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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (6607)	4/13/2006 12:35:09 AM
From: 10K a day	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

BarknSnort likes to post.

To: Skywatcher who wrote (6607)	4/13/2006 3:38:11 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 9838

no I don't retired at 45, and you will be working at McDonalds until you are 80

To: Skywatcher who wrote (6607)	4/14/2006 10:11:41 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

Muslims here who say democracy is a no, no (... Australia's Muslims ) Herald Sun ^ \| 14 Apr 06 \| Andrew Bolt heraldsun.news.com.au ANOTHER speech by another Muslim leader, and I ask -- who's kidding who? In February Treasurer Peter Costello was monstered for saying Muslims shouldn't come to Australia unless they accepted basic Australian values. And he listed them: democracy, the freedoms of a secular state, and "loyalty first -- loyalty to Australia". For this he was called a Muslim-basher by most of our leading Muslim groups. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils declared "Islam law teaches that when you go into a country you embrace the laws of that country". The Islamic Council of Victoria said: "Muslims are Australians first." The Lebanese Muslim Association claimed the "majority of Muslims . . . accept Australian values". And maybe they do, indeed. It's a good sign, in one way, that so many felt hurt by Costello's remarks. But I wonder if they should take far more offence at the many other Muslim spokesmen who seem determined to make them seem dishonest, or at least deaf to what a significant minority of other Muslims here say. Last Saturday a small Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, held a public meeting at the Bankstown Town Hall to discuss whether Australia's Muslims really should subscribe to those values Costello mentioned. The answer was: No. No to democracy, a secular society and Australia first. For instance, Usman Badar, president of the University of NSW Muslim Students Association, told the 300 or so people that "Western values are not worthy of human subscription". Take democracy: "Democracy sounds nice enough, (but) not to a Muslim . . . Sovereignty is for none but Allah." And "Allah did not say . . . whatever the people want, we'll have this." As for a secular society, "it relegates Allah to the margins of public life and places human beings above him. This, to put it blatantly, is as blasphemous as it gets". Nor was any overriding loyalty to Australia possible. "The overriding commitment of a Muslim is to Allah, and Allah alone." I expect to hear the usual protests -- that Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Students Association are small, representing few people. But surely it's now clear that far too many Muslim activists and leaders have at times seemed to reject Australian values and even Australians themselves. To remind you of some of them: Melbourne cleric Abdul Nacer Ben Brika: "This is a big problem. There are two laws -- there is an Australian law and there is an Islamic law." Melbourne's Sheik Mohammad Omran: "We believe we have more rights than you because we choose Australia to be our country and you didn't." American Sheik Khalid Yasin, then based in Sydney: "There's no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend." Khaled Cheikho, now on terrorism charges in Sydney: "Sharia law is gonna prevail through this land, it's gonna be ruled by it, you tell Howard this." Sheik Faiz Mohamad, of Sydney's Global Islamic Youth Centre: "A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself." The Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-din el-Hilali, who called the September 11 attacks "God's work against oppressors" and blamed "Australian society" for pack rapes by gangs of Muslim Lebanese youths. Keysar Trad, of the Islamic Friendship Association: "The criminal dregs of white society colonised this country and . . . the descendents of these criminal dregs tell us that they are better than us." There's more, but you get the message. Perhaps it's time more responsible Muslim leaders got it, too, and realised they'd do more good by criticising their radicals than by attacking those who confront them. The real battle is not, or should not be, between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is as Arab-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan bravely put it in a debate on Al-Jazeera two months ago: "It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship." The hard truth is more Muslim spokesmen need to join us on the right side of that battle . . . and to fight with us, not against.

To: Skywatcher who wrote (6607)	4/14/2006 12:29:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

More buffoonery from the head buffoon: Iran president: Israel a threat to Islamic nations Friday, April 14, 2006; Posted: 11:02 a.m. EDT (15:02 GMT) TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iran's president said on Friday that the existence of the "Zionist regime", Iran's term for Israel, was a threat to the Islamic world, days after declaring Iran had become a nuclear power by enriching uranium. But the tone of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech to a conference on the Palestinian issue was slightly more moderate than fiery rhetoric last year, when Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling a conference: "Israel must be wiped off the map." "The existence of the Zionist regime is tantamount to an imposition of an unending and unrestrained threat so that none of the nations and Islamic countries of the region and beyond can feel secure from its threat," Ahmadinejad said on Friday. In February, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had said Ahmadinejad's October comments had been misunderstood and that he had been speaking about the Israeli "regime" not the country. Mottaki had said a country could not be removed from the map. His October remarks drew widespread condemnation. (Full story) Some analysts had said Ahmadinejad might use slightly more moderate language at Friday's conference after announcing Iran had successfully enriched uranium, a step condemned by world powers and which has ratcheted up pressure on the country.

To: Skywatcher who wrote (6607)	4/17/2006 12:18:01 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9838

Taliban are snubbed in their hometown -- Fighters seeking shelter find closed doors Globe and Mail (Toronto) ^ \| 2006-04-17 \| Graeme Smith KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — In the moonlit hours before attacking Canadian and Afghan troops in one of the biggest battles this country has seen in months, the ragged band of Taliban rebels needed a place to sleep. The insurgents had reason to expect they would find hot meals and comfortable beds in the village of Sangisar. The long stretch of mud-walled farms alongside a river about 40 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City has gained infamy as the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the suspected planner behind Afghanistan's insurgency, once served as Sangisar's village preacher. But the Taliban's hometown didn't open its doors to the insurgents when about 70 heavily armed fighters walked down the dusty streets shortly after midnight on Friday. The militants grew so desperate for shelter, villagers say, they barged into a farmer's home, locked him up and spent the night crowded into a single room with no beds, no pillows and not enough blankets. "They didn't even have any tea or bread," said a resident of Kandahar, who was visiting relatives in Sangisar and found himself sleeping next door to the gunmen. "People in the village, they feel pressed from both sides. They don't like the government and they don't like the Taliban. But these days, they're more afraid of the Taliban because they don't follow any laws." Details of the intense firefight in the district around Sangisar became clearer over the weekend, although the full chronology remains uncertain as dangerous roads prevent foreigners from visiting the battleground. So far, it appears that 41 insurgents died and 11 were captured, while at least a dozen civilians were wounded and one died. Six Afghan police were also killed, including three senior officers. No Canadians were hurt. How the fight started remains somewhat murky. Western military officials and Kandahar's governor described Afghan police launching a preventative attack against the Taliban as the insurgents were mustering their forces in Sangisar. An Afghan military source put it differently, saying that a band of insurgents ambushed the police on Highway 1, the road leading west from Kandahar, and the attack drew Afghan forces into the fight. By all accounts, however, the Afghan authorities and their foreign partners knew that Taliban were massing in Sangisar at least four days before the shooting started. This coincides with when the Taliban fighters visited the district, according to villagers, which suggests the insurgents had difficulty operating secretly in their supposed stronghold. There was nothing secretive about the banging noise a farmer heard shortly after midnight on Friday, as somebody knocked on the heavy wooden gate that protects his mud-walled compound. By the light of a full moon, the farmer could see the Taliban's entire attack group standing on the road. They looked like young men, perhaps between 20 and 35 years old, most wearing black turbans and some wearing white. Despite their heavy arsenal of Kalashnikovs, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and belts of ammunition, they appeared to have arrived on foot. "He was afraid, because they had so many guns," said the Kandahari visitor who had been sleeping in an adjoining compound. "He didn't want to let them inside, but he had no choice." They bundled him into a storage room and locked him inside, leaving him to spend the night on a dirt floor. Keeping with strict Islamic tradition, the Taliban didn't bother the farmer's wife and children, allowing them to remain in their two rooms. That left only the guest room for visitors, a space measuring four metres by six metres, to shelter about 70 gunmen. They piled inside, with barely enough room to sit down and fewer than a dozen blankets for bedding. Some stayed outside, talking and patrolling around the compound with their assault rifles ready. In the morning, the Taliban had disappeared. The farmer told his neighbours that the nighttime visit was the most terrifying thing he experienced that day, despite the smoke and explosions that soon filled the air as a battle raged around the village. "In the daytime we fear the government," the Kandahari said. "At night we fear the Taliban. But we fear the night much worse. The Taliban can kill you in a second."