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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (10140)	10/19/2005 12:43:18 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 32591

'Quake killed over 3000 terrorists' Onkar Singh in New Delhi \| October 17, 2005 17:57 IST us.rediff.com Intelligence sources have confirmed that over 3000 terrorists who were waiting for an opportunity to cross into India from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir were killed in the October 8 earthquake. A top intelligence officer told rediff.com that while hundreds of terrorists were killed because of the huge buildings crumbling, most others were killed due to massive explosions that took place because of fire breaking out in their ammunition dumps. • Tremors across Borders "This was nature's way of closing down terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," the officer said. According to him, the figure of 3000 was tentative and the number of militants killed could be much more. "Several former and present minister of the PoK government were also killed due to quake," he said. Though India offered to fly helicopters and rescue the injured from Muzaffarabad in particular,the Pakistan government refused permission as it feared that the move would let out find the truth out about the training camps, the officer said.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (10140)	10/19/2005 10:45:26 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 32591

Sundancing with the Terrorists--Robert Redford's poison. New York Sun \| Frontpage Magazine ^ \| October 19, 2005 \| Andrea Levin Unlike American journalists who subscribe in principle, if not always practice, to a high-minded code of ethics calling for accuracy, balance and accountability in news coverage, documentary filmmakers of various nationalities often freely blend fact, distortion, ideology and even fiction and defamation without pretense of adherence to any such standards. Evidence of the indifference to fairness and fact has been a lineup of startlingly one-sided and sometimes blatantly propagandistic anti-Israel documentaries airing in the summer and fall on the Sundance Channel, a popular premium cable channel said to be "under the creative direction of Robert Redford." The works are often broadcast multiple times in multiple cycles reaching viewers at all hours of the day. "Checkpoint," for instance, as described by Sundance on its own Web site, looks at "the petty humiliations, absurdist interrogations and abusive uses of power Palestinians encounter daily ... " The brief historical background given by the director never bothers to mention that checkpoints were erected in recent years to halt a surge of West Bank Palestinian terrorists from crossing into Israel and killing innocents - and they have worked, helping to save lives. "Ford Transit" by Hany Abu-Assad similarly presents Palestinians as victims of Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints. Unmentioned by Sundance in its Web site blurb on the work is the director's controversial use of actors and staged events to cast Israel and its military as abusive. One scripted scene had an actor dressed as an Israeli soldier punch a Palestinian driver - also an actor. According to Daily Variety, a Dutch public broadcaster that co-produced the film withdrew it from the nation's most prestigious film competition on learning of the fabrications. "The Inner Tour" follows a busload of Palestinians who have "either lost a family member in the conflict or know someone imprisoned by the Israelis." The theme is one of alleged dispossession. Numerous other productions cast Israel, its leaders, its military or its society as either grossly unjust and brutal or reprehensible and tainted. "Detained," "My Terrorist," "Aftershock," and "Raging Dove" are among these. But few equal in sheer malevolence the propaganda film entitled "Writers on the Borders," an account of the visit of eight international writers to Ramallah and Gaza in March 2002. The documentary by Samir Abdallah and Jose Reynes was part of a full-blown campaign in which the authors, including two Nobel prize winners, joined in condemning Israel at the height of the terrorist bombings against the Jewish state. The participants, after shooting the documentary, then published articles in which they elaborated on their abhorrence of Israel. Under the aegis of the International Parliament of Writers, a group founded in 1993 "as a human rights organization that would create awareness of writers living in oppressed circumstances," the writers participated ostensibly in response to a plea from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Each offers his own on-camera denunciation of Israel as the party addresses local audiences or passes scenes of bulldozers, tanks, and rubble. The denunciations never once hint at the Palestinian terrorist onslaught that had spawned Israeli reaction. The American head of the IPW, Russell Banks, declares: "I've seen a lot of forms of violence but I've never seen such a grotesque - and I don't know what else to call it but - diabolical form of violence as what's been imposed here." The French writer, Christian Salmon, announces: "The Israeli colonization of the occupied territories is not only unjust and illegal, it is also impossible." South African Breyten Breytenbach reads from an open letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon subsequently published: "General Sharon, past injustices suffered cannot justify or excuse your present fascist actions. A viable state cannot be built on the expulsion of another people who have as much claim to that territory as you have. Might is not right. In the long run, your immoral and shortsighted (and finally stupid) policies will furthermore weaken Israel's legitimacy as a state." It is Portuguese bestseller Jose Saramago who creates headlines for the delegation, observing on March 25, 2002, that "What is happening in Palestine is a crime on the same plane as Auschwitz." Unfazed by the outrage from Israelis of every political stripe, he explains months later that they had not been sufficiently pained by the condemnations of the other writers. "It was the fact that I put my finger in the Auschwitz wound that made them jump." The same sadism evident in Mr. Saramago's tormenting of Israel is implicit in the often stunningly ignorant and baseless verbal assaults of all the strutting writers who came to embrace the Palestinians and excoriate Israel at a moment when the Jewish state was under the worst terrorist assault in its history. While the unbridled ill will of many European elites has become all too apparent, it is worrisome, indeed, that Mr. Redford and Sundance - with their reputation for innovation and independence - would be a party to amplifying the poison and airing as well other shoddy and distorted productions.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (10140)	10/19/2005 12:34:36 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

(Australian Muslim) Gang rapist's attacks unavoidable, says lawyer smh ^ \| October 12, 2005 \| Natasha Wallace A violent gang rapist should have been given a lesser sentence partly because he was a "cultural time bomb" whose attacks were inevitable, as he had emigrated from a country with traditional views of women, his barrister has argued. MSK, who, with his three Pakistani brothers, raped several girls at their Ashfield family home over six months in 2002, was affected by "cultural conditioning … in the context of intoxification", Stephen Odgers, SC, told the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday. MSK, 26, MAK, 25 and MMK, 19, are appealing against the severity of their sentences after they were found guilty of nine counts of aggravated sexual assault in company - a crime carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment - against two girls, aged 16 and 17, in July 2002. MSK and MMK were jailed for 22 years, with a non-parole period of 16½ years, and 13 years, respectively, and MAK for 16 years (12 years non-parole). Court orders prevent them being named. They are yet to be sentenced for other rapes. Mr Odgers said "new evidence" showed MSK had a "mental disorder" at the time of the rapes and had stopped taking his medication - supplied by his father, a general practitioner. He also said Justice Brian Sully had made a "clear error" in sentencing them to an extra six years on two counts, rather than one - referring to an act in which MMK withdrew his penis and took off the condom and then continued to rape one of the girls. "It was the same victim, it occurred in the same location, there was no relevant difference in the nature of the act. The time gap between the offences was minimal," he said. Mr Odgers said a forensic psychologist, David Greenberg, had diagnosed MSK with "atypical compulsive obsessive disorder". MSK said: "When I stopped taking medication, I never had any idea in my mind that I would be committing these problems. If anything happened, it would happen accidentally, but I was commanded to do these things." After a special hearing, a judge concluded earlier this year that MSK was not mentally ill - the same conclusion reached by pre-sentence psychology reports in 2003. Mr Odgers said the new evidence showed that he had a disease, which, combined with alcohol and the cultural conditioning of "a society with very traditional views of women", was "clearly a factor in the commissioning of these offences". "The applicant was a cultural time bomb," Mr Odgers said. "It was almost inevitable that something like this would happen. His culpability is lessened because of that combination." Professor Greenberg's report concluded the disorder did not lead MSK to commit the rapes. He also said he may be malingering. The father, who said at the trials that he was with his sons on the night of the rapes, told the court he had diagnosed MSK with schizophrenia. "He told me … Satan come to him and tell him different things. He told me that sometimes even the green grass whisper to him." He refused to place his hand on the Koran when sworn in because he said he had not washed. A spokesman for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, said he was unable to confirm whether the father would be charged with perjury over evidence he gave at the trials. The appeal, funded by Legal Aid, follows their unsuccessful appeal against conviction, which failed when they took it to the High Court. The Court of Criminal Appeal has reserved its decision.