Posted on 12/17/2006 4:03:30 PM PST by DAVEY CROCKETT
VEVAK learned its methodology from the Soviet KGB and many of the Islamist revolutionaries who supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini actually studied at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba Friendship University, the Oxford of terrorism. Documented Iranian alumni include the current Supreme Leader (the faqih) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, under whose Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Islamic Jurisprudent) apparatus it has traditionally operated. Its current head is Cabinet Minister Hojatoleslam Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ezhei, a graduate of Qom's Haqqani School, noted for its extremist position advocating violence against enemies and strict clerical control of society and government. The Ministry is very well funded and its charge, like that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the Pasdaran) is to guard the revolutionary Islamic Iranian regime at all costs and under all contingencies.
From the KGB playbook, VEVAK learned the art of disinformation. It's not so difficult to learn: tell the truth 80% of the time and lie 20%. Depending on how well a VEVAK agent wants to cover his/her tracks, the ratio may go up to 90/10, but it never drops below the 80/20 mark as such would risk suspicion and possible detection. The regime in Teheran has gone to great lengths to place its agents in locations around the world. Many of these operatives have been educated in the West, including the U.K. and the United States. Iranian government agencies such as embassies, consulates, Islamic cultural centers, and airline offices regularly provide cover for the work of VEVAK agents who dress well and are clean shaven, and move comfortably within our society. In this country, because of the severance of diplomatic relations, the principal site of VEVAK activities begins at the offices of Iran's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.
Teheran has worked diligently to place its operatives in important think tanks and government agencies in the West. Some of its personnel have been recruited while in prison through torture or more often through bribery, or a combination of both. Others are Islamist revolutionaries that have been set up to look like dissidents - often having been arrested and imprisoned, but released for “medical reasons”. The clue to detecting the fake “dissident” is to read carefully what he/she writes, and to ask why this vocal “dissident” was released from prison when other real dissidents have not been released, indeed have been grievously tortured and executed. Other agents have been placed in this country for over twenty-five years to slowly go through the system and rise to positions of academic prominence due to their knowledge of Farsi and Shia Islam or Islamist fundamentalism.
One of the usual tactics of VEVAK is to co-opt academia to its purposes. Using various forms of bribery, academics are bought to defend the Islamic Republic or slander its enemies. Another method is to assign bright students to train for academic posts as specialists in Iranian or Middle East affairs. Once established, such individuals are often consulted by our government as it tries to get a better idea of how it should deal with Iran. These academics then are in a position to skew the information, suggesting the utility of extended dialogue and negotiation, or the danger and futility of confronting a strong Iran or its proxies such as Hizballah (Hezbollah). These academics serve to shield the regime from an aggressive American or Western policy, and thereby buy more time for the regime to attain its goals, especially in regards to its nuclear weaponry and missile programs.
MOIS likes to use the media, especially electronic media, to its advantage. One of VEVAK's favorite tricks is setting up web sites that look like they are opposition sites but which are actually controlled by the regime. These sites often will be multilingual, including Farsi, German, Arabic French, and English. Some are crafted carefully and are very subtle in how they skew their information (e.g., Iran-Interlink, set up and run by Massoud Khodabandeh and his wife Ann Singleton from Leeds, England); others are less subtle, simply providing the regime's point of view on facts and events in the news (e.g., www.mujahedeen.com or www.mojahedin.ws). This latter group is aimed at the more gullible in our open society and unfortunately such a market exists. However, if one begins to do one's homework, asking careful questions, the material on these fake sites generally does not add up.
Let's examine a few examples of VEVAK's work in the United States. In late October, 2005, VEVAK sent three of its agents to Washington to stage a press event in which the principal Iranian resistance movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), was to be slandered. Veteran VEVAK agent Karim Haqi flew from Amsterdam to Canada where he was joined by VEVAK's Ottawa agents Amir-Hossein Kord Rostami and Mahin (Parvin-Mahrokh) Haji, and the three flew from Toronto to Washington. Fortunately the resistance had been tracking these three, informed the FBI of their presence in Washington, and when the three tried to hold a press conference, the resistance had people assigned to ask pointed questions of them so that they ended the interview prematurely and fled back to Canada.
Abolghasem Bayyenet is a member of the Iranian government. He serves as a trade expert for the Ministry of Commerce. But his background of study and service in the Foreign Ministry indicates that Bayyenet is more than just an economist or a suave and savvy businessman. In an article published in Global Politician on April 23, 2006, entitled “Is Regime Change Possible in Iran?”, Bayyenet leads his audience to think that he is a neutral observer, concerned lest the United States make an error in its assessment of Iran similar to the errors of intelligence and judgment that led to our 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its less than successful outcome. However, his carefully crafted bottom line is that the people of Iran are not going to support regime change and that hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually has achieved greater popularity than his predecessors because of his concern for the problems of the poor and his fight for economic and social justice. To the naive, Bayyenet makes Ahmadinejad sound positively saintly. Conveniently overlooked is the occurrence of over four thousand acts of protest, strikes, anti-regime rallies, riots, and even political assassinations by the people of Iran against the government in the year since Ahmadinejad assumed office. So too, the following facts are ignored: the sizeable flight of capital, the increase in unemployment, and the rising two-figure rate of inflation, all within this last year. Bayyenet is a regime apologist, and when one is familiar with the facts, his arguments ring very hollow. However, his English skills are excellent, and so the naОve might be beguiled by his commentary.
Mohsen Sazegara is VEVAK's “reformed revolutionary”. A student supporter of Khomeini before the 1979 revolution, Sazegara joined the “imam” on his return from exile and served in the government for a decade before supposedly growing disillusioned.
He formed several reformist newspapers but ran afoul of the hardliners in 2003 and was arrested and imprisoned by VEVAK. Following “hunger strikes”, Sazegara was released for health reasons and permitted to seek treatment abroad. Although critical of the government and particularly of Ahmadinejad and KhameneМ, Sazegara is yet more critical of opposition groups, leaving the impression that he favors internal regime change but sees no one to lead such a movement for the foreseeable future. His bottom line: no one is capable of doing what needs to be done, so we must bide our time. Very slick, but his shadow shows his likely remaining ties to the MOIS.
http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_27144.shtml
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2007/Feb-10-Sat-2007/news/12519468.html
Feb. 10, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Police shoot man setting fires near Strip
REVIEW-JOURNAL
A man setting fires close to large fuel tanks near the south end of the Strip was shot and wounded by police Friday after officers were summoned to the scene, authorities said.
About 8:45 p.m., an AMR ambulance crew stationed near Mandalay Bay saw the man throwing Molotov cocktails and igniting small brush fires, across Las Vegas Boulevard from Mandalay Bay, said Sgt. John Loretto, a spokesman for Las Vegas police.
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Witnesses said the man was brandishing a weapon and had pointed the gun at the ambulance crew, Las Vegas police said.
Clark County Fire Department personnel were the first to respond but retreated when the man brandished his weapon, said Fire Department spokesman Scott Allison.
Clark County firefighters said they were not shot at.
Two police bicycle officers then confronted the suspect and exchanged gunfire with the suspect, authorities said.
Late Friday, Sheriff Doug Gillespie said the suspect was a Las Vegas police recruit who was enrolled in the academy.
Gillespie said officers shot the suspect multiple times. He said the suspect was armed with two handguns.
"I'm not going to say this is a normal officer-involved shooting," Gillespie said.
The man was taken to University Medical Center, police said.
His condition was not known late Friday
Feb. 10, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Disease shuts animal shelter
Hundreds of dogs, cats to be killed
By MIKE KALIL
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Hundreds of dogs and cats housed at Southern Nevada's regional animal shelter will probably be euthanized after visiting veterinarians discovered a severe outbreak of contagious diseases in the overcrowded facility.
Lied Animal Shelter closed to the public Friday while a team from The Humane Society of the United States began individual examinations of the 1,800 dogs and cats impounded there to determine how many carried deadly viruses that spread quickly in shelter settings.
Although shelter officials were not aware of problems, the Humane Society team noticed dogs and cats suffering from serious respiratory and intestinal diseases shortly after it arrived in Las Vegas on Monday for a four-day site inspection.
"We had animals dying every day," said Kim Intino, director of animal sheltering issues for the Humane Society and leader of the six-member team of vets and other experts who reviewed Lied.
The nation's foremost animal protection group had been invited by Lied to assess shelter operations and suggest improvements. The team planned to finish its paid work Thursday, but instead declared an "emergency" and stayed on Friday to begin corrective measures at the North Mojave Road facility.
"It is common for there to be problems in animal shelters. But we realized the disease situation was grave," Intino said. "We have a situation of animals that have disease and are dying from that disease in large numbers."
Exact numbers were not available, but shelter officials acknowledged they were looking at putting down hundreds of dogs infected with parvovirus or distemper and scores of cats with panleukopenia, often likened to a feline version of distemper.
Humans are not susceptible to the diseases, which attack animals' respiratory systems and intestinal tracts.
Although Intino said she had not previously come across an outbreak of the magnitude found at Lied, shelter leaders said they had not noticed serious problems.
Lied employs a full-time veterinarian at the shelter, but the animal doctor spends almost all work hours performing spay and neuter operations rather than evaluating the animals, said Diane Orgill, executive director of the shelter.
"We didn't realize this was happening," she said.
Orgill said that while the Humane Society's experts might be able to "look at a cat across the room and tell you what's wrong," the diseases at issue can often be difficult to detect.
"There's a lot of things you don't notice right way," she said. "If a dog sneezes but licks before someone sees him, you're not going to notice."
Orgill noted that Lied had invited the outside scrutiny and that the Humane Society had found disease outbreaks in other shelters.
Intino said Friday evening that she could not provide an estimate on how many dogs and cats are affected, because the team was still in the "emergency phase." Humane Society leaders were directing the segregation of sick animals, performing euthanizations and training Lied staffers on how to properly carry on that work after the team departs today.
Vets were finding a much lower rate of disease in the approximately 800 dogs and cats in Lied's adoption park, Orgill said.
Animals infected with the viruses were concentrated in the shelter's intake area, where at any time about 1,000 animals typically spend three to 10 days awaiting pickup by their owner, a spay or neuter surgery, or euthanasia for animals deemed unadoptable.
Orgill said shelter overcrowding undoubtedly hastened the spread of disease.
"The number of animals we have increases the chances of this happening," she said.
It was unclear Friday evening when Lied would be able to reopen its shelter, clinic and adoption park.
When it does, Animal Foundation spokesman Mark Fierro said, the shelter will immediately implement one of the Humane Society's key recommendations for minimizing the chances of further disease spread.
Fierro said shelter employees will immunize animals as soon as they are brought to the shelter by animal control officers or members of the public.
"They were doing that on a select number of animals, and now they'll be doing it for all," he said.
In addition, the shelter will begin using vaccines that spread antibodies through animals' systems faster.
People who have adopted animals from Lied recently and have concerns about their pets' health may bring them in for a checkup or return them permanently, Orgill said.
She encouraged pet owners whose animals have gone missing to visit the shelter in hopes of finding them, adding that reducing overcrowding will significantly help combat the crisis the shelter faces.
"If they've had vaccinations in the past, they're probably going to be fine, but every animal is different," said Orgill, who also serves as president of The Animal Foundation, the private nonprofit that operates the shelter.
The foundation contracts with Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas to house abandoned, neglected and stray animals.
More than 7,000 dogs, cats, rabbits, gerbils, guinea pigs and other animals are adopted annually at Lied, and its spay and neuter clinic has performed nearly 200,000 surgeries.
The Animal Foundation generated headlines five years ago amid allegations of mismanagement by then-President Mary Herro and citizens' complaints that their pets were wrongfully euthanized there.
A 2001 investigation by the city of Las Vegas found that management controls at the shelter were inadequate, poorly trained employees had illegal access to controlled substances, and thousands of dollars had been stolen.
The shelter's fortunes seemed to have turned around since it changed directors, boosted and replaced much of its staff and expanded operations.
Links referenced within this article
By MIKE KALIL
http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/rjstaff.html
REVIEW-JOURNAL
http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/rjstaff.html
Find this article at:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2007/Feb-10-Sat-2007/news/12517017.html
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/16670873.htm
Posted on Sat, Feb. 10, 2007
Four dead in small plane crash on Fort Stewart
Associated Press
FORT STEWART, Ga. - Four people died when a small civilian airplane crashed in southeast Georgia, authorities said Saturday.
The plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza, went down Friday evening in Fort Stewart. It was en route from Titusville, Fla., to Anderson, S.C., said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta.
The cause of the crash was unknown.
Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said Saturday the plane went down in a training area about five miles north of the tiny town of Gum Branch in Liberty County.
Bergen said the plane crashed at about 6:30 p.m. Friday. Military police and firefighters responded to the crash and found four bodies among the wreckage.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were heading to Fort Stewart to recover the wreckage and investigate the cause of the crash.
The identities of those killed had not been released Saturday.
http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/2007/02/nuclearizing-iran-forging-antisemitic_06.html
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Nuclearizing Iran Forging Antisemitic Alliance
In the wake of its Holocaust denial conference and Holocaust cartoon contest, mass-murdering Islamist Iran is forming an antisemitic international, the likes of which the world has not seen since the Nazi era.
An international institute for Holocaust denial will be the centerpiece of this evil enterprise, highlighting a new level of cooperation between neo-Nazis and the nuclear-arming Iranian mullahocracy.
The usual suspects--such well-known neo-Nazis as Bernhard Schaub of Switzerland, Serge Thion of France, and Australia's Fredrick Toben--are expected to play important roles. Mohammad Ali Rahim, an advisor to Iranian monster-in-chief Mahmud Ahmadinejad, will act as general secretary of the institute, which will be based in Tehran.
Iran, since the fall of the pro-Western, modernizing Shah, has become a center for organized international Holocaust denial and has helped elevate the endeavor from fringe hate speech to a state-approved pseudo-intellectual debate. Iran has also become a refuge for the biggest names in European Holocaust denial, including: (1) Jurgen Graf, who was sentenced in Switzerland to 15 months in prison for Holocaust falsification, before fleeing to Tehran, and (2) Austrian Holocaust denier Wolfgang Frohlich, who testified as a so-called expert witness during Graf's 1998 trial. This saved Frohlich from Austria's severe anti-Holocaust denial statutes. Frohlich argued that evidence proved no Jews were killed by gassing.
The website of the United States-based, Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review (IHR) states that "Iran's official radio voice to the world, IRIB, has in recent years expressed support for Holocaust revisionism by broadcasting sympathetic interviews with leading revisionist scholars and activists (including) IHR Director Mark Weber ... and Ernst Zundel." The latter is a German Holocaust denier and pamphleteer who was jailed several times in Canada.
IHR further states that the "editorial, 'Myth of the Holocaust,' in the English-language Iranian paper Kayhan International, Dec. 6, 1999, commented sympathetically on Holocaust revisionism, and criticized German government persecution of Dr. Fredrick Toben and others who dispute Holocaust claims."
Iranian-Nazi ties are deep and disgusting. About 600 Iranian journalists and 160 members of the Iranian parliament have signed petitions supporting Roger Garaudy, who was fined $40,000 by French authorities for his book claiming the Holocaust was a myth. When Garaudy landed in Iran, the country's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Sayyad Khamenei, granted him an audience and lauded his work.
Other neo-Nazis who have found Iran an especially welcoming and sheltering place include David Myatt, a founder of the British National Socialist Movement (NSM), who has been jailed for racist attacks, and has changed his name to Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt following his reported conversion to Islam. Myatt supports the killing of any Muslim who breaks his oath of loyalty to Islam, and the setting up of a Muslim superstate. He encourages Neo-Nazis to convert to Islam, arguing that Islam is the best hope for combating Zionism and the West.
A number of so-called traditionalist Catholics have also visited Iran and shown support for the regime in its nuclear impasse with the West. The Holocaust-denying Catholic splinter group--which includes actor Mel Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson--rejects many of the Vatican's core teachings and essentially views every Jew as an enemy of Christ. There is evidence of growing cooperation between the movement, which seems to be on the rise in the US and Europe, and white supremacist hate groups.
The brain behind the Islamist-neo-Nazi alliance is an elderly, mysterious Swiss-German financier straight out of central casting. His name is Ahmed Huber (nee Albert Huber). A former journalist who converted to Islam, Huber has been linked by US and European law enforcement and intelligence agencies to Al Qaeda, which he publicly praised after 9/11. He has also admitted meeting with Binladen followers.
Born in 1927, Huber remains highly active inside Europe's radical right elite. His Swiss home is said to boast a poster of Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a framed quote from Hitler denouncing modern art, and other Nazi memorabilia items.
Huber is a longtime leader of the Avalon Gemeinschaft, a secret fraternity whose members include aging former Waffen-SS volunteers and younger radicals, such as Germany's Horst Mahlet, Jurgen Graf, and and the Swedish-based Ahmad Rami, a former Moroccan military officer.
Huber's Muslim project dates to the late 1950s, when he publicly cast his lot with secular pan-Arabists, including Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who offered Nazi war criminals safe haven and hefty salaries in exchange for their help on "Jewish affairs." In the wake of Egypt's military defeats in both the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, and after Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat, signed a peace accord with Israel, and Khomeini toppled the Shah, Huber embraced Islamist Iran. In 1982, he wrote an essay for a book entitled "Der Unbekannte Islam" ("The unknown Islam") that identified Zionism, Judaism, and America as Islam's implacable enemies. He often asserts that Hitler regarded Islam as the one true religion.
Huber's work recalls Iran's axis with the Third Reich, which began during the prewar years, when it welcomed Nazi Gestapo officers and other operatives to Tehran and allowed them to use the city as a base for Middle East agitation against the British and the region's Jews. The leading Tehran-based Nazi was Fritz Grobba, Berlin's envoy to the Middle East, who was often called "the German Lawrence," because he called for creation of a pan-Islamic state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran.
Relations between Berlin and Tehran strengthened when Hitler came to power in 1933. The then-Shah, Reza Pahlavi, sought the Reich's help in reducing British petro-political domination of Persia, which the Shah renamed Iran in 1935. Iran in Farsi means Land of the Aryans and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists cherished.
The abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in neighboring Iraq was planned in Iran. After the British booted the Nazis out of Baghdad in June 1941, German aircrews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across Iraq's northern border into Iran.
The pro-Nazi Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Sunni religious leader, was smuggled across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British--and for Jewish refugees to be shipped to the gas chambers of Nazi-occupied Poland.
The same gas chambers that the Mufti's spiritual heirs and their neo-Nazi allies would one day deny.
In October 1941, British, Soviet other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested, and the Shah's son was installed in power. (In contrast with his father, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi befriended Iran's Jewish community and covertly allied his country with Israel.)
The Mufti escaped to the Italian embassy, and was allowed to leave Iran along with the rest of the Italian delegation. He landed in Berlin, where he met with Hitler, established his own Reich-backed bureau and was given airtime on Radio Berlin in order to agitate for international Jewish destruction, as well as a pan-Islamic alliance with Nazi Germany.
The Mufti called upon all Muslims to "kill the Jews wherever you see them." He raised three divisions of Islamic Waffen SS, including Iranian Nazis, to massacre Jews in Bosnia.
After the war, the Mufti fled to Switzerland, was detained and put under house arrest in France, but escaped and was given asylum in Egypt, where he established a terrorist apparatus that was responsible for the assassination of jordanian King Abdullah in 1951.
The British declined to have the Mufti arrested and tried as a war criminal out of fear of antagonizing a hero of Arab and Muslim extremism. He died in Beirut, Lebanon in 1974.
Testimony presented at the Nuremberg trials accused the Mufti of not only having knowledge about the Holocaust but of also actively encouraging the initiation of extermination programs against European Jews.
Adolf Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny (who was subsequently executed) testified at his 1946 war crimes trial: "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz."
A postscript: The idea for the 1935 Iranian name change was supposedly suggested by Tehran's ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of Hitler's trusted banker, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Similarly, there is reason to believe that the idea for Iran's Holocaust-denying initiative came from the neo-Nazi financier Ahmed Huber.
# posted by Confidential Reporter @ 4:37 AM
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ahmed+Huber&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ahmed+Huber+Soros+connection&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ahmed+Huber+funds+Soros&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US
Cal, if I am reading this correctly, it is muslim money behind Soros and maybe even Hitler:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ahmed+Huber+funded+by+Arab+money&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US&q=Ahmed+Huber+funded+largely+by+Persian+Gulf+and+particularly+Saudi+money&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?q=Soros+funded+largely+by+Persian+Gulf+and+particularly+Saudi+money&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Soros+funds+al-qaeda&btnG=Search&hl=en&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=David+Myatt&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Albert+Huber&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Huber%27s+Muslim+project+dates+to+the+late+1950s&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Iran%27s+axis+with+the+Third+Reich&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Avalon+Gemeinschaft&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Berlin+and+Tehran+strengthened+when+Hitler+came+to+power+in+1933&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
http://www.google.com/search?q=Dr.+Hjalmar+Schacht&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US
Cal, on several of these googles, Free Republic came up, I do hope they are the threads with your research on this subject.
granny
http://www.china-intel.blogspot.com/
Monday, January 08, 2007
Norht Korea's biochemical weapons threat
From Popular Mechanics (link):
Fifty miles south of the Chinese border lies the rural town of Chongju. Like many North Korean towns, it is a small, impoverished place where people scratch a bare existence from government-controlled farms. What photographs exist of Chongju reveal a brown landscape of depleted-looking fields and shanty-style houses. It is hard to believe anything of value grows here.
But, according to intelligence reports, something precious to the North Korean regime may be under cultivation in Chongju. Beyond the shacks stands an installation suspected of being a component in North Korea's bioweapons (BW) research and development program. The effort is steeped in a level of secrecy possible only in a totalitarian state, but it is thought to encompass at least 20 facilities throughout the country. Another 12 plants churn out chemical weapons.
* * *
North Korea's Chemical and Bioweapons (CBW) program appears to be modeled on that of the former Soviet Union, which covertly constructed a massive biological weapons infrastructure within the shell of a civilian research organization called Biopreparat. Inside Biopreparat, the Soviets developed deadly agents that included weaponized forms of anthrax and pneumonic plague.
Intelligence reports from the United States and South Korea list anthrax, smallpox, pneumonic plague, cholera and botulism toxins as leading components of North Korea's bioweapons projects. "Information from U.S. government sources indicates that North Korea is capable of growing several biological agents," says Michael Stebbins, head of Biology Policy at the Federation of American Scientists. And, he says, the country "has the infrastructure to weaponize them."
* * *
North Korea's biological and chemical weapons have never been deployed against outside enemies. According to defectors, however, they have been used inside the country on human test subjects. The victims: political prisoners.
* * *
Tens of thousands of American troops and millions of civilians reside within range of North Korea's missiles. However, Robert Templer, Asia Program director for the International Crisis Group, says the most threatening scenario may not be a direct attack by North Korea, but rather what might happen to the weapons during the chaos that would erupt if the regime crumbles...
Posted at 1/08/2007 09:31:00 AM 0
Today, we go and meet the cats of another country....LOL
http://www.israelated.com/node/8669
http://www.israelated.com/the_godfather_of_all_cats_cats_of_jaffa_part_2_0
How Romero became a Julia:
http://www.israelated.com/node/8669
For some reason the urls are not copying as in the window, but the links are at the bottom of the pages.
http://www.israelated.com/node/8669
http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications251807&Category=publications&Subcategory=0
Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia Presents the Return of its Publication, Sawt al-Jihad [Voice of Jihad], the Thirtieth Issue, Calling for Strikes on all Oil Interests
By SITE Institute
February 8, 2007
Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia issued the thirtieth issue of its former biweekly electronic magazine, Sawt al-Jihad [Voice of Jihad], today, Thursday, February 8, 2006. The issuance of this publication comes nearly twenty months after its last, the group having distributed the 29th edition in April 2005, also following a several month absence. This issue, 56-pages in length, contains fifteen articles, not including sections with readers’ contributions and messages/responses, which cover subjects pertaining to jihad, Mujahideen operations, martyrs, and scholars. The Abqaiq oil refinery suicide attack from February 2006 is featured throughout the magazine, some pieces concentrating on individuals involved, and another, titled: “Bin Laden and the Oil Weapon”, discussing this incident, as well as the impact of the Mujahideen targeting oil vis-à-vis America’s dependence upon this resource, and future targets on oil producing countries.
Introducing the magazine is Abu Malik Muhammad bin Abdullah al-Nasser, who lauds the return of Sawt al-Jihad as that which serves as a podium for the Mujahideen to reveal facts and dispel falsity. He announces that specific operations have been planned to target Americans, British, and their “henchman” in Saudi Arabia, aiming to “clean the Arabian Peninsula from the filth of the polytheists and the Crusader bases that spread in the whole of the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam and the home of the message.” Abu Malik also addresses the Emir of al-Qaeda, Usama bin Laden, assuring that the Mujahideen still continue on the path of jihad. Further, he sends greetings to the Islamic State of Iraq and its leaders, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, stating that the Mujahideen in Saudi Arabia spiritually fight alongside their brothers in Iraq.
The featured article, “Bin Laden and the Oil Weapon”, written by Adeeb al-Bassam, begins with a review of the “successful” attack on the Abqaiq oil refinery from last year, dismissing the Saudi Ministry of Interior’s claims of it being a failure. The crux of the article, however, is the impact on the United States and other industrial countries when oil facilities are struck by the Mujahideen. Abqaiq is placed within this context to illustrate the effect, as well as bombing on Iraqi oil facilities and those of the Royal Dutch Shell corporation in Nigeria, and the notion of bin Laden using oil as a weapon is not a strategic change in al-Qaeda policy. For a large portion of the article, Bassem reviews a key part of the 2007 State of the Union address by U.S. President George W. Bush, in which he called for alternative fuel sources and reduced dependency upon the Middle East.
Alternative fuel sources are dismissed by the author, using statements from figures such as British Petroleum Chief Execution John Brown as evidence for its improbability, and he argues that politically and economically, America can never reduce its dependency upon the Middle East and its oil. Thus, the article encourages the Mujahideen to continue to follow bin Laden’s directives and strike oil targets not only in Saudi Arabia, but elsewhere. Substitute sources for oil, like Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela are cited, to which the author writes: “we should strike petroleum interests in all areas which supply the United States, and not only in the Middle East, because the target is to stop its imports or decrease it by all means. Targets, Bassam points out, should be oil fields, pipelines, loading platforms and carriers, which he believes will ultimately choke the U.S. economy.
Bassam concludes: “I assure that the biggest party hurt will be the industrial nations, and on top them, the United States, the holder of the Cross. The producing nations will not be hurt as much; rather, the producing nations will benefit by higher oil prices. It is the same as the economic boom which the Gulf countries had in 1973 after cutting oil imports.”
A translation of the table of contents, introduction, and cited article is provided to our Intel Service members.
http://www.aina.org/news/2007021011944.htm
Assyrian International News Agency
Lebanon Hit By Black Market Weapons Boom
Posted GMT 2-10-2007 17:9:44
Beirut (AFP) -- The price of a Kalashnikov assault rifle has soared in Lebanon, riding the wave of political crisis, community tension and fears of a new civil war, AFP reported.
It used to be 100 dollars (76 euros). Now it's more than 700 dollars.
"It's a stampede," an arms dealer who did not wish to be named told AFP.
"Those who have guns are keeping them or not selling except for a huge profit, and those who don't have them are buying so they can face any eventuality."
He said a cartridge clip that used to go for two dollars now costs 20 dollars, and "a Kalashnikov has gone from a hundred dollars to 700 or 750 dollars."
After the country's 1975-1990 civil war, militias handed in their weapons, all of them except the Shiite group Hezbollah, whose guerrillas were fighting Israeli occupation in south Lebanon.
The United Nations -- as well as Lebanese officials -- have demanded that Hezbollah disarm, but it has not done so.
After the current political crisis sparked deadly Beirut street clashes last month between opposition supporters and those backing the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, "everyone is looking for guns," said a businessman close to the arms trade.
Requesting anonymity, he added that Syria- and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which heads the opposition movement, is not selling weapons on the local market.
The source of guns now available is twofold, the businessman said. Either they have been passed from hand to hand down the years or they were smuggled into the country, generally from Iraq.
Last December, police in the north seized weapons in a raid on offices of a pro-Syrian party, which said they were left over from the 1980s "from the time of the resistance" against Israel.
But guns that have hit the market recently are brought by road from Iraq via Syria, often hidden in containers, lorries, "and even concealed inside car doors," the businessman said.
"To ensure they are not found by Syrian customs officers, only small quantities are smuggled at any one time," he added.
On February 4, Syrian officials said they had impounded an Iraqi truck transporting guns to Lebanon, and on Thursday a lorry loaded with weapons destined for Hezbollah was intercepted by security forces in east Beirut.
EM: Novaya Gazeta management refutes story on Politkovskaya killers
Ekho Moskvy
10.02.2007
15:28 (Moscow time)
http://echo.msk.ru/news/359159.html
[my tr.]
Novaya Gazeta management refutes the story concerning the arrest of
the supposed killers of Anna Politkovskaya.
Deputy editor-in-chief Sergey Sokolov told the radio station Ekho
Moskvy that this story does not correspond to reality. He refused to
make any comment on the investigation, saying that it is a matter
protected by secrecy.
"The whole report bears no relation to reality whatsoever," was Novaya
Gazeta deputy editor-in-chief Sergey Sokolov's comment on the story
that has appeared in the media claiming that the Russian Federal Space
[Cosmos] Forces [Kosmicheskie voiska] have helped to secure the arrest
of two Chechens for the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. Invoking the law
on secrecy, he noted that it would not be proper to discuss the
steps that are currently being taken by the investigation. "It is
premature to do so," he considers.
Earlier today, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published a report
that two Chechens had been arrested on suspicion of killing
Politkovskaya. The Prosecutor General's office has made no comment on
the story.
CK: Mass psychosis of Chechen children from Chechnya turned out to be poisoning
Mass psychosis of Chechen children from Chechnya turned out to be
poisoning
British Trade Secretary Tells Russia to "Play by the Rules"
Publication time: 9 February 2007, 21:42
British Trade Secretary Alistair Darling warned Russia on Thursday,
Feb. 8, that it should "play by the rules" and ensure "legal
certainty" for British investors. Darling spoke at the end of his
three-day visit to Moscow.
His sharp comments followed talks with Russia's Finance Minister
Alexei Kudrin, which were designed to shore up Britain's interests
in Russia in anticipation of a troubled period of diplomacy. Britain
was Russia's biggest foreign investor last year with 2.8 billion
pounds invested in the first nine months.
Mr Darling said he raised his concerns that foreign investors in
Russia were not facing clear ground rules with Mr Kudrin and the
Industry and Energy Minister, Viktor Khristenko. He criticized the
state-run energy company Gazprom's takeover of a majority stake in
Shell's huge Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in December. "There was
an initial backlash following Sakhalin and they [the Russians] are
aware of that," he said, quoted by The Guardian.
On BP's problems at its Kovykta gas field, he said: "What we have
said is that people are now apprehensive, and it would be far better
if these matters were settled in accordance with established laws."
Russia's environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, reported last
month that the Russo-British venture TNK-BP was in breach of its
license because it had underexploited the field. It is widely
thought the breach claim is a means of persuading TNK-BP to cede
control of the field to Gazprom. Shell's Sakhalin-2 was paralyzed by
similar accusations of environmental violations, which disappeared
once Gazprom took a 50 percent plus one share stake.
Analysts say there is a concerted effort by the Kremlin to seize
control of the oil and gas sector, the engine of Russia's booming
economy. Russian officials admit privately that they feel cheated by
some of the production-sharing deals signed on disadvantageous terms
with British companies such as Shell in the 1990s. A new law to go
before the State Duma this year is expected to formalize the
practice that state-run companies get a controlling stake in major
oil and gas projects.
Mr Darling's comments yesterday came as Lord Jenkin of Roding, a
former energy minister, told the House of Lords that any moves by
Gazprom to buy the largely British-owned Centrica should be "knocked
on the head". He accused Russia of "shamefully bullying" Shell and
using energy as an instrument of foreign policy.
Source: Mosnews
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2007/02/09/7405.shtml
This is a wonderful collection of "Animal and Bird Spies".
A couple that I did not know, all kinds of animals.
http://mprofaca.cro.net/spy_animals.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/2007/deep-politics.htm
“DEEP POLITICS” AND THE MOON RACE
Soviet Gray Areas of History Explored and Exposed
An Article-Editorial
By Peter Pesavento
[This is almost a book, I spot read and it is interesting, granny]
http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=64561
Man on FBI’s terrorist watch list arrested in metro area
posted by: Sara Gandy , Web Producer
written by: Amy Herdy , Investigative Producer
reported by: Nicole Vap , Executive Producer Investigative
created: 2/9/2007 2:04:02 PM
Last updated: 2/9/2007 9:46:28 PM
A man on the FBI's terror watch list was arrested in Colorado. 9NEWS at 6 p.m. 2/09/07
AURORA – In what is described as a ‘sensitive’ case, police took a man into custody early Friday morning whose name is on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, officials said.
9WantsToKnow has learned police stopped Moussa Bitar, 27, at 2 a.m. for suspicion of drunk driving at East 6th Avenue and Dillon Way, who then took him into custody on unrelated charges, officials said.
When asked to provide identification, police said, Bitar produced papers that listed the name of a dead man. Police were later able to determine his true identity and learned of his listing on the terrorist watch list.
Bitar is currently being held at the Aurora Detention Center, said David Gaouette, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver.
“The federal government is looking into any possible federal violations,” Gaouette said. “The FBI and other agencies are interested in talking to him.”
(Copyright KUSA*TV, All Rights Reserved)
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=64572
House explodes, one injured
written by: Jeffrey Wolf , Web Producer
created: 2/9/2007 4:42:21 PM
Last updated: 2/10/2007 9:20:59 AM
A house explosion burned a 52-year-old woman in Lakewood on Friday. 9NEWS at 6 p.m. 2/09/07
VIEW SLIDESHOW
LAKEWOOD – A 52-year-old woman was injured after her house apparently exploded Friday afternoon.
West Metro Fire says they got a report of a house explosion at 17th and Ingalls around 4:15 p.m.
Authorities say a woman had second-degree burns on 20 percent of her body, mostly on her face and arms.
Investigators are looking to see if the fire was sparked by a natural gas leak.
The woman says she smelled natural gas for the past two days and on Friday, she was ironing in her back room when she heard two small explosions.
She tried to run out of the house when the third explosion caused the house to burst into flames.
The explosion was so powerful it actually shook the house off its foundation.
Five fire trucks and 25 firefighters were at the scene to fight the fire.
(Copyright KUSA*TV. All rights reserved.)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/alqaeda-in-plot-to-attack-france/2007/02/10/1170524345165.html#
Al-Qaeda 'in plot to attack France'
February 11, 2007
AdvertisementAdvertisement
FRENCH intelligence has produced a dossier alleging that al-Qaeda plans an attack on the country during forthcoming presidential elections.
The Arabic-language al-Hayat daily newspaper has reported there were "several indications of a plot to copy the Spanish scenario in France", a reference to the explosions that rocked Madrid in March 2004.
The London-based daily quoted mainly "messages posted on internet sites close to al-Qaeda carrying threats against France, accompanied by pictures from the campaigns for the presidential elections", which are slated for April and May.
The newspaper said the eight-page intelligence report took three months to prepare and included contributions from different French intelligence services which identified "four sources of threat".
One came from "Iraqi networks", including returnee volunteers from European countries who had fought with the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda.
"The north African networks linked to Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat" (GSPC) are another source of threat, the report said.
Al-Hayat also published a letter attributed to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden addressed to a GSPC leader referred to as Abu Qassem, in which he recommends targeting France "to hit where it hurts most".
Although France was not mentioned by name in the letter, the Saudi-born terror chief - who has a $US25 million ($32 million) US bounty on his head - made clear references to it.
"This infidel country has colonised Muslim countries for a long time. Today it uses all its power to support the infidel group which rules Algeria with an iron fist," bin Laden said in the letter published by the daily.
"It is a religious duty to fight [this enemy] even in the heart of its land, especially that it chases the mujahedeen [holy warriors] within its country and in neighbouring ones ... and that it is a firm US ally," the letter said.
Paris has come under fire from Islamic radicals over its 2004 ban on religious insignia including the Muslim headscarf in state schools, as well as over its support for the Algerian Government.
In January, the GSPC urged Algerians to attack French nationals.
Formed in 1998 by dissidents of the Islamic Armed Group, the GSPC is the sole remaining radical movement that continues to wage an insurgency against the secular Algerian state.
Last September the group officially placed itself under al-Qaeda orders.
Source: The Sun-Herald
The Golden Rule
You called the Golden Rule "Ali Sina's cult" and asked me to “prove the legitimacy of the Golden Rule”.
The Golden Rule is as old as humanity. It is commonsense Mr. Zakaria. What on earth is more self evident than “Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you”? This is actually the common theme in almost all the religions. I will quote this principle as stated by various religions based on alphabetical order.
Bahá'í Faith: “Choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself." Epistle to the Son of the Wolf
Brahmanism: "This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". Mahabharata, 5:1517
Buddhism: "...a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another?" Samyutta NIkaya v. 353
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." Udana-Varga 5:18
Christianity: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Matthew 7:12, King James Version.
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Luke 6:31, King James Version.
"...and don't do what you hate...", Gospel of Thomas 6.
Confucianism: "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" Analects 15:23
"Ze-Gong asked, 'Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?' Confucius replied, 'It is the word 'xu' -- reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'" Doctrine of the Mean 13.3
"Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence." Mencius VII.A.4
Ancient Egyptian: "Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110 Translated by R.B. Parkinson. The original dates to 1970 to 1640 BCE and may be the earliest version ever written.
Hinduism: "One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself." Mencius Vii.A.4
"This is the sum of the Dharma [duty]: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you." Mahabharata 5:1517
Humanism: "(5) Humanists acknowledge human interdependence, the need for mutual respect and the kinship of all humanity."
"Don't do things you wouldn't want to have done to you, British Humanist Society.
Jainism: "In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self." Lord Mahavira, 24th Tirthankara
"A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated. "Sutrakritanga 1.11.33
Judaism: "...thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.", Leviticus 19:18
"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." Talmud, Shabbat 31a.
"And what you hate, do not do to any one." Tobit 4:15
Native American Spirituality:
"All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." Black Elk
Roman Pagan Religion: "The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves."
Shinto: "The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form"
Sikhism: "Don't create enmity with anyone as God is within everyone." Guru Arjan Devji 259
Taoism: "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss." T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien.
Wicca: "An it harm no one, do what thou wilt" (i.e. do what ever you will, as long as it harms nobody, including yourself). One's will is to be carefully thought out in advance of action. This is called the Wiccan Rede
Yoruba: ( Nigeria ): "One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts."
Zoroastrianism: "That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself". Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5
"Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others." Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29
Islam is the only religion that does not adhere to the Golden Rule (and I am glad that you admit that). The closest that Islam comes to this principle is a hadith that says
"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths."
This brotherhood however does not extend to everyone. Quran (9:23) states that the believers should not take for friends and protectors (awlia) their fathers and brothers if they love Infidelity above Islam. In fact there are many verses that tell the Muslims to kill the unbelievers and be harsh with them. A clear example that Islam is not based on the Golden Rule is the verse (48:29) It says: "Muhammad is the messenger of Allah; and those who are with him are strong against Unbelievers, (but) compassionate amongst each other.”
This is the perfect definition of fascism. There are many other verses that show the brotherhood in Islam is not universal. The rest of mankind have no rights and should not be treated in the same way that Muslims are to be treated. The entire Quran is the breach of the Golden Rule. Quran tells Muslims to slay the unbelievers wherever they find them (2:191), do not befriend them (3:28), fight them and show them harshness (9:123), and smite their heads (47:4).
http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/YaminZakariap8.htm
Jihad, the Lord's Supper, and eternal life
By Spengler
Jihad injures reason, for it honors a god who suffers no constraints on his caprice, unlike the Judeo-Christian god, who is limited by love. That is the nub of Pope Benedict XVI's September 12 address in Regensburg, Germany. It promises to be the Vatican's most controversial utterance in living memory.
When a German-language volume appeared in 2003 quoting the same analysis by a long-dead Jewish theologian, I wrote of "oil on the flames of civilizational war". [1] Now the same ban has been preached from St Peter's chair, and it is a defining moment comparable to Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Earlier this year, Benedict's elliptical remarks to former students at a private seminar in 2005, mentioned in passing by an American Jesuit and reported in this space, created a scandal. [2] I wrote at the time that even the pope must whisper when it comes to Islam. We have entered a different stage of civilizational war.
The Islamic world now views the pontiff as an existential threat, and with reason. Jihad is not merely the whim of a despotic divinity, as the pope implied. It is much more: jihad is the fundamental sacrament of Islam, the Muslim cognate of the Lord's Supper in Christianity, that is, the unique form of sacrifice by which the individual believer communes with the Transcendent. To denounce jihad on theological grounds is a blow at the foundations of Islam, in effect a papal call for the conversion of the Muslims.
Just before then-cardinal Ratzinger's election as pope last year, I wrote, "Now that everyone is talking about Europe's demographic death, it is time to point out that there exists a way out: convert European Muslims to Christianity. The reported front-runner at the Vatican conclave ... Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is one of the few Church leaders unafraid to raise the subject." [3] The Regensburg address oversteps the bounds of dialogue and verges upon the missionary. A great deal has changed since John Paul II kissed the Koran before news cameras in 1999. The boys and girls of the Catholic youth organization Communione e Liberazione that Ratzinger nurtured for a generation will have a great deal to talk to their Muslim school-fellows about.
No more can one assume now that Europe will slide meekly into dhimmitude.
In that respect [I wrote during the conclave] John Paul II recalled the sad position of Pius XII, afraid to denounce publicly the murder of Polish priests by Nazi occupiers - let alone the murder of Polish Jews - for fear that the Nazis would react by killing even more. It is hard to second-guess the actions of Pius XII given his terrible predicament, but at some point one must ask when the Gates of Hell can be said to have prevailed over St Peter.
Specifically, Benedict stated that jihad, the propagation of Islam by force, is irrational, because it is against the Reason of God. Citing a 14th-century Byzantine emperor to the effect that Mohammed's "decree that the faith he preached should be spread with the sword" as "evil and inhumane" provoked headlines. But of greater weight is the pope's observation that Allah is a god whose "absolute transcendence" allows no constraint, to the point that Allah is free if he chooses to promote evil. The great German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig explained the matter more colorfully than did the pope, as I reported three years ago in the cited review:
The god of Mohammed is a creator who well might not have bothered to create. He displays his power like an Oriental potentate who rules by violence, not by acting according to necessity, not by authorizing the enactment of the law, but rather in his freedom to act arbitrarily ... Providence thus is shattered into infinitely many individual acts of creation, with no connection to each other, each of which has the importance of the entire creation. That has been the doctrine of the ruling orthodox philosophy in Islam. Every individual thing is created from scratch at every moment. Islam cannot be salvaged from this frightful providence of Allah ... despite its vehement, haughty insistence upon the idea of the god's unity, Islam slips back into a kind of monistic paganism, if you will permit the expression. God competes with God at every moment, as if it were the colorfully contending heavenful of gods of polytheism.
It is amusing to see liberal Jewish commentators in the United States, eg, the editorial page of the September 16 New York Times, deplore the pope's remarks, considering that Rosenzweig said it all the more sharply in 1920.
Benedict's comments regarding Islam served as a preamble to a longer discourse on the unity of faith and reason. "Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?" Benedict asked, and answered his own question: "I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God." It is not, however, the reasoned side of Benedict's remarks to which Muslims responded, but rather the existential.
Rather than rail at the pope's characterization of Islam, Muslims might have responded as follows: "Excuse me, Your Holiness, but did we hear you say that you represent a religion of reason, whereas Allah is a god of unreason? Do you not personally eat the body and blood of your god - at least things that you insist really are his flesh and blood - every day at Mass? And you accuse us of unreason!" That is a fair rebuttal, but it opens up Islam's can of worms.
True, we are not pottering about in this pilgrim existence to be rational. Today's Germans are irrational, and know that their time has past, and therefore desist from bearing children. What mankind - Christian, Muslim and Jew, and all - demand of God is irrational. We want eternal life! Christians do not want what the Greeks wanted - Socrates' transmigration of souls, nor the shadow existence of Homer's dead heroes in Hades. That is an unreasonable demand if ever there was one.
Before the Bible was written, the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh learned that his quest for immortality was futile. The demigods of Greece, mortals favored by Olympians, suffered a tedious sort of immortal life as stars, trees or rivers. The gods of the heathens are not in any case eternal, only immortal. They were born and they will die, like the Norse gods at the Ragnorak, and their vulnerability projects the people's presentiment of its own death. To whom, precisely, have the gods offered eternal life prior to the appearance of revealed religion? Eternal life and a deathless mortality are quite different things.
But what is it that God demands of us in response to our demand for eternal life? We know the answer ourselves. To partake of life in another world we first must detach ourselves from this world in order to desire the next. In plain language, we must sacrifice ourselves. There is no concept of immortality without some concept of sacrifice, not in any culture or in any religion. That is a demand shared by the Catholic bishops and the Kalahari Bushmen.
God's covenant with Abraham is unique and singular in world history. A single universal and eternal god makes an eternal pact with a mortal that can be fulfilled only if Abraham's tribe becomes an eternal people. But the price of this pact is self-sacrifice. That is an existential mortal act beyond all ethics, as Soren Kierkegaard tells us in Fear and Trembling. The sacraments of revealed religion are sublimated human sacrifice, for the revealed god in his love for humankind spares the victim, just as God provided a ram in place of the bound Isaac on Mount Moriah. Among Jews the covenant must be renewed in each male child through a substitute form of human sacrifice, namely circumcision. [4] Christians believe that a single human sacrifice spared the rest of humankind.
Jihad also is a form of human sacrifice. He who serves Allah so faithfully as to die in the violent propagation of Islam goes straight to paradise, there to enjoy virgins or raisins, depending on the translation. But Allah is not the revealed god of loving kindness, or agape, but - pace Benedict - a god of reason, that is, of cold calculation. Islam admits no expiatory sacrifice. Everyone must carry his own spear.
We are too comfortable, too clean, too squeamish, too modern to descend into the terrible space where birth, death and immortality are decided. We forget that we cannot have eternal life unless we are ready to give up this one - and this the Muslim knows only through what we should call the sacrament of jihad. Through jihad, the Muslim does almost precisely what the Christian does at the Lord's Supper. It is the sacrifice of Jesus that grants immortal life to all Christians, that is, those who become one with Jesus by eating his flesh and drinking his blood so that the sacrifice also is theirs, at least in Catholic terms. Protestants substitute empathy identification with the crucified Christ for the trans-substantiated blood and flesh of Jesus.
Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to give all men eternal life, on condition that they take part in his sacrifice, either through the physical communion of the Catholic Church or the empathetic Communion of Protestantism. From a Muslim vantage point, the extreme of divine humility embodied in Jesus' sacrifice is beyond reason. Allah, by contrast, deals with those who submit to him after the calculation of an earthly despot. He demands that all Muslims sacrifice themselves by becoming warriors and, if necessary, laying their lives down in the perpetual war against the enemies of Islam.
These are parallel acts, in which different peoples do different things, in the service of different deities, but for the same reason: for eternal life.
Why is self-sacrifice always and everywhere the cost of eternal life? It is not because a vengeful and sanguineous God demands his due before issuing us a visa to heaven. Quite the contrary: we must sacrifice our earthly self, our attachment to the pleasures and petty victories of our short mortal life if we really are to gain the eternal life that we desire. The animal led to the altar, indeed Jesus on the cross, is ourselves: we die along with the sacrifice and yet live, by the grace of God. YHWH did not want Isaac to die, but without taking Abraham to Mount Moriah, Abraham himself could not have been transformed into the man desirous and deserving of immortal life. Jesus died and took upon him the sins of the world, in Christian terms, precisely so that a vicarious sacrifice would redeem those who come to him.
What distinguishes Allah from YHWH and (in Christian belief) his son Jesus is love. God gives Jews and Christians a path that their foot can tread, one that is not too hard for mortals, to secure the unobtainable, namely immortal life, as if by miracle. Out of love God gives the Torah to the Jews, not because God is a stickler for the execution of 613 commandments, but because it is a path upon which the Jew may sacrifice and yet live, and receive his portion of the World to Come. The most important sacrifice in Judaism is the Sabbath - "our offering of rest", says the congregation in the Sabbath prayers - a day of inactivity that acknowledges that the Earth is the Lord's. It is a sacrifice, as it were, of ego. In this framework, incidentally, it is pointless to distinguish Judaism as a "religion of works" as opposed to Christianity as a "religion of faith".
To Christians, God offers the vicarious participation in his sacrifice of himself through his only son.
That is Grace: a free gift by God to men such that they may obtain eternal life. By a miracle, the human soul responds to the offer of Grace with a leap, a leap away from the attachments that hold us to this world, and a foretaste of the World to Come.
There is no Grace in Islam, no miracle, no expiatory sacrifice, no expression of love for mankind such that each Muslim need not be a sacrifice. On the contrary, the concept of jihad, in which the congregation of Islam is also the army, states that every single Muslim must sacrifice himself personally. Jihad is the precise equivalent of the Lord's Supper in Christianity and the Jewish Sabbath, the defining expression of sacrifice that opens the prospect of eternity to the mortal believer. To ask Islam to become moderate, to reform, to become a peaceful religion of personal conscience is the precise equivalent of asking Catholics to abolish Mass.
Islam, I have argued for years, faces an existential crisis in the modern world, which has ripped its adherents out of their traditional existence and thrust them into deadly conflicts. What was always latent in Islam has now come to the surface: the practice of Islam now expresses itself uniquely in jihad. Benedict XVI has had the courage to call things by their true names. Everything else is hypocrisy and self-delusion.
Postscript
Regarding Benedict XVI's statement that the characterization of the Prophet Mohammed did not reflect his "personal opinion": In 1938, at the peak of Stalin's terror, a Muscovite called the KGB to report that his parrot had escaped. The KGB officer said, "Why are you calling us?" The Muscovite averred, "I want to state for the record that I do not share the parrot's political opinions."
Notes
1. See Oil on the flames of civilizational war, December 2, 2003.
2. See When even the pope has to whisper, January 10, 2006.
3. The crescent and the conclave, April 19, 2005.
4. See The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, by Jon D Levinson (Harvard; Cambridge 1993).
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI19Aa02.html
Some Very Enlightening Thoughts From Ali Sina
This is an excerpt from an interview with Ali Sina from his site www.faithfreedom.org:
Jarek:
Q04: You are asking people to mock Islam. By making fun of it and insulting its dogmas and principles you think good and intelligent people will start to be ashamed of being Muslims and will abandon this religion. However, the cartoons published by Jyllands Posten were only very mild, and yet the reaction of the Muslims worldwide was the opposite. They reacted in unison, in some countries even violent, killing tens of Christians and their faith seems to become even stronger. How do you explain that?
Sina:
Why do you think they reacted so violently? It is because you pressed their sore spot. If you are strong you can take a punch and not flinch, but if you have a sore spot, all it takes to bring you to your knee is a nudge on that sore spot. Muslims committed the huge blunder of revealing their vulnerability. Now the world knows what hurts them. When you find your opponent’s weak spot, it is exactly where you want to hit him. (See this!)
Muhammad was a narcissist and Muslims, by having entered into his bubble universe have become narcissists by extension. More precisely, they are reverse narcissists. A commonly used term for reverse narcissist is co-dependent.
The biggest preoccupation of the narcissist is the preservation of his image. But the reverse narcissists do not have self image. The narcissist destroys the self image of his co-dependants and gives them his own image to cling to. He destroys their identity and selfhood and makes them believe that their glory and greatness is in their submission and obedience to him. He makes them swallow that without him they are nothing. That they are like specks of dust floating in the air, invisible and insignificant, but they can light up and become visible if they come under his light. That is how the narcissist controls his co-dependants.
The first thing Islam does is to destroy the self image of the believers. It convinces them that without Islam they are worthless creatures only fit for hellfire. It tells them that their culture is jahelyyah (ignorance) and their ancestral religion was taaghoti (satanic). They are made to despise their identity and selfhood and seek their glory in their submission to Islam and slavery to its deity who was Muhammad’s own alter ego. Islam has taken everything from its wretched believers. They are robbed from their identity and self pride. All they have now is Islam. That is why Islam for Muslims is more than just a religion. It is their identity. When you criticize Islam, they perceive it as an attack on their identity and cringe with pain. They take that not only as an insult but also as an assault on their person. Like a corned animal they become vicious and fight back with all their might – a fight of survival. That is why you see such a violent reaction to a few silly cartoons.
Why we must continue the campaign of humiliation and ridicule? It’s because we must destroy that false image of Islam to which the Muslims cling for their identity. That idol must be smashed. When that false image is destroyed there would be nothing left to cling to and only then the Muslims will be able to find themselves and recover their lost selfhood. The co-dependant must see that his narcissist, the object of his adoration, is not that great but a fraud, a loser, a clown. This can't be done through logical argumentations alone. By trying to disprove the claims of a fruitcake with philosophical and logical expostulations and remonstrations you give him importance. Muhammad was an idiot, a psychopath, a crackpot. He needs to be laughed at not disproved. What is there to disprove about splitting the moon, climbing the seventh heaven riding on the back of a horse with human face and meeting dead prophets who tell him to bargain with God to reduce the number of prayers from 50 to 5 times per day? Is God stupider than his prophets? The entire Quran is a big joke. If it was not so violent, it would be the biggest comic book ever written.
Muhammad was a jackass. People who believe in him are stupid. Let us call a spade as spade. These people must be laughed at. They, and their screwball prophet have to be ridiculed not respected. Let them cringe, let them wince, let them agonize. We must demolish this fetish and break the shackles of these wretched people. They must be set free and the only way to do that is to demolish their fetish.
Once Muhammad is ridiculed, once this talisman is destroyed, Muslims will be liberated and they will leave Islam. When that happens they'll thank you.
It is not difficult to destroy Islam. Islam is the pumped up ego of a megalomaniac psychopath. Muhammad was a narcissist madman. Just as a huge balloon can be deflated by a small needle, all it takes to make Islam explode is to ridicule its loony inventor and its brainless followers.
Shame works! I have seen it work many times. It worked for me. It was not just the truth but also the savagery of the Muslims that made me want to distance myself from Islam. I was ashamed of Islam; I was embarrassed of what Muhammad had done and what Muslims were doing. I thought to myself, what would I say if people find out the truth about Muhammad’s perversions and ask me, how can you follow a pedophile? What is your opinion about the ridiculous scientific and logical blunders of the Quran? Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Wouldn't I look like a fool? Shame works on those who have the sense of shame. Those are the ones we want to rescue. Shame does not work on those who have no shame. Those we don't want anyway. Let the fools remain Muslims. We want to salvage intelligent and good people who call themselves Muslims by error.
I know the Muslim psychology. It is all pomposity and bravado. I give you my word that if Islam is ridiculed publicly and systematically, it will be defeated. Shame is a great motivator as well as deterrent. Do not underestimate the power of ridicule. This is serious stuff not a laughing matter.
Rwanda 'plane crash probe halted'
By Mark Doyle
BBC World Affairs correspondent
A former UN investigator has told the BBC his enquiries into the 1994 downing of the Rwandan president's plane were abruptly stopped against his wishes.
At the time, he says he had obtained detailed allegations that the then rebel leader, and now President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, was involved.
Michael Hourigan said his probe was stopped in 1997 and he was speaking now as he felt justice had not been served.
The shooting down of the plane sparked the genocide of up to a million people.
Radical ethnic Hutus reacted to the death in the crash of the Hutu president by trying to wipe out the minority ethnic Tutsis from which the rebels drew support.
No-one has been prosecuted for the downing of the plane.
'Doesn't make sense'
The shooting down of the Rwandan presidential jet, killing the Hutu president, in April 1994, continues to create international controversy.
It didn't make sense to me then and it doesn't make sense to me now
Michael Hourigan
Rwanda recently broke off diplomatic relations with France when a French judge accused President Kagame of involvement.
The former UN investigator who has now spoken to the BBC, Michael Hourigan, worked on several aspects of the genocide in 1996 and 1997.
He successfully prosecuted a number of Hutu leaders responsible for the mass killings, but also found witnesses who alleged that the Tutsi Paul Kagame, the current president of Rwanda, was involved in the plot to shoot down the plane when he was a rebel leader.
Mr Hourigan told the BBC from his home in Australia that senior UN officials instructed him to stop his enquiries.
"None of it makes sense," he said.
"That all of a sudden when we get the breakthrough and we start to actually get people coming forward saying: 'We were involved in the crash, you know, I fired a rocket which took the president's aircraft down' - when we're getting those people with that sort of quality information coming forwards and then we shut it down."
"I mean it didn't make sense to me then and it doesn't make sense to me now."
Denial
Senior UN officials say the enquiry into the plane crash was stopped because it was not within the mandate of the genocide tribunal. Mr Hourigan strongly disagrees.
A spokesman for the then chief prosecutor of the tribunal, Louise Arbour, who is now the UN human rights commissioner, said she would not comment on Mr Hourigan's complaints because she had a duty of confidentiality.
Diplomats say Rwanda would almost certainly have stopped cooperating with the tribunal if its investigations targeted Mr Kagame.
The diplomats add that the foreign policies of western nations towards Rwanda are partly driven by guilt because the international community failed to stop the mass killings.
President Kagame has denied involvement in shooting down the plane, but adds that he does not regret the death of the former Rwandan leader, who he describes as a dictator.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6348815.stm
Published: 2007/02/09 23:06:23 GMT
© BBC MMVII
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