Dubai's opulent, multimillion-pound New Year's Eve celebrations have been
cancelled due to the Gaza violence, leaving hordes of expatriates hastily
making alternative plans.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of the Gulf state, called off
festivities late last night.
He said "all public New Year’s celebrations" should be stopped "in
solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are currently enduring death,
suffering and destruction in Gaza".
The city, home to thousands of Western expatriate businesspeople and tourists,
usually holds spectacular public firework displays and open-air
entertainments worth millions.
Do yourself a favor and read this simply outstanding essay from The Bulletin. (Thanks to FReeper jazusamo for this one.)
Here is one of the most important but most neglected lessons of
history: The peaceful majority is often irrelevant. That’s because the
fanatical minority is often in control. That fanatical minority calls
the shots and however peaceful, good, or well-meaning that silent
majority is, the fanatical minority renders it irrelevant. In other
words, the silent majority is rendered irrelevant by virtue of its own
silence … even in the face of a fanatic and terrorist minority.
Now
we always hear about the vast majority of peaceful Muslims. But their
relative silence lets the fanatical minority run wild and control the
impact of Muslims on world affairs.
Hmmm. A family of al Qaeda supporters or the US Special Forces... Who are YOU going to believe? (I've watched enough CSI:Miami to know those handprints and blood splatters shown in the video didn't come from someone being murdered in cold blood. I smell al Qaeda propaganda)
The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that Special Forces
troops killed an al Qaeda suspect in cold blood and cut off his finger
during an overnight operation near Baghdad earlier this month.
The
December 10 raid, on a house in the Salman Pak district, 15 miles south
of Baghdad, targeted suspected bomb-maker Hardan al-Jaburi.
In a statement, the U.S. military said al-Jaburi, armed with an AK-47, confronted troops conducting the raid.
"Perceiving hostile intent, the forces engaged the armed man, killing him," the statement said.
But
his relatives, assisted by a tribal leader, complained in a meeting
with U.S. officials in Baghdad's Green Zone that al-Jaburi was singled
out by troops after he was rounded up along with his brothers.
Soldiers ordered him into the family's house and then shot him dead, the relatives said.
In
addition to the family's claims, sources told CNN that concern within
the U.S. military itself about the way the raid was conducted also
triggered the investigation.
Much of what happened during the raid at the farmhouse that night is not in dispute.
According
to the U.S. military, the raid began with an airborne assault. Those
inside the house were warned by loudspeakers that it was surrounded.
Al-Jaburi and his brothers then surrendered to the Americans. According
to both the U.S. military and the family's account, al-Jaburi went back
to the house.
And there is where the stories diverge.
In the U.S. version, al-Jaburi burst out of the house wielding an AK-47 and was shot in the farmyard.
But
the Iraqi family's version is that all the brothers were stripped to
their underwear and forced to lie on the ground, unable to move without
the Americans' permission.
The family says the Americans then took al-Jaburi back into the house.
A militant arrested in Pakistan has confessed involvement in
the Mumbai terror attacks and is giving investigators details of the
plot, a senior Pakistani government official said Wednesday.
The revelation could add to pressure on Islamabad to either bring
Zarar Shah and other suspects to trial or extradite them to India.
"(Shah) has made some statement that he was involved," said the
government official, without providing specific details. "I can tell
you that he is singing."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
A senior intelligence officer said Shah and another suspect,
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, were cooperating with investigators, but
cautioned authorities had not reached a definite conclusion as to their
involvement yet.
He too asked for anonymity. Indian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Pakistan is under tremendous US pressure to extradite to India
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander Zaki Al Rahman Lakhvi, the alleged
mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks, a media report said here
Wednesday. "The Americans are believed to have given Pakistan a
taped conversation Lakhvi allegedly had with the gunmen involved in the
attacks," the Dawn newspaper said in a dispatch from Washington
, quoting US and diplomatic sources.
The
sources said that American audio experts had checked the tape and
concluded that it was genuine and that the speaker was Lakhvi."
Official disclaimer follows. Don't blame Dinah. Blame the lawyers.
It
is, however, not yet clear if the Americans recorded the conversation
using their own surveillance methods or received the tape from the
Indians, who have blamed Lakhvi right from the beginning," the
newspaper said.
On Dec 4, less than a week after the Nov 26 attacks, Indian officials told journalists in New Delhi they believed Lakhvi and Yusuf Muzammil - who heads the LeT's operations in India - had masterminded the Mumbai terror attack.
On
Dec 8, Pakistani security officials told the media that they had
arrested Lakhvi and some of his top lieutenants but they also said that
all suspects would be tried in Pakistan and would not be handed over to
India.
Officials in New Delhi
and Washington say that's not enough and they would not be satisfied
unless Islamabad followed up by prosecuting those arrested and taking
further action against other militant groups linked to attacks on
Indian soil.
"Until this week, US officials had not taken a clear
stand on this issue but Lakhvi's reported conversation with the gunmen
appeared to have changed their minds," Dawn said.
Reports in
the US media have also noted that Lakhvi comes from the same area as
Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist arrested during the Mumbai
attacks. Officials in Islamabad, however, appeared "reluctant" to
accept the intercepts of Lakhvi's alleged conversations as "authentic",
Dawn said. "There, however, appears to be a serious difference of
opinion between Islamabad and the Pakistan Embassy in Washington over
the issue. "While Islamabad was reluctant to accept the evidence
as authentic, the embassy insisted that it's authentic and that the
Pakistani authorities now needed to take steps to satisfy the
international community," the newspaper added.
Pakistan's own investigation of terror attacks in Mumbai has begun
to show substantive links between the 10 gunmen and an Islamic militant
group that its powerful spy agency spent years supporting, say people
with knowledge of the probe.
At least one top leader of militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or "Army
of the Pure," captured in a raid earlier this month in
Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, has confessed the group's involvement in
the attack as India and the U.S. have alleged, according to a senior
Pakistani security official.
The disclosure could add new international pressure on Pakistan to
accept that the attacks, which left 171 dead in India, originated
within its borders and to prosecute or extradite the suspects. That
raises difficult and potentially destabilizing issues for the country's
new civilian government, its military and the spy agency,
Inter-Services Intelligence -- which is conducting interrogations of
militants it once cultivated as partners.
"Could be... could be - that's all I
will say as of now, while the investigations are still being
completed," Pakistan's National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani told the CNN-IBN news channel in an interview from Islamabad.
Durrani's
comments are significant as Pakistan has officially denied any link
with the Mumbai terror strikes and even refused to acknowledge the
nationality of Muhammed Amir Ajmal alias Kasab, the lone attacker who
was captured alive and is in the custody of the Mumbai police.
Pakistan
persisted in its denial mode even after the Indian external affairs
ministry forwarded a letter from Kasab to Pakistan's acting high commissioner in New Delhi Afrasiab, saying that he and other nine gunmen who attacked Mumbai were Pakistanis.
Pakistan also did not respond to Kasab's request for consular access.
"We
have got that letter. I have seen that letter. We have been provided
some intelligence information and based on these intelligence
information we are working out," Durrani said.
"There could be possible connection and we are looking at that... but we don't have proof," he said.
Durrani
also denied any troops build-up by the Pakistani army and sought to
rebut reports about Pakistan creating war hysteria in the wake of the
Mumbai carnage.
"I think what happens in the situations like
this ... truth becomes the casualty. The bottomline is, Pakistan does
not want confrontation with India because it is neither in the interest of India nor in the interest of Pakistan," he said.
"We
in Pakistan want to cooperate with India to get rid of the region of
terrorist agenda and I think it is mandatory if we don't play in the
hands of the bad guy," he stressed.
"I would like to say that we are not mobilised... we are not on a high alert," he said.
"Yes,
some elements of our military would be on high alert because the worry
is that probably there has been limited amount of mobilisation from
India. This is our assessment and to protect our self there was a level
of alert not more than...It was a reaction more than an action," he
said.
Blah-blah-blah. Bureaucratic double speak. Lame, I know. But if we keep the pressure up, Pakistan will eventually be forced to admit that they do indeed have a terror problem. Keep the drumbeat going.
A small group of placard-waving pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered
near U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's vacation retreat in Hawaii on
Tuesday to protest against the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
Obama has made no public comment on the strikes, which Israel
launched on Saturday. Aides have repeatedly said he is monitoring the
situation and continues to receive intelligence briefings but that
there is only one U.S. president at a time.
Some critics, however, say Obama did choose to speak out after the
attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai in November in which gunmen killed
nearly 180 people, condemning them as acts of terrorism.
Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20 from outgoing Republican
President George W. Bush, has also spoken out on economic issues facing
the United States.
"He is talking about how many jobs he is going to create but he is
refusing to speak about this," said one of the protesters, Carolyn
Hadfield, 66.
Hadfield was one of eight protesters standing with placards reading
"No U.S. support for Israel" and "Gazans need food and medicine, not
war" near Obama's rented vacation home in Kailua, an upmarket suburb on
the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where Obama is in the second week of a
vacation with his family.
Obama had not left the compound on Tuesday morning and did not see the protest.
The AP's report can be found here and the WAPO snarkily checks in here.
So what else is new, you say? Well, now they're thanking all the Hindu and Christian moonbats protesting on their behalf and are enlisting the help of the Useless Nations. Oh, and they had nothing to do with that Mumbai Massacre. Really.
A defiant Jamaat-ud-Dawa
(JuD) on Tuesday vowed to continue with its charity work even in the face of
what it called an extreme clampdown by the Pakistani authorities.
Talking to TOI, JuD leader and chief spokesperson Abdullah Muntazir said that the Jamaat had support not just from Muslims but also from Hindus and Christians in Pakistan and that it will take on the US and India who, he said, had influenced the UN to ban the
organisation.
"We have been badly affected by the Pakistan
government's actions but we have the goodwill of the people. Even the Hindus and
Christians have held demonstrations in Pakistan saying that we are not a
terrorist organisation. The ban has ensured that we are left with no money but
we have our network of 156 health care centres and ambulance services in 73
towns and cities spread across the country. The ban is illegal and we will very
soon approach the UN with our case,'' stated Muntazir, adding that the JuD was
also hopeful of securing the release of its leader Hafiz Saeed
soon.
That Movie: How The Innocence of Muslims Was Made When struggling actor Tim Dax was hired to star in a swords-and-sandals movie titled Desert Warrior, he was just happy to have the job. One year later, Dax and the rest of the film’s cast and crew would look on in horror as The Innocence of Muslims—a crudely dubbed version of the movie they thought they were making—ignited protests across the Arab world and controversy at home. Speaking with many of the film’s principals, Michael Joseph Gross reports on a story as old as Hollywood itself: a pursuit of fame and fortune that ended in tears.
Pravda to Americans: Never Give Up Your Guns "These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bare arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions."
