DEDICATED TO EXPOSING DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA AND TO PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS - WITH SHARP ANALYSIS AND BLUNT COMMENTARY. NO ADS. NO TIP-JAR. JUST THE TRUTH.
Several Arab leaders say they may boycott the annual Arab summit meeting scheduled for this month in Damascus because of anger at Syria over its role in Lebanon and ongoing links to Iran.RTWT.
The measures are part of an intensified campaign against Syria that comes alongside similar moves by the United States, which recently added several new financial sanctions on Syria and sent warships to cruise off the Lebanese coast - a gesture aimed directly at the Syrian government.
"There's a new initiative to completely isolate Syria and weaken its destructive influence in Lebanon," said an adviser to the Saudi government who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"We're not going to pull them away from Iran by talking to them; we're going to take them away from Iran by making them feel the pressure and making them understand that this time it's as real as it can get."
In the past week, Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador from Damascus and urged all its citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible, indicating that it believes any Saudi here is now a target for Syria or its allies. Last month the Saudi government deposited another $1 billion into Lebanon's central bank in a show of support for Lebanon's government.
Syria's role in Lebanon is rooted in its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, which it views as crucial weapons against Israel and the West. But most Arab nations, led by Sunni Muslims, view Shiite Iran as a dangerous and implacable foe, and they appear to have given up on luring Syria back into the Arab fold through diplomacy.
The conflict has grown increasingly bitter, with officials of Saudi Arabia and Egypt - with Jordan on board - complaining that Syria is deliberately prolonging the political vacuum in Lebanon through its support for Hezbollah, which opposes the Western-backed government majority. Lebanon has been without a president since late November.
McCain Flashes Temper at Reporter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 7, 2008
Filed at 6:47 p.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Republican Sen. John McCain, showing a flash of the temper he is known for, repeatedly cut off a reporter Friday when asked whether he had spoken to Democratic Sen. John Kerry about being his vice president in 2004. ''Everybody knows that I had a private conversation. Everybody knows that, that I had a conversation,'' McCain told the reporter. ''And you know it, too. No. You know it, too. No. You do know. You do know.''
The reporter, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times, was following up on a question McCain had answered at a campaign event Friday morning in Atlanta. Asked if he might consider Kerry as a running mate, since Kerry asked him in 2004, McCain said no.
Afterward, on a campaign flight, Bumiller said she looked in the Times' archives and that McCain had denied talking with Kerry in a May 2004 story.
McCain interrupted, saying that everyone knew he had a private conversation, and he kept interrupting as she tried to follow up. McCain clearly was irate.
NOT ONE OF THE NEWSPAPERS WHICH RAN WITH THE STORY DID ANY INDEPENDENT CHECKING.Jennifer Parker / Political Radar:
McCain Loses Cool With NY Times Reporter — ABC News' Bret Hovell Reports: Senator John McCain grew agitated Friday with a New York Times reporter who asked about his 2004 conversation with then-Democratic nominee John Kerry about McCain possibly running as Kerry's vice presidential nominee.Discussion: Jonathan Martin's Blogs, The Swamp, Riehl World View, Salon, No More Mister Nice Blog and The PageRELATED:MCCAIN GETS TESTY WITH THE PRESS — From NBC's Bethany Thomas — What began as a typical chat session with traveling reporters on the plane from Atlanta to New Orleans quickly became a testy exchange with McCain. The senator was questioned on the details of a conversation …Discussion: MyDD, DownWithTyranny!, The Carpetbagger Report, Althouse, Hullabaloo, American Street and ShakesvilleMcCain clashes with NYT reporter — John McCain became hostile with the N.Y. Times' Elisabeth Bumiller on the campaign's plane today, after the reporter questioned him about a 2004 meeting with John F. Kerry, in which the Massachusetts senator suggested a VP slot. (Click here for audio clip, courtesy of Breitbart.tv)Discussion: Ed Driscoll.com
John McCain flies off the handle with NY Times Reporter over John Kerry VP questionDiscussion: Comments from Left Field
McCain Flashes Temper at Reporter
The statues were destroyed by dynamite over several weeks, starting in early March, carried out in different stages.
Initially, the statues were fired at for several days using anti-aircraft guns and artillery. This damaged them but did not obliterate them.
Then the Taliban placed anti-tank mines at the bottom of the niches, so that when chunks of rock broke off from artillery fire, the statues would fall and be blown up again.
In the end, the Taliban tied ropes around some local Hazara men, lowered them down the cliff face, and forced them to place explosives into holes in the Buddhas.[9]
On March 6, 2001 The Times quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as stating, "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them."
He had clearly changed his position from being in favor of the statues to being against them.
During a March 13 interview for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun, Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the destruction was anything but a retaliation against the international community for economic sanctions:
"We are destroying the Buddha statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue".
[THEY WERE FINALLY DYNAMITED ON 3/21/01.]
WHEN CONFRONTING THE EVIL PEOPLE AND EVIL IDEOLOGY WHICH CARRIED OUT THESE DASTARDLY ACTS, WE HAVE TWO CHOICES:
JIZAN, 7 March 2008 — Saudi tradition holds that people tend to marry young. But when families in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia wedded a 12-year-old boy to his 11-year-old cousin, even the Saudi press blanched.Home from primary school, get married and then back to primary school.
A Russian reconnaissance aircraft approached a U.S. aircraft carrier on the eastern waters off the Korean Peninsula Wednesday, entering South Korea's air defense safety zone, a military source said Thursday.
Two U.S. F/A-18 fighters from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier participating in annual drills by South Korean and American troops successfully intercepted the Russian aircraft, a Tupolev TU-142 BEAR-F and escorted it out of the area, the source said, asking not to be named.
Four F-16 fighters of the South Korean Air Force also conducted maneuvers to support the U.S. fighters, he added.
``The U.S. military first detected the Russian aircraft and carried out counter-measures against it,'' said the source. ``Our fighters subsequently flew patrol maneuvers.''
The Russian plane came within three to five nautical miles and flew at 2,000 feet above the 97,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to the source.
The Russian aircraft entered the Korea Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ), designated by the commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Force Command in 1951 to prevent clashes in the air between countries surrounding the Korean Peninsula, he said.
The zone covers the sky over the country's easternmost Dokdo islets, which Japan has laid claim to.
Prosecutors in Seoul, Korea, indicted an ex-LG employee for spying for a Chinese company in a case they say cost the South Korean economy more than $1 billion. The Chinese company, Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong, reportedly paid the LG manager $300,000 per year, an apartment and a car (he was still collecting his LG salary) in exchange for copying 1,182 files from the LG network and giving it to the Chinese company...The company then used that stolen data to copy LG's plasma display panel production technology. Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong plans to start making plasma panels with the stolen technology starting in December.
To: The Palestinian PeopleRTWT.
From: The People of Israel
Re: Final Notice Before the Termination of Our Relationship
Date: "To Be Determined"
(To be filed in your "Permanent Conduct Record")
AS YOU KNOW from our repeated meetings over many years, we have repeatedly done our best to accommodate your incessant demands regarding employment, compensation, housing allowances, health benefits, and other items of mutual interest as we have endeavored to work together on "Project Peace in the Middle East."
We have, with your agreement and assurances of a better performance, given you time, money, professional help, medication and a more than reasonable offer of land for you to live in while you work out "your issues." In the course of these meetings we feel we have been more than forthcoming in our attendance to your "special needs."
From time to time we have accepted your written word that, given adequate resources, you would be working internally to resolve "your issues." We note, for the record, that at no time has your word proven to be worth the paper which we both so ceremoniously signed. Indeed, it has been our bitter experience that the working out of "your issues" most often involves explosive episodes on the streets of our country.
It has come to our attention, through a continuing rain of the body parts of our citizens onto our streets, that "your issues" do not seem to be resolvable through considered and mutually agreeable negotiations. The outcome of these 'negotiations' in the recent past seems to us to be one of we give and you take and then you kill us. We have decided that this is not a peace project that we wish to continue.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega - 6 March 2008 Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega says he is breaking off diplomatic relations with Colombia.
The move comes amid a growing crisis over a Colombian raid into Ecuador to kill leftist Farc rebels.
Venezuela and Ecuador have already broken off diplomatic ties and moved troops to their borders with Colombia.
Mr Ortega said "we are breaking off relations because of the political terrorism" carried out by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
He made the announcement in his capital, Managua, with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa at his side.
Mr Correa is on a tour of Latin American capitals to rally opposition to Colombia's cross-border raid on Saturday.
... Colombia has waged a four-decade conflict with Farc rebels who finance themselves through the cocaine trade and by kidnapping hostages for ransom or political gain.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had become involved in mediation efforts to free Farc-held hostages in Colombia, securing the release of six this year.
He branded the Colombian raid a "war crime", adding that Bogota, which receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington to fight drug-trafficking, was just a "lackey of United States imperialism".
He dismissed Colombian claims that a laptop found during its raid on the rebel camp in Ecuador held files indicating that Venezuela had given the Farc $300m (£150m).
Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.
JERUSALEM (AP) - A gunman infiltrated a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem and opened fire in a library Thursday night, killing at least seven people, officials said.On TV, they said it was eight dead. Absolutely tragic and abominable.
Rescue workers said at least 10 people were wounded. Government spokesman Daniel Seaman and police said there was only one gunman though initial reports said there were two. [...]Note that despite what they say here, it's not clear if Abbas actually agreed with Rice about resuming: according to McClatchy-Tribune (via The American Thinker), he rebuffed her pleas.
The attack came a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice persuaded moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to peace talks with Israel and on the same day Egyptian officials were trying to mediate a truce between Gaza militants and Israel.
Abbas suspended the talks after Israel launched a military offensive against Gaza militants barraging southern Israel with rockets. Palestinian officials say more than 120 were killed in Gaza during the weeklong operation. Four Israelis were also killed.
Yitzhak Dadon, a seminary student, said he was armed with a rifle and waited on the roof of a nearby building during the attack.Some of the blame, of course, will have to be put upon the shoulders of Ehud Olmert for allowing this to continue.
"He came out of the library spraying automatic fire. ... The terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head," he said.
Medic Yaron Tzuker said he arrived as the gunfire was still going on.
"They were still shooting when we got here," he told Channel 10 TV. "We took cover and the ambulance was hit. It's horrible inside - dead bodies and wounded - it's horrific."
Another witness told Israel TV that he heard both single shots and automatic gunfire from inside the building, and it lasted for about 10 minutes.
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben Ruby said one of the gunmen who attacked the seminary was wearing what at first appeared to be an explosives vest but turned out to be a belt holding extra ammunition.
"One or two terrorists infiltrated the Mercaz Harav seminary and opened fire in all directions," the police spokesman said. "One terrorist was killed in an exchange of fire, and apparently he had an explosives belt."
Hundreds of police surrounded the area and searched the campus as ambulances raced to the scene. Scores of seminary students spilled out onto the sidewalk and street outside after they were evacuated.
"There are at least seven killed and 10 people wounded," said Eli Dein, director of Israel's rescue service.
An hour after the attack, medics began removing the dead from the building, taking them away in ambulances. [...]
"It's very sad tonight in Jerusalem. Many people were killed in the heart of Jerusalem," Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski.
A Jordanian terrorist, working in the Phillipines, on behalf of an Indonesia-based Muslim terrorist group, plotting to attack American and Israeli embassies.Philippine authorities say they have arrested three suspected Middle Eastern
militants suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb the Israeli and three other
foreign embassies in Manila.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita says one man was arrested in Manila, while the others were separately captured recently in the south.
"There is a high probability that they are involved in some kind of plan to sow trouble," Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told reporters on the sidelines of an annual anti-terrorism and business security conference.
One of the militants was arrested in Manila and the two others were separately captured in the southern Philippines recently.
Ermita refused to provide details, but two senior Filipino security officials told The Associated Press that investigators were verifying intelligence information that the three may have been involved in an active plot to bomb the U.S., British, Australian and Israeli embassies in Manila.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Authorities believe the three may have links with the Indonesia-based militant group Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent southern Philippine-based group blacklisted by Washington as a terror organization.
Both groups have been blamed for deadly bomb attacks, including the February 2004 bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay that killed 116 people in the country's worst terrorist attack.
Funding for the plot has been secured, indicating that the planned attack against any of the embassies may already be in an advanced stage, one of the security officials said, adding that all the embassies concerned have been notified.
At least one of the three suspected militants identified himself as Jordanian, but investigators were trying to verify their identities. One was arrested at a Manila airport Feb. 15 and follow-up operations were under way, he said.
(IsraelNN.com) Three Arab men from Jerusalem have been indicted for an attack on two municipal workers earlier in the week. The men were indicted for deliberately endangering life in a transportation lane, assault, and attacking public employees.Those men should be made to do hard labor in prison for their crime.
The men were part of a group that attacked two municipal inspectors on Monday as they drove on Salah A-Din Street in eastern Jerusalem. The group threw rocks at the inspectors’ car, breaking its windows, and attacked the vehicle with metal poles. The workers managed to escape by driving briefly on the sidewalk. One of the workers later described the incident as an attempted lynch.
NEW YORK (AP) - A small bomb caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above "the crossroads of the world."I wonder if this had anything to do with that case involving a soldier who made a video that showed him tossing a puppy off a cliff, though it's possible that the animal was a fake one? I don't know, but if it is, it shows that there are monstrous leftists out there who're willing to turn to savagery over their crazy beliefs.
Police blocked off the area to investigate the explosion, which occurred at about 3:45 a.m. No one was injured. The blast left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame.
Authorities said at a news conference that a witness saw a person on a bicycle wearing a backpack and acting suspiciously, but that no one saw a person place the device in front of the recruiting center.
"If it is something that's directed toward American troops than it's something that's taken very seriously and is pretty unfortunate," said Army Capt. Charlie Jaquillard, who is the commander of Army recruiting in Manhattan.
He said no one was inside the station, where the Marines, Air Force and Navy also recruit.
Witnesses staying at a Marriott hotel four blocks away said they could feel the building shake with the blast.
"I was up on the 44th floor and I could feel it. It was a big bang," said Darla Peck, 25, of Portland, Ore.
"It shook the building. I thought it could have been thunder, but I looked down and there was a massive plume of smoke so I knew it was an explosion," said Terry Leighton, 48, of London, who was staying on the 21st floor of the Marriott.
Members of the police department's bomb squad and fire officials gathered outside the station in the early morning darkness, and police cars and yellow tape blocked drivers - most of them behind the wheels of taxicabs - from entering one of the world's busiest crossroads. Police began allowing some traffic through around the start of rush hour.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Netherlands is to raise its national risk level of a terrorist attack to "substantial", partly due to a new film made by a politician that is expected to be critical of the Koran, media reported on Thursday.Do you see the irony?
The justice minister is expected to send parliament an updated threat assessment later in the day, also citing a heightened terrorism threat level around the world, unnamed cabinet sources told ANP news agency.
The level had been at "substantial" before as religious and racial tensions simmered after an Islamic militant killed director Theo Van Gogh in 2004 over a separate film he made accusing Islam of condoning violence against women.
"We will have succeeded if, after the film, Mr. Wilders is frustrated," chairman, Mohamed Rabbae said at a news conference in January. "If he sees there are no riots and Muslims are cleverer and more democratic than he thinks."Shouldn't be too hard to accomplish in a civilized world.
Remittances Drop as U.S. Jobs SlowOur government wouldn't put a stop to such money transfers. Our government wouldn't track those strip-mall storefronts executing the transfers to see how many illegal invaders were using the facilities to drain the U.S. economy. Even local governments would not enforce zoning regulations, thereby allowing 20+ immigrants to live in a single-family home. But economic reality has caused a slowdown in propping up the economy of Mexico.
Mexicans working abroad, mostly in the United States, reduced money transfers to their families at home at a record pace in January as a U.S. housing slump squeezed construction employment.
Remittances, the second-biggest source of dollar flows into Mexico after oil receipts, fell 5.9 percent in January compared with January 2007, to $1.65 billion, Mexico's central bank said. It was the biggest drop since Banco de Mexico began records in 1995.
Statesmen all over the world have paid homage to it. It's leadership has been praised and defended by Jimmy Carter. Charities have been established to support it. Fund raising in its name takes place every day. It has been provided with security training and weaponry by the International Community. If any country deserves to be called the proud creation of enlightened diplomacy and peacemaking, this is is it.And then he points to Caroline Glick's thoughtful and heart-rending essay, "Welcome to Palestine." This is part of what she has to say:
Read.The.Whole.Thing.And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.
In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.
In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.
In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.
In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.
No peace agreement ever will emerge between Israel and the Palestinians, I believe, because economics should have dispersed the Palestinian population more than half a century ago. Mechanization of agriculture, rather than Zionist political aims, began displacing the rural Arab population in the 1930s, I observed in another location. The Zionist agency bought farms from absentee landlords, displaced the fellaheen engaged in near-subsistence agriculture, and made the land profitable and productive. From an economic standpoint, that is, the Palestinians were Okies, but with no California to go to. This led to the 1936-39 Arab uprising against the British Mandate and Jewish settlement.
Rather than disperse gradually like other agrarian populations, the Palestinian Arabs became wards of the United Nations after the 1947-48 War of Independence. Their numbers surged because of better medical care and nutrition than they previously enjoyed as well as child subsidies. That is why the 700,000 Arabs who fled or were driven from Israel grew into the 4 million "refugees" registered with the UN in 2002. I place the term "refugees" in quotation marks because in no other case has the third generation following a population transfer retained official refugee status.
Despite the best intentions of Shimon Peres and the Israeli socialists, it seems delusional to imagine that any combination of light industry and tourism will provide a livelihood for a Palestine with 5 million inhabitants (including the non-refugee West Bank population). The Palestinian entity cannot exist without subsidies, and it cannot extract subsidies from the West or from the Muslim world without constituting a military threat. The existential choices for Palestinians come down to dispersal or perpetual war.
Spengler is always interesting, but I think he is wrong to think that the West Bank and Gaza are not capable of providing a living to millions of people.
Let's use the data in the CIA's World Fact Book to make a comparison.The groups say a battered, starved Gaza cannot be a peace partner
Gaza girls protest at Israeli measures Gaza's humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.
They include Amnesty International, Save the Children, Cafod, Care International and Christian Aid.
They criticise Israel's blockade on Gaza as illegal collective punishment which fails to deliver security.
Israel says its military action and other measures are lawful and needed to stop rocket attacks from Gaza.
Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, but retains control over Gaza's airspace and coastline, and over its own border with the territory.
... "Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed," said Geoffrey Dennis, of Care International UK.
Last week Israeli forces launched a bloody and destructive raid in northern Gaza, in which more than 120 Palestinians - including many civilians - were killed.
Israel says the measures are designed to stamp out frequent rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
Recent rocket attacks have hit deeper into southern Israel, reaching Ashkelon, the closest large Israeli city to the Gaza Strip.
Occupying power
The UK-based groups agree that Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens...
Moscow has overtaken New York City as home to the most billionaires, according to Forbes magazine, with 74 of the super-rich elite now counting the Russian capital as their home.
