Monday, July 12
GuerrillasMA, MilitantsMA, RebelsMA
via lgf
SRINAGAR, India (Al-Reuters) - Suspected Muslim guerrillas sliced off the nose, ears and tongue of a 14-year-old girl in Indian Kashmir on Sunday, believing her to be an informer for the Indian army, police said.
Mariam Begum was abducted by a group of militants from her house in Doda district south of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital.
"The abductee was let off by the terrorists. However her ears, nose and tongue have been chopped off," a police spokesman said.
Rebels have in the past killed or maimed people who they believe are helping Indian soldiers put down the 15-year revolt in the Himalayan region.
Elsewhere in Kashmir, 16 Muslim rebels and four soldiers were killed in separate gun battles over the weekend as rebel violence mounted despite peace moves by India and Pakistan.
More than 100 people have been killed and scores wounded this month alone.
(emphasis mine)
Sunday, July 11
Retreat and Refreshment
via jihadwatch
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- An increasing number of Saudis who crossed the border into Iraq to fight the U.S.-led military occupation are returning home to plot attacks against the Saudi government and Western targets in the desert kingdom, according to Western counterterrorism officials and Saudis with ties to militant groups. The Iraq veterans are serving as fresh recruits for an underground network in Saudi Arabia that, until recently, was led by an older generation of fighters that had trained in Afghanistan and was closely connected to al Qaeda and its founder, Saudi native Osama bin Laden. Many of those leaders have been killed or captured in recent months by Saudi security forces.
Today, the proclaimed new chief of the primary militant group in the kingdom is Saleh Awfi, 33, a Saudi who journeyed north last year to join Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic radical group in Iraq that the U.S. government has branded as a terrorist organization. Awfi stayed for a few months, barely surviving U.S. aerial bombardment, before deciding to return and take up arms in his home country, according to a former Saudi radical who met with Awfi last year.
Other Saudis are returning after spending time in newly established training camps across the Red Sea in remote parts of Sudan where central government influence is weak, said a European intelligence official whose government is advising Saudi officials on their domestic terrorist threat.
Blunkett’s Law
via lgf and telegraph
Some propose special protection for Muslims by saying that Islam is a racial identity because three of the four schools of Islamic law enjoin faithful Muslims to murder anyone who wishes to leave the faith, thus limiting every Muslim’s freedom of action. But is this a point in Islam’s favour? And is this the sort of religion we want to throw people into prison for condemning?
To argue that Islam should have special protection because it is a “religion” while Marxism or Conservatism are “merely philosophies” is equally specious. All that divides a religion from a secular ideology is something whose existence - supernatural support - is disputed by adherents of the latter. To privilege supernatural belief-systems by law would be to impose the view of the faithful about this on everyone, the situation that prevailed in the Middle Ages. This time, it is Islam, not Christianity, that New Labour wants to impose on Christendom.
A society in which one cannot revile a religion and its members is one in which there are limits to the human spirit. The Islamic world was intellectually and economically wrecked by its decision to put religion beyond the reach of invective, which is simply an extreme form of debate. By so doing, it put science and art beyond the reach of experiment, too. Now, at the behest of Muslim foreigners who have forced themselves on us, New Labour wants to import the same catastrophe into our own society.
In a recent television panel, Iqbal Sacranie explained why the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the organisation he leads, had pushed for this legislation. The British should be allowed not to believe in Islam, he said (thanks, Mr Sacranie!), but they should not be permitted to “criticise” it.
Ken Livingstone has gone even further. On Wednesday, the Mayor of London welcomed to City Hall the Qatari divine Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, according to the MCB “an Islamic scholar held in great respect throughout the Islamic world”.
Basing his teaching on Islam’s holiest texts, Dr al-Qaradawi has urged his fellow Muslims to beat their wives; to use child suicide bombers to kill female and infant civilians; to murder Jews, homosexuals and British servicemen; and to colonise, desecrate and usurp Christian Rome.
Mr Livingstone said that the newspapers that had condemned Dr al-Qaradawi for such views “showed why this legislation [Blunkett’s] is necessary”. It was the critics of Dr al-Qaradawi’s beliefs, Mr Livingstone insisted, who were, as the Muslim Association of Britain put it, “the image of evil”. Dr al-Qaradawi, a mainstream figure in a major religion, had endorsed Jew lynching and wife beating: Mr Livingstone seemed to imply that, like Islam, such activities should therefore be above criticism.
Friday, July 9
Bravery vs. Malevolence
VDH via nro
The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.
This war — like all wars — is a terrible thing; but far, far worse are the mass murder of 3,000 innocents and the explosion of a city block in Manhattan, a ghoulish Islamic fascism and unfettered global terrorism, and 30 years of unchecked Baathist mass murder. So for myself, I prefer to be on the side of people like the Kurds, Elie Wiesel, Hamid Karzai, and Iyad Allawi rather than the idiotocrats like Jacques Chirac, Ralph (the Israelis are "puppeteers") Nader, Michael Moore, and Billy Crystal.
Sometimes life's choices really are that simple.
Wednesday, July 7
Good News From Iraq
via chrenkoff, google and dailystar
Monday, July 05, 2004
BAGHDAD: Iraq has a new stock exchange, launched without fanfare and staffed almost entirely by women, which aims to become the leading bourse in the Middle East.
Trading on the first morning in late June was higher than at anytime during the lifespan of the former Baghdad Stock Exchange but the new bourse has yet to establish regular opening hours, its owners said.
"The plan at the moment is to open for business on Wednesday and Sunday from 10:00 am local time until midday but right now the situation is very fluid so we might change," said Talib al-Tabatabaie, chairman of the board of governors.
A slim trickle of brokers entered the unmarked but well guarded stock exchange building - tucked away behind a large hotel in the center of Baghdad - early Sunday for the bourse's second official day of trading.
"The old exchange used to be open three days a week for two hours at a time. We hope to match that but it will take time," Tabatabaie told AFP.
Once trading is fully underway, the potential for growth is huge, said the exchange's chief executive Ahmed Taha.
"There is a lot of interest in this exchange. At the moment the Iraqi economy is weak but it has a huge potential to grow," he said. "I don't want to be over optimistic but I think we will become larger than other exchanges in the region. However, this will take time so we are taking things step-by-step."
I may soon be able to bet on them. Chrenkoff has a lot of more good news!
The Unconcerned Johns
via townhall
John Kerry thinks mending fences with France and the UN is his first foreign policy priority. He thinks "jobs" - whatever the heck that means - and education and the environment and "energy independence" are his job(s) number one.
Kerry's vice presidential pick reinforces all of that. Kerry is the most liberal Senator in the U.S. Senate, according to the respected National Journal, and in 2003 Edwards was the fourth most liberal. Edwards also voted against the $87 billion Iraqi reconstruction bill even though he voted for the war. Clearly, Kerry doesn't want to "balance" his ticket with a moderate, he wants to reinforce it with another liberal who can sell Kerry's message.
Indeed, as my colleague Byron York notes, Edwards' "Two Americas" speech, which earned him so much popularity among the Democratic base and which in turn bought him the nod from Kerry, does not mention terrorism at all. It was a crowd-pleasing speech for a party that wanted the whole issue of foreign policy just to go away. In fact, both Kerry and Edwards constantly appeal to the nostalgia of voters - "let America be America again" is Kerry's motto - for an imagined time when there were no serious challenges in the world, be it the 1990s or John Edward's childhood.
The two Johns believe that America's problems lie in the White House, not overseas. They believe that there's a rich supply of "allies" who would take bullets intended for Americans, if only George Bush had better manners. They believe, despite the fact that George Bush has increased spending on education by 60 percent, and despite the fact that the environment is cleaner now than any time in more than fifty years, that what America really needs more than anything is an education president, an environmental president. Meanwhile, as our enemies lop the heads off our citizens and plan more 9/11s, George Bush says we need a war president. Sounds like the makings of a great debate.
