a Russia expert at UCLA, is the “silovarch.”
Putin’s authority, his inner circle’s preeminence, and their common plan to remake Russia all rests on the savvy management of the corporate, political, and personal conflicts inherent in this vast power pyramid, and on Kremlin Inc.’s board of directors remaining cohesive.
If any of the current schisms escalates into open conflict, the system could descend into crisis.
Putin “has created a situation that functions poorly without him. And he needs to continue with this system because are no alternatives,” says Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.
“In the framework of this Putin consensus, he now needs to make sure nobody becomes too strong, so that nobody gathers sufficient resources to seize control of the vertical.”
Andropov’s children
Shortly after becoming president in 2000, Putin saw to it that a plaque honoring Yury Andropov was restored to the Moscow house where the late Soviet leader and KGB chief once lived.
And in June 2004, to mark the 90th anniversary of Andropov’s birth, Putin arranged to have a 10-foot statue of him erected in Petrozavodsk, north of St Petersburg.
That Putin should take such care to honor the last KGB man to become Kremlin leader is not surprising. In many ways, Putin and his inner circle are Andropov’s children.
Putin, Patrushev, Cherkesov, Sergei Ivanov and Viktor Ivanov all entered the KGB in the mid-1970s when Andropov was at the spy agency’s helm. They were strongly influenced by his ideas.
“They thought he was simply a genius, that he was a very strong person who, if he had lived, would have made the correct reforms,” Kryshtanovskaya says.
Andropov, who led the KGB from 1967 until 1982 when he became Soviet leader, sought to modernize the Soviet economy to make it more competitive with the West, while at the same time preserving an authoritarian political system in which the KGB would have a leading role. The authoritarian modernization he envisioned, Kryshtanovskaya says, resemble the one that carried out by China’s Communist leaders.
“Andropov thought that the Communist Party had to keep power in its hands and to conduct an economic liberalization. This was the path China followed,” Kryshtanovskaya says.
“For people in the security services, China is the ideal model. They see this as the correct course. They think that Yeltsin went along the wrong path, as did Gorbachev.”
Andropov died in 1984, less than 15 months after becoming Soviet leader, and was never able to implement his modernization plan. But two decades after his death, the group of fresh-faced KGB rookies he once inspired are poised to implement it for him.
Operation successor and beyond
Speculation is rampant over how Putin’s power will manifest itself next. Will he step straight from the presidency into a new, more powerful prime ministerial post? Or will he temporarily hand over power to a weak and loyal president before reclaiming the post at a later date?
No matter the formula, analysts agree that the current elite will remain in power beyond 2008 - and the current elite along with him.
Putin, says Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center, “is the undisputed leader of this team, and since there are no serious independent candidates to compete for that role, this means that he will be the main director and architect of the new composition” of political power.
Beyond 2008, analysts say Putin and his team are considering major changes in Russia’s political system to minimize the risk of succession crises in the future.
“The dilemma of the succession of power is one of the main problems facing the authorities since it always causes a crisis,” says Kryshtanovskaya. “They find troublesome direct elections in which all the people vote.
They need either indirect elections through some kind of electors or assembly, or a change in the character of the power structures.”
This, of course, would require a major constitutional overhaul. But Dmitry Oreshkin notes that, given the dominant position Putin’s board of directors enjoys, that would not be much of an obstacle.
“Right now this group of people can do anything,” he says. “In this situation, who has the resources to oppose them or to disrupt their plans?”
Vladimir Putin may be a strongman, but he doesn’t rule alone. He’s the public face of a collective Russian leadership dominated by KGB veterans. They control the crown jewels of the economy. They have a lock on political power. And they have a plan. From RFE/RL.
By Brian Whitmore for RFE/RL (17/10/07)
In his mission to restore Russia’s pride and prestige, President Vladimir Putin has repackaged the Soviet national anthem, reinvented patriotic pro-Kremlin youth groups, and revived the cult of the suave KGB officer.
But despite bringing back these old archetypes, Putin isn’t interested in a Soviet restoration. This time around, Russia’s path to greatness lies in a modern authoritarian corporate state. Some Kremlin-watchers have even dubbed the country’s Putin-era ruling elite “Korporatsiya,” or “The Corporation.”
“I like using the term ‘Kremlin, Inc.,’” says Russia analyst Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow at the Nixon Center. “I think there are a number of boardroom strategies that apply to how policy in Russia is developed.”
Since coming to power eight years ago, Putin has carefully crafted an image of himself as the undisputed master of Russia’s political universe: a strong, stern, and solitary leader calling all the shots. His most recent moves - unexpectedly naming the heretofore unknown Viktor Zubkov as prime minister and announcing that he will lead the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia candidate list in December’s parliamentary elections - have only served to solidify this impression.
But in reality, Russia is run by a collective leadership - the Kremlin Corporation’s board of directors, so to speak. Putin is the front man and public face for an elite group of seasoned bureaucrats, most of whom are veterans of the KGB and hail from the president’s native St Petersburg. Together, they run Russia and control the crown jewels of the country’s economy.
All key political decisions in Russia, including Putin’s most recent bombshells, are the result of deliberation and consensus among members of a tight-knit inner sanctum many analysts have dubbed “the collective Putin.”
“These are people who have been with Putin from the very beginning,” says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Center for Elite Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology. “Together they thought up this model of the state and government that is in place now.”
The inner sanctum
Most Kremlin-watchers place four people with Putin at the epicenter of power: two deputy Kremlin chiefs of staff, Igor Sechin and Viktor Ivanov; First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov; and FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev.
All are KGB veterans, all are in their mid-50s, and all are St Petersburg natives. Moreover, Kryshtanovskaya says, this group is ideologically “completely homogenous” and its members view strategy for Russia’s development “in exactly the same way.”
At the heart of that strategy is the establishment of an enduring political system - a centralized, authoritarian, vertically integrated and unitary executive that can manage a thorough and comprehensive modernization of Russia.
“They want an authoritarian modernization. They want a strong authoritarian state of the Soviet type without the Soviet idiocy,” says Kryshtanovskaya. “The idiotic Soviet economy and the idiotic Soviet ideology were minuses. All the rest they want to bring back and preserve: a state system without a separation of powers.”
If they succeed, the West and the world will be dealing with an even more undemocratic, assertive and aggressive Russia for a long time to come.
Such a Russia would probably cease to even pretend to adhere to democratic norms at home, and would most likely abandon any facade of being a reliable partner of the West in international affairs. It would become more brazen about bullying neighbors, using their dependence on Russia’s energy resources as leverage.
The Kremlin would continue to try to undermine democratic reform in places where it has taken hold on Russia’s borders, like Georgia and Ukraine, and strenuously oppose such liberalization elsewhere in the former Soviet space.
But to establish their vision of modern superpower greatness, the “collective Putin” first must make sure they remain in power after the March 2008 presidential elections. And this means keeping the group cohesive, managing personal, political, and commercial conflicts among its members, and preventing any one faction in the ruling elite from becoming too powerful.
For Putin, this means a delicate balancing act - and one that he seems singularly equipped to perform.
The indispensable Putin
As his presidency winds down, Putin isn’t acting like somebody who is preparing to go quietly into retirement.
Speaking to a group of Western academics in September, Putin said he planned to remain influential in Russian politics after his presidency ends next year. And in a speech to the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party on 1 October, he gave the clearest indication yet about how he plans to do so.
Putin told cheering delegates that he would head the party’s list of candidates for December’s elections to the State Duma and that he would consider becoming prime minister in the future. The move sparked a wave of speculation that a new, powerful, super-prime minister’s office would soon displace the presidency as Russia’s key power center.
Whether or not this is indeed the plan, analysts agree that Putin is the indispensable man in Russia’s political system.
If Putin wants the system he created to remain in place and develop according to his wishes, he has little choice but to stay in the game - if for no other reason than to prevent open clan warfare from breaking out in the ruling elite.
“It is clear that some of the prerogatives Putin enjoys are because of who he is as a person, not because of the presidential chair,” says Gvosdev. “The worry is that there will be someone else sitting in that presidential chair who doesn’t have the same level of trust, isn’t able to mediate,” he adds.
And there is quite a bit to mediate.
Corporate power, political clashes
In addition to wielding near-absolute political power, Putin’s inner circle, or board of directors, also controls the commanding heights of the Russian economy.
Sechin, for example, is chairman of Rosneft, Russia’s massive state-run oil company. Sergei Ivanov heads the newly formed aircraft-industry monopoly United Aircraft Company.
Viktor Ivanov chairs the board of directors of both Almaz-Antei, a state missile-production monopoly, and Aeroflot, the national airline. Patrushev’s son Andrei is an adviser to Rosneft’s board of directors, and his other son, Dmitry, is vice president of the state-run bank Vneshtorgbank.
Just below the top tier of the Putin elite is a group of leading officials who, while not enjoying the same influence and access as the president’s inner sanctum, are nevertheless considered key players in the system whose interests must be taken into account.
Among them are Vladimir Yakunin, the chairman of Russian Railways; Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Antinarcotics Agency; Sergei Chemezov, general director of the arms export monopoly Rosoboroneksport; and First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is also chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors.
Other key figures include Yury Kovalchyuk, chairman of the board of directors of Bank Rossiya; Aleksandr Grigoryev, director of Gosrezerv, the state reserve agency; Dmitry Kozak, the regional development minister (and former presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, which includes Chechnya and the remaining North Caucasus republics); and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin, who is chairman of the board of the Channel One television station and deputy chairman of Rosneft.
Such a concentration of commercial and political might has led to conflicts, despite the group’s ideological homogeneity. This has been most visible recently in Cherkesov’s long-standing and bitter feud with Patrushev and Sechin, which went public in early October.
Cherkesov has long coveted Patrushev’s post as FSB chief. Patrushev and Sechin are wary of Cherkesov’s rising clout and Sechin and Sergei Ivanov are also fierce rivals for Putin’s ear and influence in the Kremlin.
Sechin’s interests as Rosneft chairman have also clashed with those of Medvedev’s at Gazprom. A proposed merger between the two state-controlled behemoths was abandoned in 2005 due to rivalries between the two men’s power bases in the Kremlin.
The two sides also clashed over the division of the bankrupted Yukos oil company’s production assets - the majority of which were eventually acquired by Rosneft.
Sechin’s interests also clash with Yakunin’s at Russian Railways - mainly over whether oil will be transported by pipeline or rail.
“They have problems among themselves,” says Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank. “They are afraid of each other. They are seeking somebody they can trust with the throne. Everybody trusts Putin. They don’t know what will happen with his successor,” Pribylovsky adds.
Top-down governance
Putin’s Moscow-based team sits atop what Russians call the power vertical, a sprawling pyramid of political and economic might that stretches deep into the country’s far-flung regions and republics.
Provincial governors are appointed by the president, and confirmed by elected local legislatures - which in turn are dominated by Unified Russia. Presidential representatives with sweeping authority keep governors and local officials loyal to the Kremlin line.
Those who cross “the Corporation” can expect to feel the full weight of Russia’s heavily politicized law-enforcement bodies. For those who are ready to play ball with the Kremlin, however, there are spoils.
Through the governors and presidential prefects, the Kremlin controls a vast network of patronage that Kryshtanovskaya calls “a hierarchy that resembles the Soviet state nomenclature,” in which the Communist Party would dole out coveted posts, privileges, and favors to loyal members.
Putin’s emerging nomenclature has a distinctive KGB flavor. According to Kryshtanovskaya’s research, 26 percent of Russia’s senior bureaucrats and business leaders are siloviki - veterans of the security services or military structures.
If the 1990s were dominated by robber-baron oligarchs, then the reigning figure of this decade, according to political scientist Daniel Treisman, a Russia expert at UCLA, is the “silovarch.”
Putin’s authority, his inner circle’s preeminence, and their common plan to remake Russia all rests on the savvy management of the corporate, political, and personal conflicts inherent in this vast power pyramid, and on Kremlin Inc.’s board of directors remaining cohesive.
If any of the current schisms escalates into open conflict, the system could descend into crisis.
Putin “has created a situation that functions poorly without him. And he needs to continue with this system because are no alternatives,” says Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.
“In the framework of this Putin consensus, he now needs to make sure nobody becomes too strong, so that nobody gathers sufficient resources to seize control of the vertical.”
Andropov’s children
Shortly after becoming president in 2000, Putin saw to it that a plaque honoring Yury Andropov was restored to the Moscow house where the late Soviet leader and KGB chief once lived.
And in June 2004, to mark the 90th anniversary of Andropov’s birth, Putin arranged to have a 10-foot statue of him erected in Petrozavodsk, north of St Petersburg.
That Putin should take such care to honor the last KGB man to become Kremlin leader is not surprising. In many ways, Putin and his inner circle are Andropov’s children.
Putin, Patrushev, Cherkesov, Sergei Ivanov and Viktor Ivanov all entered the KGB in the mid-1970s when Andropov was at the spy agency’s helm. They were strongly influenced by his ideas.
“They thought he was simply a genius, that he was a very strong person who, if he had lived, would have made the correct reforms,” Kryshtanovskaya says.
Andropov, who led the KGB from 1967 until 1982 when he became Soviet leader, sought to modernize the Soviet economy to make it more competitive with the West, while at the same time preserving an authoritarian political system in which the KGB would have a leading role. The authoritarian modernization he envisioned, Kryshtanovskaya says, resemble the one that carried out by China’s Communist leaders.
“Andropov thought that the Communist Party had to keep power in its hands and to conduct an economic liberalization. This was the path China followed,” Kryshtanovskaya says.
“For people in the security services, China is the ideal model. They see this as the correct course. They think that Yeltsin went along the wrong path, as did Gorbachev.”
Andropov died in 1984, less than 15 months after becoming Soviet leader, and was never able to implement his modernization plan. But two decades after his death, the group of fresh-faced KGB rookies he once inspired are poised to implement it for him.
Operation successor and beyond
Speculation is rampant over how Putin’s power will manifest itself next. Will he step straight from the presidency into a new, more powerful prime ministerial post? Or will he temporarily hand over power to a weak and loyal president before reclaiming the post at a later date?
No matter the formula, analysts agree that the current elite will remain in power beyond 2008 - and the current elite along with him.
Putin, says Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center, “is the undisputed leader of this team, and since there are no serious independent candidates to compete for that role, this means that he will be the main director and architect of the new composition” of political power.
Beyond 2008, analysts say Putin and his team are considering major changes in Russia’s political system to minimize the risk of succession crises in the future.
“The dilemma of the succession of power is one of the main problems facing the authorities since it always causes a crisis,” says Kryshtanovskaya. “They find troublesome direct elections in which all the people vote.
They need either indirect elections through some kind of electors or assembly, or a change in the character of the power structures.”
This, of course, would require a major constitutional overhaul. But Dmitry Oreshkin notes that, given the dominant position Putin’s board of directors enjoys, that would not be much of an obstacle.
“Right now this group of people can do anything,” he says. “In this situation, who has the resources to oppose them or to disrupt their plans?”
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007
VARIOUS VIEWS 10/10/07
October 11, 2007 No.1735
Fatwa by Influential Islamic American Jurist: Marriage of Muslim Woman to Non-Muslim Man – Forbidden and Invalid
A fatwa issued in August 2007 by the secretary-general of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA), Dr. Sheikh Salah Al-Sawy, states that marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man is forbidden and invalid, and that children born of such a union are illegitimate.
The following are excerpts from the fatwa, which was posted on the website www.islamonline.net: [1]
“Marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim [man] is forbidden and invalid - that is a consensus among Muslims.
A [Muslim] woman who has taken the liberty [of marrying a non-Muslim man] has removed herself from the fold of the Muslim community - and one who has done so knowing that it is wrong, has done something strictly forbidden, and has committed an open [act of] abomination that may hurl her into the abyss of heresy and apostasy.
“Some clerics hold that [a Muslim woman who marries a non-Muslim man] is considered a heretic from the very beginning [i.e. from the moment she marries], since the bond of marriage allows her to have sexual relations and intercourse [with her husband], and to take pleasure [in this], and it is inconceivable that she should commit the crime [of having intercourse] without the sanction [of a valid marriage].
“The wisdom of the religious ban [against the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim man lies in] its preventing [the woman] from being tempted away from her faith.
The Koran justifies this ban by saying that these marriages ‘beckon [the believer] to the Fire [of Hell; Koran 2:221].’ In other words, they lead to sins that doom [the sinner] to Hell... since [the woman] may be tempted to renounce [Islam], to doubt [the truth of] Islam, and to disparage its religious rituals.
“Woman is weak by nature, and the guardianship of a [non-Muslim] man affects her powers of reasoning. [Marriage to a non-Muslim] may thus cause a woman to follow the ways [of her husband], or at least to abandon her [own] religion and neglect its rituals. [By so doing,] she is neither a Muslim nor one of the People of the Book [i.e. a Christian or Jew like her husband]...
“The same applies to the children who are the product of these marriages, for they are raised by a polytheist father who may urge them to renounce or disparage [Islam], thereby [causing them] to lose both this world and the world to come.
“A person must have some buffer between him and [deeds] that will bring him to perdition. A person about to commit suicide may expect society to intervene in order to safeguard his right to live.
This is why shari’a prohibits marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man - because it is the first step towards religious suicide, whether [it is the woman’s] suicide or that of the children she will bear.
This [form of] suicide is much worse than actual suicide, which also [involves] the murder of [unborn children]. The woman can expect Muslim society to stand between her and this fate, thereby safeguarding her faith and her salvation in the world to come.
“[The Koran says]: ‘Do not marry unbelieving women, until they believe: A slave woman who believes is better than an unbelieving woman, even though she allures you.
Nor marry (your girls) to unbelievers until they believe: A man slave who believes is better than an unbeliever, even though he allures you. Unbelievers do [but] beckon you to the Fire. But Allah beckons by His Grace to the Garden [of bliss] and forgiveness [Koran 2:221].’
“The excuse that one is unable to find a [Muslim] partner for marriage is completely invalid, both from a religious and from a practical point of view... for one who is unable to find a spouse must remain chaste until Allah delivers him [from his plight], for Allah has said: ‘Let those who cannot find a match keep themselves chaste, until Allah gives them means out of His grace [Koran 24:33].’
“Allah has commanded those who cannot find a match to be patient and chaste until He provides them with what they lack. [Even if they cannot find a match], they are not permitted to go to whores or to commit incest. In addition, Allah has forbidden a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man.
The Prophet [Muhammad] said: ‘...Those of you who can marry should do so, for marriage causes one to lower his eyes [i.e. to be chaste] and it is the best protection [against promiscuity]. Those who cannot [marry] should fast, for fasting is like castration.’ The Prophet recommended fasting for those who are unable to marry for economic reasons, and for those who cannot find a religiously suitable partner.
“[Marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man] is invalid and despicable, for we know, and anyone who has contact with the Muslim communities in the West knows, that the number of [Muslim] men seeking marriage is growing. When Muslim women behave in a righteous manner and frequent the mosque, they will receive plenty of marriage proposals and have plenty of [suitable partners] from whom to choose...
“The numerous Muslim centers in the West are still providing [matchmaking] services, supplying information to those who wish to marry so that they know of suitable [candidates]. We must redouble our efforts in this area in order to help men and women who wish to remain chaste, and to remove the excuse which is used by those of weak faith and feeble hearts [namely, that they are unable to find a suitable match].
“The excuse that [the man and woman] share an emotional bond, which comes to justify that which is forbidden, is one of the most despicable excuses...”
[1] www.islamonline.net/servlet/satellite?cid=1184649663278&pagename=islamonline-Arabic-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaAAskTheScholar, August 8, 2007.
from:
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD173507
Electricity Crisis in Syria
By: H.Varulkar
“What is the daily schedule of the Syrian citizen during power outages? At night, naturally, he spends his evening by candlelight or by the light of a flashlight, and if neither are available, there’s nothing wrong with moonlight either.
In this way, our ridiculous authorities aspire to restore the productivity to our troubled souls. As we know, the light of the moon revives our souls and enriches our imagination, and it has the power to transform us into silver-tongued lovers or poets.
The afternoon is the worst time for a serious power outage - especially in the middle of a burning hot summer. The hours between one and four or five transform one from a keen-sensed poet into a crazed murderer... You curse your mother and your father who brought you into Syria.” [1]
- Ahmad Mawloud Al-Tayyar, a resident of the city of Al-Raqqa,describes life in Syria under electricity outages
Since early summer 2007, Syria has been suffering from a severe electricity crisis, the worst in many years.
Recurring power outages last four to 10 hours a day, and this has obviously affected the lives of Syria’s citizens, as well as causing serious damage to the Syrian economy.
At first, the Syrian government assured the public that the crisis was temporary - that it stemmed from increased demand due to the summer heat and was expected to resolve itself within a few weeks.
Syrian Prime Minister Muhammad Naji Al-’Utri even gave Electricity Minister Ahmad Khaled Al-’Ali a two-week ultimatum to solve the crisis.
But when the problem persisted, with the weeks turning into months, harsh criticism of the government, and particularly of the prime minister and electricity minister, began to appear in the Syrian media.
The Syrian government daily newspapers called on the country’s decision makers to act swiftly to correct the flaws in the country’s public services, including the electricity crisis.
More critical articles appeared in the Syrian dailies and news websites, and also on the opposition sites, which attributed the crisis to public corruption and to poor planning, and called for the privatizing Syria’s electricity services.
Protests against the situation reached their height in early August, after Prime Minister Al-’Utri blamed the crisis on political reasons and on international pressures that had led, inter alia, to refusal by the world’s four largest companies dealing with electricity to work in Syria.
In this context, Al-’Utri pointed at former French president Jacques Chirac as the one who had pressured a French company to withdraw from a Syrian tender for erecting a power station in Syria.
The criticism over the electricity crisis also spread to popular protest, when, on August 2, 2007, a hacker penetrated the Electricity Ministry’s website and left the following notice on the homepage:
“I thank all the Electricity Ministry employees, and particularly the [electricity] minister, who so far has offered no solution and has abandoned the country and the people who gave him his job.
I also express my gratitude for the tremendous effort of all those in charge of maintenance in the Electricity Ministry - an effort that demonstrates their inability to bear the responsibility and to hold onto their lofty positions. How long will we remain backward? How long?”
The following are excerpts from articles and reports published in the Syrian papers and news websites in response to the electricity crisis, and particularly in response to statements by Syrian Prime Minister Al-’Utri:
Government Papers:
The Regime Must Hold In-Depth Discussions on Issues Concerning Residents’ Lives
Sana Ya’qoub, columnist for the Syrian government daily Teshreen, wrote:
“In light of the pathetic picture before the eyes of the residents, from the water and electricity crises, to the narrow streets full of dust and potholes, to the animals and cattle in the neighborhoods and the bugs, rats, and sewers polluting everything around them - the people say to the makers and executors of the decisions: ‘When will you speak the truth and keep your promises? Are we to remain forever at your mercy?!”
Isma’il Jaradat, columnist for the Syrian government daily Al-Thawra, also wrote about the crisis in public services: “[There are] many issues that members of the legislative authority must raise with the executive authority. It is to be hoped that [the matter] will not end this way, and that the discussions will not take place infrequently.
We are interested in an in-depth discussion that will deal with all the issues concerning the lives and livelihoods of the residents - and not in discussions aimed at grabbing media prestige.”
Al-Watan Daily: The Electricity Crisis is the Result of Corruption and Poor Planning
In a July 30, 2007 editorial, the Syrian daily Al-Watan called for privatization of Syria’s electricity: “What is the use of talking about achievements? What is the use of all members of the government stressing the ‘improvement’ in the citizen’s [standard of] living?
What is the use of threats, promises, and ultimatums [for solving the crisis] when they are only slogans? The Syrian citizen raises these questions every day, every hour, in an attempt to obtain an explanation of what is going on.
Water comes from Allah, but electricity is the government’s responsibility... What are the investor, the tourist, and the immigrant told? Are they told that the planning is poor, and that the cause of the crisis is the corruption and neglect? Or are we to reiterate the words of the government and of the electricity minister, that the crisis is temporary and it will be overcome within a short time?
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
PROBABLE TERRORIST ACTVITY IN THE USA
Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent whom the movie "Munich" was about... He was Golda Meir's bodyguard and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.
In a lecture in NYC a few weeks ago he shared information that EVERY American needs to know but our government has not shared. His bio is below, his book is "Staying Safe".
First, I am going to share what he discussed in regard to the Bush Administration, 9/11 and Iraq and then I will share his predictions for the next attack on the U.S.
He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week - O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show and unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments.
The Administration ridiculed him and refused to respond.
Congress has since hired him as a security consultant - but still the Administration does not listen to him.
He didn't agree with going into Iraq - said it didn't make sense if we wanted terrorists responsible for 9/11 (and also he believes in Golda Meir's approach which was to bring justice to the terrorists but do not take down civilians - killing civilians only creates more terrorists - but similar to Bush, Israel's subsequent leaders were not as insightful as Golda Meir) - however, when we did decide to invade Iraq we should have learned from Israel's past mistakes.
He very articulately stated that Israel's greatest mistake against their war on terror was to invade the West Bank and Gaza and stay there... He said they should have done the proven anti-terrorist strategy which was "Hit and Leave" instead of "Hit and Stay."
Now we are stuck in Iraq and it is worse than Vietnam - Iraq is the U.S.'s West Bank/ Gaza. He doesn't think we will ever be able to truly leave because even when we are able to pull our troops back we will still have to go back regularly which will keep us quagmired. We should have hit hard and left immediately.
Now for the scary stuff.... He predicts the next attack on the U.S. is coming within the next few months.
Forget hijacking airplanes because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as the people on the plane will not go down quietly.
Aviv believes our airport security is a joke- we are being reactionary versus looking at strategies that are effective.
1) our machines are outdated. They look for metal and the new explosives are made of plastic
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire - we now have to take off our shoes, a group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives - now we can't bring liquids on board.
He is waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on their underwear and light up in a plane or in the terminal and then we will all have to travel naked!
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates, he says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times and on the front end when people are checking in.
It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved.
Israel checks bags before people can enter the airport.
Now, back to his predictions:
He says the next attack will come in a few months and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places that people congregate: Disneyland, Las Vegas, Big Cities (NY, SFO, Chicago, etc...) and there it will be shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, casinos, etc.. as well as in rural America (Wyoming, Montana, etc...).
The attack will be simultaneous detonations around the country (they like big impact) 5-8 cities including rural areas.
They won't need to use suicide bombers because at largely populated places like the MGM Grand in Vegas - they can simply valet park!
He says this is well known in intelligence circles but our government does not want to alarm Americans.
However, he also said that the US will attack Iran and Syria before Bush leaves office.
In addition, since we don't have enough troops The US will likely use small, strategic nuclear weapons regardless that the headlines the next day will read "US Nukes Islamic World" and the world will be a different place to such an extent that global warming will be irrelevant.
He travels regularly to the Middle East and he knows his stuff.
On a good note - he says we don't have to worry about being nuked - he says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons - they like suicide as the frontline approach.
He also says the next level of terrorists will not be coming from abroad, but will be homegrown - having attended our schools and universities - but will have traveled frequently back and forth to the Middle East.
They will know and understand Americans but we won't understand them - we still only have a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks and we need that to change he said...
What can we do?
From an intelligence perspective he says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence but follow Israel, Ireland and England's example of human intelligence both from an infiltration perspective as well as trust citizens to help.
We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens but our government treats us like babies and thinks we can't handle it and will panic.
He did a test for Congress recently putting an empty briefcase in 5 major spots in 5 US cities and not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago - someone tried to steal it!
In Israel an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds with a citizen shouting "Unattended Bag" and the area cleared slowly, calmly and immediately by the people themselves.
Unfortunately, we haven't hurt enough yet for us to be that concerned... (in the USA).
He also discussed how many children were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11 without parents to pick them up and the schools did not have a plan.
(Alan Note: this is one of the follow up acts by terrorists to kidnap our children. In stolen school buses - there are dozens missing - and a huge number are driven by Afghans and other Islamic country ethnics. They would appear and take out children. In the chaos, school administrations woul dnot pay close attention to a new driver appearing to take the children "to safety").
Do you have a plan with your kids, schools and families if you cannot reach each other by phone?
If you cannot return to your house?
If you cannot get to your child's school - do they know what to do?
We should all have a plan.He said that our government's plan after the next attack is to immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use their telephone, cell phone, blackberry because they don't want terrorists to be able to talk to one another - do you have a plan if you cannot communicate directly with those that you love?
Last week the Today Show began with a segment that Al Qaeda was resurfacing - the same kind of action on the Pakistani border occurred before 9/11... It is scary, but we do not have panic, we just need to be aware....
Bio follows: Juval Aviv holds an M.A. in Business from Tel Aviv University and is President and CEO of Interfor, Inc., an international corporate intelligence and investigations firm. Interfor, Inc. is based in New York with offices around the world. Founded in 1979, Interfor provides foreign and domestic intelligence services to the legal, corporate and financial communities and conducts investigations around the world.
In addition, Mr. Aviv serves as a special consultant to the U.S. Congress and other policy makers on issues of terrorism, fraud and money laundering.
A leading authority on terrorist networks, Mr. Aviv served as lead investigator for Pan Am Airways into the Pan Am 103-Lockerbie terrorist bombing. He was featured in the recent film, Munich, as the leader of the Israeli team that tracked down the terrorists who kidnapped the Israeli Olympic team.
Interfor's services encompass white-collar crime investigations, asset search and recovery, corporate due diligence, litigation support, fraud investigations, internal compliance investigations, security and vulnerability assessments.
Since its inception, Interfor's asset investigation services have recovered over $2 billion worldwide for its clients.
Before founding Interfor, Mr. Aviv served as an officer in the Israel Defense Force (Major, retired) leading an elite Commando/Intelligence Unit, and was later selected by the Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) to participate in a number of intelligence and special operations in many countries in the late 1960s and 1970s.
While working as a consultant with El Al, Mr. Aviv surveyed the existing security measures in place and updated El Al's security program, making El Al the safest airline in business today.
Most recently, Mr. Aviv wrote Staying Safe: The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business, (2004,Harper Resource).
He has been a guest on ABC Nightline, FOX News, CNN, BBC Newsnight, ZDF (German National Television) and RAI (Italian National Television) and has been featured in numerous articles in major magazines and newspapers worldwide.
In a lecture in NYC a few weeks ago he shared information that EVERY American needs to know but our government has not shared. His bio is below, his book is "Staying Safe".
First, I am going to share what he discussed in regard to the Bush Administration, 9/11 and Iraq and then I will share his predictions for the next attack on the U.S.
He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week - O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show and unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments.
The Administration ridiculed him and refused to respond.
Congress has since hired him as a security consultant - but still the Administration does not listen to him.
He didn't agree with going into Iraq - said it didn't make sense if we wanted terrorists responsible for 9/11 (and also he believes in Golda Meir's approach which was to bring justice to the terrorists but do not take down civilians - killing civilians only creates more terrorists - but similar to Bush, Israel's subsequent leaders were not as insightful as Golda Meir) - however, when we did decide to invade Iraq we should have learned from Israel's past mistakes.
He very articulately stated that Israel's greatest mistake against their war on terror was to invade the West Bank and Gaza and stay there... He said they should have done the proven anti-terrorist strategy which was "Hit and Leave" instead of "Hit and Stay."
Now we are stuck in Iraq and it is worse than Vietnam - Iraq is the U.S.'s West Bank/ Gaza. He doesn't think we will ever be able to truly leave because even when we are able to pull our troops back we will still have to go back regularly which will keep us quagmired. We should have hit hard and left immediately.
Now for the scary stuff.... He predicts the next attack on the U.S. is coming within the next few months.
Forget hijacking airplanes because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as the people on the plane will not go down quietly.
Aviv believes our airport security is a joke- we are being reactionary versus looking at strategies that are effective.
1) our machines are outdated. They look for metal and the new explosives are made of plastic
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire - we now have to take off our shoes, a group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives - now we can't bring liquids on board.
He is waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on their underwear and light up in a plane or in the terminal and then we will all have to travel naked!
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates, he says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times and on the front end when people are checking in.
It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved.
Israel checks bags before people can enter the airport.
Now, back to his predictions:
He says the next attack will come in a few months and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places that people congregate: Disneyland, Las Vegas, Big Cities (NY, SFO, Chicago, etc...) and there it will be shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, casinos, etc.. as well as in rural America (Wyoming, Montana, etc...).
The attack will be simultaneous detonations around the country (they like big impact) 5-8 cities including rural areas.
They won't need to use suicide bombers because at largely populated places like the MGM Grand in Vegas - they can simply valet park!
He says this is well known in intelligence circles but our government does not want to alarm Americans.
However, he also said that the US will attack Iran and Syria before Bush leaves office.
In addition, since we don't have enough troops The US will likely use small, strategic nuclear weapons regardless that the headlines the next day will read "US Nukes Islamic World" and the world will be a different place to such an extent that global warming will be irrelevant.
He travels regularly to the Middle East and he knows his stuff.
On a good note - he says we don't have to worry about being nuked - he says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons - they like suicide as the frontline approach.
He also says the next level of terrorists will not be coming from abroad, but will be homegrown - having attended our schools and universities - but will have traveled frequently back and forth to the Middle East.
They will know and understand Americans but we won't understand them - we still only have a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks and we need that to change he said...
What can we do?
From an intelligence perspective he says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence but follow Israel, Ireland and England's example of human intelligence both from an infiltration perspective as well as trust citizens to help.
We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens but our government treats us like babies and thinks we can't handle it and will panic.
He did a test for Congress recently putting an empty briefcase in 5 major spots in 5 US cities and not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago - someone tried to steal it!
In Israel an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds with a citizen shouting "Unattended Bag" and the area cleared slowly, calmly and immediately by the people themselves.
Unfortunately, we haven't hurt enough yet for us to be that concerned... (in the USA).
He also discussed how many children were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11 without parents to pick them up and the schools did not have a plan.
(Alan Note: this is one of the follow up acts by terrorists to kidnap our children. In stolen school buses - there are dozens missing - and a huge number are driven by Afghans and other Islamic country ethnics. They would appear and take out children. In the chaos, school administrations woul dnot pay close attention to a new driver appearing to take the children "to safety").
Do you have a plan with your kids, schools and families if you cannot reach each other by phone?
If you cannot return to your house?
If you cannot get to your child's school - do they know what to do?
We should all have a plan.He said that our government's plan after the next attack is to immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use their telephone, cell phone, blackberry because they don't want terrorists to be able to talk to one another - do you have a plan if you cannot communicate directly with those that you love?
Last week the Today Show began with a segment that Al Qaeda was resurfacing - the same kind of action on the Pakistani border occurred before 9/11... It is scary, but we do not have panic, we just need to be aware....
Bio follows: Juval Aviv holds an M.A. in Business from Tel Aviv University and is President and CEO of Interfor, Inc., an international corporate intelligence and investigations firm. Interfor, Inc. is based in New York with offices around the world. Founded in 1979, Interfor provides foreign and domestic intelligence services to the legal, corporate and financial communities and conducts investigations around the world.
In addition, Mr. Aviv serves as a special consultant to the U.S. Congress and other policy makers on issues of terrorism, fraud and money laundering.
A leading authority on terrorist networks, Mr. Aviv served as lead investigator for Pan Am Airways into the Pan Am 103-Lockerbie terrorist bombing. He was featured in the recent film, Munich, as the leader of the Israeli team that tracked down the terrorists who kidnapped the Israeli Olympic team.
Interfor's services encompass white-collar crime investigations, asset search and recovery, corporate due diligence, litigation support, fraud investigations, internal compliance investigations, security and vulnerability assessments.
Since its inception, Interfor's asset investigation services have recovered over $2 billion worldwide for its clients.
Before founding Interfor, Mr. Aviv served as an officer in the Israel Defense Force (Major, retired) leading an elite Commando/Intelligence Unit, and was later selected by the Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) to participate in a number of intelligence and special operations in many countries in the late 1960s and 1970s.
While working as a consultant with El Al, Mr. Aviv surveyed the existing security measures in place and updated El Al's security program, making El Al the safest airline in business today.
Most recently, Mr. Aviv wrote Staying Safe: The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business, (2004,Harper Resource).
He has been a guest on ABC Nightline, FOX News, CNN, BBC Newsnight, ZDF (German National Television) and RAI (Italian National Television) and has been featured in numerous articles in major magazines and newspapers worldwide.
Monday, October 8, 2007
UCI NEWS SUMMARY
Radical Islam is Alive and Well in America, Jerusalem Post International, Ruthie Blum
The Battle for Jerusalem Begins, Arutz-7, Hana Levi Julian
How Jerusalem Became Sacred to the Muslims, Omedia, Dr. Mordechai Keidar
U.S.: Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Member of Elite Revolutionary Guard Unit, The Media Line,
Wealthy Syrians head to Iraq for jihad, Jihad Watch,
COIN Is Not Small Change: General Petraeus' Strategy for the most complex and maddening type of war, National Review, Clifford D. May
Bush Kicks Off November Middle East Summit, The Philadelphia Bulletin, David Bedein
Egyptian Independent Newspapers Strike Over Press Freedom, The Media Line,
The Battle for Jerusalem Begins, Arutz-7, Hana Levi Julian
How Jerusalem Became Sacred to the Muslims, Omedia, Dr. Mordechai Keidar
U.S.: Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Member of Elite Revolutionary Guard Unit, The Media Line,
Wealthy Syrians head to Iraq for jihad, Jihad Watch,
COIN Is Not Small Change: General Petraeus' Strategy for the most complex and maddening type of war, National Review, Clifford D. May
Bush Kicks Off November Middle East Summit, The Philadelphia Bulletin, David Bedein
Egyptian Independent Newspapers Strike Over Press Freedom, The Media Line,
Saturday, October 6, 2007
DEFENSE & NATIONAL SECURITY
Defense and National Security NewsFrom Washington
By Bill Gertz
Joint Chiefs and 3ComU.S. defense and intelligence officials said both the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not informed by intelligence officials about the impending merger deal involving 3Com and the Chinese company Huawei Technology that was announced last week.
Also, Lasers in Iraq? Target China
Paulson hands off merger review October 5, 2007
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson will recuse himself from a government review of the merger between 3Com and a Chinese company because of his past relationship with an investment firm involved in the deal.
GOP urges probe in China firm deal
Several Republican members of Congress yesterday called for a Treasury Department probe into whether Pentagon computer networks will be compromised by the merger of a U.S. network-equipment maker and a Chinese firm with links to Beijing’s military.
Merger opens U.S. defense to China
A Chinese company with ties to Beijing’s military and past links to Saddam Hussein’s army in Iraq and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger, Pentagon officials say.
FBI reaching out to jihadist-linked group
The FBI is cooperating with a U.S. Muslim group recently linked to global extremists and is asking the group to provide “cultural training” for its special agents, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report.
FBI chief orders internal probe
Former Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, is said to suspect careerists and Democratic sympathizers in the Justice Department worked covertly with former Clinton administration officials to defeat him in the 2006 election.
Chinese dissident urges boycott of Olympics
A leading Chinese dissident called on Congress yesterday to lead an international boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympics because of China’s human rights abuses and support for rogue regimes.
U.S. watches Syria, Israel after air strike
U.S. intelligence agencies have stepped up monitoring of Syria and Israel for signs of a new military confrontation after a recent Israeli air strike inside Syria, Bush administration officials said yesterday.
Algeria, China teamed on nuke
Newly declassified U.S. government documents confirm the U.S. government suspected China was helping Algeria build a secret facility in 1991 for developing nuclear weapons.
Al Qaeda still plots another U.S. attack
Al Qaeda terrorists continue to plan and train for a major attack against the United States, but so far, there are no signs that the group’s extremists have infiltrated into the country, senior U.S. security and intelligence officials told Congress yesterday.
Chinese donor sounds like ‘96
Questionable donations to Democratic officials and presidential candidates from a Chinese-American businessman highlight past concerns over Chinese political influence-buying operations.
Report: Iraqi stability growing
Growing Sunni opposition to al Qaeda and in some cases the perception that U.S. troops will leave the country are key factors behind recent and growing stability in Iraq, according to a major U.S. intelligence report based on findings from 16 agencies.
CIA failed to plot against al Qaeda
The CIA lacked a strategy to counter al Qaeda in the months leading up to the September 11 attacks and committed multiple analytical and operational failures that prevented the agency from stopping Osama bin Laden’s terror group, according to a once-secret CIA inspector general report released yesterday.
China won’t allow U.S. to check out fighter jet
China”s military recently turned down a request by the United States to see the new Chinese J-10 fighter but allowed visits to two operational fighter bases, the commander of Pacific Air Forces said yesterday.
FBI calls Chinese espionage ‘substantial’
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday that Chinese intelligence operations against the United States are a major problem and that the FBI is stepping up counterespionage efforts against them.
Al Qaeda seen in search of nukes
Al Qaeda terrorists are continuing to plan attacks against the United States and are seeking nuclear and other unconventional arms for the strikes, a senior Pentagon official told Congress yesterday.
Al Qaeda ‘evolving’ against U.S.
Al Qaeda terrorists are rebuilding their capabilities and continuing to plan mass-casualty attacks inside the United States, according to an intelligence assessment made public yesterday.
By Bill Gertz
Joint Chiefs and 3ComU.S. defense and intelligence officials said both the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not informed by intelligence officials about the impending merger deal involving 3Com and the Chinese company Huawei Technology that was announced last week.
Also, Lasers in Iraq? Target China
Paulson hands off merger review October 5, 2007
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson will recuse himself from a government review of the merger between 3Com and a Chinese company because of his past relationship with an investment firm involved in the deal.
GOP urges probe in China firm deal
Several Republican members of Congress yesterday called for a Treasury Department probe into whether Pentagon computer networks will be compromised by the merger of a U.S. network-equipment maker and a Chinese firm with links to Beijing’s military.
Merger opens U.S. defense to China
A Chinese company with ties to Beijing’s military and past links to Saddam Hussein’s army in Iraq and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger, Pentagon officials say.
FBI reaching out to jihadist-linked group
The FBI is cooperating with a U.S. Muslim group recently linked to global extremists and is asking the group to provide “cultural training” for its special agents, according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report.
FBI chief orders internal probe
Former Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, is said to suspect careerists and Democratic sympathizers in the Justice Department worked covertly with former Clinton administration officials to defeat him in the 2006 election.
Chinese dissident urges boycott of Olympics
A leading Chinese dissident called on Congress yesterday to lead an international boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympics because of China’s human rights abuses and support for rogue regimes.
U.S. watches Syria, Israel after air strike
U.S. intelligence agencies have stepped up monitoring of Syria and Israel for signs of a new military confrontation after a recent Israeli air strike inside Syria, Bush administration officials said yesterday.
Algeria, China teamed on nuke
Newly declassified U.S. government documents confirm the U.S. government suspected China was helping Algeria build a secret facility in 1991 for developing nuclear weapons.
Al Qaeda still plots another U.S. attack
Al Qaeda terrorists continue to plan and train for a major attack against the United States, but so far, there are no signs that the group’s extremists have infiltrated into the country, senior U.S. security and intelligence officials told Congress yesterday.
Chinese donor sounds like ‘96
Questionable donations to Democratic officials and presidential candidates from a Chinese-American businessman highlight past concerns over Chinese political influence-buying operations.
Report: Iraqi stability growing
Growing Sunni opposition to al Qaeda and in some cases the perception that U.S. troops will leave the country are key factors behind recent and growing stability in Iraq, according to a major U.S. intelligence report based on findings from 16 agencies.
CIA failed to plot against al Qaeda
The CIA lacked a strategy to counter al Qaeda in the months leading up to the September 11 attacks and committed multiple analytical and operational failures that prevented the agency from stopping Osama bin Laden’s terror group, according to a once-secret CIA inspector general report released yesterday.
China won’t allow U.S. to check out fighter jet
China”s military recently turned down a request by the United States to see the new Chinese J-10 fighter but allowed visits to two operational fighter bases, the commander of Pacific Air Forces said yesterday.
FBI calls Chinese espionage ‘substantial’
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday that Chinese intelligence operations against the United States are a major problem and that the FBI is stepping up counterespionage efforts against them.
Al Qaeda seen in search of nukes
Al Qaeda terrorists are continuing to plan attacks against the United States and are seeking nuclear and other unconventional arms for the strikes, a senior Pentagon official told Congress yesterday.
Al Qaeda ‘evolving’ against U.S.
Al Qaeda terrorists are rebuilding their capabilities and continuing to plan mass-casualty attacks inside the United States, according to an intelligence assessment made public yesterday.
TRANSLATED PRE-WAR IRAQI DOCUMENTS
WAKE UP AMERICA, WAKE UP WORLD! HEED CHURCHILL'S WARNING - WE FACE THIS AGAIN!
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed;
if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly;
you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
There may even be a worse case.
You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
I. SADDAM TERRORIST REGIME: TRANSLATED DOCUMENTS SHOWING WITHOUT A SHADOW OF DOUBT THAT SADDAM REGIME IS A TERRORIST REGIME
Saddam Regime Document: Iraqi Intelligence met with Bin Laden in 1995 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600579/posts
Captured Al Qaeda Document Shows Bin Laden Deputy Aymen Al Zawahiri Visited Iraq http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1825605/posts
Saddam Regime Document Dated May 1999 Reveals Plans for Terrorist Attacks in Europe http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1822592/posts
Document: Zarqawi in Iraq Long Before the War Started http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1598259/posts
Document: Saddam Regime Training and Using Foreign Arab Terrorists As Suicide Bombers. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600367/posts
2003 Document: Saddam Ordered To Treat The Arab Feedayeen Terrorists The Same As Iraqi Soldiers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618519/posts
Document: Iraqi Intelligence To Train Arab Feedayeen Terrorists In the Year 2000 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1617431/posts
March 2001 Document: Saddam Regime Recruits Suicide Terrorists to Hit US Interests http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1610012/posts
2003 Document: Hundreds of Palestinian Terrorists to Join Saddam And Fight US Troops http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1726660/posts
Document: Afghani Taliban Consul Spoke of a Relationship Between Iraq and Bin Laden http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1597459/posts
March 2002 Document: Saddam Ordered 25,000 Dollars for Each Suicide Terrorist Against Israel http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1602317/posts
2003 Document: Iraqi Intelligence Asks Hamas To Conduct Terrorist Attacks Against The US. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607915/posts
September 2001 Document: Military Orders To Prepare For US Attacks Against Iraq After 9/11 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1652528/posts
Iraqi Documents Contradict Senate Report that Saddam Regime was “Intensely Secular” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1705635/posts
II. SADDAM REGIME WMD PROGRAMS: TRANSLATED DOCUMENTS THAT SHOW SADDAM REGIME CONTINUOUS WORK ON WMD PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES, AND DECEPTION OF THE U.N INSPECTORS ABOUT HIS WMD PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES.
Saddam WMD: Findings and Analysis Based on Captured Iraqi Documents (Part I) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1822157/posts
September 1998 Document: Secret Research Programs Related to WMD http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613509/posts
Iraqi Documents: Plans To Produce Prohibited Chemical Weapons Precursors http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1657480/posts
2002 Document: Request for Precursor That Can Be Used To Make VX Nerve Gas http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1695883/posts
2001 Top Secret Document: Production of Prohibited Nerve Gas Detectors http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1624797/posts
2001 Document: Manufacturing of Chemical Warfare Decontamination Trailers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1692741/posts
1999 Document Chemical Platoons Applied Training In Chemical Lab to Detect Nerve Agents, VX Agents.. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612527/posts
2002 Document: Plan To Produce Mobile Laboratories http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1631022/posts
2002 Document: Chemical Material Hidden Underground http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642403/posts
Summer 2002 Document: Destruction And Hiding of WMD Documents and Archives http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1614115/posts
1997 Document: Orders To Remove All Information Related To WMD From Computers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611976/posts
2001 Iraqi Document: Saddam Approved the Re-Use of Nuclear Equipment http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1725141/posts
Iraqi Documents: Projects to Rebuild Saddam Nuclear Facilities http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718125/posts
Iraqi Documents Show Plans for Prohibited Nuclear Projects http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1709390/posts
Document: Iraqi Dissident Talks About WMD Moved to Syria http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671897/posts
Iraqi Documents Rebut the Senate Intelligence Report on WMD. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1703710/posts
1999, 2000 Iraqi memos: Procurement of 50000 Aluminum Tubes That Can Be Used For URANIUM ENRICHMENT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620565/posts
Undated Document: Change Chemical, Nuclear, And Missiles Sites for Fear of Western Attack http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1621334/posts
2001, 2002 Iraqi Memos: SECRET NUCLEAR PROJECT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620262/posts
Document Dated February/3/2003: Chemical Gears for The Chemical Group http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603039/posts
Saddam Regime Document Dated January 2003: The French and German Connections which include a story about WMD transfer to Syria http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603917/posts<
III. MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS TRANSLATIONS
Iraqi Document: Boutrous Ghali Ex-UN Chief To Benefit from Oil for Food Program http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761387/posts
2003 Document: Iraqi Sources in Pakistan warns of US Capturing or Killing Saddam http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1705293/posts
2001 Doc: Saddam Regime Wants France To Provide Info About US Intelligence Work Against Iraq. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1726927/posts
March 2003 Document: Saddam Orders Iraq Central Bank to Give his Son 1 Billion Dollars http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1697062/posts
Saddam Regime Document: Give CNN the Priority for Coverage http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603696/posts
Saddam Regime Document: Saddam Ordered The Use of Chemical Weapons in Northern Iraq http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601810/posts
Saddam Regime document: How To Use Coalition Dead Troops and POW’s As Propaganda Tool http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1608423/posts
November 2002 Document: Russian Company Sells Mig 29 Parts to Iraq http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1615
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed;
if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly;
you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
There may even be a worse case.
You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
IF YOU NEED FACTS TO SHOOT DOWN THE LIBERAL LEFT WING WHO CLAIM SADDAM WAS NOT PART OF TERRORISM REFER TO THESE DOCUMENTS, ORIGINALLY IN ARABIC.
TRANSLATED PRE-WAR IRAQ DOCUMENTS:
I. SADDAM TERRORIST REGIME: TRANSLATED DOCUMENTS SHOWING WITHOUT A SHADOW OF DOUBT THAT SADDAM REGIME IS A TERRORIST REGIME
Saddam Regime Document: Iraqi Intelligence met with Bin Laden in 1995 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600579/posts
Captured Al Qaeda Document Shows Bin Laden Deputy Aymen Al Zawahiri Visited Iraq http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1825605/posts
Saddam Regime Document Dated May 1999 Reveals Plans for Terrorist Attacks in Europe http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1822592/posts
Document: Zarqawi in Iraq Long Before the War Started http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1598259/posts
Document: Saddam Regime Training and Using Foreign Arab Terrorists As Suicide Bombers. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600367/posts
2003 Document: Saddam Ordered To Treat The Arab Feedayeen Terrorists The Same As Iraqi Soldiers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618519/posts
Document: Iraqi Intelligence To Train Arab Feedayeen Terrorists In the Year 2000 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1617431/posts
March 2001 Document: Saddam Regime Recruits Suicide Terrorists to Hit US Interests http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1610012/posts
2003 Document: Hundreds of Palestinian Terrorists to Join Saddam And Fight US Troops http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1726660/posts
Document: Afghani Taliban Consul Spoke of a Relationship Between Iraq and Bin Laden http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1597459/posts
March 2002 Document: Saddam Ordered 25,000 Dollars for Each Suicide Terrorist Against Israel http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1602317/posts
2003 Document: Iraqi Intelligence Asks Hamas To Conduct Terrorist Attacks Against The US. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607915/posts
September 2001 Document: Military Orders To Prepare For US Attacks Against Iraq After 9/11 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1652528/posts
Iraqi Documents Contradict Senate Report that Saddam Regime was “Intensely Secular” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1705635/posts
II. SADDAM REGIME WMD PROGRAMS: TRANSLATED DOCUMENTS THAT SHOW SADDAM REGIME CONTINUOUS WORK ON WMD PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES, AND DECEPTION OF THE U.N INSPECTORS ABOUT HIS WMD PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES.
Saddam WMD: Findings and Analysis Based on Captured Iraqi Documents (Part I) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1822157/posts
September 1998 Document: Secret Research Programs Related to WMD http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613509/posts
Iraqi Documents: Plans To Produce Prohibited Chemical Weapons Precursors http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1657480/posts
2002 Document: Request for Precursor That Can Be Used To Make VX Nerve Gas http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1695883/posts
2001 Top Secret Document: Production of Prohibited Nerve Gas Detectors http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1624797/posts
2001 Document: Manufacturing of Chemical Warfare Decontamination Trailers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1692741/posts
1999 Document Chemical Platoons Applied Training In Chemical Lab to Detect Nerve Agents, VX Agents.. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612527/posts
2002 Document: Plan To Produce Mobile Laboratories http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1631022/posts
2002 Document: Chemical Material Hidden Underground http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642403/posts
Summer 2002 Document: Destruction And Hiding of WMD Documents and Archives http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1614115/posts
1997 Document: Orders To Remove All Information Related To WMD From Computers http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611976/posts
2001 Iraqi Document: Saddam Approved the Re-Use of Nuclear Equipment http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1725141/posts
Iraqi Documents: Projects to Rebuild Saddam Nuclear Facilities http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718125/posts
Iraqi Documents Show Plans for Prohibited Nuclear Projects http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1709390/posts
Document: Iraqi Dissident Talks About WMD Moved to Syria http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671897/posts
Iraqi Documents Rebut the Senate Intelligence Report on WMD. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1703710/posts
1999, 2000 Iraqi memos: Procurement of 50000 Aluminum Tubes That Can Be Used For URANIUM ENRICHMENT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620565/posts
Undated Document: Change Chemical, Nuclear, And Missiles Sites for Fear of Western Attack http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1621334/posts
2001, 2002 Iraqi Memos: SECRET NUCLEAR PROJECT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620262/posts
Document Dated February/3/2003: Chemical Gears for The Chemical Group http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603039/posts
Saddam Regime Document Dated January 2003: The French and German Connections which include a story about WMD transfer to Syria http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603917/posts<
III. MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS TRANSLATIONS
Iraqi Document: Boutrous Ghali Ex-UN Chief To Benefit from Oil for Food Program http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761387/posts
2003 Document: Iraqi Sources in Pakistan warns of US Capturing or Killing Saddam http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1705293/posts
2001 Doc: Saddam Regime Wants France To Provide Info About US Intelligence Work Against Iraq. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1726927/posts
March 2003 Document: Saddam Orders Iraq Central Bank to Give his Son 1 Billion Dollars http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1697062/posts
Saddam Regime Document: Give CNN the Priority for Coverage http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603696/posts
Saddam Regime Document: Saddam Ordered The Use of Chemical Weapons in Northern Iraq http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601810/posts
Saddam Regime document: How To Use Coalition Dead Troops and POW’s As Propaganda Tool http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1608423/posts
November 2002 Document: Russian Company Sells Mig 29 Parts to Iraq http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1615
VARIOUS VIEWS
Details of Olmert-Abbas Meeting Kept Quiet, Arutz Sheva, Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
Summit failure may ignite new intifada, Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh
Uncertainty Prevails about Middle East Summit, Center for Security Policy, Ben Lerner
Peace conference invitee list revealed, Maan News Agency,
Column One: Rice's rabbit hole, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick
Summit failure may ignite new intifada, Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh
Uncertainty Prevails about Middle East Summit, Center for Security Policy, Ben Lerner
Peace conference invitee list revealed, Maan News Agency,
Column One: Rice's rabbit hole, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick
Friday, October 5, 2007
THIS IS HOW IT STARTS
And so it begins again.
The punk jihad is restless - Dozens (betcha its more - can’t trust the state run French media) of Moslem youths attacked a police station in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the scene of unrest. Youths = muslims.
Muslim youths riot in French Town
Saint-Dizier, France - French police clashed overnight with youths who went on a rampage in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the trouble spot.
Between 40 and 50 masked youths used metal bars to smash a firefighters’ vehicle and a police car dispatched to a shopping mall in Saint-Dizier, said Yves Guillot, the head of the Haute-Marne regional government.
The youths then fanned out across the town of 30 000 inhabitants, setting fire to two buildings, a car rental office and 16 vehicles.
Police reinforcements were sent in to quell the violence.
“We are trying to understand what happened.
We have had clashes in our town but not on this scale,” said Mayor Francois Cornut-Gentille.
The punk jihad is restless - Dozens (betcha its more - can’t trust the state run French media) of Moslem youths attacked a police station in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the scene of unrest. Youths = muslims.
Muslim youths riot in French Town
Saint-Dizier, France - French police clashed overnight with youths who went on a rampage in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the trouble spot.
Between 40 and 50 masked youths used metal bars to smash a firefighters’ vehicle and a police car dispatched to a shopping mall in Saint-Dizier, said Yves Guillot, the head of the Haute-Marne regional government.
The youths then fanned out across the town of 30 000 inhabitants, setting fire to two buildings, a car rental office and 16 vehicles.
Police reinforcements were sent in to quell the violence.
“We are trying to understand what happened.
We have had clashes in our town but not on this scale,” said Mayor Francois Cornut-Gentille.
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