Flabby thinking opens doors to British terrorists, study finds.
A new report says 'flabby and bogus' government thinking has made the country vulnerable to attack from Islamist extremists.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/02/flabby_thinking_opens_doors_to.html
Britain has become a "soft touch" for home-grown terrorists because ministers have failed to tackle immigrant communities that refuse to integrate, according to a study published by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
The think tank, which employs the wisdom of retired generals, former spy chiefs and diplomatic figures, argues that a loss of British values and national identity caused by "flabby and bogus" government thinking has made the country vulnerable to attack from Islamist extremists, the Telegraph reports on its front page today.
"Misplaced" policies on multiculturalism have failed to "lay down the line" to immigrants, leading to a fragmented society opposed by "implacable" terrorist enemies, the report says.
But a leader in the Telegraph, which probably has more retired generals, former spy chiefs and diplomatic figures among its readers than most papers, argues that although the report's analysis is sound, its prescription is less persuasive.
"The report's authors call for a constitutional re-structuring involving the creation of twin Whitehall and parliamentary committees to draw together 'all the threads of government relating to defence and security'. They liken it to the creation of the Monetary Policy Committee, which took interest rates out of the political arena.
"This is a dangerously flawed proposition. De-politicising defence and security by creating some cosy cross-party machinery actually means de-democratising it."
The Mail also splashes on the Rusi story and says that its "bleak assessment" follows two blows this week to Labour's anti-terror strategy. On Wednesday five Muslim men had their convictions for terrorism offences quashed.
Yesterday, the appeal court ruled that the Algerian pilot Lotfi Raissi was entitled to claim compensation from the British government after he was falsely accused of training 9/11 pilots and banged up in Belmash prison. He is now preparing to claim millions, the Mail says, for the devastating effect his arrest had on his career.
How could anyone believe he was a terrorist, asks the Times. "While other al-Qaeda suspects sat sullenly in the dock, Mr Raissi, then 27, sobbed uncontrollably as allegations now known to be utterly false were made by Crown lawyers acting on behalf of the US government ...
No one who came to know about his uncle's role in the front line against Islamist terrorism in Algeria could accept that this frightened young man was a follower of Osama bin Laden."
James Welch, the legal director of the human rights group Liberty, is quoted in the Guardian saying: "Luckily for Mr Raissi he was arrested before the new extradition arrangements under the Extradition Act 2003 came into force.
"If he were arrested now he would have been whisked off to the US without the possibility of a British court considering the strength of the charges against him."
Britain 'a soft touch for home grown terrorists
'http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;jsessionid=5FZB1RB1MWQANQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2008/02/15/nterror115.xml&site=5&page=0By
Robert Winnett Deputy Political Editor
Britain has become a "soft touch" for home grown terrorists because ministers have failed to tackle immigrant communities that refuse to integrate, warns a report released today.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a body of the country's leading military and diplomatic figures, says the loss of British values and national identity caused by "flabby and bogus" Government thinking has made the country vulnerable to attack from Islamic extremists.
"Misplaced" policies on multiculturalism have failed to "lay down the line" to immigrants, leading to a fragmented society opposed by "implacable" terrorist enemies, the report says.The stark warning - which comes just days after the Archbishop of Canterbury was plunged into a row over the adoption of sharia, or Islamic law, in Britain - will embarrass the Government.
RUSI, whose patron is the Queen, is one of the most respected and long-established defence research organisations in the world.
Gordon Brown, who is due to unveil his national security policy next week, has described the think-tank as "leading the debate about homeland security and global terrorism".
Its analysis represents the views of senior defence experts including Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, Vice Adml Sir Jeremy Blackham, Gen Sir Rupert Smith and Baroness Park, a former senior officer with MI6.
It was written by the Marquess of Salisbury and Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics.
In addition to raising concerns over the threat from home-grown terrorists, the report warns that:
• The military is not receiving adequate funding and the Armed Forces are in a state of "chronic disrepair".
• Competition for energy, water and food from China and India raises significant questions for security policy.
• British reliance on a weakening UN, Nato and EU could leave this country vulnerable to emerging terrorist threats.
However, it is the vulnerable state of British society that attracts the most criticism.
"The UK presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society," the report says, and is "increasingly divided" on its history, national aims, values and political identity.
"That fragmentation is worsened by the firm self-image of those elements within it who refuse to integrate."
The report places most of the blame for this on a "lack of leadership from the majority, which, in misplaced deference to 'multiculturalism', failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities, thus undercutting those within them trying to fight extremism".
"The country's lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its Islamist terrorist enemy, within and without.
"We look like a soft touch. We are indeed a soft touch, from within and without."
The report also accuses ministers of "flabby and bogus strategic thinking" which has led to public money being spent in "perverse ways".
"All this has contributed to a more severe erosion of the links of confidence and support between the British people, their government and Britain's security and defence forces, than for many years," it says.
Citing the creation of the independent monetary policy committee at the Bank of England, RUSI concludes that the situation is so serious that "moves are needed to take defence and security, as far as possible, back out of the arena of short-term party politics".
"The range of threats and risks facing the UK, together with the experience of the past few years, suggest that measures to achieve that should go beyond changes in policy. Institutional changes are needed."
Last night, the report was welcomed by Baroness Neville-Jones, the shadow security minister and former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who said it showed how multiculturalism had been a "disaster" for Britain.
She said: "This report sends a powerful message to the Government that leadership is badly lacking at a time of significant threat to our country.
"The Conservatives agree that multiculturalism has been a disaster for national cohesion and has increased our vulnerability to the terrorist threat."
RUSI's report is the latest indication of the growing unease about Labour's counter-terrorism policies, which many believe have failed to stem the growth of home-grown terrorists.
The multiculturalist approach has been condemned by a wide array of figures from Trevor Phillips, the equalities watchdog, to John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York.
The debate was re-ignited last week after Dr Rowan Williams said that adoption of parts of Sharia, or Islamic, law in Britain was "'unavoidable"' - a suggestion condemned across the political spectrum.
MI5 estimates that there are about 2,000 active terror supporters in Britain and claims that schoolchildren are being recruited by al-Qa'eda. RUSI formed the private seminar group to discuss Britain's security in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 and the botched 21/7 terrorist attempt.
The report also draws attention to the "narrowly pre-empted attack on planes in 2006" and last year's car bomb attacks at Glasgow airport and London's West end.
"A declaration of war is almost inconceivable today, and yet both our defence and security services are in action against active forces, abroad and at home, at this moment," the report says.
RUSI, which is thought to represent the views of many current senior members of the Armed Forces, issues a call to Britons to re-establish a sense of identity. It states: "The deep guarantee of real strength is our knowledge of who we are.
Our loss of cultural self-confidence weakens our ability to develop new means to provide for our security in the face of new risks. Our uncertainty incubates the embryonic threats these risks represent."
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
HISTORY & MEANING OF PALESTINE AND PALESTINIAN
The History and Meaning of 'Palestine' and 'Palestinian'
By Michael Bussio
"From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries..." - Professor Bernard Lewis, Princeton University
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not." -- Professor Philip Hatti, Arab historian to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946.
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." - Delegate of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations Security Council, 1956
"Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today... No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough." -- Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, author of "Myths of the Middle East"
There has never been a Palestinian state in the history of the region. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity.
There is no language known as Palestinian.
There is no distinct Palestinian culture.
There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.
The "so-called" Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, etc.
Even the name Palestine came from the Roman Emperor Hadrian around 135 A.D. after Rome put down yet another Jewish revolt.
The Emperor, increasingly angered by the rebellious nature of Judah, Judea, and Samaria, became determined to break the back of the stiff-necked Jews once and for all.
When asked who the Jews most ardent enemies of the distant past were, the Emperor was told the Philistines; thus the name Palestina, which would later be morphed into the word Palestine.
(Alan Note: the Philistines have since become EXTINCT as a race or people)
Nearly eighteen hundred years later, Great Britain took over that part of the Middle East as a mandate from the League of Nations. The British chose to call the land Palestine.
It wasn't long before the various Arab tribes, native Egyptians, Syrians, and Turks living in the area adopted the word Palestine as if it were some ancient name passed down from their forefathers.
Strangely, the Arabs couldn't even pronounce it correctly, and used the fictional entity, Falastine.
The Word-"Palestine"
The word Palestine has never been used as a name of a nation or state, but rather as a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history.
The word Palestine comes from the name Peleshet. Peleshet appears frequently in the Bible and entered into English as "Philistine." It dates to the thirteenth century B.C. These people were thought to be the dangerous "Sea Peoples" that so threaten the Aegean, Egypt, Syria, and present day Israel, Turkey, and Lebanon.
Historians and archeologist believe these "Sea Peoples" originated from Greece and many of the Greek Islands.
From there they would raid the region for plunder and general destruction. Eventually, they would establish five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land that came to be known as "Philistia."
The Greeks and Romans would call it Palestina. At no time were the Philistines of old ever considered to be Arabs.
They were not even Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic, or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palestina" derived from Peleshet.
How Did The Land Of Israel Become "Palestine"?
In the First Century after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. Though the Jews had successfully created a nation state for the second time in their history (the first being that of King David and King Solomon), it was eventually smashed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian.
In the Emperor's haste to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea-Samaria (those areas that make up much of Israel today), Hadrian not only defeated the Israelite armies, slaughtered countless hundred thousands of Jews, and sent many more into exile, but took the name Palestina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel to further humiliate the Jews.
At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
Though the Romans killed many Jews and sold many more into slavery, there was never a complete abandonment of the Land by its people. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities living on the land.
A Short History of Palestine
Before the Greeks, before the Romans, before the land was known by its invented Roman name of "Palestina," more than a millennium ago, the region had been called the land of "Canaan."
The people known as Canaanites had the unique ability of creating small vibrant city-states, though none ever reached the grandeur and efficiency of the Greek city-states of antiquity. At times these small states were independent, but for much of their history, the Canaanite city-states were vassals of an Egyptian or Hittite king. In their entire history, the Canaanites never united into a single nation.
After the Hebrews were granted their freedom in the Exodus from Egypt nearly 3,300 years ago, they wandered the desert for the next 40 years before settling in the lands of Canaan. There they would form the first Jewish government, the first Jewish nation, out of the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and later those of Judea and Samaria.
Israel-Judah-Judea and parts of Samaria united into one nation, thus forming the "only" independent, sovereign nation-state that has ever existed in the entire history of "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab, and Edom as well as Israel, had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920's.)
The Roman Empire would eventually extend its borders to the Middle East with the conquest of Judea, Judah, Israel, and Samaria. This region would become a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire.
After the death of Mohammad in the 600's A.D. the Arab-Muslim Caliph conquered Palastina from the Byzantines, and made it apart of their Arab-Muslim Empire. Because the Arabs had no name of their own for the area, they opted for adopting the name the Romans gave the region-Palastina, which the Arabs pronounced Falastine.
During this time in history, much of the mixed population of Palastina was converted to Islam and eventually was pressured to adopt the Arabic language.
Whether they liked it or not, the people of the region were subject to the whims of a distant dictator, the Caliph. The area of Palastina at no time ever became an Arabic nation, or ever became an independent Arabic state of any kind, or ever developed a distinct Arabic culture and/or society.
The year 1099 A.D. marked the first year of the First Crusade. It was also the year the Christian Crusaders conquered Palastina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule.
Though the Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, it never developed a national identity. For all intents and purposes, it remained only a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than one century.
Thereafter, Palastina-Falastin would be ruled as a subject province by Syria, then by the Egyptian dominated, ethnically mixed slave-warriors known as Mameluks, and finally by the Ottoman Turks.
Near the end of the First World War, the British, led by the likes of General Allenby and Lawrence of Arabia, took control of Palestine from the Ottomans. Thus with the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, its once-subject provinces came under the influence of the European powers.
Palestine was one of those subject provinces, and it came under the control of Great Britain who would now govern the territory on a temporary mandate from the League of Nations.
The Historical Home of the Jews
Over the centuries, many from the West traveled through the region. They gave an excellent account of what they saw there. And what they saw was depressing to say the least.
All mentioned the land as being empty, neglected, abandoned, and desolate. "Everything had fallen into disrepair and ruins," one visitor said. An English pilgrim stated in 1590, "There is nothing there (Jerusalem) to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining, and all the rest is grass, moss, and weeds".
The British consul to the region stated in 1857, "The country is in considerable degree, empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population."
It was not unusual to hear from travelers returning home from this area of the Middle East to assert that, "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [Valley of Jezreel]-not for 30 miles in either direction...
One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings." It was reported in Europe and the United States that, "For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to the Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lays a moldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation ... untenanted by any living creature..."
One visitor declared that the "country was desolate whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere.
Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country..." Even Mark Twain was taken by the devastation of the region, stating in his 1867 trip to the Palestine territory, "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely..."
The land would not maintain its "desolate and unlovely" image for long. With the coming of Jewish pioneers in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, who would join with the many Jews who already lived in the region from time immemorial, the land began to turn green. Their hard work and diligence in bringing the land back to life attracted many others in the Middle East who sought employment opportunities and a better lifestyle.
Thus many Arab migrants were drawn to the area in hopes of better conditions for their families.
"His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object..." This was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It was validated by the League of Nations Mandate, and thereby committed the British Government to the principle that there would be a Jewish state in that portion of the Middle East. It also specified that those Jews living in the region be preserved and protected.
The area in question to which Britain had committed itself, Mandated Palestine, originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of what is now Israel, Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza strip. This would change when Britain's wartime (First World War) ally, Emir Abdullah, was forced out of his Hashemite domain in Arabia by the Saudi family.
In order to preserve their alliance however, Great Britain opted for making the former king ruler of a great portion of Mandated Palestine and lands east of the Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later just Jordan.
With the British violating their own declaration under the mandate, the proposed ancestral and National Home for the Jews was cut by more than 75 percent. From this point on, no Jew has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan. In addition, the British progressively restricted Jews from building, farming, purchasing land, and living where they wanted within the region.
Nonetheless, following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel finally entered those lands long forbidden to them by the British and later by Jordan. Though one British government after another went about denouncing Jewish settlement as "illegal," the reality of the situation was that it was Great Britain who was acting in an illegal manner by prohibiting Jews from these parts of the ancestral Jewish National Home originally promised to them.
Just Who Is a Palestinian?
While Britain mandated over the region, it was the Jews, not any Arab tribe, who were known as Palestinians, including those Jews who served in the British Army during the Second World War, while various Arab groups aligned themselves with Nazi Germany.
More often than not, it was British policy brought on by fits of anti-Semitism, and Arab oil that continually restricted Jewish immigration. It was the 1939 White Paper that all but put an end to the admission of Jews to Palestine. When Jews needed a helping hand the most, it was this White Paper that became the death knell for Jews fleeing to the Promised Land, from the threat of annihilation at the hands of Hitler's executioners.
Jews-who might have lived, developed the nearly empty lands of Palestine, and prospered-were instead murdered in the death camps that stretched out over Nazi occupied Europe.
While the British, together with their Arab helpers, were closing the door to those Jews attempting to escape certain death in Europe, they were more than willing to permit massive illegal Arab immigration from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa into the ancestral lands of the Jews.
A famous myth states that the various Arab tribes have long established themselves in Palestine. Then the Jews came and drove them out. This is of course patently false, as any knowledgeable historian will tell us.
History enlightens us to the fact that it was the assortment of Arab tribes who entered the region through illegal immigration, and it was they, who with violence, "displaced" the Jews. In fact, this Arab violence was used against the Jews in areas where they (the Jews) had long been established. For example, the Jewish presence in the city of Hebron goes back to Abraham, and there has been an Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua, long before it was King David's capital.
In 1929, Arab rioters, with the passive consent of the British, killed or drove out virtually the entire Jewish population.
The world community stood by and did nothing. The U.N. itself, no friend to Israel and certainly no friend to any Jew, declared that the massive increase in Arab population was very recent; that any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugee."
In the early 1920's, the British created the state of Trans-Jordan, which eventually seized much of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank), East Jerusalem, and the old city. They killed or drove out every Jew. And the world community stood by and did nothing.
As far as the British and the Arabs were concerned, all lands from where the Jews had been driven, making the land Judenrein (cleansed of Jews), would remain so forever.
It is interesting to note by contrast, that Israel, eventually allotted only 17 percent of Mandated Palestine, had to absorb a large and growing population of Arab citizens.
From Palestine Back to Israel-Again
By the time of the "third" Jewish nation-Israel, the Arab tribes of the region had still not yet discovered their ancient nation of Falastin. The U.N. offered them (the Arab tribes) half of Palestine in 1947-half!
And what did the Arabs do with this offer to a non-people? They violently rejected it. Soon, all too soon, six Arab nations swept down upon the only Jewish state in the region with the intent of driving every last Jew into the sea.
The Arab goal was the complete eradication of Jewry in that portion of the Middle East. And the stated goal of the Arab tribes in the area was the creation of the 22nd Arab state known as Falastin.The Arabs failed in their attempt to massacre the Jewish population of Israel.
The Arab tribes of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) even forfeited any right to a nation of their own when their brethren in Trans-Jordan invaded the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied these territories, and killed or drove out all the Jews who had lived there since time immemorial.
The Jews were banned for life from traveling and praying before Jewish holy places in the region. In the meantime, another Arab nation, Egypt, succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip. Both Egypt and Jordan held onto conquered lands until 1967. In that same year, the Arab nations that surrounded Israel initiated another war of genocide.
The end result, however, was much like the first - the Arabs lost again in their bid to destroy the Jewish nation, and in consequence lost lands they had taken illegally in 1948.
In the nineteen-year span from 1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never once, not once, offered to hand over Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip to make up an independent state of Falastin. Once more, the so-called "Palestinians" never sought it. And not one nation in the entire world ever suggested it, much less demanded it.
Since the end of the First World War, the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land they claimed. They are determined that the remaining 0.5 percent be developed into yet another Arab nation at the expense of the lone Jewish state. To that end, the Palestine Liberation Organization was set up in 1964 with the express purpose of destroying the State of Israel and driving out of the region all the Jews.
The sad truth today is that history has been thrown aside. Many nations, including the United States, have engineered media and public opinion to accept without question; without any serious analysis, the new myth of an Arab nation of Falastin whose territory is unlawfully occupied by the Jews.
Michael Bussio is a former teacher of history. He has worked for INR at the US Department of State in Washington D.C. and lived in Israel.
By Michael Bussio
"From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries..." - Professor Bernard Lewis, Princeton University
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not." -- Professor Philip Hatti, Arab historian to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946.
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." - Delegate of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations Security Council, 1956
"Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today... No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough." -- Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, author of "Myths of the Middle East"
There has never been a Palestinian state in the history of the region. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity.
There is no language known as Palestinian.
There is no distinct Palestinian culture.
There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.
The "so-called" Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, etc.
Even the name Palestine came from the Roman Emperor Hadrian around 135 A.D. after Rome put down yet another Jewish revolt.
The Emperor, increasingly angered by the rebellious nature of Judah, Judea, and Samaria, became determined to break the back of the stiff-necked Jews once and for all.
When asked who the Jews most ardent enemies of the distant past were, the Emperor was told the Philistines; thus the name Palestina, which would later be morphed into the word Palestine.
(Alan Note: the Philistines have since become EXTINCT as a race or people)
Nearly eighteen hundred years later, Great Britain took over that part of the Middle East as a mandate from the League of Nations. The British chose to call the land Palestine.
It wasn't long before the various Arab tribes, native Egyptians, Syrians, and Turks living in the area adopted the word Palestine as if it were some ancient name passed down from their forefathers.
Strangely, the Arabs couldn't even pronounce it correctly, and used the fictional entity, Falastine.
The Word-"Palestine"
The word Palestine has never been used as a name of a nation or state, but rather as a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history.
The word Palestine comes from the name Peleshet. Peleshet appears frequently in the Bible and entered into English as "Philistine." It dates to the thirteenth century B.C. These people were thought to be the dangerous "Sea Peoples" that so threaten the Aegean, Egypt, Syria, and present day Israel, Turkey, and Lebanon.
Historians and archeologist believe these "Sea Peoples" originated from Greece and many of the Greek Islands.
From there they would raid the region for plunder and general destruction. Eventually, they would establish five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land that came to be known as "Philistia."
The Greeks and Romans would call it Palestina. At no time were the Philistines of old ever considered to be Arabs.
They were not even Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic, or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palestina" derived from Peleshet.
How Did The Land Of Israel Become "Palestine"?
In the First Century after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. Though the Jews had successfully created a nation state for the second time in their history (the first being that of King David and King Solomon), it was eventually smashed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian.
In the Emperor's haste to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea-Samaria (those areas that make up much of Israel today), Hadrian not only defeated the Israelite armies, slaughtered countless hundred thousands of Jews, and sent many more into exile, but took the name Palestina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel to further humiliate the Jews.
At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
Though the Romans killed many Jews and sold many more into slavery, there was never a complete abandonment of the Land by its people. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities living on the land.
A Short History of Palestine
Before the Greeks, before the Romans, before the land was known by its invented Roman name of "Palestina," more than a millennium ago, the region had been called the land of "Canaan."
The people known as Canaanites had the unique ability of creating small vibrant city-states, though none ever reached the grandeur and efficiency of the Greek city-states of antiquity. At times these small states were independent, but for much of their history, the Canaanite city-states were vassals of an Egyptian or Hittite king. In their entire history, the Canaanites never united into a single nation.
After the Hebrews were granted their freedom in the Exodus from Egypt nearly 3,300 years ago, they wandered the desert for the next 40 years before settling in the lands of Canaan. There they would form the first Jewish government, the first Jewish nation, out of the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and later those of Judea and Samaria.
Israel-Judah-Judea and parts of Samaria united into one nation, thus forming the "only" independent, sovereign nation-state that has ever existed in the entire history of "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab, and Edom as well as Israel, had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920's.)
The Roman Empire would eventually extend its borders to the Middle East with the conquest of Judea, Judah, Israel, and Samaria. This region would become a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire.
After the death of Mohammad in the 600's A.D. the Arab-Muslim Caliph conquered Palastina from the Byzantines, and made it apart of their Arab-Muslim Empire. Because the Arabs had no name of their own for the area, they opted for adopting the name the Romans gave the region-Palastina, which the Arabs pronounced Falastine.
During this time in history, much of the mixed population of Palastina was converted to Islam and eventually was pressured to adopt the Arabic language.
Whether they liked it or not, the people of the region were subject to the whims of a distant dictator, the Caliph. The area of Palastina at no time ever became an Arabic nation, or ever became an independent Arabic state of any kind, or ever developed a distinct Arabic culture and/or society.
The year 1099 A.D. marked the first year of the First Crusade. It was also the year the Christian Crusaders conquered Palastina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule.
Though the Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, it never developed a national identity. For all intents and purposes, it remained only a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than one century.
Thereafter, Palastina-Falastin would be ruled as a subject province by Syria, then by the Egyptian dominated, ethnically mixed slave-warriors known as Mameluks, and finally by the Ottoman Turks.
Near the end of the First World War, the British, led by the likes of General Allenby and Lawrence of Arabia, took control of Palestine from the Ottomans. Thus with the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, its once-subject provinces came under the influence of the European powers.
Palestine was one of those subject provinces, and it came under the control of Great Britain who would now govern the territory on a temporary mandate from the League of Nations.
The Historical Home of the Jews
Over the centuries, many from the West traveled through the region. They gave an excellent account of what they saw there. And what they saw was depressing to say the least.
All mentioned the land as being empty, neglected, abandoned, and desolate. "Everything had fallen into disrepair and ruins," one visitor said. An English pilgrim stated in 1590, "There is nothing there (Jerusalem) to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining, and all the rest is grass, moss, and weeds".
The British consul to the region stated in 1857, "The country is in considerable degree, empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population."
It was not unusual to hear from travelers returning home from this area of the Middle East to assert that, "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [Valley of Jezreel]-not for 30 miles in either direction...
One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings." It was reported in Europe and the United States that, "For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to the Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lays a moldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation ... untenanted by any living creature..."
One visitor declared that the "country was desolate whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere.
Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country..." Even Mark Twain was taken by the devastation of the region, stating in his 1867 trip to the Palestine territory, "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely..."
The land would not maintain its "desolate and unlovely" image for long. With the coming of Jewish pioneers in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, who would join with the many Jews who already lived in the region from time immemorial, the land began to turn green. Their hard work and diligence in bringing the land back to life attracted many others in the Middle East who sought employment opportunities and a better lifestyle.
Thus many Arab migrants were drawn to the area in hopes of better conditions for their families.
"His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object..." This was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It was validated by the League of Nations Mandate, and thereby committed the British Government to the principle that there would be a Jewish state in that portion of the Middle East. It also specified that those Jews living in the region be preserved and protected.
The area in question to which Britain had committed itself, Mandated Palestine, originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of what is now Israel, Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza strip. This would change when Britain's wartime (First World War) ally, Emir Abdullah, was forced out of his Hashemite domain in Arabia by the Saudi family.
In order to preserve their alliance however, Great Britain opted for making the former king ruler of a great portion of Mandated Palestine and lands east of the Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later just Jordan.
With the British violating their own declaration under the mandate, the proposed ancestral and National Home for the Jews was cut by more than 75 percent. From this point on, no Jew has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan. In addition, the British progressively restricted Jews from building, farming, purchasing land, and living where they wanted within the region.
Nonetheless, following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel finally entered those lands long forbidden to them by the British and later by Jordan. Though one British government after another went about denouncing Jewish settlement as "illegal," the reality of the situation was that it was Great Britain who was acting in an illegal manner by prohibiting Jews from these parts of the ancestral Jewish National Home originally promised to them.
Just Who Is a Palestinian?
While Britain mandated over the region, it was the Jews, not any Arab tribe, who were known as Palestinians, including those Jews who served in the British Army during the Second World War, while various Arab groups aligned themselves with Nazi Germany.
More often than not, it was British policy brought on by fits of anti-Semitism, and Arab oil that continually restricted Jewish immigration. It was the 1939 White Paper that all but put an end to the admission of Jews to Palestine. When Jews needed a helping hand the most, it was this White Paper that became the death knell for Jews fleeing to the Promised Land, from the threat of annihilation at the hands of Hitler's executioners.
Jews-who might have lived, developed the nearly empty lands of Palestine, and prospered-were instead murdered in the death camps that stretched out over Nazi occupied Europe.
While the British, together with their Arab helpers, were closing the door to those Jews attempting to escape certain death in Europe, they were more than willing to permit massive illegal Arab immigration from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa into the ancestral lands of the Jews.
A famous myth states that the various Arab tribes have long established themselves in Palestine. Then the Jews came and drove them out. This is of course patently false, as any knowledgeable historian will tell us.
History enlightens us to the fact that it was the assortment of Arab tribes who entered the region through illegal immigration, and it was they, who with violence, "displaced" the Jews. In fact, this Arab violence was used against the Jews in areas where they (the Jews) had long been established. For example, the Jewish presence in the city of Hebron goes back to Abraham, and there has been an Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua, long before it was King David's capital.
In 1929, Arab rioters, with the passive consent of the British, killed or drove out virtually the entire Jewish population.
The world community stood by and did nothing. The U.N. itself, no friend to Israel and certainly no friend to any Jew, declared that the massive increase in Arab population was very recent; that any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugee."
In the early 1920's, the British created the state of Trans-Jordan, which eventually seized much of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank), East Jerusalem, and the old city. They killed or drove out every Jew. And the world community stood by and did nothing.
As far as the British and the Arabs were concerned, all lands from where the Jews had been driven, making the land Judenrein (cleansed of Jews), would remain so forever.
It is interesting to note by contrast, that Israel, eventually allotted only 17 percent of Mandated Palestine, had to absorb a large and growing population of Arab citizens.
From Palestine Back to Israel-Again
By the time of the "third" Jewish nation-Israel, the Arab tribes of the region had still not yet discovered their ancient nation of Falastin. The U.N. offered them (the Arab tribes) half of Palestine in 1947-half!
And what did the Arabs do with this offer to a non-people? They violently rejected it. Soon, all too soon, six Arab nations swept down upon the only Jewish state in the region with the intent of driving every last Jew into the sea.
The Arab goal was the complete eradication of Jewry in that portion of the Middle East. And the stated goal of the Arab tribes in the area was the creation of the 22nd Arab state known as Falastin.The Arabs failed in their attempt to massacre the Jewish population of Israel.
The Arab tribes of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) even forfeited any right to a nation of their own when their brethren in Trans-Jordan invaded the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied these territories, and killed or drove out all the Jews who had lived there since time immemorial.
The Jews were banned for life from traveling and praying before Jewish holy places in the region. In the meantime, another Arab nation, Egypt, succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip. Both Egypt and Jordan held onto conquered lands until 1967. In that same year, the Arab nations that surrounded Israel initiated another war of genocide.
The end result, however, was much like the first - the Arabs lost again in their bid to destroy the Jewish nation, and in consequence lost lands they had taken illegally in 1948.
In the nineteen-year span from 1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never once, not once, offered to hand over Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip to make up an independent state of Falastin. Once more, the so-called "Palestinians" never sought it. And not one nation in the entire world ever suggested it, much less demanded it.
Since the end of the First World War, the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land they claimed. They are determined that the remaining 0.5 percent be developed into yet another Arab nation at the expense of the lone Jewish state. To that end, the Palestine Liberation Organization was set up in 1964 with the express purpose of destroying the State of Israel and driving out of the region all the Jews.
The sad truth today is that history has been thrown aside. Many nations, including the United States, have engineered media and public opinion to accept without question; without any serious analysis, the new myth of an Arab nation of Falastin whose territory is unlawfully occupied by the Jews.
Michael Bussio is a former teacher of history. He has worked for INR at the US Department of State in Washington D.C. and lived in Israel.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA - CHARISMATIC FOOL OR JUST LEFT WING LIBERAL LOONEY
Alan Note: Other than crippling our economy and lives (as does Hillary with hers) with his Economic Package and HIGH taxes, Obama appeals to our emotional sense of likeability not our common sense and we an expect a situation like the Carter administration with same incredibly high "pain levels" if he gets elected.
The major worry on Obama is his naive mindset that he can "negotiate" with Islamic terrorists like Iran's Mullahs or Prez Ahmadi-Nejad (aka the "Turd").
However, we can expect this and worse from the Billeries if they pollute the Whie House again.
By Joseph Farah
As Barack Obama continues to clean Hillary Clinton's clock in primary after primary, maybe it's time to take this guy a little more seriously.
He could be the president of the United States.
His appeal, especially when compared with "Shrillary," is understandable. He looks good. He sounds good. He seems like a nice guy.
Shrillary is anything but likable – and her voice sounds like a rusty nail scraping a blackboard. I won't comment on her looks – except to say most people are sick to death of seeing her. Period. End of story.
We knew she had high negatives, but we never realized how high they were among Democrats, too. What we know now is her appeal was 49 percent wide and a millimeter deep.
And that, quite probably, leaves us with Barack Obama – who has all the momentum on his side.
And that, quite probably, leaves us with Barack Obama – who has all the momentum on his side.
Let's remember that Barack Obama is a first-term senator. It's extremely rare in American history, especially recently, that members of the Senate or House of Representatives are elected directly to the presidency. Why? Probably because legislative experience gives us little idea about real leadership, executive ability, decisiveness, the ability to command and other qualities we look for in a president.
The last senator elected to the White House was John Kennedy. It can happen, but it's rare.
Now combine that with the fact that Obama is midway through his first term in the Senate. He is, politically speaking, a virtual unknown without any executive, management or military experience in his portfolio.
Does that disqualify him? No. But it does suggest we don't really know much about him and his ability to cope with the pressures and decisions he would have to face as president.
There is, also, the matter of his opinions on the great issues of the day. He is virtually indistinguishable in that regard from Shrillary. Yes, his style is an improvement. But, on substance, he is a political clone – albeit with darker skin and a deeper voice.
What does that tell you? It suggests he is, like Hillary, a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who, in the names of compassion, fairness, Mom and apple pie, would strip America of the freedom that has made it a shining city on a hill for 230 years.
This Che flag was in Obama's office.
That opinion was solidified with me when I heard about Obama's volunteer offices in Houston displaying a Cuban flag emblazoned with an image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
What did Obama have to say about it?
What did Obama have to say about it?
He didn't insist it come down.
He didn't denounce it as "insensitive" or "sickening" or "an emblem of evil."
He simply dismissed it as "inappropriate."
Inappropriate?
"Inappropriate" is when somebody tells an off-color joke.
"Inappropriate" is when a campaign worker passes gas in the office.
"Inappropriate" is when a campaign worker passes gas in the office.
"Inappropriate" is when someone tells you the three people they most fear in life are Osama, Obama and Chelsea's Mama.
Displaying an image of Che Guevara as if he were some kind of Third World hero is an abomination. Check that, it's an Obama-nation.
Maybe Obama is just too young and inexperienced to know who Che really was. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt along with this refresher course.
Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928 and originally trained to become a doctor at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1952, he embarked on the trip dramatized in "The Motorcycle Diaries" across South America.
After returning to Buenos Aires to complete his medical degree, Guevara set off again to travel through the Americas.
He participated in leftist movements in Guatemala and Mexico and became acquainted with Cuban expatriates in those countries. He joined Castro's revolutionary Cuban army in 1956 as a top commander and Castro's personal physician. He helped Castro topple the regime in Havana in 1959.
As Castro's right-hand man in the new regime, Guevara ordered the execution of hundreds of people while in charge of the notorious La Caba, a prison in Havana. He was unapologetic about the mass killings of innocent people, explaining, "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.
These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."
Pure hate. It wasn't the first time Guevara used the expression, nor the last. He explained how it must be a tool in the arsenal of revolutionary terrorists – permitting them to do things they would otherwise never be able to accomplish.
"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine – this is what our soldiers must become," Guevara said.
During the Cuban missile crisis, Guevara was in favor of a nuclear war with the U.S. because he believed that a better world could be built from the ashes, regardless of the cost in millions of lives. He was overruled by cooler heads in the Kremlin and in Cuba. The nuclear missiles headed for Cuba, 90 miles from the U.S., were returned to Russia.
Disgraced by the slight, Guevara went to create new revolutionary movements and wage armed struggle in Africa and Latin America. He was killed in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967.
Guevara was proud of the fact that he personally put bullets in the backs of the heads of many he considered counter-revolutionary.
Once again, in rallying his guerrillas in Angola, he wrote: "Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier into an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary."
Would you say displaying this man's picture is "inappropriate"?
I'd say that's the biggest understatement since Gen. George Custer said: "Over that hill, I think they're friendly Indians."
Like I said, maybe Obama just doesn't know what a monster Che was. But then, again, if he doesn't, he probably shouldn't be running for president of the United States.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
REAGAN'S LAST WORDS
Reagan's Last Words
I don't know whether or not you watched the memorial service for Ronald Reagan , but if you did, you probably noticed that Bill and Hillary were both dozing off.
President Ronald Reagan, who never missed a chance for a good one-liner, raised his head out of his casket and said... 'I see the Clintons are finally sleeping together.'
Friday, February 8, 2008
SERBIA - DID EUROPE DODGE A WAR?
By Austin Bay
On Super Sunday, Europe dodged a shooting war ... but just barely.
Thank Serbia's electorate — at least 50.5 percent of them — as Serbia's current president, Boris Tadic, narrowly defeated "ultra-nationalist" Tomislav Nikolic. Mr. Tadic opposes renewed warfare and supports Serbia's economic and political integration with Western and Central Europe.
Mr. Nikolic looks east — to Russia. He doesn't shy from violent threats, either. "Ultra-nationalist" in the context of contemporary Eastern Europe and Central Asia is something of a euphemism for "21st century fascist." That's a freighted description, but Mr. Nikolic's "irredentist" land claims, insistent political exploitation of historical grievances and a violent brand of ethnic identity politics justifies it.
History does not repeat itself, not exactly. In 1933, a fascist didn't have nuclear weapons. Not that Mr. Nikolic does, either — but the day before the election he promised if elected to ask the Russian Air Force to patrol Serbian air space. Mr. Nikolic added that he stood "for military cooperation with Russia" and stressed opposition to a "NATO presence in Serbia in any form."
NATO peacekeepers still patrol Kosovo. Mr. Nikolic was telling Serbian voters he would toss NATO out of Kosovo — and remove the force that prevents renewed combat and ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps most Americans have forgotten the 1999 Kosovo War, the Clinton administration's war to stop a Serb-led genocide in Kosovo. Serbians haven't, Albanians haven't, nor has Vladimir Putin's newly muscular Kremlin. Perhaps Americans thought that "little" Balkan war was over and done. Serbs don't think so, Albanians don't, nor does the Kremlin.
The "Kosovo problem" was the primary election issue in Serbia. That made the election a major battle in that still simmering Balkan war. Fortunately, Serbs waged Sunday's battle with ballots instead of bombs. Unfortunately, with men like Mr. Nikolic getting 49 percent of the vote, bombs (whether delivered by unconventional ethnic and religious terrorists, or conventional strike aircraft) remain a terrifying possibility.
In the Balkans, "little" events have a track record for igniting large-scale slaughter — with World War I as a bitter example.
The Kosovo conundrum is an ugly clash with no gentle resolution. For the last nine years, the Kosovo tug of war between Belgrade and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority has challenged diplomatic creativity.
European Union and United Nations diplomats have explored several options, including a vague policy called "conditional independence," but ultimately either Kosovo becomes independent or in some way remains politically tethered to Serbia.
Kosovar Albanians demand independence. They claim they cannot be secure in any state dominated by Serbs.
Serbs demand Kosovo remain part of Serbia. Kosovo was the core of Serbia's medieval empire and is particularly dear to the Serbs. In 1389, Turkish Sultan Murad I's legions defeated Christian forces under Serbian Prince Lazar at the Battle of Kosovo. (Yes, in the Balkans, nations venerate defeats — not an optimistic sign.)
For the United States, NATO and the European Union, however, Russian intransigence, energy supplies and nuclear weapons are the most vexing issues framed by the Kosovo problem. The Kremlin, concerned about Chechnya, fears that Kosovo's "unilateral" independence will establish a "separatist precedent" for carving states from sovereign nations.
As the 21st century begins, Balkan and Eastern European nations are looking for new political accommodations — and these include joining NATO or the EU. The idea is that "internationalization" and an "expanded political identity" dampen ethnic and nationalist passions and thus reduce the chance of conflict.
The EU is supposed to do this for Western and Central Europe (keep France and Germany from destroying each other). NATO and Partnership for Peace (PFP, also called "NATO Lite") are security organizations, but at the political level they serve the same purpose. For example, Hungarian and Romanian membership in NATO has greatly reduced the potential for conflict over Transylvania, a Romanian region with an ethnic Hungarian majority.
This indirectly takes us back to Serbia. President Tadic received a solid majority of ethnic minority votes in Serbia, especially among ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia's Vojvodina region. Serbia's Hungarians see the benefit of the "expanded political identity" of the European Union.
Pray that Mr. Tadic can nudge Mr. Nikolic's 49 percent in that "westerly" direction.
On Super Sunday, Europe dodged a shooting war ... but just barely.
Thank Serbia's electorate — at least 50.5 percent of them — as Serbia's current president, Boris Tadic, narrowly defeated "ultra-nationalist" Tomislav Nikolic. Mr. Tadic opposes renewed warfare and supports Serbia's economic and political integration with Western and Central Europe.
Mr. Nikolic looks east — to Russia. He doesn't shy from violent threats, either. "Ultra-nationalist" in the context of contemporary Eastern Europe and Central Asia is something of a euphemism for "21st century fascist." That's a freighted description, but Mr. Nikolic's "irredentist" land claims, insistent political exploitation of historical grievances and a violent brand of ethnic identity politics justifies it.
History does not repeat itself, not exactly. In 1933, a fascist didn't have nuclear weapons. Not that Mr. Nikolic does, either — but the day before the election he promised if elected to ask the Russian Air Force to patrol Serbian air space. Mr. Nikolic added that he stood "for military cooperation with Russia" and stressed opposition to a "NATO presence in Serbia in any form."
NATO peacekeepers still patrol Kosovo. Mr. Nikolic was telling Serbian voters he would toss NATO out of Kosovo — and remove the force that prevents renewed combat and ethnic cleansing.
Perhaps most Americans have forgotten the 1999 Kosovo War, the Clinton administration's war to stop a Serb-led genocide in Kosovo. Serbians haven't, Albanians haven't, nor has Vladimir Putin's newly muscular Kremlin. Perhaps Americans thought that "little" Balkan war was over and done. Serbs don't think so, Albanians don't, nor does the Kremlin.
The "Kosovo problem" was the primary election issue in Serbia. That made the election a major battle in that still simmering Balkan war. Fortunately, Serbs waged Sunday's battle with ballots instead of bombs. Unfortunately, with men like Mr. Nikolic getting 49 percent of the vote, bombs (whether delivered by unconventional ethnic and religious terrorists, or conventional strike aircraft) remain a terrifying possibility.
In the Balkans, "little" events have a track record for igniting large-scale slaughter — with World War I as a bitter example.
The Kosovo conundrum is an ugly clash with no gentle resolution. For the last nine years, the Kosovo tug of war between Belgrade and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority has challenged diplomatic creativity.
European Union and United Nations diplomats have explored several options, including a vague policy called "conditional independence," but ultimately either Kosovo becomes independent or in some way remains politically tethered to Serbia.
Kosovar Albanians demand independence. They claim they cannot be secure in any state dominated by Serbs.
Serbs demand Kosovo remain part of Serbia. Kosovo was the core of Serbia's medieval empire and is particularly dear to the Serbs. In 1389, Turkish Sultan Murad I's legions defeated Christian forces under Serbian Prince Lazar at the Battle of Kosovo. (Yes, in the Balkans, nations venerate defeats — not an optimistic sign.)
For the United States, NATO and the European Union, however, Russian intransigence, energy supplies and nuclear weapons are the most vexing issues framed by the Kosovo problem. The Kremlin, concerned about Chechnya, fears that Kosovo's "unilateral" independence will establish a "separatist precedent" for carving states from sovereign nations.
As the 21st century begins, Balkan and Eastern European nations are looking for new political accommodations — and these include joining NATO or the EU. The idea is that "internationalization" and an "expanded political identity" dampen ethnic and nationalist passions and thus reduce the chance of conflict.
The EU is supposed to do this for Western and Central Europe (keep France and Germany from destroying each other). NATO and Partnership for Peace (PFP, also called "NATO Lite") are security organizations, but at the political level they serve the same purpose. For example, Hungarian and Romanian membership in NATO has greatly reduced the potential for conflict over Transylvania, a Romanian region with an ethnic Hungarian majority.
This indirectly takes us back to Serbia. President Tadic received a solid majority of ethnic minority votes in Serbia, especially among ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia's Vojvodina region. Serbia's Hungarians see the benefit of the "expanded political identity" of the European Union.
Pray that Mr. Tadic can nudge Mr. Nikolic's 49 percent in that "westerly" direction.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
ANOTHER EMERGING MOSLEM THREAT TO THE WEST AND THE USA
AMERICA WAKE UP! EUROPE WAKE UP! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
By JAMES GEORGE JATRAS UPI Outside View CommentatorWASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (UPI) --
During its final year in office, the Bush administration has a full plate on the foreign front: intractable war in Iraq, Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, concerns about Iran's nuclear program, nuclear uncertainty in North Korea, increasingly unstable nuclear-armed Pakistan, and hopes for an ever-elusive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
With all that to juggle, one might think Washington would hesitate to trigger a blowup on a seemingly unimportant matter that could transform into a full-blown global crisis. Yet that is exactly what the administration intends to do with respect to the Serbian province of Kosovo.Since the 1999 NATO war against what was then Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Kosovo has been under U.N. administration.
The province remains legally part of Serbia as Albanian Muslims escalate their demands to create an independent country.
Despite pious assurances of protection, the remaining Christian Serbs know that Kosovo's independence would mean curtains for them. With a quarter of a million Serbs (and other non-Albanians: Roma (Gypsies), Croats, Gorani, all the Jews) terrorized from the province during the past nine years of "peacetime" when the rest of the world had turned it eyes elsewhere, the Serbs' fears are well-founded. Since 1999, some 150 Christian shrines have been destroyed or desecrated.
At the same time, hundreds of mosques have been built, mainly with Saudi money and propagating the intolerant Wahhabi brand of Islam. The effective authority in the Albanian Muslim community is an organized crime network trafficking in drugs, women and weapons.
The legitimate economy is virtually nonexistent. Independent or not, it's hard to see how Kosovo ceases to be an economic basket case and black hole of terror, crime and corruption, despite billions of aid dollars and euros dumped into the place.In short, Kosovo is a mess, and it's not obvious how or when that can be changed.
Left alone, it might remain one of the worlds simmering sore spots, like Kashmir or Cyprus, until the parties manage to come to some agreement -- or don't.
However, for reasons that are hard to understand, the Bush administration -- joined, oddly enough, by Hillary Clinton -- demands that immediate independence for Kosovo's Albanians is the only possible solution.
The fact that democratic Serbia refuses to concede amputation of 15 percent of its territory, and has offered the Albanians the fullest autonomy enjoyed by any minority group anywhere in the world, is ignored.
Likewise dismissed is the fact that the relevant U.N. Security Council Resolution affirms Serbia's sovereignty, which Russia insists must be respected.If, as now planned, Kosovo's Albanians declare independence after a green light from Washington, a bad situation would get much worse.
Violence would flare as Muslim Albanians step up their attacks on Christian Serbs. Belgrade would be forced to consider how to respond as its citizens are targeted under the eyes of an illegal occupying force. Moscow, livid at the prospect of an end-run of the Security Council, has said it stands ready to aid Serbia if asked.
Countries around the world would be forced to take sides on whether to recognize Kosovo's independence. Most probably would not, as separatist groups in dozens of countries cite Kosovo as reason to demand carving out their own states.
Washington might find itself isolated, along with a few countries that had followed our lead.Setting all this in motion might be justified if there were some obvious U.S. benefit. But the opposite is the case. Why should we provoke a needless fight with a newly muscular Russia? Especially after Sept. 11, why should America want to be midwife to the birth of a new Islamic country in Europe?
Already having experienced "blowback" in the form of the jihad terror plot against Fort Dix, N.J., where four of the six indictees are Albanian Muslims from the Kosovo region, why give the Albanian mafia a consolidated base from which to extend its operations?
The United States has no interest in creating an independent Kosovo, even if it were easy to achieve. The fact that trying to separate Kosovo from Serbia would be anything but easy would just add one more headache to our list. If the Bush administration has any sense, it will leave Kosovo to the next president, whoever that might be.
By JAMES GEORGE JATRAS UPI Outside View CommentatorWASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (UPI) --
During its final year in office, the Bush administration has a full plate on the foreign front: intractable war in Iraq, Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, concerns about Iran's nuclear program, nuclear uncertainty in North Korea, increasingly unstable nuclear-armed Pakistan, and hopes for an ever-elusive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
With all that to juggle, one might think Washington would hesitate to trigger a blowup on a seemingly unimportant matter that could transform into a full-blown global crisis. Yet that is exactly what the administration intends to do with respect to the Serbian province of Kosovo.Since the 1999 NATO war against what was then Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Kosovo has been under U.N. administration.
The province remains legally part of Serbia as Albanian Muslims escalate their demands to create an independent country.
Despite pious assurances of protection, the remaining Christian Serbs know that Kosovo's independence would mean curtains for them. With a quarter of a million Serbs (and other non-Albanians: Roma (Gypsies), Croats, Gorani, all the Jews) terrorized from the province during the past nine years of "peacetime" when the rest of the world had turned it eyes elsewhere, the Serbs' fears are well-founded. Since 1999, some 150 Christian shrines have been destroyed or desecrated.
At the same time, hundreds of mosques have been built, mainly with Saudi money and propagating the intolerant Wahhabi brand of Islam. The effective authority in the Albanian Muslim community is an organized crime network trafficking in drugs, women and weapons.
The legitimate economy is virtually nonexistent. Independent or not, it's hard to see how Kosovo ceases to be an economic basket case and black hole of terror, crime and corruption, despite billions of aid dollars and euros dumped into the place.In short, Kosovo is a mess, and it's not obvious how or when that can be changed.
Left alone, it might remain one of the worlds simmering sore spots, like Kashmir or Cyprus, until the parties manage to come to some agreement -- or don't.
However, for reasons that are hard to understand, the Bush administration -- joined, oddly enough, by Hillary Clinton -- demands that immediate independence for Kosovo's Albanians is the only possible solution.
The fact that democratic Serbia refuses to concede amputation of 15 percent of its territory, and has offered the Albanians the fullest autonomy enjoyed by any minority group anywhere in the world, is ignored.
Likewise dismissed is the fact that the relevant U.N. Security Council Resolution affirms Serbia's sovereignty, which Russia insists must be respected.If, as now planned, Kosovo's Albanians declare independence after a green light from Washington, a bad situation would get much worse.
Violence would flare as Muslim Albanians step up their attacks on Christian Serbs. Belgrade would be forced to consider how to respond as its citizens are targeted under the eyes of an illegal occupying force. Moscow, livid at the prospect of an end-run of the Security Council, has said it stands ready to aid Serbia if asked.
Countries around the world would be forced to take sides on whether to recognize Kosovo's independence. Most probably would not, as separatist groups in dozens of countries cite Kosovo as reason to demand carving out their own states.
Washington might find itself isolated, along with a few countries that had followed our lead.Setting all this in motion might be justified if there were some obvious U.S. benefit. But the opposite is the case. Why should we provoke a needless fight with a newly muscular Russia? Especially after Sept. 11, why should America want to be midwife to the birth of a new Islamic country in Europe?
Already having experienced "blowback" in the form of the jihad terror plot against Fort Dix, N.J., where four of the six indictees are Albanian Muslims from the Kosovo region, why give the Albanian mafia a consolidated base from which to extend its operations?
The United States has no interest in creating an independent Kosovo, even if it were easy to achieve. The fact that trying to separate Kosovo from Serbia would be anything but easy would just add one more headache to our list. If the Bush administration has any sense, it will leave Kosovo to the next president, whoever that might be.
Monday, February 4, 2008
MORE "CANCER" INSIDE OUR SECURITY
John England, Deputy Secretary of Defence at the Pentagon is clueless enough to be totally influenced by two of his Moslem employees, fire a non-Moslem EXPERT at their behest and ENDANGERS the security of our country.
He should be fired or made to resign!
Hillary Clinton's closest and trusted (perhaps loved) companion Huma Abedin has deep family roots to Al Qaeda and wold enter the White House again!
Now this on the International front. Could well be a very worthy person but not reach a security clearance level needed for this post.
New NATO intelligence chief was trained by KGB
By Judy Dempsey Published: February 3, 2008
BERLIN: The new chief of the Hungarian secret services, who spent six years at the KGB's academy in Moscow during the 1980s, has become chairman of NATO's intelligence committee, a development that diplomats said could compromise the security of the alliance.
Sandor Laborc, 49, was personally chosen by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary as director of the country's counterintelligence National Security Office in December, after a bitter dispute between the governing coalition led by the Socialists - the former Communists - and the main opposition party, Fidesz.
Laborc, a former Communist who was trained at the KGB's Dzerzhinsky Academy from 1983 to 1989, according to members of the national security committee in the Hungarian Parliament, had failed to win support from that committee, which oversees such appointments.
Despite that, Gyurcsany and Gyorgy Szilvasy, the minister responsible for the intelligence services, pushed through the appointment.
"A decision by the National Security Committee has no binding effect," Gyurcsany's office said in a statement issued in response to several written questions about Laborc from the International Herald Tribune.
"Gyorgy Szilvasy had the right to make a decision in his own capacity and advise the prime minister. He justified the recommendation by introducing General Laborc as someone with unquestioned professional credentials."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
He should be fired or made to resign!
Hillary Clinton's closest and trusted (perhaps loved) companion Huma Abedin has deep family roots to Al Qaeda and wold enter the White House again!
Now this on the International front. Could well be a very worthy person but not reach a security clearance level needed for this post.
New NATO intelligence chief was trained by KGB
By Judy Dempsey Published: February 3, 2008
BERLIN: The new chief of the Hungarian secret services, who spent six years at the KGB's academy in Moscow during the 1980s, has become chairman of NATO's intelligence committee, a development that diplomats said could compromise the security of the alliance.
Sandor Laborc, 49, was personally chosen by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary as director of the country's counterintelligence National Security Office in December, after a bitter dispute between the governing coalition led by the Socialists - the former Communists - and the main opposition party, Fidesz.
Laborc, a former Communist who was trained at the KGB's Dzerzhinsky Academy from 1983 to 1989, according to members of the national security committee in the Hungarian Parliament, had failed to win support from that committee, which oversees such appointments.
Despite that, Gyurcsany and Gyorgy Szilvasy, the minister responsible for the intelligence services, pushed through the appointment.
"A decision by the National Security Committee has no binding effect," Gyurcsany's office said in a statement issued in response to several written questions about Laborc from the International Herald Tribune.
"Gyorgy Szilvasy had the right to make a decision in his own capacity and advise the prime minister. He justified the recommendation by introducing General Laborc as someone with unquestioned professional credentials."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Sunday, February 3, 2008
NAVY'S NEW TECHNOLOGY WEAPON
The US Navy's electromagnetic railgun project notched up a successful test yesterday. The radical new protoype weapon, operated by the the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, fired* shot a hypersonic aluminium slug at approximately Mach 7.5 to generate muzzle energy of 10.6 megajoules.
The US navy is interested in the kit for a number of reasons. For one, its next generation warships are expected to use electric drive systems, meaning that they will be have 80 megawatts or more on hand. If this power can be used to put violence onto the enemy as well as driving the ship, that's good news for logistics and supply. The only ammo you need is solid shot with guidance fins; there's no need for tons of high-explosive warheads and low-explosive chemical propellants for regular shells and missiles. These are replaced by nice simple fuel for the ship's engines.
The lack of exploding warheads could offer a chance to deliver more surgical strikes, too. They could take out a single vehicle from far out at sea, perhaps, rather than pulverising a whole area like present-day cruise missiles. This kind of thing is very trendy nowadays in military circles, though the problem of getting the right vehicle remains a tricky one.
Furthermore, even the ritziest missiles struggle to get above Mach 3-4, especially over any distance; thus the railgun slugs would be quicker to arrive when bombarding shore targets. They might also be good for shooting down fast-moving flying things.
Indeed, if the cannon could aim quickly enough and the hyper-bullets could steer well enough in flight, lighter-calibre weapons might tip the balance of naval warfare back in favour of surface craft. Ever since the Battle of Midway, sailors have reluctantly been forced to accept that aircraft win sea battles, not ships. But railguns might demote aircraft carriers from their current big-dog naval status and bring in electric dreadnoughts as the capital ships of tomorrow, able to sweep the skies of pesky aircraft or missiles as soon as they dared show themselves above the horizon.
It's easy to see why navies like the idea of electric hypercannons, then. But there are a lot of problems to be overcome. For one, the gun barrel tends to come apart after just a few shots. For another, packing a steady hundred-megawatt supply down into ultra-brief 64 megajoule pulses isn't simple.
The US navy is interested in the kit for a number of reasons. For one, its next generation warships are expected to use electric drive systems, meaning that they will be have 80 megawatts or more on hand. If this power can be used to put violence onto the enemy as well as driving the ship, that's good news for logistics and supply. The only ammo you need is solid shot with guidance fins; there's no need for tons of high-explosive warheads and low-explosive chemical propellants for regular shells and missiles. These are replaced by nice simple fuel for the ship's engines.
The lack of exploding warheads could offer a chance to deliver more surgical strikes, too. They could take out a single vehicle from far out at sea, perhaps, rather than pulverising a whole area like present-day cruise missiles. This kind of thing is very trendy nowadays in military circles, though the problem of getting the right vehicle remains a tricky one.
Furthermore, even the ritziest missiles struggle to get above Mach 3-4, especially over any distance; thus the railgun slugs would be quicker to arrive when bombarding shore targets. They might also be good for shooting down fast-moving flying things.
Indeed, if the cannon could aim quickly enough and the hyper-bullets could steer well enough in flight, lighter-calibre weapons might tip the balance of naval warfare back in favour of surface craft. Ever since the Battle of Midway, sailors have reluctantly been forced to accept that aircraft win sea battles, not ships. But railguns might demote aircraft carriers from their current big-dog naval status and bring in electric dreadnoughts as the capital ships of tomorrow, able to sweep the skies of pesky aircraft or missiles as soon as they dared show themselves above the horizon.
It's easy to see why navies like the idea of electric hypercannons, then. But there are a lot of problems to be overcome. For one, the gun barrel tends to come apart after just a few shots. For another, packing a steady hundred-megawatt supply down into ultra-brief 64 megajoule pulses isn't simple.
Friday, February 1, 2008
SHARIA BEING INJECTED INTO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU? SURE?
THOUGH THE INFILTRATION OF SEVERE, RESTRICTIVE, 7TH CENTURY (!) SHARIA LAWS INTO THE WEST HAS MADE GREATER PROGRESS IN CANADA AND PARTS OF EUROPE, THE PIECES ARE IN PLACE IN THE USA TO FORCE AMERICANS TO ADAPT TO ISLAMIC BEHAVIOR.
GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations human rights body called on Saudi Arabia on Friday to immediately end its system of male guardianship which it said severely limits the basic freedoms of women in the kingdom.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in its first scrutiny of Saudi Arabia's gender equality record, said Islamic Sharia law should not trump an international women's rights treaty that Riyadh signed in 2000.
The committee's 23 independent experts urged Saudi Arabia to "amend its legislation to confirm that international treaties have precedence over domestic laws," and "enact a comprehensive gender equality law."
They also said that Riyadh should "take immediate steps to end the practice of male guardianship over women" and work to eliminate "negative cultural practices and stereotypes" which discriminate against women.
Saudi Arabia's system of male guardianship severely curtails the rights afforded in the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the committee said.
The rules restrict women's legal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, property ownership and decision-making in the family, as well as choice of residency, education and jobs, the committee said.
It "contributes to the prevalence of a patriarchal ideology with stereotypes and the persistence of deep-rooted cultural norms, customs and traditions that discriminate against women," the committee said. A de facto ban on Saudi women driving further reinforces such stereotypes, the U.N. body concluded.
Although the body has no legal power to enforce its recommendations, it is regarded as a moral authority on women's rights.
SAUDIS SAY NO DISCRIMINATION !!!!!!!!!!!
A report submitted by Riyadh on its compliance with the treaty said that generally there was "no discrimination against women in the laws of the kingdom."
A Saudi delegation led by Zeid Bin Abdul Mushin Al Hussein, vice president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission, told the committee during a recent debate: "Human rights in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia are based on Sharia law."
Saudi clerics, who rule according to the strict religious tenets, have wide powers in Saudi Arabia under a traditional pact with the royal family.
The country drew international criticism after its Supreme Judicial Council ordered a 19-year-old to 200 lashes and six months in jail for having been with a man she was not related to when she was attacked and raped by seven other men in 2006.
SHE WAS CONDEMNED TO HUNDREDS MORE LASHES FOR TALKING TO THE PRESS ABOUT IT.
King Abdullah finally pardoned the gang-rape victim in December.
The U.N. committee urged Riyadh to withdraw its proviso that Islamic law take precedence over the women's rights treaty, particularly as Saudi authorities have given assurances that there is "no contradiction in substance" between the two.
The committee's conclusions were issued at the end of a three-week meeting during which it also reviewed other states.
IRAN IS ALMOST AS BAD, Pakistan and Afghan Taliban are as bad or worse but why waste breath on them and their deaf ears to any form of human rights.
Monday, January 28, 2008
VARIOUS VIEWS
20 Years of Research Reveals: Jerusalem Belongs to Jews, Arutz-7, Hillel Fendel
Shas Party: When Jerusalem Talks Start, We Quit, Arutz-7, Hillel Fendel
This is war, Israpundit, Ted Belman
Hamas Takes Over Egyptian Sea Port, The Bulletin, David Bedein
Israel says it wants to stop supplying electricity and water to Gaza, Jihad Watch,
Palestinian Authority demonization of USA continues, Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
Barak: Iran has a clandestine uranium enrichment program, The Jerusalem Post, Jpost.com Staff
Russia Completes Nuclear-Fuel Delivery to Iran, The Media Line,
=====
Gunmen kidnapped a burqa-clad American aid worker and her driver while they were traveling through southern Afghanistan early Saturday, a provincial governor said.
The two were stopped by gunmen outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, said Gov. Asadullah Khalid. He blamed the kidnappings on the 'enemy of Islam and the enemy of Afghanistan.'
====
A powerful bomb targeting a security convoy killed at least 10 people and wounded many more in a Christian area of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Friday, local television reported.
An army official put the death toll at three and told AFP that Captain Wissam Eid, a member of the Internal Security Forces, was one of the dead.
Flames engulfed cars, trapping several people as firefighters battled to extinguish the fires and security forces cordoned off the area.
====
A series of explosions thundered in the Iraqi capital Saturday morning, police said, including one from a mortar round that hit the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. One of the explosions was a roadside bomb that targeted a U.S. patrol in eastern Baghdad.
A police officer said the blast site was sealed by American forces and there was no immediate way to detail damage or casualties. There was no immediate report of the incident from the U.S. military.
Another police officer confirmed a mortar round hit the heavily protected Green Zone. The Americans did not report damage or casualties from that incident either. Both officers spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release the information.
On Friday, shaken by two days of deadly bombings in Mosul, the government said it would dispatch several thousand more security forces to that city in a 'decisive' bid to drive al-Qaida in Iraq from its last major stronghold.
====
U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against 'crusader' nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece.
A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for 'Forest Jihad.' The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week.
The statement, in Arabic, said that 'summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.'
The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to 'start forest fires.'
The posting quoted imprisoned Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Al-Suri, as saying 'Jihad is an art just like poetry, music, and the fine arts. There are people that draw and there are others that are jihadists. They both act upon inspiration.'
Al-Suri is a senior Al Qaida leader captured in Pakistan in 2005 who is believed to be in U.S. custody.
====
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, in an interview published Saturday, that Iran is 'quite advanced' in its work on atomic weapons and may already be fashioning a nuclear warhead.
'We suspect they are probably already working on warheads for ground-to-ground missiles,' Barak said in an interview with The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine.
He also suggested that Iranians 'probably ... have another clandestine enrichment operation beyond the one in Natanz.'
The remarks were in stark contrast the conclusion of a US National Intelligence Estimate released late last year that said Tehran had abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons as far back as 2003.
Barak sharply disagreed with this assessment.
====
In America it seems that from the information that has been released from intelligence services and local police, the Latin street gang MS13 have been working with Al Qaeda to smuggle arms, international terrorists and even nuclear weapons into the American homeland.
For Islam's General's it is a very logical step to try and open up connections with MS13, if they have not already got the connections due to the gang having well trodden smuggling routes straight into the U.S homeland already in place.
MS13 have exploded over the past ten years or so upon American culture, they have spread throughout America and have now become the biggest street gang throughout the U.S. That is no small feat to have achieved and leaves a very deadly vicious criminal network throughout the whole of the U.S from East to West coast.
A criminal street gang anywhere in the world makes its money through all types of criminal enterprises with street drugs like Heroin being the most lucrative of them all. It is this type of commodity that helps finance growth within a criminal organisation due to the vast wealth that is earned through the drugs trade and the distribution networks you need to have in place over a large area.
The bigger the area you control then the more money you make, America being so large and with the likes of the Italian mafia no longer involved in this type of trade it makes Heroin an ideal fuel in which to finance the growth of what is now Americas largest and most feared street gang.
Shas Party: When Jerusalem Talks Start, We Quit, Arutz-7, Hillel Fendel
This is war, Israpundit, Ted Belman
Hamas Takes Over Egyptian Sea Port, The Bulletin, David Bedein
Israel says it wants to stop supplying electricity and water to Gaza, Jihad Watch,
Palestinian Authority demonization of USA continues, Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
Barak: Iran has a clandestine uranium enrichment program, The Jerusalem Post, Jpost.com Staff
Russia Completes Nuclear-Fuel Delivery to Iran, The Media Line,
=====
Gunmen kidnapped a burqa-clad American aid worker and her driver while they were traveling through southern Afghanistan early Saturday, a provincial governor said.
The two were stopped by gunmen outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, said Gov. Asadullah Khalid. He blamed the kidnappings on the 'enemy of Islam and the enemy of Afghanistan.'
====
A powerful bomb targeting a security convoy killed at least 10 people and wounded many more in a Christian area of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Friday, local television reported.
An army official put the death toll at three and told AFP that Captain Wissam Eid, a member of the Internal Security Forces, was one of the dead.
Flames engulfed cars, trapping several people as firefighters battled to extinguish the fires and security forces cordoned off the area.
====
A series of explosions thundered in the Iraqi capital Saturday morning, police said, including one from a mortar round that hit the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. One of the explosions was a roadside bomb that targeted a U.S. patrol in eastern Baghdad.
A police officer said the blast site was sealed by American forces and there was no immediate way to detail damage or casualties. There was no immediate report of the incident from the U.S. military.
Another police officer confirmed a mortar round hit the heavily protected Green Zone. The Americans did not report damage or casualties from that incident either. Both officers spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release the information.
On Friday, shaken by two days of deadly bombings in Mosul, the government said it would dispatch several thousand more security forces to that city in a 'decisive' bid to drive al-Qaida in Iraq from its last major stronghold.
====
U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against 'crusader' nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece.
A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for 'Forest Jihad.' The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week.
The statement, in Arabic, said that 'summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.'
The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to 'start forest fires.'
The posting quoted imprisoned Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Al-Suri, as saying 'Jihad is an art just like poetry, music, and the fine arts. There are people that draw and there are others that are jihadists. They both act upon inspiration.'
Al-Suri is a senior Al Qaida leader captured in Pakistan in 2005 who is believed to be in U.S. custody.
====
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, in an interview published Saturday, that Iran is 'quite advanced' in its work on atomic weapons and may already be fashioning a nuclear warhead.
'We suspect they are probably already working on warheads for ground-to-ground missiles,' Barak said in an interview with The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine.
He also suggested that Iranians 'probably ... have another clandestine enrichment operation beyond the one in Natanz.'
The remarks were in stark contrast the conclusion of a US National Intelligence Estimate released late last year that said Tehran had abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons as far back as 2003.
Barak sharply disagreed with this assessment.
====
In America it seems that from the information that has been released from intelligence services and local police, the Latin street gang MS13 have been working with Al Qaeda to smuggle arms, international terrorists and even nuclear weapons into the American homeland.
For Islam's General's it is a very logical step to try and open up connections with MS13, if they have not already got the connections due to the gang having well trodden smuggling routes straight into the U.S homeland already in place.
MS13 have exploded over the past ten years or so upon American culture, they have spread throughout America and have now become the biggest street gang throughout the U.S. That is no small feat to have achieved and leaves a very deadly vicious criminal network throughout the whole of the U.S from East to West coast.
A criminal street gang anywhere in the world makes its money through all types of criminal enterprises with street drugs like Heroin being the most lucrative of them all. It is this type of commodity that helps finance growth within a criminal organisation due to the vast wealth that is earned through the drugs trade and the distribution networks you need to have in place over a large area.
The bigger the area you control then the more money you make, America being so large and with the likes of the Italian mafia no longer involved in this type of trade it makes Heroin an ideal fuel in which to finance the growth of what is now Americas largest and most feared street gang.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
WHAT DOES ANNIHILATION OF ISRAEL SUPPOSED TO MEAN?
Alexander Maistrovoy
amaist@lycos.com
A couple of weeks before the opening of the conference in Annapolis Saib Arikat, Head of Negotiations with Israel categorically rejected the opportunity of recognizing Israel, as the Jewish state. In other words, the body politic which PA is considered to be, negotiating for peace with its neighboring state, Israel, …denies the very existence of this state. Is it surrealism and absurdity? Undoubtedly. However, this is an integral part of the Middle Eastern reality. And in this context the statement of Arikat (the representative of "pragmatic" and “moderated" Palestinians) is not accidental at all.
From the very beginning of Oslo Palestinians did not camouflage their intention not to recognize Israel. I emphasize: they did not camouflage it. Yaser Arafat publicly declared: "Palestinians will return to all the houses which they have lost during the War for Independence - in Acre, Jaffa, Haifa, etc". He compared Oslo agreement to the peace treaty between Prophet Mohammed and the Koreish tribe. As you know, it was annulled by the Prophet at the moment of loosing its value.
Shimon Peres has called the acceptance of the amendment to the Charter PLO in 2002 (about recognition of the Jewish state) "one of the most significant events in the history of Israel". (The Charter had contained the item on "destruction of the Zionist state"). It was yet another illusion harbored by Peres, and Israel as a whole. "The Palestinian national Charter has not changed!” one of leaders of FATH Farouk Kaddoumi repeatedly declared. He only repeated the statement that "the moderate Palestinians" had many times said openly. As a matter of fact, the same has been told by Saib Arikat.
"We can temporarily recede or gain a tactical victory. It does not matter. Our eyes are turned to the future, to our strategic purpose, the name of which is Palestine from the river (Jordan) up to the sea (Mediterranean). No matter what we receive now, it will not force us to forget the prime aim" (Feisal Husseini, the former minister of Arafat for Jerusalem Affairs, the participant of peace talks in March, 2001).
In January, 2002, immediately after Peres's enthusiastic declaration, the director of the Department on the international parliamentary issues in PA National Council Zuhair Sanduka declared that the amendment to the Charter... was never and nowhere published. "There were publications about the decision to make this amendment. But there are no texts or paragraphs which should replace the existing ones or to change them”, he said.
There are a lot of similar declarations. They are made, we’d like to emphasize, by "pragmatists" with whom Israel has been negotiating for peace.
"It’s no use arguing about the percent of the ground that should be given to Palestinians if we don’t try to understand their driving motives first”, Asher Eder says in his interview. He is a historian from Jerusalem, who has been studying religious and historical aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict for many years. “The problem is not in Palestinians, the problem is in the specific approach of the Arab world to the conflict.
Till now Israel has not understood the main thing: the Arabian policy concerning "Zionist formation" is nothing but their sacred war, jihad. We are not talking separate appeals in separate countries of the Arab world. We are talking total jihad, the ultimate goal of which is the destruction of Israel. All means suit the purpose".
“This strategy”, Eder continues, "has no relation either to internal political struggle of the Arab world, or to the antagonism of the so-called "secular" and religious fractions. Moreover, the directive on total jihad against Israel was generated during the ruling of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Naser who was known as a secular governor of the socialist sense. He, in particular, after the defeat in the Six-Day War called a conference of Arabian religious leaders where the concept of the anti-Israeli jihad was formulated. And since that moment Arabs have consistently and purposefully been realizing it", Eder expands his idea.
Is it possible to get out of this situation? Eder considers it is. However, it is a long and difficult way, and there are no easy solutions in it. "True peace can be reached by way of understanding the sacred texts of Islam. Islam is the soul of the Arabic society. Muslims do not separate religion from policy, outlooks, or daily life. Israel in the eyes of Arabs will be a "damned state" until the Muslim clergy bless it, authorize its right to exist. In fact peace is possible between Ishmael and Israel according to Koran. It recognizes the teachings of the Jewish Prophets and peculiarity of Israel. But Islam teaching is distorted be fanatics and until Muslim clergy conceal truth about Muslim prophecies regarding Jews, any political negotiations will make no sense", Eder exp! lains.
Meanwhile, during the wartime, all means are good. He quotes Arabic spiritual leaders. Grand Kadi of Jordan, Sheikh Abdullah Goshah has in his time defined the strategy of Muslims concerning Israel in the following words: “The Muslims are also free to break their covenant with the enemies if they are uneasy lest the enemy should betray them… Telling lies in war is permitted so as to comfort the Muslims when they are in need of it as in the time of fighting. Arrogance is disliked except in case of war”.
Syria’s Mufti Muhammad Azah Darwaza declaims: “The Quranic sentence is applied to make peace with an enemy who has his own country and state, but the Jews in Palestine are our enemies who have made their aggression upon counter the Arab Muslims”.
Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheich Hassan Khaled: “Particular this battle is not a mere combat between parties, but it is a battle between two religions”.
Such approach has only become stronger in our days.
The similar opinion I have heard from known Rabbi Menachem Froman from the settlement Tkoa. For many years Froman has been trying to establish a dialogue between the Arabic leaders and Israel. Rabbi Froman is convinced: the Israeli politicians, analysts, experts have not made the slightest effort to understand and study Islam. All their intensions are concentrated on the searching of superficial, political decisions. Moving religious motives were denied, as something irrational and consequently not essential. But actually, the religious factor is dominating for each Arab, and it is not very important, to which party or movement he belongs.
"Do you remember the slogan of the Left: "It is necessary to make peace with moderate, secular, progressive Palestinian leaders until extremists have not strengthened their influence there"? Do you remember?! Arafat in their eyes was a moderate, secular, progressive Palestinian leader of the kind. What nonsense! In the first place, Arafat was the Muslim, and a deeply religious one. I met him many times, went to him to Mukata. Once he told to me with pride: "For me to be a Muslim is more important, than to be a Palestinian, above all I‘m a Muslim!"
Rabbi Froman believes: peace with Arabs could be only achieved on religious basis. But nobody tries to do it, substituting a real dialogue by illusions and lies. The consequences of it can be fatal to Israel.
And at last, let’s give the floor to a representative of Arabs themselves. In virtual interview on the Internet the Arabic scientist and publicist from Kuwait D-r Sami Alrabaa, living in Germany, has answered my questions:
- What is the real cause for the Palestinian terror against Israel: occupation of territories or refuse to accept Israel? If Israel agrees to leave these territories, will Arabs (and Palestinians) really (not formally) accept it?
- To be honest, even if Israel evacuates all occupied territories, as it did in Gaza, the Palestinians, in particular Hamas and the other radical organizations will not stop their terror. As far as Arabs are concerned, I can tell form experience backed with empirical research, the majority of Arabs want peace with Israel. But they are intimidated by radical Islamists. Arab regimes, almost all of them, including Egypt and Jordan, do not want to have peace with Israel. These regimes have been trading with the “Palestinian Issues” for decades now. The “issue” is a pretext to distract from real issues like democracy, human rights, and less corruption.
- How do you estimate the Saudi initiative?
- Saudi Arabia uses two different languages, one for radical Muslims, for the Wahhabis and one for the West. It tells the Wahhabis, never, we can never have peace with the Jews, the Prophet had none. Hence the Saudi regime would have “peace” with its followers as the “Custodian of the two holy mosques”. To polish its fanatic and despotic image in the West and America, the Saudis have come up with a peace initiative. From historical record, the Saudis would ally with the devil if that guarantees their survivals.
…So what peace are we talking about? The “peace” between Prophet Mohammed and the Koreish tribe? The one which has ended with the total slaughter of the tribe.
...When Hitler declared, that he wished to annihilate Jews and grasp the world, smart intellectuals and politicians-pragmatists inquired in bewilderment: "What does he mean by this?” Indeed, what did he mean by that?
amaist@lycos.com
A couple of weeks before the opening of the conference in Annapolis Saib Arikat, Head of Negotiations with Israel categorically rejected the opportunity of recognizing Israel, as the Jewish state. In other words, the body politic which PA is considered to be, negotiating for peace with its neighboring state, Israel, …denies the very existence of this state. Is it surrealism and absurdity? Undoubtedly. However, this is an integral part of the Middle Eastern reality. And in this context the statement of Arikat (the representative of "pragmatic" and “moderated" Palestinians) is not accidental at all.
From the very beginning of Oslo Palestinians did not camouflage their intention not to recognize Israel. I emphasize: they did not camouflage it. Yaser Arafat publicly declared: "Palestinians will return to all the houses which they have lost during the War for Independence - in Acre, Jaffa, Haifa, etc". He compared Oslo agreement to the peace treaty between Prophet Mohammed and the Koreish tribe. As you know, it was annulled by the Prophet at the moment of loosing its value.
Shimon Peres has called the acceptance of the amendment to the Charter PLO in 2002 (about recognition of the Jewish state) "one of the most significant events in the history of Israel". (The Charter had contained the item on "destruction of the Zionist state"). It was yet another illusion harbored by Peres, and Israel as a whole. "The Palestinian national Charter has not changed!” one of leaders of FATH Farouk Kaddoumi repeatedly declared. He only repeated the statement that "the moderate Palestinians" had many times said openly. As a matter of fact, the same has been told by Saib Arikat.
"We can temporarily recede or gain a tactical victory. It does not matter. Our eyes are turned to the future, to our strategic purpose, the name of which is Palestine from the river (Jordan) up to the sea (Mediterranean). No matter what we receive now, it will not force us to forget the prime aim" (Feisal Husseini, the former minister of Arafat for Jerusalem Affairs, the participant of peace talks in March, 2001).
In January, 2002, immediately after Peres's enthusiastic declaration, the director of the Department on the international parliamentary issues in PA National Council Zuhair Sanduka declared that the amendment to the Charter... was never and nowhere published. "There were publications about the decision to make this amendment. But there are no texts or paragraphs which should replace the existing ones or to change them”, he said.
There are a lot of similar declarations. They are made, we’d like to emphasize, by "pragmatists" with whom Israel has been negotiating for peace.
"It’s no use arguing about the percent of the ground that should be given to Palestinians if we don’t try to understand their driving motives first”, Asher Eder says in his interview. He is a historian from Jerusalem, who has been studying religious and historical aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict for many years. “The problem is not in Palestinians, the problem is in the specific approach of the Arab world to the conflict.
Till now Israel has not understood the main thing: the Arabian policy concerning "Zionist formation" is nothing but their sacred war, jihad. We are not talking separate appeals in separate countries of the Arab world. We are talking total jihad, the ultimate goal of which is the destruction of Israel. All means suit the purpose".
“This strategy”, Eder continues, "has no relation either to internal political struggle of the Arab world, or to the antagonism of the so-called "secular" and religious fractions. Moreover, the directive on total jihad against Israel was generated during the ruling of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Naser who was known as a secular governor of the socialist sense. He, in particular, after the defeat in the Six-Day War called a conference of Arabian religious leaders where the concept of the anti-Israeli jihad was formulated. And since that moment Arabs have consistently and purposefully been realizing it", Eder expands his idea.
Is it possible to get out of this situation? Eder considers it is. However, it is a long and difficult way, and there are no easy solutions in it. "True peace can be reached by way of understanding the sacred texts of Islam. Islam is the soul of the Arabic society. Muslims do not separate religion from policy, outlooks, or daily life. Israel in the eyes of Arabs will be a "damned state" until the Muslim clergy bless it, authorize its right to exist. In fact peace is possible between Ishmael and Israel according to Koran. It recognizes the teachings of the Jewish Prophets and peculiarity of Israel. But Islam teaching is distorted be fanatics and until Muslim clergy conceal truth about Muslim prophecies regarding Jews, any political negotiations will make no sense", Eder exp! lains.
Meanwhile, during the wartime, all means are good. He quotes Arabic spiritual leaders. Grand Kadi of Jordan, Sheikh Abdullah Goshah has in his time defined the strategy of Muslims concerning Israel in the following words: “The Muslims are also free to break their covenant with the enemies if they are uneasy lest the enemy should betray them… Telling lies in war is permitted so as to comfort the Muslims when they are in need of it as in the time of fighting. Arrogance is disliked except in case of war”.
Syria’s Mufti Muhammad Azah Darwaza declaims: “The Quranic sentence is applied to make peace with an enemy who has his own country and state, but the Jews in Palestine are our enemies who have made their aggression upon counter the Arab Muslims”.
Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheich Hassan Khaled: “Particular this battle is not a mere combat between parties, but it is a battle between two religions”.
Such approach has only become stronger in our days.
The similar opinion I have heard from known Rabbi Menachem Froman from the settlement Tkoa. For many years Froman has been trying to establish a dialogue between the Arabic leaders and Israel. Rabbi Froman is convinced: the Israeli politicians, analysts, experts have not made the slightest effort to understand and study Islam. All their intensions are concentrated on the searching of superficial, political decisions. Moving religious motives were denied, as something irrational and consequently not essential. But actually, the religious factor is dominating for each Arab, and it is not very important, to which party or movement he belongs.
"Do you remember the slogan of the Left: "It is necessary to make peace with moderate, secular, progressive Palestinian leaders until extremists have not strengthened their influence there"? Do you remember?! Arafat in their eyes was a moderate, secular, progressive Palestinian leader of the kind. What nonsense! In the first place, Arafat was the Muslim, and a deeply religious one. I met him many times, went to him to Mukata. Once he told to me with pride: "For me to be a Muslim is more important, than to be a Palestinian, above all I‘m a Muslim!"
Rabbi Froman believes: peace with Arabs could be only achieved on religious basis. But nobody tries to do it, substituting a real dialogue by illusions and lies. The consequences of it can be fatal to Israel.
And at last, let’s give the floor to a representative of Arabs themselves. In virtual interview on the Internet the Arabic scientist and publicist from Kuwait D-r Sami Alrabaa, living in Germany, has answered my questions:
- What is the real cause for the Palestinian terror against Israel: occupation of territories or refuse to accept Israel? If Israel agrees to leave these territories, will Arabs (and Palestinians) really (not formally) accept it?
- To be honest, even if Israel evacuates all occupied territories, as it did in Gaza, the Palestinians, in particular Hamas and the other radical organizations will not stop their terror. As far as Arabs are concerned, I can tell form experience backed with empirical research, the majority of Arabs want peace with Israel. But they are intimidated by radical Islamists. Arab regimes, almost all of them, including Egypt and Jordan, do not want to have peace with Israel. These regimes have been trading with the “Palestinian Issues” for decades now. The “issue” is a pretext to distract from real issues like democracy, human rights, and less corruption.
- How do you estimate the Saudi initiative?
- Saudi Arabia uses two different languages, one for radical Muslims, for the Wahhabis and one for the West. It tells the Wahhabis, never, we can never have peace with the Jews, the Prophet had none. Hence the Saudi regime would have “peace” with its followers as the “Custodian of the two holy mosques”. To polish its fanatic and despotic image in the West and America, the Saudis have come up with a peace initiative. From historical record, the Saudis would ally with the devil if that guarantees their survivals.
…So what peace are we talking about? The “peace” between Prophet Mohammed and the Koreish tribe? The one which has ended with the total slaughter of the tribe.
...When Hitler declared, that he wished to annihilate Jews and grasp the world, smart intellectuals and politicians-pragmatists inquired in bewilderment: "What does he mean by this?” Indeed, what did he mean by that?
Sunday, January 20, 2008
HOW LONG DO WE HAVE AS THE USA???
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
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.'
'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'
'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.' (Alan Note: Almost certainly an Islamic sharia law dictatorship like in Iran).
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years'
'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency; (appeasing our Jihadist enemy to avoid confronting them)
6. From complacency to apathy; (When we discover they have no intention of listening to us and we can do NOTHING about it)
7. From apathy to dependence; (and obedience to Islamic sharia laws of dress, behavior and servitude to Allah, even if only feigned as a majority of the population in Islamic Iran)
8. From dependence back into bondage' (Of our own doing and stupidity)
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election: (which should point out the accuracy of the above analysis)
Number of States won by:
Gore: 19
Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000
Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' (and the key voters for the Democrats this time around too)
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA (as we now know it) in fewer than five years.
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
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.'
'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'
'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.' (Alan Note: Almost certainly an Islamic sharia law dictatorship like in Iran).
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years'
'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency; (appeasing our Jihadist enemy to avoid confronting them)
6. From complacency to apathy; (When we discover they have no intention of listening to us and we can do NOTHING about it)
7. From apathy to dependence; (and obedience to Islamic sharia laws of dress, behavior and servitude to Allah, even if only feigned as a majority of the population in Islamic Iran)
8. From dependence back into bondage' (Of our own doing and stupidity)
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election: (which should point out the accuracy of the above analysis)
Number of States won by:
Gore: 19
Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000
Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' (and the key voters for the Democrats this time around too)
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA (as we now know it) in fewer than five years.
THIN END OF THE ISLAMIC SHARIA LAW WEDGE
By Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones
19/01/2008
Islamic courts meet every week in the UK to rule on divorces and financial disputes. Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones report on demands by senior Muslims that sharia be given legal authority
Amnah is a modern British Muslim. She is dressed in a denim skirt and her head is covered in a hijab. Poised and self-assured, she has come to meet Dr Suhaib Hasan, a silver-bearded sheikh who sits behind his desk, surrounded by religious books.
· The origins and obligations of sharia law
"But why would I have to observe the waiting period?" she asks him. "What are the reasons?" There is an urgency to her questions.
Dr Suhaib Hasan is pushing for personal sharia law to be integrated into the British legal system.
"These reasons don't apply to me, that's what I'm very confused about. If you could give me the reasons why I have to wait three months, then I'll understand."
Amnah is going through a divorce and is baffled at being told that she must wait for three months to remarry, considering that she hasn't seen her estranged husband for two years.
Alan Note: the waiting period is to ensure that the divorced wife (which is how the sharia refers to her) is not pregnant from the former husband when she remarries.
She twists her sock-clad toes into the carpet, grasping one hand with the other in her lap, and fixes Dr Hasan with an intense look. He meets this with a simple reply: "These rulings are all in the Koran. The rulings are made for all."
Amnah has little choice but to comply: Dr Hasan is a judge, and this is a sharia court - in east London. It sits, innocuously, at the end of a row of terrace houses in Leyton: a converted corner shop, with blinds on the windows, office- style partitions and a makeshift reception area.
It is one of dozens of sharia courts - also known as councils - that have been set up in mosques, Islamic centres and even schools across Britain. The number of British Muslims using the courts is increasing.
To many in the West, talk of sharia law conjures up images of the floggings, stonings, amputations and beheadings carried out in hardline Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
However, the form practised in Britain is more mundane, focusing mainly on marriage, divorce and financial disputes.
The judgments of the courts have no basis in British law, and are therefore technically illegitimate - they are binding only in that those involved agree to comply.
For British Muslims who are keen to follow Islam, this poses a dilemma. An Islamic marriage is not recognised by British law, and therefore many couples will have two ceremonies - civil for the state, and Islamic for their faith.
If they wish to divorce, they must then seek both a civil and an Islamic divorce.
Dr Hasan, who has been presiding over sharia courts in Britain for more than 25 years, argues that British law would benefit from integrating aspects of Islamic personal law into the civil system, so that divorces could be rubber-stamped in the same way, for example, that Jewish couples who go to the Beth Din court have their divorce recognised in secular courts.
He points out that the Islamic Sharia Council, of which he is the general secretary, is flooded with work. It hears about 50 divorce cases every month, and responds to as many as 10 requests every day by email and phone for a fatwa - a religious verdict on a religious matter.
Alan Note: some such "requests" in other countries pose questions such as "is a young girl's urine clean or unclean"? A cleric replied to this that a boy's urine is considered clean in Islamic sharia law but a young girl's is dirty. Go figure.
Dr Hasan, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain on issues of sharia law, says there is great misunderstanding of the issue in the West.
"Whenever people associate the word 'sharia' with Muslims, they think it is flogging and stoning to death and cutting off the hand," he says with a smile.
He makes the distinction between the aspects of law that sharia covers: worship, penal law, and personal law. Muslim leaders in Britain are interested only in integrating personal law, he says.
Next page
19/01/2008
Islamic courts meet every week in the UK to rule on divorces and financial disputes. Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones report on demands by senior Muslims that sharia be given legal authority
Amnah is a modern British Muslim. She is dressed in a denim skirt and her head is covered in a hijab. Poised and self-assured, she has come to meet Dr Suhaib Hasan, a silver-bearded sheikh who sits behind his desk, surrounded by religious books.
· The origins and obligations of sharia law
"But why would I have to observe the waiting period?" she asks him. "What are the reasons?" There is an urgency to her questions.
Dr Suhaib Hasan is pushing for personal sharia law to be integrated into the British legal system.
"These reasons don't apply to me, that's what I'm very confused about. If you could give me the reasons why I have to wait three months, then I'll understand."
Amnah is going through a divorce and is baffled at being told that she must wait for three months to remarry, considering that she hasn't seen her estranged husband for two years.
Alan Note: the waiting period is to ensure that the divorced wife (which is how the sharia refers to her) is not pregnant from the former husband when she remarries.
She twists her sock-clad toes into the carpet, grasping one hand with the other in her lap, and fixes Dr Hasan with an intense look. He meets this with a simple reply: "These rulings are all in the Koran. The rulings are made for all."
Amnah has little choice but to comply: Dr Hasan is a judge, and this is a sharia court - in east London. It sits, innocuously, at the end of a row of terrace houses in Leyton: a converted corner shop, with blinds on the windows, office- style partitions and a makeshift reception area.
It is one of dozens of sharia courts - also known as councils - that have been set up in mosques, Islamic centres and even schools across Britain. The number of British Muslims using the courts is increasing.
To many in the West, talk of sharia law conjures up images of the floggings, stonings, amputations and beheadings carried out in hardline Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
However, the form practised in Britain is more mundane, focusing mainly on marriage, divorce and financial disputes.
The judgments of the courts have no basis in British law, and are therefore technically illegitimate - they are binding only in that those involved agree to comply.
For British Muslims who are keen to follow Islam, this poses a dilemma. An Islamic marriage is not recognised by British law, and therefore many couples will have two ceremonies - civil for the state, and Islamic for their faith.
If they wish to divorce, they must then seek both a civil and an Islamic divorce.
Dr Hasan, who has been presiding over sharia courts in Britain for more than 25 years, argues that British law would benefit from integrating aspects of Islamic personal law into the civil system, so that divorces could be rubber-stamped in the same way, for example, that Jewish couples who go to the Beth Din court have their divorce recognised in secular courts.
He points out that the Islamic Sharia Council, of which he is the general secretary, is flooded with work. It hears about 50 divorce cases every month, and responds to as many as 10 requests every day by email and phone for a fatwa - a religious verdict on a religious matter.
Alan Note: some such "requests" in other countries pose questions such as "is a young girl's urine clean or unclean"? A cleric replied to this that a boy's urine is considered clean in Islamic sharia law but a young girl's is dirty. Go figure.
Dr Hasan, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain on issues of sharia law, says there is great misunderstanding of the issue in the West.
"Whenever people associate the word 'sharia' with Muslims, they think it is flogging and stoning to death and cutting off the hand," he says with a smile.
He makes the distinction between the aspects of law that sharia covers: worship, penal law, and personal law. Muslim leaders in Britain are interested only in integrating personal law, he says.
Next page
Thursday, January 17, 2008
FIRST LADY OR MUCK-MOUTH??
CLICK ON TITLE TO GO TO PAGE WITH HILLARY'S CONFIRMED SAYINGS (AND EPITHETS
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
LAW TO PROTECT NEW YORK AUTHORS
FRESH MEADOWS, NY (January 14, 2008) – Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Long Island) introduced the "Libel Terrorism Protection Act" ( S.6687/A.9652) on the front steps of The New York Public Library yesterday (the entire press conference is viewable here: (Part 1 and Part 2 ).
The legislation will protect American authors and journalists from foreign lawsuits that infringe on their First Amendment rights.
Senator Skelos and Assemblyman Lancman were joined by Senator Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, Daniel Kornstein, Dr. Ehrenfeld's attorney, and Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, a New York author who was sued for libel in Britain by a Saudi businessman whom she identified in her book "Funding Evil – How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It" as a financial supporter of terrorist organizations.
In Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz, New York State's highest court held last month that it would not protect Dr. Ehrenfeld from a British lawsuit filed by Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz, where she was ordered to pay over $225,000 in damages and legal fees to Bin Mahfouz, as well as apologize and destroy existing copies of her books.
Dr. Ehrenfeld sought a court order to protect her constitutional rights, but in a ruling with national First Amendment implications sending legal shockwaves throughout newsrooms across America, as well as potentially undermining our ability to expose terrorism's financial and logistical support networks, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to protect Americans – on U.S. soil – from foreign defamation judgments, which contradict the U.S. First Amendment rights.
"When American journalists and authors can be hauled into kangaroo courts on phony-baloney libel charges in overseas jurisdictions who don't share our belief in freedom of speech or a free press, all of us are threatened and our war effort is weakened," said Lancman.
"This legislation will give New York's journalists, authors and press the protection and tools they need to continue to fearlessly expose the truth about terrorism and its enablers, and to maintain New York's place as the free speech capitol of the world," said Lancman. "The ability to expose the truth about international terrorist activities is critically-important to the global war on terror," said Senator Skelos.
"These foreign courts are trampling the First Amendment protections guaranteed to American writers and journalists by our Constitution and this legislation will ensure that they cannot infringe upon our freedom," said Senator Skelos.
"Under the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, writers and journalists would have foreign defamation suits declared unenforceable in New York unless the foreign law provides the same free speech protections guaranteed under our Constitution.
In effect, we are giving New Yorkers a chance to have their fair day in court," said Senator Golden.
The legislation will protect American authors and journalists from foreign lawsuits that infringe on their First Amendment rights.
Senator Skelos and Assemblyman Lancman were joined by Senator Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, Daniel Kornstein, Dr. Ehrenfeld's attorney, and Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, a New York author who was sued for libel in Britain by a Saudi businessman whom she identified in her book "Funding Evil – How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It" as a financial supporter of terrorist organizations.
In Ehrenfeld v. Mahfouz, New York State's highest court held last month that it would not protect Dr. Ehrenfeld from a British lawsuit filed by Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz, where she was ordered to pay over $225,000 in damages and legal fees to Bin Mahfouz, as well as apologize and destroy existing copies of her books.
Dr. Ehrenfeld sought a court order to protect her constitutional rights, but in a ruling with national First Amendment implications sending legal shockwaves throughout newsrooms across America, as well as potentially undermining our ability to expose terrorism's financial and logistical support networks, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to protect Americans – on U.S. soil – from foreign defamation judgments, which contradict the U.S. First Amendment rights.
"When American journalists and authors can be hauled into kangaroo courts on phony-baloney libel charges in overseas jurisdictions who don't share our belief in freedom of speech or a free press, all of us are threatened and our war effort is weakened," said Lancman.
"This legislation will give New York's journalists, authors and press the protection and tools they need to continue to fearlessly expose the truth about terrorism and its enablers, and to maintain New York's place as the free speech capitol of the world," said Lancman. "The ability to expose the truth about international terrorist activities is critically-important to the global war on terror," said Senator Skelos.
"These foreign courts are trampling the First Amendment protections guaranteed to American writers and journalists by our Constitution and this legislation will ensure that they cannot infringe upon our freedom," said Senator Skelos.
"Under the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, writers and journalists would have foreign defamation suits declared unenforceable in New York unless the foreign law provides the same free speech protections guaranteed under our Constitution.
In effect, we are giving New Yorkers a chance to have their fair day in court," said Senator Golden.
Monday, January 14, 2008
EXTREMIST JIHAD
Stephen Collins Coughlin
Major, Military Intelligence, USAR
NDIC Class 2007
Unclassified thesis submitted to the faculty of the
National Defense Intelligence College in partial
fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of
Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence
July 2007
http://www.strategycenter.net/docLib/20080107_Coughlin_ExtremistJihad.pdf
Sunday, January 13, 2008
MUSLIM BRITAIN BECOMING "NO-GO" AS IN FRANCE & OTHER PARTS OF EUROPE
Muslim Britain is becoming one big no-go area
A bishop caused uproar last week by exposing ghettos of Islamist extremism. But Muslims everywhere are cutting themselves off from society in other, equally dangerous ways
Shiraz Maher
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3176455.ece
Perhaps it had to be someone like Michael Nazir-Ali, the first Asian bishop in the Church of England, who would break with convention and finally point out the elephant in the room.
His comments last week about the growing stranglehold of Muslim extremists in some communities revived debate about the future of multiculturalism and provoked a flurry of condemnation. Members of all three political parties immediately clamoured to dismiss him. “I don’t recognise the description that he’s talked about – no-go areas and people feeling intimidated,” said Hazel Blears, the communities secretary.
A quick call to her Labour colleague John Reid, the former home secretary, would almost certainly have helped her to identify at least one of those places. Just over a year ago Reid was heckled by the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen in Leytonstone, east London, during a speech on extremism, appropriately. “How dare you come to a Muslim area,” Izzadeen screamed.
That picture is mirrored outside London. One of our country’s biggest and most deprived Muslim areas is Small Heath, in Birmingham, where Dr Tahir Abbas, director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, was raised. With a dominant Asian monoculture, low social achievement and high unemployment, Small Heath is precisely the kind of insular and disengaged urban ghetto Nazir-Ali was talking about.
Reflecting on his experiences there, Abbas is critical of his peers who don’t stray beyond their area. “They haven’t seen rural Devon, a stately home or Windsor Castle,” he says. That refusal to engage with anything beyond the community is suffocating young Muslims by divorcing them almost entirely from Britain’s cultural heritage and mainstream life.
And their feelings of separation have been further reinforced by the advent of digital broadcasting, which has swelled the number of foreign language television stations in Britain, creating digital ghettos. Islamist movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (of which I was once a senior member) have been quick to spot the opportunities this affords them.
In 2004 the group launched a campaign aimed at undermining President Pervez Mush-arraf by broadcasting adverts on Asian satellite channels, calling on the Pakistani community in Britain to “stop Busharraf”.
Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Leicester-based Muslim Forum, is unequivocal about the dangers such Islamification poses. “We have a cultural and social apartheid which fun-damentalists thrive off,” he says.
The point was underscored last summer when Kafeel Ahmed, whom I once knew, was arrested after a Jeep laden with explosives crashed into Glasgow airport. I think Ahmed was first radicalised in Cambridge, where I saw his views become increasingly intolerant, even though the city has a negligible Muslim population. After being exposed to the Islamist culture of separation and confrontation there, he didn’t need to be living in an actual ghetto.
He was already sectioning himself off, by giving up his non-Muslim friends and eventually socialising only with those who shared his world-view.
It raises a compelling point that Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have largely tried to ignore: while the moral ambiguity of multiculturalism means Britain no longer knows what it stands for, our enemies are not just growing ever surer of themselves but are also winning the debate.
For almost three decades now, the witless promotion of cultural relativ-ism under successive governments means that our national identity can simply be reduced to the theme of a courtroom sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus – anything goes. Measuring the extent to which this ambiguity has affected perceptions within Britain’s already insular Muslim communities, Abbas told me he surveyed schoolchildren in Small Heath by asking them how many Muslims they thought lived in Britain.
“We had answers around 30m to 50m,” he says, with more than a hint of despondency in his voice (the true figure is 1.6m).
Moghal blames the mosques for this, saying: “They promote a conscious rejection of western values.” He has a point. In many places the prevailing attitude is that sporting a flowing Arab robe symbolises your religiosity while your piety is linked to the length of your beard.
Muslim groups have already reacted with predictable intemperance to the bishop’s comments. “Mr Nazir-Ali is promoting hatred towards Muslims and should resign,” said Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, while Ajmal Masroor of the Islamic Society of Britain said the church should “take serious action”.
Their anger vindicates him entirely and in many respects demonstrates that Nazir-Ali’s observations not only are valid, but don’t go far enough. The Glasgow bombings proved that the kinds of no-go area extremists are creating don’t always have to be physical locations.
Muslim attitudes are now so hyper-sensitive that anyone who dares to criticise Islam or Muslims has to think twice – and then some more – before doing so. Publishing a simple cartoon is enough to provoke a serious diplomatic crisis, the ransacking of embassies, mass global protest and at least several deaths.
But it’s not just nonMuslims for whom extremists reserve their hatred. After I wrote about the way British Islamists celebrated Benazir Bhutto’s assassination last month, a number of threats quickly appeared on the internet. “If I meet him I’m going to paste him in his face,” wrote Abu Junayd from Slough on a chat forum. Another commentator said I should “suffer severe punishments in this life and the hereafter”.
Their attitude springs from the Takfiri mind-set, which, in its most extreme forms, underwrites Al-Qaeda’s philosophy by suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Islamism (the extreme, politicised form of Islam) is a legitimate target for attack.
As if to emphasise the point, a statement released on a known Al-Qaeda forum last week specifically called for attacks on moderate Muslims in Britain. Citing the opinions of Muham-mad Ibn Alb al-Wahhab, whose followers are known as Wahhabis, it branded moderates as “aides of the crusaders”.
Seven years after the Cantle report first revealed the extent to which Britain’s different communities are living apart together, it’s still impossible to engage politicians seriously about the future of multiculturalism.
After being heckled by Izzadeen in Leytonstone for “daring” to visit a Muslim area, the home secretary told him: “There is no part of this country that any of us is excluded from.” The knee-jerk reaction to the bishop’s comments suggests we’re still a long way from realising that vision.
A bishop caused uproar last week by exposing ghettos of Islamist extremism. But Muslims everywhere are cutting themselves off from society in other, equally dangerous ways
Shiraz Maher
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3176455.ece
Perhaps it had to be someone like Michael Nazir-Ali, the first Asian bishop in the Church of England, who would break with convention and finally point out the elephant in the room.
His comments last week about the growing stranglehold of Muslim extremists in some communities revived debate about the future of multiculturalism and provoked a flurry of condemnation. Members of all three political parties immediately clamoured to dismiss him. “I don’t recognise the description that he’s talked about – no-go areas and people feeling intimidated,” said Hazel Blears, the communities secretary.
A quick call to her Labour colleague John Reid, the former home secretary, would almost certainly have helped her to identify at least one of those places. Just over a year ago Reid was heckled by the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen in Leytonstone, east London, during a speech on extremism, appropriately. “How dare you come to a Muslim area,” Izzadeen screamed.
That picture is mirrored outside London. One of our country’s biggest and most deprived Muslim areas is Small Heath, in Birmingham, where Dr Tahir Abbas, director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture, was raised. With a dominant Asian monoculture, low social achievement and high unemployment, Small Heath is precisely the kind of insular and disengaged urban ghetto Nazir-Ali was talking about.
Reflecting on his experiences there, Abbas is critical of his peers who don’t stray beyond their area. “They haven’t seen rural Devon, a stately home or Windsor Castle,” he says. That refusal to engage with anything beyond the community is suffocating young Muslims by divorcing them almost entirely from Britain’s cultural heritage and mainstream life.
And their feelings of separation have been further reinforced by the advent of digital broadcasting, which has swelled the number of foreign language television stations in Britain, creating digital ghettos. Islamist movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (of which I was once a senior member) have been quick to spot the opportunities this affords them.
In 2004 the group launched a campaign aimed at undermining President Pervez Mush-arraf by broadcasting adverts on Asian satellite channels, calling on the Pakistani community in Britain to “stop Busharraf”.
Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Leicester-based Muslim Forum, is unequivocal about the dangers such Islamification poses. “We have a cultural and social apartheid which fun-damentalists thrive off,” he says.
The point was underscored last summer when Kafeel Ahmed, whom I once knew, was arrested after a Jeep laden with explosives crashed into Glasgow airport. I think Ahmed was first radicalised in Cambridge, where I saw his views become increasingly intolerant, even though the city has a negligible Muslim population. After being exposed to the Islamist culture of separation and confrontation there, he didn’t need to be living in an actual ghetto.
He was already sectioning himself off, by giving up his non-Muslim friends and eventually socialising only with those who shared his world-view.
It raises a compelling point that Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have largely tried to ignore: while the moral ambiguity of multiculturalism means Britain no longer knows what it stands for, our enemies are not just growing ever surer of themselves but are also winning the debate.
For almost three decades now, the witless promotion of cultural relativ-ism under successive governments means that our national identity can simply be reduced to the theme of a courtroom sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus – anything goes. Measuring the extent to which this ambiguity has affected perceptions within Britain’s already insular Muslim communities, Abbas told me he surveyed schoolchildren in Small Heath by asking them how many Muslims they thought lived in Britain.
“We had answers around 30m to 50m,” he says, with more than a hint of despondency in his voice (the true figure is 1.6m).
Moghal blames the mosques for this, saying: “They promote a conscious rejection of western values.” He has a point. In many places the prevailing attitude is that sporting a flowing Arab robe symbolises your religiosity while your piety is linked to the length of your beard.
Muslim groups have already reacted with predictable intemperance to the bishop’s comments. “Mr Nazir-Ali is promoting hatred towards Muslims and should resign,” said Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, while Ajmal Masroor of the Islamic Society of Britain said the church should “take serious action”.
Their anger vindicates him entirely and in many respects demonstrates that Nazir-Ali’s observations not only are valid, but don’t go far enough. The Glasgow bombings proved that the kinds of no-go area extremists are creating don’t always have to be physical locations.
Muslim attitudes are now so hyper-sensitive that anyone who dares to criticise Islam or Muslims has to think twice – and then some more – before doing so. Publishing a simple cartoon is enough to provoke a serious diplomatic crisis, the ransacking of embassies, mass global protest and at least several deaths.
But it’s not just nonMuslims for whom extremists reserve their hatred. After I wrote about the way British Islamists celebrated Benazir Bhutto’s assassination last month, a number of threats quickly appeared on the internet. “If I meet him I’m going to paste him in his face,” wrote Abu Junayd from Slough on a chat forum. Another commentator said I should “suffer severe punishments in this life and the hereafter”.
Their attitude springs from the Takfiri mind-set, which, in its most extreme forms, underwrites Al-Qaeda’s philosophy by suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Islamism (the extreme, politicised form of Islam) is a legitimate target for attack.
As if to emphasise the point, a statement released on a known Al-Qaeda forum last week specifically called for attacks on moderate Muslims in Britain. Citing the opinions of Muham-mad Ibn Alb al-Wahhab, whose followers are known as Wahhabis, it branded moderates as “aides of the crusaders”.
Seven years after the Cantle report first revealed the extent to which Britain’s different communities are living apart together, it’s still impossible to engage politicians seriously about the future of multiculturalism.
After being heckled by Izzadeen in Leytonstone for “daring” to visit a Muslim area, the home secretary told him: “There is no part of this country that any of us is excluded from.” The knee-jerk reaction to the bishop’s comments suggests we’re still a long way from realising that vision.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
OLDER AND SMARTER
A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by. The jet jockey decided to show off.
The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, "watch this!" and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier.
The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?The C-130 pilot said, "That was impressive, but watch this!"
The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back on and said "What did you think of that?"
Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, "What the hell did you do?"
The C-130 pilot chuckled. "I stood up, stretched my legs, walked to the back, went to the bathroom , then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun."
When you are young and foolish - speed and flash may be a good thing !!!
When you get older and smarter - comfort and dull is not such a bad thing!!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
NEW JERSEY BANS INVESTMENT RELATED TO IRAN -- BILINGUAL
در ایالت نیوجرسی، ت�ریم های تازه ای علیه ایران تصویب شد
ايالت نيوجرسی در آمريکا، روز جمعه، چهارم ژانويه، سرمايه گذاری پول صندوق بازنشستگی اين ایالت را در شرکت هايی که با ايران تجارت می کنند، منع کرد.
اغلب شرکت های آمريکايی از داد و ستد با ايران منع شده اند، ولی مجلس ايالتی نيوجرسی، با تصویب مصوبه ای اين ايالت را از انجام معامله با ديگر شرکت های بين المللی که با ايران داد و ستد دارند نيز منع کرده است.
مجلس ايالتی نيوجرسی به دليل آنچه که «رابطه ايران با تروريسم و جاه طلبی هسته ای» اين کشور می خواند، خواستار افزايش فشار اقتصادی بر ايران شده است.
جان کورزين، فرماندار ایالت نيوجرسی، با امضای این مصوبه، این ایالت را از خريدن سهام شرکت هايی که با ايران تجارت می کنند، منع کرد.
به گزارش آسوشيتدپرس، آقای کورزين در اين مورد گفت: «من از فشار اقتصادی در رابطه با ايران پشتيبانی می کنم تا اين کشور سياست خود را تغيير دهد ولی از �مله نظامی �مایت نمی کنم.»
نيل کوهن از نمايندگان مجلس ايالتی نيوجرسی، از �زب دموکرات، از خطر ايران برای موجودیت اسرائيل سخن گفت و افزود: «نيوجرسی پيام روشنی می فرستد که در فعاليت های ايران که می تواند به قتل عامی مانند هولوکاست مبدل شود، شرکت نمی کند.»
ايالت نيوجرسی در دهه ۱۹۸۰ نيز ممنوعيت هايی را برای سرمايه گذاری در آفريقای جنوبی اعمال کرده بود.
صندوق ۸۰ ميليارد دلاری
صندوق بازنشستگی ايالت نيوجرسی ارزشی معادل ۸۰ ميليارد دلار دارد و با وجود اين مشخص نيست چه مقدار از آن در شرکت هايی سرمايه گذاری شده است که با ايران داد و ستد دارند.
مصوبه مجلس ايالت نيوجرسی از مقام های م�لی می خواهد تا با استخدام مؤسسات ت�قيقاتی مستقل، سرمايه گذاران مورد نظر اين طر� را شناسايی کنند.
صندوق بازنشستگی ايالت نيوجرسی نهمين صندوق بزرگ در ايالات مت�ده به شمار می رود و به تازگی از دو ميليارد و ۱۶۰ميليون دلار عايدات از ۱۷ شرکت دارای داد و ستد با سودان چشم پوشی کرد.
نيوجرسی پس از ايالات فلوريدا و کاليفرنيا سومين ايالت آمريکا است که چنين تصميمی می گيرد. ايالت فلوريدا اولين ايالتی بود که در اوايل سال جاری ميلادی چنين مصوبه ای را تصويب کرد.
ايالت فلوريدا، بر اساس همين قانون، سرمايه گذاری در سودان را نيز ممنوع کرده بود. مقام های م�لی اين ايالت اجازه اعطای وجوه بازنشستگی کارمندان را به ۲۱ شرکت که در دو کشور (آمريکا و سودان) فعاليت اقتصادی می کردند ندادند و از عايدی يک ميليارد و ۳۰۰ ميليون دلاری خود صرف نظر کردند.
در ايالت کاليفرنيا نيز فرماندار آرنولد شوارتزنگر در ماه اکتبر مصوبه ای را امضا کرد که بر اساس آن به همکاری با شرکت هايی که با ايران داد و ستد دارند پايان می داد.
آمريکا از ديرباز جمهوری اسلامی ايران را دولت «�امی تروريسم» ناميده است و طی سال های اخير کوشيده است با �مايت از تشديد ت�ريم های ايران مانع دستيابی اين کشور «به سلا� هسته ای» شود.
ايران همواره اين اتهامات را رد کرده و هدف برنامه هسته ای خود را توليد برق دانسته است.
January 5, 2008
For New Jersey Pension Fund, No Iran-Linked Investments
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TRENTON (AP) — New Jersey on Friday became one of the few states to prohibit state pension money from being invested in companies that do business in Iran.
Most American companies are already banned from doing business in the country, but Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, signed a measure restricting the state from buying stock in international companies that do business with Iran.
The move was intended to protest the country’s links to terrorism and its nuclear ambitions.
“I continue to support using economic means, not military means, to bring about policy changes in Iran,” Mr. Corzine said recently.
Florida and California have similar laws.
Assemblyman Neil M. Cohen, a Democrat from Union, a bill sponsor, cited Iranian threats against Israel.
“Divesting our finances from entities associated with Iran will send a clear message in the universal language of money that New Jersey will have no part in Iran’s pursuit of actions that would lead to Holocaust-like genocide and the complete destruction of a sovereign nation,” Mr. Cohen said.
The New Jersey measure resembles a 2005 bill that prohibited investing state pension funds in companies doing business in Sudan to protest what the United States has deemed a genocide there. New Jersey recently divested $2.16 billion from 17 companies doing business in Sudan.
New Jersey also passed a similar law in the 1980s banning investments in South Africa.
The state’s pension fund is worth about $80 billion, though it was unclear how much was invested in companies doing business in Iran. The law requires the state to hire an independent research firm specializing in global securities to identify such investments.
New Jersey’s pension fund is the nation’s ninth largest.
ايالت نيوجرسی در آمريکا، روز جمعه، چهارم ژانويه، سرمايه گذاری پول صندوق بازنشستگی اين ایالت را در شرکت هايی که با ايران تجارت می کنند، منع کرد.
اغلب شرکت های آمريکايی از داد و ستد با ايران منع شده اند، ولی مجلس ايالتی نيوجرسی، با تصویب مصوبه ای اين ايالت را از انجام معامله با ديگر شرکت های بين المللی که با ايران داد و ستد دارند نيز منع کرده است.
مجلس ايالتی نيوجرسی به دليل آنچه که «رابطه ايران با تروريسم و جاه طلبی هسته ای» اين کشور می خواند، خواستار افزايش فشار اقتصادی بر ايران شده است.
جان کورزين، فرماندار ایالت نيوجرسی، با امضای این مصوبه، این ایالت را از خريدن سهام شرکت هايی که با ايران تجارت می کنند، منع کرد.
به گزارش آسوشيتدپرس، آقای کورزين در اين مورد گفت: «من از فشار اقتصادی در رابطه با ايران پشتيبانی می کنم تا اين کشور سياست خود را تغيير دهد ولی از �مله نظامی �مایت نمی کنم.»
نيل کوهن از نمايندگان مجلس ايالتی نيوجرسی، از �زب دموکرات، از خطر ايران برای موجودیت اسرائيل سخن گفت و افزود: «نيوجرسی پيام روشنی می فرستد که در فعاليت های ايران که می تواند به قتل عامی مانند هولوکاست مبدل شود، شرکت نمی کند.»
ايالت نيوجرسی در دهه ۱۹۸۰ نيز ممنوعيت هايی را برای سرمايه گذاری در آفريقای جنوبی اعمال کرده بود.
صندوق ۸۰ ميليارد دلاری
صندوق بازنشستگی ايالت نيوجرسی ارزشی معادل ۸۰ ميليارد دلار دارد و با وجود اين مشخص نيست چه مقدار از آن در شرکت هايی سرمايه گذاری شده است که با ايران داد و ستد دارند.
مصوبه مجلس ايالت نيوجرسی از مقام های م�لی می خواهد تا با استخدام مؤسسات ت�قيقاتی مستقل، سرمايه گذاران مورد نظر اين طر� را شناسايی کنند.
صندوق بازنشستگی ايالت نيوجرسی نهمين صندوق بزرگ در ايالات مت�ده به شمار می رود و به تازگی از دو ميليارد و ۱۶۰ميليون دلار عايدات از ۱۷ شرکت دارای داد و ستد با سودان چشم پوشی کرد.
نيوجرسی پس از ايالات فلوريدا و کاليفرنيا سومين ايالت آمريکا است که چنين تصميمی می گيرد. ايالت فلوريدا اولين ايالتی بود که در اوايل سال جاری ميلادی چنين مصوبه ای را تصويب کرد.
ايالت فلوريدا، بر اساس همين قانون، سرمايه گذاری در سودان را نيز ممنوع کرده بود. مقام های م�لی اين ايالت اجازه اعطای وجوه بازنشستگی کارمندان را به ۲۱ شرکت که در دو کشور (آمريکا و سودان) فعاليت اقتصادی می کردند ندادند و از عايدی يک ميليارد و ۳۰۰ ميليون دلاری خود صرف نظر کردند.
در ايالت کاليفرنيا نيز فرماندار آرنولد شوارتزنگر در ماه اکتبر مصوبه ای را امضا کرد که بر اساس آن به همکاری با شرکت هايی که با ايران داد و ستد دارند پايان می داد.
آمريکا از ديرباز جمهوری اسلامی ايران را دولت «�امی تروريسم» ناميده است و طی سال های اخير کوشيده است با �مايت از تشديد ت�ريم های ايران مانع دستيابی اين کشور «به سلا� هسته ای» شود.
ايران همواره اين اتهامات را رد کرده و هدف برنامه هسته ای خود را توليد برق دانسته است.
January 5, 2008
For New Jersey Pension Fund, No Iran-Linked Investments
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TRENTON (AP) — New Jersey on Friday became one of the few states to prohibit state pension money from being invested in companies that do business in Iran.
Most American companies are already banned from doing business in the country, but Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, signed a measure restricting the state from buying stock in international companies that do business with Iran.
The move was intended to protest the country’s links to terrorism and its nuclear ambitions.
“I continue to support using economic means, not military means, to bring about policy changes in Iran,” Mr. Corzine said recently.
Florida and California have similar laws.
Assemblyman Neil M. Cohen, a Democrat from Union, a bill sponsor, cited Iranian threats against Israel.
“Divesting our finances from entities associated with Iran will send a clear message in the universal language of money that New Jersey will have no part in Iran’s pursuit of actions that would lead to Holocaust-like genocide and the complete destruction of a sovereign nation,” Mr. Cohen said.
The New Jersey measure resembles a 2005 bill that prohibited investing state pension funds in companies doing business in Sudan to protest what the United States has deemed a genocide there. New Jersey recently divested $2.16 billion from 17 companies doing business in Sudan.
New Jersey also passed a similar law in the 1980s banning investments in South Africa.
The state’s pension fund is worth about $80 billion, though it was unclear how much was invested in companies doing business in Iran. The law requires the state to hire an independent research firm specializing in global securities to identify such investments.
New Jersey’s pension fund is the nation’s ninth largest.
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