Do sheep love to be slaughtered?

Al Qaeda, with the very likely connivance of Tehran (yes, I know they are supposed to be Shiites, but they have already corrupted their faith by con-fusing religion and politics, and they are the one who would benefit from a civil war in Iraq) is destroying Islam most holy shrines, Serbia is protecting Mladic, Syria is governed by an esoteric sect (anathema to Sunnis), &c.

Have you seen many demonstrations against these real abuses and more? No. What do Muslims do instead?

Police in Pakistan have used batons and tear gas to disperse protesters trying to stage a rally against cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

If only western powers had the guts or even the intelligence to exploit these contradictions, militant Islam would be destroyed quickly and, most importantly, by the Muslims themselves. As we stand now, Islam is being highjacked by extremists and rapidly disappearing into a satanic cult.

Moral seriousness in this case means political seriousness. Insist on going ahead with the ports deal so that Arab governments who have stood with us in the war on terror are not told to get lost when one of their companies acquires port management contracts in the United States. Make a real effort to destabilize Ahmadinejad in Iran. Do what it takes to defeat Zarqawi and secure Iraq. Stand with Denmark, and moderate Muslims, against the radical mob. This is no time for dishonorable retreat. It is time for resolve--and competence.

I would love to blog during this period; unfortunately work commitments do not leave me much time. Thank you all for having followed my ramblings this far and apologies for the disappointing frequency of posts.

Islam, Muslims, Terrorism

Saddam Hussein to start hunger strike

Does anyone give a f**k?

Iraq, Saddam

Buy Danish!
Let's toast the fascists.

Denmark, Europe, Islam, Terrorism

Danish cartoons: a crisis and an opportunity

What a splendid opportunity to identify, arrest and deport all fundamentalists in Europe!

Denmark, Europe, Islam, Terrorism

Culture of hate

Iran said sending the case to the UN would mean "the end of diplomacy".

What diplomacy? Iran has been only buying time, blackmailing, lying and spying. Time to drop the mask, all of us. Can we please start taking these monsters at face value? Can we please stop responding to threats with empty statements full of "concern" and "dismay" Can we please stop turning the other cheek and ask to "clarify"? What's to clarify about "destruction of Israel"? "Annihilation of America"? "World domination"? While the West wastes time in interminable meetings the culture of hate gains precious time.

In an appalling regurgitation of relativism, Bill Clinton at Doha said:

Clinton described as "appalling" the 12 cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in September depicting Prophet Mohammed and causing uproar in the Muslim world.

The Muslim world is up in arms for some cartoons, but we just whimpered when Ahmadinejad swore to "wipe Israel off the map" or Hamas swears to destroy another nation. Let's stop this appeasing nonsense once and for all at whatever cost. I would be willing to use a bicycle and candles just so I wouldn't have to listen to terrorists' blackmailing obscenities.

In the meantime, buy Danish!

PS: Following the Dutch cartoons' Muslim fake rage, Palestinians have demanded that Danes, Norwegians and Swedes (sic) leave immediately; could Europe please reciprocate? Fair is fair. Some terrorist group have also threatened suicide attacks in Denmark.

Iran, Hamas, Ahmadinejad, Terrorism

Zimbabwe and the IMF, update

A number of NGOs and various blogs are hoping that the IMF relents and does not expel Zimbabwe, despite the abusive, incoherent and corrupt economic policies that the regime erratically pretends to implement. Some even ask for the IMF to cancel Zimbabwe's debt. Do they think that the money loaned or saved would go to benefit ordinary people instead of continuing to fatten up Mugabe and his henchmen? How naive can they be?

Corruption, IMF, Zimbabwe, Mugabe

The shadow war on terror

SANKABAR, Ethiopia - This is the war on terrorism that most Americans don't know about:

A small U.S. military task force in East Africa is installing water pumps, rebuilding schools and health clinics, making medical house calls, and training national armies - all part of a mission to stabilize a region that is seen as a potential breeding ground for terrorist groups.

"We are coming out of drought because of the pump," Omar Ahmed, a Sankabar elder, said. "So we say thank you, America. And thank you, Mr. Reed. He is the first guy to give us help."

What is happening here provides a glimpse of the Bush administration's global war on terrorism, which is being fought - mostly in the shadows - elsewhere in Africa and across the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia using different combinations of military, covert, economic and diplomatic weapons.

Separated from the Middle East by only a narrow waterway, the Horn of Africa is home to 90 million Muslims, many of whom live in crushing poverty and political isolation. Al-Qaeda has had success in the area, bombing U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, attacking the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 and nearly shooting down an Israeli charter plane over Kenya in 2002.

The 1,500 troops of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa have been stationed since 2002 at Camp Lemonier, a former French base on the Red Sea in the tiny coastal nation of Djibouti. They were sent to hunt down al-Qaeda operatives in East Africa, but there are few known terrorist cells working in the area - two-thirds the size of the United States - and the troops have not made many arrests.

Instead, theirs has become a humanitarian mission, with public relations benefits.

Read it all.

Ethiopia, Africa, US, WOT

Israel should join NATO

Echoing a concept already expressed brilliantly by Jose Maria Aznar (machine translation) as a means to dampen Iran's destructive ambitions towards Israel, Mr Martino, the Italian defense minister, said today:

NATO should consider allowing Israel to join the military alliance to guarantee the security of the Jewish state in the event of an attack against it by Iran, Italy's defence minister Antonio Martino said Monday. "In the light of the serious and worrying Iranian position the time has come to think of admitting Israel into NATO, so that an eventual attack against Israel would be regarded as an attack against the whole of NATO,"

Martino said that Israeli membership of NATO was also motivated by "the incapacity of the European Union to adopt a united and cohesive foreign policy," with regard to the Middle East.

Israel, NATO

Mugabe is cutting the branch he sits on

Six years after instituting a policy of nationalizing white-owned farms and evicting their owners, Zimbabwe's government has begun to seize white-owned land in urban Harare...Police arrived before Christmas and said they were going to build houses for themselves on Gletwyn. Ian Ross, 68, said the police started harassing and evicting hundreds of workers from their homes. "They arrived to evict the workers, which they did piece by piece, village by village, compound by compound. They were loaded onto police trucks in the rain, which most of the time arrived without fuel," he said. "They forced workers to buy fuel for them. They took them to various parts of the country. They were basically dumped, they lost all their furniture, saturated in the rain, but within days they all started to come back with a reed mat, a couple of blankets, a pot. They came back to work, but were hounded day and night. They moved into sheds, where they could sleep. The guys moved in to chicken runs; they were living like rabbits, like little rats in a hole."

Mugabe knows - he has admitted as much - that the army and police are the only things that keep him alive. He has therefore to try and keep them happy as he can; since he can't pay them enough, he looks the other way when they abuse their power, allowing them to loot at leisure. The same thing happens with his henchmen in Zanu PF: there is very little he can do to rein them in, even if he really wanted to.

To avoid this mess to be widely published and the horrors of starvation and suffering to become public, he has to tighten media laws:

Zimbabwe's national security minister Didymus Mutasa has warned that "the net will soon close in" on journalists he claims are threatening national security, a state-controlled newspaper reported on Friday.

Why not ask China's technical advice on how to censure the web?

One thing we should be grateful for is that dictators never learn their lessons. Mugabe has used Hitler's veterans in the past to do his bidding and it cost him dearly. He is using the army and police this time, but the game is much, much more dangerous.

Zimbabwe, Mugabe