Free Republic

Tens of thousands of people have turned out at a rally in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi for former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan. Mr Khan, who has been an established politician for many years but has struggled to win votes, has seen his support increase recently. Correspondents say he has been riding a wave of disillusionment, particularly among the urban middle class. snip The two main parties - the PPP and the PML-N - are still strongly entrenched and Mr Khan has yet to spell out the specific policies of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party. One...

What's Islam Got to Do with It?The role of Islam in terrorism should not be banned from discussion. Is there anything Islamic about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? On what basis does Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda’s leader, formerly the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, claim to be a jihadi — an Islamic warrior? Do groups that justify terrorism on the basis of Islam have a doctrinal leg to stand on?Let’s not start by answering these questions. Let’s start by agreeing that such questions need to be asked — not suppressed. Yet right now suppression seems to be the goal of...

-excerpt- The ministry said in a statement broadcast on state TV that Iran's secret services identified the suspect at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.

NEW YORK — In an historic hearing in the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels said he planned to issue a ruling in the coming days declaring that Iran shares in the responsibility for the 9/11 terror attacks. “The extensive record submitted to this court, including fact witnesses and expert testimony, is satisfactory to this court,” Judge Daniels said. The court “accepts as true” the various allegations of the plaintiffs and their experts, he declared, and “will issue an order” in the coming days that Iran bears legal responsibility for providing “material support” to...

Pakistani officials say NATO forces knew they were opening fire on Pakistani forces, and even apologised to Pakistani officers, throughout the friendly fire incident on a military checkpoint that killed 24 troops near the Afghan border in November. Pakistani officials on Thursday briefed reporters in Washington on their findings, drawn from interviews with survivors and local residents in the remote, mountainous area. Results of NATO's official investigation are due next week. Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said it could be an attempt by Pakistani officials to shape public opinion before the NATO report is released. “The Pakistanis...

Iran has more to lose than America in current standoffIran is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. Go ahead, make our day. On Monday, Parviz Sarvari, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, said, “Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.” Closing the strategically important strait has long been viewed as one of Iran’s trump cards in the give-and-take with the United States and the West. The impact of a strait crisis is overrated....

AN IRANIAN nuclear facility has been hit by a huge explosion, the second such blast in a month, prompting speculation that Tehran's military and atomic sites are under attack. Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran. The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was "no doubt" that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was...

Force is being used to attempt to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. On Monday, an explosion rocked the city of Isfahan in western Iran, site of a conversion facility that prepares uranium for enrichment at other sites. Conflicting reports attributed the explosion to either an accident at a gas station or a military training incident, or they denied it even happened. The blast came two weeks after Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Gen. Hasan Tehrani Moghaddam and 20 other IRGC members were killed in a massive explosion at a base near the village of Bidganeh, southwest of Tehran. The base...

Seems an explosion rocked Iranian city Isfahan that houses that nation’s uranium conversion facility on Monday. Hmm. Big hmm. Capitalized, italicized and boldfaced HMM. From the New York Daily News: “The government of Isfahan denied reports that the explosion was linked to the nuclear site, saying it was part of a military drill north of the city.” That excuse is so weak that I think Baghdad Bob either moved to Iran or has a cousin Tehran Terry. From the New York Daily News: “One of the first reports of the blast came from Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, according to...

Iran erupted in a fresh frenzy of animosity towards its old imperial foe on Sunday as MPs chanting "death to England" voted to expel Britain's ambassador to Tehran and threatened his mission with a reprise of the 1979 hostage crisis. Dominic Chilcott, who took up the position of ambassador just a month ago, could be forced to leave the country within weeks after a motion to downgrade Iran's diplomatic ties with Britain was passed overwhelmingly by the Islamist republic's parliament. The step was taken after Britain, Canada and the United States announced fresh sanctions against Iran last week in the...

Afghan and Western officials on Sunday said NATO and Afghan forces on a nighttime operation Saturday came under fire from across the Pakistan border before they called in a deadly airstrike on two Pakistani military posts, in an incident has left U.S.-Pakistan relations in tatters. Pakstan's military denied firing on NATO forces, calling the "unprovoked" raid on the border posts an "irresponsible act." The army questioned why the coalition undertook a sustained two-hour attack on well-known border positions, involving helicopters and fighter jets, which left 25 soldiers dead and another 25 injured. ...Afghan and U.S. officials say their troops are...

RACISM!

An attack by Nato aircraft on Pakistani troops that allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and looks set to further poison relations between the US and Pakistan was an act of self-defence, a senior western official has claimed. According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, forcing them to return fire. The high death toll from an incident between two supposed allies suggests Nato helicopters and jets strafed Pakistani positions with heavy weapons.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Pakistani government has demanded the U.S. vacate an air base within 15 days that the CIA is suspected of using for unmanned drones. The government issued the demand Saturday after NATO helicopters and jet fighters allegedly attacked two Pakistan army posts along the Afghan border, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will target NATO's missile defense installations in Turkey if the U.S. or Israel attacks the Islamic Republic, a senior commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saturday. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards' aerospace division, said the warning is part of a new defense strategy to counter what he described as an increase in threats from the U.S. and Israel.

ISLAMABAD: Pakista Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) Chief on Saturday strongly condemned the unprovoked Nato attack on Salala Check Post in the Momand Agency and called upon civilian leadership to immediately withdraw from its alliance from US-led war against terrorism. While terming the attack as an insane and immoral brutality, Khan said such attacks reflected the hollowness and counter-productivity of Pakistan’s involvement in the aimless ‘war on terror’ that had been unleashed to subdue the proud people of the region. The PTI chief was speaking to a public gathering in Shujaabad. He said Pakistan had already sacrificed 40,000 people and an equal number...

Assad has also stated that should a US strike take place against Syria, “All these events(striking Tel Aviv, calling on Hezbollah to strike northern Israel) will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack the U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf and the U.S. and European interests will be targeted simultaneously.”

DAMATURU, Nigeria, November 11 (CDN) — They stormed this town in Yobe state, northern Nigeria like a swarm of bees, and at the end of their four-hour rampage, some 150 people had been killed – at least 130 of them Christians, according to church sources. Hundreds of people are still missing, and the destruction included the bombing of at least 10 church buildings.

PARIS (Reuters) -A French satirical weekly whose office was fire bombed after it printed a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad has reproduced the image with other caricatures in a special supplement distributed with one of the country's leading newspapers.The weekly Charlie Hebdo defended "the freedom to poke fun" in the four-page supplement, which was wrapped around copies of the left-wing daily Liberation on Thursday, a day after an arson attack gutted Charlie Hebdo's Paris headquarters.

A House panel on Wednesday unanimously approved harsher penalties against Iran, arguing that an economically weak Tehran will struggle in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. By voice vote, Republicans and Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee pushed forward two bills that would strengthen current sanctions while expanding the list of companies and individuals subject to penalties. Lawmakers cited recent allegations of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and insisted that such brazen behavior demands consequences. The legislation builds on sanctions that Congress overwhelmingly passed — and President Barack Obama signed — last year....