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Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:34am EST ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani newspapers gave prominent coverage on Monday to a British media report that a retired general gunned down in Islamabad last month planned to blow the whistle on fellow generals' dealings with the Taliban. Jang, Pakistan's biggest selling Urdu-language newspaper, ran a story on its front page headlined: "Gen. Alavi was against pacts with Taliban, Musharraf had sacked him." The reports in Jang and other Pakistani dailies were based on a story published in Britain's Sunday Times, and written by Carey Schofield. Major-General Amir Faisal Alavi, a brother-in-law of Nobel prize-winning...

Unless effective measures are taken soon, Iran will have a nuclear bomb within a year according to worst-case assessments, or a few years under more optimistic ones. President-elect Barack Obama is publicly committed to a policy of engagement with Iran. The question is no longer whether to engage, but how to do so. Iran has good strategic reasons for seeking a nuclear capability and it is questionable whether any combination of inducements, positive or negative, can elicit a change in its policies. We will only know, however, if a sincere and comprehensive attempt is made. Time is the biggest problem.

Arabs hail shoe attack as Bush's farewell gift by Salam Faraj Salam Faraj 14 mins ago BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq faced mounting calls on Monday to release the journalist who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, an action branded shameful by the government but hailed in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president. Colleagues of Muntazer al-Zaidi, who works for independent Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, said he "detested America" and had been plotting such an attack for months against the man who ordered the war on his country. "Throwing the shoes at Bush...

San Francisco is rolling out the red carpet for Emirates Airlines, which starting today will be flying nonstop from SFO to Dubai and back three times a week - and the East-West link sure makes for some interesting politics. The airline, which is run by the government of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, operates by rules far different from those San Francisco espouses. Take Emirates' flight attendants, for instance. A recent Wall Street Journal piece on the airline says that "tough rules are enforced, including some that would be deemed discriminatory in the West, such as weight requirements and a...

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush during his farewell visit to Baghdad was hailed a hero in the Arab world today as thousands marched to demand his release. Muntazer al-Zaidi tore off his shoes and flung them at Mr Bush as he stood beside Nouri al-Maliki, SNIP "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," he shouted before being overpowered by security guards and bundled out of the room. SNIP Al-Zaidi worked for the independent Iraqi television station al-Baghdadia, which...

India has sent out a tough wish-list to Pakistan through the Western interlocutors – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Senator John Kerry – who flew into New Delhi over the weekend that it will not be averse to taking tough military measures, in case Islamabad failed to handover the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks to India. Insiders privy to the discussions Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had with Brown and Obama's envoy Kerry that India is clear that Pakistan will have to hand over the perpetrators of Mumbai attacks to India, and that the Pakistan government will have...

From Barbara Starr CNN Pentagon Correspondent WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States believes that India's air force began preliminary preparations for a possible attack against Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of the recent massacre in Mumbai, CNN has learned. One U.S. official said India's air force "went on alert" following the attacks in Mumbai. Three Pentagon officials have individually confirmed to CNN that the United States has information indicating that India began to prepare air force personnel for a possible mission. The officials offered very few details, but one said India's air force "went on alert." This is the first...

The full horror of contemporary Middle East politics and debate is comprehended by few in the West, largely because people aren't informed by their political leaders, intellectuals and media. Occasionally, the truth emerges, as on September 11, 2001, but soon is reburied under mountains of obfuscation. After all, Iran's president called for Israel to be wiped off the map, according to the official Iranian translation, and The New York Times publishes an article analyzing whether this ever happened. I imagine exchanges like this: Middle Easterner (in Arabic): "We'll wipe you out, kill your children and trample your cities into dust!"...

(IsraelNN.com) The president of the World Bank and other international fiscal authorities are warning Israel in a strongly-worded letter not to withhold cash from Gaza. According to the Associated Press news agency, they also advised Jerusalem not to allow Israeli banks to implement a decision to sever ties with their Palestinian Authority counterparts in the Hamas terrorist-run region. The letter, dated December 12 and received Monday by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was signed by Robert B. Zoelick, Quartet Mideast envoy Tony Blair and International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Withholding cash and ending reciprocal relations between Israeli and Gaza-based...

Truth Be Told: The Palestinian Preoccupation   By David SolwayFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, December 15, 2008 With respect to the ongoing imbroglio in the Holy Land, one may plausibly wonder whether bad history may not be rewriting itself. When Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, put the Palestinian rebellion of 1936 on partial hold following the British promise of a Royal Commission, no effort was made to disarm his guerrillas and the period of relative calm was exploited by the Mufti to train, reorganize, unify and rearm his forces. Nothing much changes in the Middle East and what was...

A prison’s new chapel will not contain a crucifix to avoid offending Muslim inmates, it emerged today. Bosses at HMP Lewes have been told the traditional Christian symbol, featuring Jesus nailed to a cross, must not be used in the Grade-II listed Victorian jail’s ‘multi-faith space’. The room - part of a £1million new block - has been split in two, with one half featuring heated foot baths so Muslim worshippers can wash their feet before prayer. But the other side, dedicated to Christian prayer, contains just a simple wooden cross and portable alter - both of which can be...

The shoes had hardly left the hand of the Iraqi who tossed them at President Bush during the Baghdad press conference yesterday when the leftwing blogosphere began cheering him as some sort of hero. The incredible success of the Surge in Iraq has been very frustrating for the left. Along with Joe Biden they claimed that the Surge could never work. Problem was that it worked. That is why they have been so silent recently on the topic of the Iraq. The complete turnaround there has been much too embarrassing for them to mention Iraq very much...until now. The shoes...

Thirty-five Taliban fighters have been killed in an operation to "clean up" areas controlled by the militants in a rebel-infested southern Afghan province, a military official said Sunday.General Muhaidin Ghori, army commander for southern Afghanistan, said the militants had been killed in an ongoing joint NATO and Afghan security forces operation launched on Thursday in Helmand province."We cleared Nad Ali district of Taliban presence," the general said, adding the 35 dead Taliban included three rebel commanders."There was no casualty for NATO and Afghan forces. Check-points have been set up in the area and we will not leave until government control...

In today's column, the New York Times' Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, examines the paper's use (or non-use) of the words "terrorist" and "terrorism." It's a revealing exercise: "WHEN 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels." "They were "militants," "gunmen," "attackers" and "assailants." Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city's largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital...

I was scanning your site, like I do often, and I noticed on the issue of piracy some short comments about using firearms to ward off pirates. One good source of info on modern piracy that many who own yachts may not have ever read is an American magazine called, "Soldier of Fortune". "Soldier of Fortune" magazine, founded and edited by a retired US Army special forces colonel, is known as the only publication to have had a reporter on the ground the entire time during the Russian war in Afghanistan. This magazine is of extreme interest to the yachting...

The British Broadcasting Corporation, a state-sponsored but independently run, media organization has attracted sharp criticism for having "double-standards" in its coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks. Most times the BBC reporters referred to the terrorists who attacked Mumbai as "gunmen" or "militants". Well-known thinker and editor-in-chief of Covert magazine, MJ Akbar has taken up the issue seriously. Since November 27, Akbar has refused to appear on BBC to speak about the Mumbai attacks. Many British politicians have also taken up the issue with the BBC management. Steve Pound, who represents Ealing North, has issued a strong statement against BBC's biased...

The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep "open" minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. An all-time achiever in this category is Fernanda Santos of the New York Times, who managed to write from Bombay on Nov. 27 that the Chabad Jewish center in that city was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial...

Petition To The Washington Post To Express Reader Dissatisfaction With The Post's Inaccurate and Slanted Coverage of the Arab Israeli Conflict To: Katharine Weymouth and Marcus Brauchli, The Washington Post EyeOnThePost, Inc. is sponsoring this petition to let the Washington Post know of wide-spread dissatisfaction in the Community with its coverage of the Arab-Israel conflict.Readers' Petition:The Washington Post's coverage of the conflict between Israel and Its Arab neighbors in the Middle East is unfair and biased. The Post's opinionated and agenda driven reporting is characterized by: portrayal of events taken out of historical and current political context, use of sources...

Though most Harvard students have not been directly touched by the tragedy in Mumbai, how our community reacts to the events remains critically important. In so doing, let us not be afraid to acknowledge what these attacks represent: Modern Islam has a problem, and it is that shockingly large numbers of today’s Muslims favor a domination of those who espouse Western principles. Whenever terrorist attacks such as these are carried out (such generalizations can be made because they occur so frequently), pundits predictably exclaim that we must not allow hatred for Islam to fester, but rather, we must remind ourselves...

The country's media has reportedly condemned the film in part because of a fight sequence in which Rourke's character, Randy 'the Ram' Robinson, battles an opponent dubbed the Ayatollah. During the fight, the Ayatollah, played by actor and former professional wrestler Ernest "the Cat" Miller, waves an Iranian flag before ramming the pole under his opponent's neck. Rourke's character then grabs the flag and snaps the pole over his knee before tossing it into the crowd. Newspapers and websites in Iran say the Darren Aronofsky-directed film is just the latest manifestation of Western prejudice towards Iran in Hollywood films. Last...