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Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi called for allowing Christians and Jews to perform pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest place. Speaking following prayers with the presidents of Mali, Sierra Leone, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal on the occasion of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in Timbuktu, Mali, late on Monday, Qadhafi said "Mecca should be a meeting point to all people except heretics and impure". He said that Christians and Jews are not heretics or impure and "believe in God" and should be allowed to go to pilgrimage in Mecca. Qadhafi challenged Muslim religious leaders to allow US President George W. Bush to enter...

Libyan leader says Eid al-Adha holiday opportunity to bring three main monotheistic religions closer together Roee Nahmias Published: 12.31.06, 15:13 Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called to “allow Jews and Christians to visit Mecca and circle the Kaaba (cubical building surrounded by the Sacred Mosque).” These days Muslims all around the world are marking Eid al-Adha, the most important Islamic holiday. Some three million people have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Gaddafi believes the holiday offers a great opportunity to bring the three main monotheistic religions closer together. “Everyone has the right to stand atop Mount Arafat and circle the Kaaba,”...

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24th, it caused a lot of problems for voices on the right and the left. Putin has a lot of fans in both corners, and these fans had spent years portraying him as a tactical genius, bamboozling us all with his four-dimensional chess moves. Right up until February 23rd, these Putin stans had been assuring us that Putin would never do something as dumb as launch a full-scale invasion of a sovereign democracy. Ever since then, the right have been able to change gears on Putin fairly seamlessly. This is WAR, and...

Kuwaiti Journalist Abdallah Muhammad Al-Mulla: The Palestinians Supported Saddam's Invasion of Kuwait, Hitler in WWII – Now They Support the Houthis, IRGC; Arabs Today Are Less Inclined to Support the Palestinians Cause #Kuwait #Palestinians pic.twitter.com/uNjIILPuzt— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 2, 2022

It’s hard to believe that, less than 30 years ago, South Africa was a nation riven by apartheid and segregation. To look back on that time period and realize that it wasn’t that long ago is astonishing. Brave men and women stood up and spoke out against the horrendous policy, and eventually, South Africa shook off the bond of apartheid. Desmond Tutu was one of those voices who spoke of the importance of freedom for black South Africans, and now he is with his Heavenly Father. Tutu passed away on Sunday at the age of 90. “The passing of Archbishop...

A U.S. intelligence report for the first time links China’s largest telecommunications company to Beijing’s KGB-like intelligence service and says the company recently received nearly a quarter-billion dollars from the Chinese government. The disclosures are a setback for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.’s efforts to break into the U.S. telecommunications market. The company has been blocked from doing so three times by the U.S. government because of concerns about its links to the Chinese government. The report by the CIA-based Open Source Center states that Huawei’s chairwoman, Sun Yafang, worked for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) Communications Department before joining...

'Saddam's deputy' in anti-US call The US blames Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri for attacks on its troops A message purported to be from the fugitive deputy of executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has called on insurgents to make a final push against US forces. The message attributed to Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri urged Iraqi fighters to "make this year... decisive for victory". The message also called on US President George W Bush to "come clean about the scale of US losses". Ibrahim is the most senior member of Saddam Hussein's regime still at large. The message, aired by Dubai-based satellite broadcaster...

Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort. Though the bid ultimately failed, and there was nothing illegal about the involvement, it drew Giuliani into a complex partnership with the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government. ... Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore...

The legal conditions for extraditing a suspect linked to a 1982 attack in France, in which six people were killed, have been met, a Norway appellate court found Friday. Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, a 61-year-old Palestinian who became a Norwegian citizen in 1997, is wanted by French authorities on suspicion of being one of the shooters in the attack on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in Paris's Marais district, a historically Jewish quarter. The attack on August 9, 1982, which left six people dead and 22 injured, was blamed on the Abu Nidal Organisation, a splinter group of the militant Palestinian...

"Gambling on the losers": a storm after the Saudi prince attacked the Palestinians Roy Kaise. Oct.6.2020 Following the agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia was designated as a state that if Israel succeeds in normalizing its relations with it, it will be a breach of equality with the Arab world. Tonight, Israel may have received a positive message in this direction, in an interview with one of the Saudi princes on the Al-Arabiya network: he attacked the Palestinians for their opposition to agreements between Israel and the Gulf states, implicitly mentioned Abba Eben. [From the clip: 'We...

Labor Raid: The FBI raids the Chicago home of a local union leader looking for terrorist connections as the union's former chief is investigated for corruption. Why are we not surprised? Thuggery and corruption are not quite synonyms for unionism, but it gets very close when you consider the Service Employees International Union, formerly led by Andy Stern. From being involved in fraudulent voter registration in Texas to beating up Tea Party activists outside town hall meetings in Missouri, SEIU's reputation is well-established. Now we can possibly add a linkage to terrorism. On Friday, the FBI searched eight addresses in...

Online shoppers were amused when they spotted an advertisement that offered them a chance to purchase former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein at a bargain price of $20. The unusual ad was put out by Wish store. Several people posted screenshots of the ad for the deceased leader on social media. "Enjoy much cheaper items sold by Wish. don't miss 60-80% OFF store prices," the ad was captioned. The viral screenshot of the ad made "Saddam Hussein" trend on Twitter. One user asked, "Who wants to buy Saddam Hussein for $20?" Another wrote, "Can’t believe the U.S. spent all that time...

Exactly 30 years ago, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and created a set of consequences that are with us today, including sectarianism, terrorism, and Iranian militancy. The Bush presidencies made a number of historical mistakes in dealing with Iraq and Iran. Iran, as a result, reaped the rewards of Saddam Hussein’s cruelty and greed, and American errors. The George H. W. Bush administration, for its part, was given a mandate by the United Nations to undo Saddam’s aggression in Kuwait. It should have been used to eliminate Saddam Hussein alone. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet...

AFP/File Photo: The UN-appointed panel probing the scandal-tainted oil-for-food program for Iraq, headed by Paul Volcker, seen... Slideshow: Oil-for-Food Corruption Probe Video AP Video By NICK WADHAMS and EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writers 39 minutes ago NEW YORK - A formerUnited Nations procurement officer pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting a bribe under the oil-for-food program, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted operation. Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian, also pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of wire fraud and money laundering for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes...

The French government has been notably restrained in their criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for unleashing a pandemic upon the world.  One possible reason for their reticence is a single, highly embarrassing fact: They essentially built the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s P4 lab in which the coronavirus now sweeping the world was being researched, and from which it escaped.  That the French delivered the turn-key, high-containment biolab to China has long been public knowledge, but now a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has added riveting details to the story.  The insider information comes from interviews with French...

When President George W. Bush asked Colin Powell if the United States should invade Iraq in 2003 and overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein, the secretary of state and former general refused to give a straight answer. “I didn’t say to him, ‘I oppose this war,’” Powell says in a book published today about U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War. “Because it wouldn’t have worked.” That admission sheds light on Bush’s decision to launch the war that defined his presidency. Powell acknowledged his muted opposition in James Mann’s new book, The Great Rift, an account of how Powell’s rivalry with Vice...

Americans have to face the painful reality that Arabs are, when judged by 21st century Western Standards, a crazy people. This is not meant as an insult. Early this year, the Iraqi parliament proposed a law that would permit men to marry 9 year old girls. The law had the support of a majority of parliament. The law would also permit men to beat up and rape their wives, and prevent women from leaving the house without the permission of the husband. These SOBS are supposed to be the allies of America in the fight against ISIS. The Shia regime...

Already missing from the news cycle is the story of Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, who alerted authorities to the squalid conditions in New Mexico in which his son, two daughters, another man and woman, and 11 children were living.Authorities arrived at the compound to some of the most horrifying conditions they had ever seen, and prosecutors identified the makeshift home as a training ground for militant children, including in carrying out school shootings. The imam’s son had been wanted for kidnapping his own four-year-old child, who had severe disabilities. The body of a young child was recovered from the...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) issued a barrage of criticism about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 on Wednesday, which marked the 16th anniversary of the start of one of America's longest-running armed conflicts. In a series of tweets, the Minnesota congresswoman labeled the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq "illegal" and called for those involved in the explanation and lead up to the war to be held accountable. "16 years ago the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq, leaving a trail of destruction and lives lost," Omar tweeted. "4,496 U.S. troops lost their lives. 100,000+ Iraqi civilians [were] killed." "We...

I received my Academy screener of "Vice" -- Adam McKay's intermittently black comic biopic of Dick Cheney --- just a few days before its Christmas opening and watched it almost immediately, even though I knew I would hate it. I did. It had exactly the retrograde, conformist Hollywood politics I expected. What I didn't expect was that it would be an aesthetic jumble and quite boring. Nevertheless, "Vice" led the pack of Golden Globe nominations with six and is an early favorite for the Best Picture Oscar. So unfortunately, due to the biased state of our educational system, this could...