Free Republic

My son, the martyr: A mother's viewpoint on the glories of jihadTHE LONDON-BASED Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an interview with Umm Nidal, the mother of the shahid (martyr) Muhammad Farhat. During the first intifada, Umm Nidal had hidden 'Imad 'Aql, the commander of Hamas' military wing "Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades," in the family's home for over a year. The following are excerpts from the interview: Q: How did the idea of carrying out a Fidaai [martyrdom] operation develop in [your son] Muhammad's soul? A: Jihad is a [religious] commandment imposed upon us. We must instill this idea in our...

'THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH'Secret guerrilla armies. Neighbours stoning schoolbuses. Two peoples living in terror and hatred: Three years later, war-ravaged Kosovo remains a powderkeg. Scott Taylor The Ottawa Citizen Saturday, June 22, 2002 On April 8 of this year, international police from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) attempted to apprehend Slavoljub Jovic, a Serb suspected of ethnic hate crimes. From the outset, the arrest in the northern town of Mitrovica went awry. Believing him armed, UNMIK police used force to subdue Mr. Jovic, prompting a large crowd of Serbian onlookers to stone the 10 police officers....

The decision by the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence panels to ask the Justice Department to investigate whether someone on Capitol Hill leaked classified material bypassed the rules of both chambers and raises thorny constitutional questions about the oversight checks between the two branches of government, experts said last week.Attorney General John Ashcroft on Friday asked the department’s criminal division to begin a probe, Justice sources said. The referral came in response to a classified request Thursday from the four intelligence panel leaders into the origin of news reports about two messages intercepted by the National Security Agency...

PALESTINIAN RADICALISM AND ARAB ANTISEMITISM by Srdja Trifkovic That a majority of Arabs, and especially Palestinians, want the destruction of Israel is something we assume and intuit. It is therefore unsurprising to have this assumption confirmed by the results of a major opinion poll released on June 11. The poll, by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC), highlighted a radicalization of views as we near the third year of unabated Israeli-Palestinian violence. The JMCC interviewed 1,179 people in the West Bank and Gaza in late May and early June. Fifty-one percent of people surveyed said the end result of...

German newspaper: Egypt is trying to obtain nuclear weapons By Ha'aretz Service Western security establishments have reached the conclusion that Egypt is taking measures to obtain nuclear weapons, the German daily Die Welt published on Saturday. According to the report, Egypt intends to mine natural uranium in the Sinai Peninsula and enrich it to weapons' grade material with the help of Chinese technology. The material would then be used on long-range missiles. The paper also said that Egypt had in the past few years considered obtaining enriched uranium from several African countries. Die Welt stressed that Egypt has denied...

Dying for Dubious JihadInside the suicide strategy.A video released by the militant Islamist group Hamas shows a proud Naima al-Obeid holding a rifle beside her favorite son, Mahmoud, a 23-year-old college student. Mrs. al-Obeid is saying good-bye to her son as he heads out to kill some Jews. The video starts with a warm embrace between mother and son, their final embrace as it turns out, and then a nice kiss. “God willing, you will succeed,” says the mother. “May every bullet hit the target, and may God give you martyrdom. This is the best day of my life.”Mahmoud says:...

House payroll records show that Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) significantly increased the salaries of three key staffers in the days following the revelation that he was romantically involved with Chandra Levy, a young Washington intern who went missing last year and recently was found dead in Rock Creek Park.A Roll Call analysis of Condit’s payroll records, as disclosed in the quarterly Statement of Disbursements of the House, revealed that the embattled Congressman gave significant pay raises to two top aides — Administrative Assistant Mike Dayton and Chief of Staff Michael Lynch — as the Levy investigation heated up.The Congressman also...

The government is under no obligation to disclose whether court-ordered monitoring of attorney-client conversations is ongoing in the aiding terrorism case against defense lawyer Lynne Stewart, prosecutors argued in court papers. Rejecting claims by Stewart and two co-defendants that the specter of government wiretaps makes an effective defense impossible, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph F. Bianco and Christopher J. Morvillo said that "no statutory or case authority" supports the defendants' claim that they should be notified if their conversations are being monitored. The papers were filed with Southern District of New York Judge John G. Koeltl on Friday in response to...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Pentagon official is expected to meet next week with Chinese defense officials in Beijing about renewing some military contacts between the United States and China.</p> <p>Peter Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, will meet with Chinese officials Wednesday, Pentagon officials said Friday.</p>

This summer will mark the 47th year since I took my first Republican job: as public relations director for the party in Minnesota. Since then I have rarely strayed from politics, or my party. I served as a staffer to two GOP congressmen, to a GOP governor, as a federal appointee to Richard Nixon and as a corporate executive who supported in Washington and Springfield much, if not all, of the Republican agenda. You can describe me as a conservative. Thus I am qualified to say that although I dearly love conservatives, they tend to be querulous, disagreeable and threaten...

<p>This year's boating season opened with a mystery: the theft of almost a third of the new moorings placed around the islands of Boston Harbor.</p> <p>Harbor officials doing an inventory of the islands' moorings on Sunday found that 15 of the 50 buoys installed last August by the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership to provide safe anchorage and on-site waste removal services to private boaters had been stolen.</p>

The Atlanta WSB-TV noon local news broadcast reported that the FBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and Atlanta Police department is looking for a tan PT Cruiser with Canadian license plates last seen leaving the Charlie Brown Municipal Airport. For those not familar with Atlanta, Charlie Brown is just west of downtown and slightly north of Hartsfield. The occupants of the vehicle were seen by airport security staff taking pictures of aircraft flight operations, aircraft fuel services and the Rathyeon aircraft maintance facilities over a "prolonged period of time" according to a Rathyeon employee. When the people were approached by airport...

<p>Nearly half of the vehicles assigned to Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector are in the garage awaiting repairs, union officials say.</p> <p>Of the 543 sport utility vehicles designated for use by field agents and station management, 234 are broken and out of commission.</p>

That's all. No additional hits by dogs. General search to continue...

Western leftists find themselves in strange company when it comes to the Middle East. Are they really happy to line up with neo-Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists?By Mick Hume Once upon a time, a hundred years or so ago, it was fashionable to attack something called "Jewish capitalism". August Bebel, a German friend of Karl Marx, described this attempt to give anti-Semitism a progressive spin as "the socialism of fools". Today's fashion for Israel-bashing seems to me to represent a similar foolishness. It is not old-fashioned anti-Semitism. But there is a growing tendency to endorse dubious ideas under the guise of...

<p>After three years of fiery debates, rolling electrical blackouts and shifting political positions, Calpine Corp. is beginning construction of a controversial 600-megawatt power plant in San Jose's Coyote Valley.</p> <p>So far, the 14-acre site on the west side of Monterey Highway just north of the community of Coyote has been cleared of derelict vehicles, dilapidated sheds and other junk and scraped bare of vegetation. The real work has yet to begin.</p>

First off, Gov. King’s plan to fix this year’s half of the state’s two-year, $180 million (give or take) budget shortfall is not, despite the governor’s assertion, free of broad-based tax increases. Three unpaid furlough days for state employees are nothing less than a tax increase of several hundred dollars each for this particular broad-based group of Maine citizens. Yes, the cut in education funding is a reduction of growth, but given the new state and federal mandates school districts still must meet, it’s going to look a lot like a tax increase to an even broader-based group — property...

[NOTE: SOME INCREASED PARAGRAPHING AND EMPHASIS FROM Q]: Santa Cruz Islands Quake Timothy Snodgrass Jun 21, 2002 SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS QUAKE A WARNING By Timothy Snodgrass - Philippines June 21, 200 June 20, 2002 – On Monday, June 17, as the world was awaiting President Bush’s proposal for a Palestinian state, a 6.7 earthquake shook the Santa Cruz Islands, 210-miles NNW of Vanuatu Island. Within less than 24-hours, a rare 5.0 quake shook Indiana, just south of the U.S. Great Lakes. What is the significance of these two earthquakes? Exactly six months ago, on November 20, 2001, I received a...

<p>Now that Maryland's state schools superintendent, Nancy Grasmick, has decided not to join Rep. Robert Ehrlich's gubernatorial ticket, he should count his blessings. It is certainly understandable that Mr. Ehrlich, running in a state where Republicans are outnumbered by roughly 2-1, would be tempted to court a big-name Democrat like Mrs. Grasmick. But, when it comes to real education reform, something Mr. Ehrlich has often advocated, he would have been hard-pressed to come up with a poorer choice for a running mate.</p>

Batten the hatches ladies and gents. It looks like that propaganda storm that's been a-brewing on the horizon is getting ready bust loose. Prepare yourselves for the arrival of Massacre at Mazar, a "documentary" that tells the honest-to-God, true-to-life, tell-it-like-it-was, no-holds-barred story of American G.I.'s gunning down innocent Talibanis during that prison uprising last year in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. You want war crimes? You can't handle war crime!! Witness this lede from the Guardian: A former chairman of Amnesty International yesterday called for an independent investigation into claims that US troops tortured Taliban prisoners and assisted in the...