Scariest term for harmless bloggers (possibly a continuing series)

Ever since bloggers took down CBS with their '1970's' Microsoft Word documents which were obviously not produced on a typewriter, the mainstream media has resorted to increasingly shrill language to describe people typing their opinions on computers. "Internet brownshirts" by Al Gore is one of my favorites. I used to think that was pretty extreme.

A blogger who humorously critiques the NYT food critic, one might think, is about as harmless as a sea cow. But not according to Times reviewer William Grimes:

"Now, it seems that you're in grave danger of being stalked on the Internet by a philosophical assassin."

"grave danger" "stalked" "philosophical assassin" ???

The mainstream media is far more charitable to those who blow themselves up in crowds of civilians. There is nothing dangerous about a marketplace of ideas except to those who used to run a monopoly.

Some examples of this "gravely dangerous stalking" by the "assassin" in question:

"This blog is predicated on the suggestion that every Wednesday, in the Times Dining Out section, Frank lays a huge Faberge egg of hilarity," Langbein writes. She imagines Bruni as a "Venetian count in a huge ruffled collar," doling out stars from "the inside breast pocket of his brocaded chamber robe."

Bruni holds sway over a vast kingdom of restaurants in a city obsessed with eating. New Yorkers use his critiques to decide whether they should try the latest adventure in dining.

Langbein's 10-month-old blog, "The Bruni Digest," has evolved into a sassy counterpoint to Bruni's dispatches.

Take this acerbic sample from her Nov. 2 posting:

"Usually the Count, trained in the infamously razor-witted journalistico-priestly salons of Berlusconi-era Rome, has a firm grasp on subtle humor. But this week, Frank is taking everything literally, in an autistic Amelia Bedelia way."

Ironically, assassin could be an accurate term if applied to Muslim murderers. The word is derived from a group of Muslims who used to kill after smoking hashish. But that would be unfair to those alienated, impoverished (like Osama Bin Laden, say) militants who are yearning to breathe free (of modern civilization).

"You can fool some of the people all of the time"

Analysis based on fabricated data. If you are a conspiracy theorist, consider how the media creates polling data to suit their agenda and then turns it into news.

Please read down to the bolded passage.

WASHINGTON - Republican strategists say President Bush has time to snap out of a three-month run of bad luck and setbacks, including GOP losses Tuesday in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.

Still, a comeback will be tough, and will get increasingly tougher the closer the 2006 midterm elections come, strategists in both parties agree.

Bush might want look back to successful predecessors for pointers. Other presidents have recovered from ratings slumps like the one Bush is in right now: Dwight Eisenhower came back after the Sherman Adams scandal; Ronald Reagan rebounded after Iran-Contra; Bill Clinton triumphed after Monica Lewinsky.

Bush could shake up his White House staff, as Eisenhower and Reagan did in their troubled second terms. Or he could follow Clinton's lead and engage in a flurry of domestic and foreign policy initiatives.

But the clock is running. And Bush may already have passed the point of no return, suggested Paul C. Light, a professor of public policy at New York University.

"Unless Bush and his advisers do something dramatic to reposition the administration and stop the slide in public approval, they're going to find they have very few friends who want to come to the White House, let alone friends who want them to come to their districts," Light said. "And that's about the worst possible position for a president to be in."

Some presidents tried but failed to mount successful comebacks. Nixon wasn't able to recover from Watergate and was forced to resign in August 1974, a year and a half into the second term he won by a landslide. Presidents Ford, Carter and George H.W. Bush never recovered from their slumps — and were denied new terms by voters.

Democratic Presidents Truman and Lyndon Johnson, both hobbled by unpopular wars — Korea for Truman, Vietnam for Johnson — declined to seek re-election.

Bush has been buffeted by the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, soaring fuel prices, a failed effort to revamp Social Security, the botched Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, investigations of top Republican leaders and budget setbacks on Capitol Hill, and the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

"Presidents always get in trouble in second terms. He's in more trouble than most," said Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University.

"When bad luck comes along, you've got to have a lot of momentum and a lot of forward motion. But Bush didn't do a lot of things that would have gotten him through those moments," Schmidt said. "When the hurricanes hit, when Katrina hit in particular, he already had lost momentum. And he slammed into a wall."

Bush's approval rating is at the lowest of his presidency — 37 percent in the most recent AP-Ipsos poll and at similar levels in comparable polls.

The poll in question sampled 1000 people. Breakdown: 51% Democrats, 40% Republicans.

The sampling (very small to begin with, but forget that) guaranteed the desired result, negative opinion of Bush. Then bring in an army of 'analysts' shortly thereafter to spin the manufactured data to match the ideological bias.

It's transparent, dishonest, and standard operating procedure for mainstream media polling.

Big day for the jihad 'warriors'

At least 57 dead at three Amman, Jordan hotels

AMMAN, Jordan - Suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three U.S.-based hotels in the Jordanian capital Wednesday night, killing at least 57 people and wounding 115 in what appeared to be an al-Qaida assault on an Arab kingdom with close ties to the United States.

Some higher-ups in the PA terrorist leadership were among the victims.

At least 33 Iraqi diners slaughtered

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two suicide bombers detonated themselves near a restaurant frequented by Baghdad police Thursday morning, killing at least 33 people and injuring 19, police said.

The blast echoed through central Baghdad at about 9:45 a.m., when police officers frequently stop by for breakfast. Police Maj. Abdel-Hussein Minsef said two bombers attacked the restaurant, killing seven police officers and 26 civilians.

Samiya Mohammed, a housewife who lives nearby, said she rushed outside when she heard the explosion.

"I went out to see the restaurant heavily damaged. There was bodies, mostly civilians, and blood everywhere inside the place. This is a criminal act that only targeted and hurt innocent people having their breakfast," she said.

There were no Americans in the area, she said.

"I do not understand why most of the time it is the Iraqis who are killed," she said.

Combine these with the brave jihadi attacks on French nursery schools, supermarkets, transportation, and critical infrastructure.

What a couple days for the Religion of Peace.

Their idea of a hard target is attacking a police car with an RPG, from behind, under cover.

Darfur genocide complete? - UN can go back to raping kids

The Darfur genocide consisting of Arab / Muslim Janjaweed supported by Sudanese troops moving from black African village to village raping, murdering, torturing, and dismembering seems to be reaching an end. Hitchens notes:

It looks as if the realists have won the day in the matter of Darfur. Or, to phrase it in another way, it looks as if the ethnic cleansers of that province have made good use of the "negotiation" and "mediation" period to complete their self-appointed task. As my friend Johann Hari put it recently in the London Independent: "At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There's only one problem—it's drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill."
By some reliable estimates, the Sudanese government or "National Islamic Front" has slain as many as 400,000 of its black co-religionists—known contemptuously as zurga ("niggers")—and expelled perhaps 2 million more. This appalling achievement has been made possible by a very simple tactic: The actual killers and cleansers, the Arab janjaweed militias, are a "deniable" arm of the Sudanese authorities. Those authorities pretend to negotiate with the United Nations, the United States, and the African Union, and their negotiating "card" is the control that they can or might exercise over said militias. While this tap is turned on and off, according to different applications of carrot and stick, the militias pretend to go out of control and carry on with their slaughter and deportation. By the time the clock has been run out, the job is done.

One story which was so buried during the last U.S. presidential election I've never seen it since gave life to what has been going on. On election day (U.S.) some UN observers noted that Sudanese troops were loading Africans on buses, to parts unknown, in direct violation of the 'safe' area the UN had created. One might refer to UN 'safe' areas as waiting rooms for genocide given their recent history.

Genocide weighs heavily on me. I don't consider myself a particularly special person, endowed with exceptional morals, but when I hear of the systematic murder of entire groups of people it makes me question the nature of international law. So often we hear about some trumped-up complaint from the UN, like the burning of dead Taliban terrorists, but the Darfur genocide - under Kofi Annan's watch - appears to be ending because there is nobody left to rape, torture, mutilate, or kill.

I can only pray that this website's title is still validDarfur: A Genocide We Can Stop

The Crime of Our New Century...

The Sudanese Government, using Arab "Janjaweed" militias, its air force, and organized starvation, is systematically killing the black Sudanese of Darfur.

The picture of the boy killed (left) shows what is happening in Darfur. Over a million people, driven from their homes, now face death from starvation and disease as the Government and militias attempt to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching them. The same forces have destroyed the people of Darfur's villages and crops, and poisoned their water supplies, and they continue to murder, rape and terrorize.

How will history judge those who lived through this mass atrocity? For all our platitudes about international law, due process, 'torture,' and 'illegal war,' there is a mass crime against humanity going on under our noses. These victims don't wear panties on their heads. They are raped, tortured, and mutilated to death.

When the political fallout people obsess over fades away, the history of mankind will be written in a more serious tone. Body counts speak volumes in history. History is one long list of body counts which could have, or should have, been prevented.

How many American, French, British, Russian, and Chinese troops would it take to end this genocide? Perhaps a brigade each. But the Chinese and French (among others) have substantial Sudanese oil interests to think about, so UN action is off the table.

Where is the 'Security' in the UN Security Council? Should we use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for toilet paper?

This is a massive genocide being carried out in the most inhumane ways, for oil.

10 French officers wounded by gunfire in skirmish, two seriously

If you're tempted to say France is beginning to sound like a bad day in Iraq, I won't try to talk you out of it. (BBC)

Of course, by skirmish I mean rioters firing at police. The police, as far as I know, haven't fired real bullets yet. Nor have I heard of any injuries due to rubber bullets or tear gas.

Chirac pledges to defeat rioters

President Jacques Chirac says France is determined to prevail in the face of widespread rioting that has gripped mostly African and Arab communities.
Mr Chirac spoke after chairing crisis talks following the 10th - and worst - night of violence, arson and looting.

He said it was an "absolute priority" to re-establish order. But soon after, fresh unrest erupted in several cities.

In Grigny, south of Paris, rioters fired shots at police, injuring 10 police officers, two of them seriously.

Violent attacks were also reported in Orleans, Rennes and Nantes.

Rioters burnt nearly 1,300 cars and more than 300 arrests were made on Saturday night from the cities of Nice to Strasbourg.

The Great European Jihad Will Not Be Televised

Europe's Muslims in open rebellion

Is there a breaking point in the mainstream media? Is there any limit to their rhetorical elasticity?

Islam, as happens periodically, is making a bid to take over Europe and the world. It's that simple. How much longer can the world media pretend it's limited to "impoverished" "youths" in "France"?

Stay tuned.

UPDATES:

1. Fjordman reports half of cash machines looted in urban Sweden.

Good place to keep track of the European Jihad's progress. Fjordman is a smart fella.

France to surrender or fight back?

This is not rocket science.

Rioting Spreads From Paris Across France

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer
26 minutes ago

AUBERVILLIERS, France - Widespread riots across impoverished areas of France took a malevolent turn in a ninth night of violence, as youths torched an ambulance and stoned medical workers coming to the aid of a sick person. Authorities arrested more than 200 people, an unprecedented sweep since the beginning of the unrest.

Bands of youths also burned a nursery school, warehouses and more than 750 cars overnight as the violence that spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France. The U.S. warned Americans against taking trains to the airport through the affected areas.

At the nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris, part of the roof was caved in, childrens' photos stuck to blackened walls, and melted plastic toys littered the floor.

The town had been previously untouched by the violence. Some residents demanded that the army be deployed, or that citizens rise up and form militias. At the school gate, the mayor tried to calm tempers.

"We are not going to start militias," Mayor Alain Outreman said. "You would have to be everywhere."

Fires and other incidents were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the southwest, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere on the second night of unrest in areas beyond metropolitan Paris. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole.

"This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?" Naima Mouis, a hospital worker in Suresnes, asked while looking at the hulk of her burned-out car.

On Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois, filing past burned-out cars to demand calm. One banner read: "No to violence." Car torchings have become a daily fact in France's tough suburbs, with about 100 each night.

The Interior Ministry operations center reported 754 vehicles burned throughout France from Friday night to Saturday morning — three-quarters of them in the Paris area.

Arrests were also up sharply, with 203 people detained overnight, the center said. By comparison, Interior Ministry Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday that police had made 143 arrests during the whole first week of unrest.

The violence — sparked after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis — has laid bare discontent simmering in France's poor suburbs ringing big cities. Those areas are home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin oversaw a Cabinet meeting Saturday to evaluate the situation.

The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to avoid the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade.

An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence. The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set afire after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.

Late Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry officer said. The officer, not authorized to speak publicly, asked not to be named.

"I'm not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out," said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq living near a burned carpet warehouse. "I have three children and I live in a five-story building. If a fire hit, what would I do?"

A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination between gangs in the various riot-hit suburbs. He said, however, that neighborhood youths were communicating between themselves using mobile phone text messaging or e-mails to arrange meeting points and alert each other to police.

___

Associated Press writers John Leicester, Elaine Ganley and Angela Doland in Paris contributed to this report.

Remember when France was the classic example of a modern, progressive, welfare state, the social model to be emulated by the simplisme Anglo-Saxons? Yeah, you know, one day before the riots started. Now it's impoverished all over apparently. Amazing how AP crafts the news to their bias without considering their bias two weeks ago.

Whatever you do, France, don't react like the 'cowboy' United States might. What would we know about winning wars?

politics of religion

The clash of civilizations is real

The Times November 05, 2005

Fine words cannot disguise it: the clash of civilisations is real
Michael Burleigh

.....Osama bin Laden, the inciting intelligence behind many of these atrocities, certainly believed in a “clash of civilisations”, as he called it. His justification for 9/11 was a bizarre fusion of finance and theology. The twin towers reminded him of the moon idol Hubal, worshipped by pagan Meccans until Muhammad demolished all lesser gods. But bin Laden’s stream of consciousness also included totting up the financial cost of 9/11 to the US, in terms of disrupted financial markets, lost employment and reconstruction, arriving at a net loss of $1 trillion for the modest investment of $500,000 that these attacks are thought to have involved.

But bin Laden has competition in the stakes for the world’s most wanted terrorist. His erstwhile Jordanian protégé, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, established his credentials as a murderer by cutting off the head of the US businessman Nicholas Berg, graduating to bomb attacks in Iraq that claim 60 lives a day. Perhaps al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has expressed “concern” about the killing of Iraqi Muslims, may get to al-Zarqawi before American special forces do. Big egos are at play.

President Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, have been commendably unflinching in their determination to eradicate the pestilence of Islamist terrorism. Other governments are trying a different tack, which smacks of appeasement. Last week in Madrid, I attended a “Dialogue between Cultures and Religion”, organised by a foundation with links to Spain’s ruling socialists. Here, talk of “dialogue” between faiths effortlessly mutated into the separate notion, promoted by Spain and Turkey, of “an alliance of civilisations” spanning the Mediterranean world. Countries can ally; civilisations generally don’t. A banquet in the government quarter elicited the intelligence, from a Moroccan diplomat, that not only was “Europe” morally superior to a US symbolised by Bush’s Texas, but that a distinctive “fusion” culture was emerging in the Mediterranean, “different ” from that of northern Europe. One doubts whether the Italians feel that way.

The conference opened with protestations of goodwill from Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s former president, delivered by an ambassador who was not among those recalled for failing to reflect the crazed views of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Felipe González, the former Spanish premier, chose to overlook Ahmadinejad’s rant, preferring to contest the notion of a “clash of civilisations”, as if this were US policy.

At least Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, managed condemnation of an elliptical sort. He has been a prime mover of the claim that you cannot “fight evil with evil”, a formula begging many questions about moral equivalences. He favours marginalising extremists through a dialogue with Muslim “moderates”. These included Dr Tariq Ramadan, an Egyptian intellectual, who is on an FBI watch list and banned from France, but welcome in Spain.

Discussion of religion and politics took the form of a “dialogue” between aggressive secularists — on this occasion Spanish socialists with memories of “national Catholicism” under Franco — who averred, against all the evidence, that “religion” will “inevitably” fade away, and those who think it is an essential and vital force in the modern world. This was a dialogue of the deaf, because Western liberals have become totally unmusical on the subject of religion, which they nevertheless combat with an evangelical fervour.
.....

There's nothing more annoying than a cocksure, evangelical athiest.

Amir Taheri: NY POST - A two-state solution for France?

Seen at Jihad Watch

WHY PARIS IS BURNING

By AMIR TAHERI
November 4, 2005 -- AS THE night falls, the "troubles" start — and the pattern is always the same.

Bands of youths in balaclavas start by setting fire to parked cars, break shop windows with baseball bats, wreck public telephones and ransack cinemas, libraries and schools. When the police arrive on the scene, the rioters attack them with stones, knives and baseball bats.

The police respond by firing tear-gas grenades and, on occasions, blank shots in the air. Sometimes the youths fire back — with real bullets.

These scenes are not from the West Bank but from 20 French cities, mostly close to Paris, that have been plunged into a European version of the intifada that at the time of writing appears beyond control.

The troubles first began in Clichy-sous-Bois, an underprivileged suburb east of Paris, a week ago. France's bombastic interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, responded by sending over 400 heavily armed policemen to "impose the laws of the republic," and promised to crush "the louts and hooligans" within the day. Within a few days, however, it had dawned on anyone who wanted to know that this was no "outburst by criminal elements" that could be handled with a mixture of braggadocio and batons.

By Monday, everyone in Paris was speaking of "an unprecedented crisis." Both Sarkozy and his boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, had to cancel foreign trips to deal with the riots.

How did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week, a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: stealing parts of parked cars.

Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened, as the police have not been present in that suburb for years.

The problem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something — which meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them.

Once the police arrived on the scene, the youths — who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years — got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street, and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned-off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted.

Once news of their deaths was out, Clichy was all up in arms.

With cries of "God is great," bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.

The French authorities could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from French territory. So they hit back — sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.

Within hours, the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories." By midweek, the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris, with a population of 5.5 million.

But who lives in the affected areas? In Clichy itself, more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns, the Muslim immigrant community accounts for 30 percent to 60 percent of the population. But these are not the only figures that matter. Average unemployment in the affected areas is estimated at around 30 percent and, when it comes to young would-be workers, reaches 60 percent.

In these suburban towns, built in the 1950s in imitation of the Soviet social housing of the Stalinist era, people live in crammed conditions, sometimes several generations in a tiny apartment, and see "real French life" only on television.

The French used to flatter themselves for the success of their policy of assimilation, which was supposed to turn immigrants from any background into "proper Frenchmen" within a generation at most.

That policy worked as long as immigrants came to France in drips and drops and thus could merge into a much larger mainstream. Assimilation, however, cannot work when in most schools in the affected areas, fewer than 20 percent of the pupils are native French speakers.

France has also lost another powerful mechanism for assimilation: the obligatory military service abolished in the 1990s.

As the number of immigrants and their descendants increases in a particular locality, more and more of its native French inhabitants leave for "calmer places," thus making assimilation still more difficult.

In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.

The result is often alienation. And that, in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.

"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb."

It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.

The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

Suddenly, French politics has become worth watching again, even though for the wrong reasons.

Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," is a member of Benador Associates.

I wish I could say this planned pre-emptive capitulation surprised me.

Watching European civilization crumple into a fetal position while crying does not encourage me to triumphant calls of "told ya so." Seeing it coming and wishing it would happen are two completely different things.

In the words of Tom Sizemore's character in Black Hawk Down, "Well, shoot back."

FAAUA makes significant territorial gains on French Colonial Army

Washington Times Article

Back to the BSM for coverage...

The French African Asian Ute Alliance has made significant progress in recapturing the holy city of Paris from its French colonial occupiers. The French - also taking a leading role in the subsequent brutal Crusades - stole the holy land of France from its rightful Frankistanian conquerors when the right-wing attorney and part-time blogger Charles Martel took orders from a secret Vatical cabal and was instructed to "keep the unholy brown people from spreading that religion of love and tolerance everywhere." "I must get back to my polytheism and buggery," the pope (news-websites-lawsuits) added.

The spiritual leader of the FAAUA, Mohammed Takfir Taqiyya al-Shahad, has stated clearly on many occasions that the French simply cannot run electricity through wires without insulting and humiliating the original Frankastanian inhabitants. Imam al-Shahad still holds a key from his ancestors which he claims could open a brothel door in Paris. "That is forbidden," Mohammed added. Unlike the many French inhabitants of Paris, Mohammed is a devout Muslim (news-websites-dhimmitude) who prays five times a day. Nor does he have sex with prostitutes.

A family portrait
Mohammed Takfir Taqiyya al-Shahad was born a poor sixth son to a fourth wife, a forgotten son by the other royal sheikh princes he called his peers. Educated at Oxford, he spent three long years in the United States acquiring a graduate degree in political science from Harvard, where he faced brutal Islamophobia and bigotry. He returned to England where he specializes in Anglo-Islamic affairs, publishes, teaches, and lectures. He works part-time as a government diversity consultant.

"It is not just the insulting and humiliating electrical current," Mohammed thoughfully added, looking soulfully at us with his big brown eyes. "That is minor compared to the job discrimination, alienation, public housing, welfare benefit issues, lack of proper Islamic education at school, insufficient funding for mosques and Islamic centers...

...the constant humiliation of billboards which show scantily-clad kaffir whores asking to be raped, ice cream cones which insult the Prophet (PBUH), Zionists! Have I mentioned the Zionists?!"

Embedded with the French Colonial Army [Salem al-Khalifa]

Things look grim as one neighborhood after another fall to the FAAUA. There is very little the FCA can do without the support of the French majority which still occupies France. "We shoot the bullets of roobeer, but zey juuust bounce off dem!" a dejected Sgt. Jean LaFleur noted.

"We use the weapons of mass destruction, but they only cry!"

There you have it. The chemical weapons which could not be found in Iraq are being employed on the poor Muslim Frankistanians who only want to reclaim the land the neo-con Charles Martel stole from them.

With the insurgency changing and adapting with each passing day, morale of the French troops at a new low, and international pressure mounting on the French to pull their occupation force out of France, the chance of Paris surviving this seige could be in doubt. This reminds some of Dien Bien Phu when the French were routed by a similar indigenous ute movement.

Example China: You really want hospitals run like the DMV or child protective services?

When national health care evolves

Hospitals where the 'illness' is revolt [Telegraph UK]
(Filed: 04/11/2005)

• China has 25 Ankang hospitals. It intends to set up one for every city of more than a million people - 70 in all.

• Ankang means "Peace and health".

• 3,000 people have been "treated" at Ankang hospitals because of their political or religious activities or excessive demands for their legal rights since the early 1980s.

• Ankang doctors and nurses are employees of the Public Security Bureau, the police.

• Crimes for which you can be committed include shouting political slogans, writing reactionary banners and letters, making anti-government speeches in public, expressing opinions on important domestic and international affairs and disrupting the normal work of party and government offices.

"Creating a socialist utopia on Earth would be simple if we could just make those annoying complainers using the fancy words Shut Up!"

In other news, Democrats in the U.S. Congress continue to argue for restricting free political speech on the Internet. Power Line has the story.

Now imagine the government was trying to restrict the rights of the New York Times.

Think you might have heard of this legislation?

What an admission by the Left: "We can't win debates in the sphere of ideas. So the only logical thing to do is silence the opposition."

Is there any wonder why every socialist model eventually turns to vicious repression of dissent? From hospitals to keyboards, they know what's best for you. Now Shut Up!

Sarkozy - Guardian (UK)

"We need to act at the same time on prevention, education, housing, jobs ... and not play the cowboy."

-- Laurent Fabius, ... on French radio ...

Cowboys are useful for some things. Don't knock the cowboy approach, France.

Guardian
Sarkozy pledges police crackdown after riots in Paris

· Special units assigned to rundown districts
· 30 held after worst clashes with youths for years

Jon Henley in Paris
Tuesday November 1, 2005

France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday defended his law-and-order tactics and pledged rapid police reinforcements after four nights of rioting in Paris.
Mr Sarkozy, who also promised the parents of two teenagers whose deaths sparked the violence that they would learn "the full truth" about how their sons died, said the situation in some deprived neighbourhoods had been deteriorating "for 30 years" and had to be tackled firmly. More than 30 people were under arrest last night in the rundown northeastern district of Clichy-sous-Bois after some of the most violent clashes between riot police and mainly immigrant youths that the country has seen for some years.

Groups of youths have set cars and rubbish bins alight, hurled stones at police and fired at least one bullet in running battles that began on Thursday after Ziad, 17, and Banou, 15, were electrocuted in an electricity substation. On Sunday night a teargas grenade was fired into a mosque.
Visiting the nearby Seine-Saint-Denis police headquarters, Mr Sarkozy maintained his hardline stance, saying policing would be stepped up to ensure every resident of France's poor immigrant estates - where unemployment can be five times the national average - had "the security they have a right to". He said 17 companies of CRS riot police would be assigned permanently to difficult neighbourhoods, along with seven mobile police squads. Plainclothes agents will be sent on to some estates to "identify gang leaders, traffickers and big shots," he added, promising a "national plan" to deal with delinquency by the end of the year.

Opposition politicians, human rights groups and even some members of his own centre-right UMP party have accused Mr Sarkozy of being more interested in high-profile repression than long-term prevention. They are also upset at his use of words such as rabble, yobs and louts, which they say is likely to stoke tensions further. "This isn't how we resolve these problems," a former Socialist prime minister, "Laurent Fabius, said on French radio. "We need to act at the same time on prevention, education, housing, jobs ... and not play the cowboy."

But Mr Sarkozy, citing statistics that show 30 police patrols are stoned and as many cars burned every night on France's low-income housing estates, is unrepentant. "There are some gangs and traffickers who are living off the underground economy, off drug trafficking, who seem to think these neighbourhoods are beyond the authorities' reach, " he said on television on Sunday. So far, France's voters seem to back him: he is by far the most popular politician and is seen as a leading presidential candidate in 2007.

Along with a friend, Metin, 21, who survived, Ziad and Banou were on their way home when they saw other youths being stopped and questioned by police. Apparently believing they were being pursued, they scrambled over a high barbed wire fence to get into the substation.

At the police station Mr Sarkozy met relatives of the two youths. He said that a full investigation was under way but on Sunday he had said that according to his information the youths were not being chased when they climbed the substation fence. The parents of the boys yesterday refused to meet the "incompetent" Mr Sarkozy and demanded to meet the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.

The internal politics in France don't come close to matching their actual problems on the ground. Losing France one Clichy-sous-Bois at a time.

Updates on Afghanistan and Iraq

Small US units lure Taliban into losing battles

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

QALAT, AFGHANISTAN - It's mid- morning on June 21, and Lt. Timothy Jon O'Neal's platoon has just been dropped onto a dusty field north of a mud-walled village of Chalbar. Their mission: to check out reports that a local Afghan Army commander has defected to the Taliban and burned the district headquarters, and is prepared to fight.


Within minutes, it becomes clear that the reports are true, and the platoon is in trouble. The radio crackles with Taliban fighters barking orders to surround the Americans. Gunfire comes from the hilltops. Lieutenant O'Neal's men are easy targets. The Taliban have the high ground.

* * *
This has been the most violent year here since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The US Army is moving in smaller numbers to lure the Taliban out of hiding for fights they cannot win. The result: More than 1,200 enemy deaths this year, including high-level commanders. But it is also a strategy with profound risks, and one that may be difficult to sustain in Zabul Province - a region so unstable that commanders call it the "Fallujah of Afghanistan" - as current troops return home, their replacements as yet undecided.

Through interviews with soldiers of Chosen Company, of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the Monitor has reconstructed two recent battles that illustrate how this strategy works, and how it may have weakened the Taliban movement's effectiveness as a military force - for now.

* * *
As the Taliban start shooting, O'Neal's platoon scurries for cover. But there's no panic. "They think, without a doubt, they have us outnumbered," recalls O'Neal, a native of Jeannette, Pa., and leader of 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company. "We've got only 23 people on the ground, and I would say the Taliban had over 150 before the day was over."

But O'Neal and his men are not alone. Just to the south, 1st platoon is clearing a village; to the east, the 3rd platoon are marching toward Chalbar. O'Neal's platoon calls for close air support from nearby Apache helicopters. But on the ground, 2nd platoon will have to hold its own, and fight for every inch - uphill.

Tactical advantages
Much is made about the high-tech gear that US soldiers carry: body armor, rapid-firing machine guns, night vision goggles. But the chief advantage of the US military - especially in a low-intensity conflict, pitted against a crudely trained force like the Taliban - is training and air power.

Taliban fighters, meanwhile, appear to gain courage from numbers, the ability to swarm a smaller enemy unit. A sense of safety in numbers, however, is often the Taliban's undoing if a US platoon can fix an enemy's position long enough for aircraft or other infantry units to arrive. This is the backbone of US military strategy in Zabul, and one reason why the Taliban have lost so many fighters this year.

"We've had a lot of success with textbook tactics, getting the smallest element engaged, and then using other assets to just pile on," says O'Neal. "The Taliban are more willing to engage with us when we have smaller numbers."

Not Taliban bait
Lt. Col. Mark Stammer, the commander at Forward Operating Base in Qalat, is quick to clarify that the US Army is not using small units as "bait."

"I've never sent a squad in as bait," says Colonel Stammer, a native of Redfield, S.D. "I'm sure that it has emboldened the Taliban to attack. But there's no fight where our squads have made contact and lost. Whenever the Taliban fight us, they're decimated."

Darting from boulder to boulder, Sgt. Justin Hormann, a native of Melbourne, Fla., is leading a team of about six men up the hill, just behind 1st squad leader, Staff Sgt. Michael Christian of Montrose, Pa. Above them, about 50 Taliban fighters are raining down a torrent of gunfire with their Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades.

Sergeant Christian reaches a shallow plateau on the hill, and pulls himself up to establish a fire position. Almost immediately, he's shot. He crouches behind a boulder and shouts out, "I'm hit." The Talib who shot him is barely 30 feet away.

Sergeant Hormann can see his squad leader is bleeding and needs immediate help. "When he got hit, they were right in front of us," recalls Hormann, while on break between missions at the Forward Operating Base at Qalat. "He could see the fighter in front of him, but he couldn't see the Taliban who was just alongside him."

Hormann makes a snap decision: He bounds up the hill to give Christian first aid. "I said 'to heck with it.' I just ran up," says Hormann. All around him, Taliban bullets continue to ping off rocks as Hormann applies a tourniquet. Under constant fire, he sets up Bravo team to deliver suppressing fire, while he and Alpha team carry Christian off the hill. At the bottom, he regroups the squad for another assault.

"And then we all went back up the hill a second time," says Hormann, who was recently awarded a Bronze Star with valor for his actions that day. For the next four hours, Hormann and a 10-man ad hoc squad move back up the mountain within 60 feet of the enemy. Only when Pfc. Joseph Lorman of Sloughhouse, Calif., is wounded in the neck and shoulder does Hormann move the squad back down the mountain.

By that time, reinforcements from the 1st and 3rd platoons have arrived. All escape routes are blocked. The Taliban are trapped.

"The fire was extremely close," says O'Neal, who was with a second team providing covering fire lower down the hill. "But toward the end it got dark, so we just ran to the bottom."

As night falls, American AC-130 Specter gunships arrive to engage Taliban fighters who have also decided to make a run for it. By the end of the day, 76 Taliban bodies are counted, and another nine Taliban fighters are captured.

To this day, the men of the 2nd Platoon, Chosen Company, can't figure out what the Taliban were thinking. Were they suicidal? Why did they gather so many Taliban in one place? Did they really think they had enough men to defeat the Americans?

"They called the BBC to tell them they had taken the district headquarters," says O'Neal. "They knew we were going to come."

* * *
It's been just over a month since the men of 2nd Platoon, Chosen (Few) Company, were in a battle with the Taliban.

O'Neal and his men are in Kandahar, on call as a quick-reaction force, when they get a call to deploy. They catch helicopters to Uruzgan, a region that has been a headquarters of sort for Taliban remnants. Their mission is to clear the village of Siahchow, where US Special Forces units have taken fire from an unknown number of Taliban fighters. The Special Forces will continue to block escape routes, while O'Neal's men take the village, one building at a time.

"The whole purpose of an infantry is to close in on the enemy and finish them off," says Capt. Eric Gardiner, commander of Chosen Company in Qalat. "Here in Afghanistan, we've had over 75 percent of our contacts within hand grenade range."

Missions like this one, with its elements of intense urban warfare, test an infantryman like no other. The closest comparison to what is about to happen in Siahchow is what one occasionally sees in the street battles of Iraqi towns like Fallujah, Ramadi, or Najaf. But Siahchow has another hazard: a fruit orchard in the center of town, with hiding places for the enemy.

Spc. Christopher Velez, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who is in the lead squad, says he senses something is wrong. Normally, children come up to American soldiers, asking for candy or pens. Here, there is nobody. Even the roosters are silent.

The village follows the shape of the valley: narrow at one end, and then opening up, with houses along the outskirts. The men begin to search each of those houses, north to south. Specialist Velez's team searches houses. Sergeant Hormann and his men line up shoulder to shoulder and search the orchard.

The Taliban are there. "We are close enough that we could hear their movements," says Hormann. "We could see the hand of some guy reaching for his weapon."

A fierce gun battle breaks out with eight Taliban fighters in the orchard. Hormann and his team leader, Sgt. DaWayne Krepel, and his team maneuver around the Taliban. The firefight lasts an intense 15 minutes; Sergeant Krepel kills two enemy fighters just two feet away.

House to house
Lieutenant O'Neal hears the gunfire nearby, but continues with his objective of clearing houses.

For the most part, the Taliban are poorly trained, firing wildly enough that they can't hit American soldiers even at close range. "If we were that far from you," Velez says, pointing at a table just 10 feet away, "and I missed you, I would be upset at myself."

.....

...The mission turns deadly...

Report on roadside bombs

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A day after releasing new casualty figures showing that October was the fourth deadliest month for U.S. forces in the Iraq war, the military issued a report Tuesday showing how hard it can be to prevent the deadliest form of attack: roadside bombs.

The report, summarizing combat operations in and around Baghdad over a five-day period, said U.S. forces had found several powerful roadside bombs hidden in two vehicles on Saturday.

The day before, soldiers caught three suspected insurgents planting a bomb along a street and defused it before it could be used in an attack. On Thursday, a roadside bomb exploded, damaging a U.S. patrol, and when its soldiers chased three Iraqi men into a nearby home, they found it contained more bomb-making materials, the military said.

On Monday, the U.S. command reported that seven American service members were killed, six on Monday and one on Sunday. All of them were victims of increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs that have become the deadliest weapon in the insurgents' arsenal.

The new deaths made October the fourth deadliest month for troops here since the war began. A powerful roadside bomb also exploded on Monday among civilians in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the major metropolis of the Shiite-dominated south, which has witnessed less violence than Sunni areas.

On Tuesday, Basra police raised the casualty figures to 20 dead and 71 wounded. The attack occurred along a bustling street packed with shops and restaurants as people were enjoying an evening out after the daily Ramadan fast.

In new attacks on Tuesday, two roadside bombs exploded, one in Baghdad and one south of the capital, killing a police officer and wounding three Iraqis, officials said.

On a road near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide attacker with explosives hidden beneath his clothes lunged at a police patrol that had been slowed by traffic, wounding the city's police commander, Col. Khatab Rash, and his driver, police said.

Military commanders have warned that Sunni insurgents will step up their attacks in the run-up to the Dec. 15 election, when Iraqis will choose their first full-term parliament since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

To guard against such attacks, the military has raised the number of American troops in Iraq to 157,000 — among the highest levels of the Iraq conflict.

Most of the combat deaths and injuries in recent months have been a result of the increasing use by insurgents of sophisticated homemade bombs. The military refers to those bombs as "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs.

Last Friday, an IED killed Col. William W. Wood, 44, of Panama City, Fla. an infantry battalion commander. He was promoted posthumously, making him the highest-ranking soldier killed in action in the Iraq conflict, according to the Pentagon.

"We see an adversary that continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise stand-off type weapons — IEDs, in particular," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters Monday.

The insurgents continually search for new and more effective ways to use IEDs, Di Rita said, while U.S. forces look for new ways to counter the threat.

"We're getting more intelligence that's allowing us to stop more of these things, find more of them. So we're learning from them and the enemy is learning from us, and it's going to be that way for as long as there is an insurgency," he said.

Monday's deadliest attack against U.S. service members came in an area known as the "triangle of death." Four soldiers from the U.S. Army's Task Force Baghdad died when their patrol struck a roadside bomb in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.

.....

BATTLEFRONT FRANCE: DAY FIVE: SIEGE

SIEGE OF CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS

BSM

French troops approach another grim milestone. This is the fifth day, a work week, half of ten, yet the militant activist youths of Clichy-sous-Bois tenacously hang onto the holy city under wood. Using makeshift weapons like 'fire bad' and rocks they burned somewhere between 20 and 40 French armored vehicles.
Sources close to Chirac who could not be named said they warned him what might happen if French troops strayed too closely into France.

Critics of the administration point out that armor which protects from 'fire bad' has been available for years. Sources close to Chirac note his 'Water Good' company could profit from the internal strife which has marred the French occupation of France for decades.

One family story
Azzam Mohammed Jihad Shahid Mohammed (17)
"He's the quietest, most bookish student I've ever taught," Osama Zarqawi Ballout Jihad said of Azzam, his pupil for 10 years. "Nobody knows the Koran better," asserted Osama. "There is no way he could participate in unjustified violence," Mr. Jihad concluded.

"My brother strikes out at the police cars which drive up and down the streets," Shahada Kazzam Mohammed (13) says. "They are Zionist Gallic French imperialists." He paused briefly to watch a behading video on his cell phone, but continued, "how can police cars not be burned when they try to force their secular law on us?"

"Fire bad" said Azzam, hosing incendary machine gun fire at French police cars.

Fire bad, indeed. "Allah is greatest" said Azzam, noting the "police should surrender" Clichy-sous-Bois, or risk violence...

Hitch: Plame, Wilson, Fitzkerfuffle..

Christopher Hitchens: What Goes Around, Comes Around
The Plame kerfuffle has made hypocrites of just about everyone.

If--and one has to say "if"--the transmission of any classified information is a crime, then as Mr. Fitzgerald also confirmed, one would be in the deep waters of the Espionage Act, which is "a very difficult statute to interpret." Actually, it is a very easy act to interpret. It declares that even something very well-known is secret if the state defines it as secret: the same principle as the dreaded British Official Secrets Act. As to the critical question of whether Ms. Plame had any cover to blow, Mr. Fitzgerald was equally insouciant: "I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert."

In the absence of any such assertion or allegation, one must be forgiven for wondering what any of this gigantic fuss can possibly be about. I know some apparently sensible people who are prepared to believe, still, that a Machiavellian cabal in the White House wanted to punish Joseph Wilson by exposing his wife to embarrassment and even to danger. So strong is this belief that it envisages Karl Rove (say) deciding to accomplish the foul deed by tipping off Robert Novak, one of the most anti-Iraq-war and pro-CIA journalists in the capital, as if he were precisely the pliant tool one would select for the dastardly work. And then, presumably to thicken the plot, Mr. Novak calls the CIA to confirm, as it readily did, that Ms. Plame was in the agency's employ.

France a quagmire?

Insurgency shows signs of adapting, spreading, growing

The French African, Asian, Ute Alliance (FAAUA) continues its bloody house-to-house defense of Clichy-Sous-Bois. After four days of intense combat in the holy city under wood, government forces are no closer to a violent resolution of the conflict.

"We are to die, all uv uzz!" said Armand St. Guerrue, the Mayor of Clichy-Sous-Bois, as he packed his Mercedes full of German pornography and headed for the border.

A FAAUA representative said simply, "no cutting off the current, no peace."

This reporter has covered dozens of conflicts all over the world. I don't think it would be biased of me to say these damn French occupiers need to get off of the land which was lawfully seized by Islamic jihadis, converting parts of France from the Dar-al-Harb to Dar-al-Islam.

Social class and racism has driven these African, Asian, and French Utes to acts of violence. The root causes must be addressed to solve the underlying social problems.

[just kidding]

Nominee Best Acting by Man in Commercial Dressed as Fruit: "You can't over love"

...love your underwear...

Steyn: Dripping with expectations

Dripping with expectations

Fitzgasm?

This is getting ridiculous, isn't it?

Steyn:

Most Americans have never heard of any of these people. What's that? You've heard of Scooter? No, you're mistaken, you're thinking of Skeeter -- Skeeter Davis, the late country & western singer, who had a Top Three hit in 1963 with "Don't the-ey know it's The End Of The World/It ended when you said goodbye," which is apparently what George W. Bush will be singing as Karl Rove's led out of the Oval Office in handcuffs.
Just for the record, Scooter Libby is the highest-ranking Scooter in the Bush administration, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. All last week, lefty gloaters were eagerly anticipating "Fitzmas," their designation for that happy day when federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments against Mr. Libby, and Mr. Rove, and maybe Mr. Cheney, and -- boy oh boy, who knows? -- maybe Chimpy Bushitlerburton himself. Pat Fitzgerald has been making his list, checking it twice, found out who's naughty or nice, and he's ready to go on a Slay Ride, leaving Mr. Bush the Little Drummed-Out Boy and the Dems having a blue blue blue blue blue-state Christmas in November 2006, if not before. [Mr. Libby was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation.]

UPDATE:

Guardian has a fitzgasm

I tried repeatedly to talk the US out of invading Iraq, says Berlusconi

· Italian PM tries to distance himself from White House
· Gadafy enlisted to help halt move towards war

John Hooper in Rome
Monday October 31, 2005
The Guardian


Silvio Berlusconi, one of George Bush's closest allies, says he repeatedly tried to talk the US president out of invading Iraq, in comments to be broadcast today.
In the television interview, which goes out on the day the Italian prime minister flies to Washington to meet Mr Bush, Mr Berlusconi says he even enlisted the help of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadafy, in behind-the-scenes efforts to stop America going to war.

"I have never been convinced war was the best way to succeed in making a country democratic and extract it from an albeit bloody dictatorship," he says. "I tried on several occasions to convince the American president not to wage war."

His version of events, recounted in an interview with the La7 private TV station, with excerpts reported by the Apcom and Ansa news agencies at the weekend, was backed by his deputy, Gianfranco Fini, leader of the former neo-fascist party, who said: "We tried right up to the end to persuade Bush and Blair not to launch a military attack."

Mr Berlusconi said one of the "other ways and other solutions" he had tried was a "joint action" with Colonel Gadafy, whose country is a former Italian colony.

Coming after Lewis Libby's indictment capped a crisis week for the Bush administration, Mr Berlusconi's remarks will be seen by many in Washington as treacherous. Italy's prime minister is standing for re-election in just over five months and polls indicate that his support for Mr Bush is a major handicap. He became closely identified with Mr Bush soon after coming to office in 2001 and avoided criticism of US policy in the run-up to the war. In March 2003 he told parliament the use of force against Iraq was legitimate and Italy could not abandon the Americans "in their fight against terrorism".

No alcohol on public transportation? (UK)

Should be complimentary.

Blair in retreat over ban on drinking

The Government was in full retreat last night over a proposal to ban drinking on all forms of public transport as part of new campaign against anti-social behaviour.

Tories and Lib Dems said the proposed ban was ridiculous
After senior ministers distanced themselves from the idea, train operators said it was unworkable and Opposition politicians said the Government was "obsessed" with banning things, Downing Street made clear that there were no plans for a "blanket ban" on alcohol on trains and buses.

NYT: Islamic Jihad's Vow to Cease Rocket Fire Ends Hours Later

Islamic Jihad's Vow to Cease Rocket Fire Ends Hours Later

"Vow" = Hudna?

By GREG MYRE [NYT]
Published: October 31, 2005
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 - The Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad said Sunday that it would stop firing rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, but several hours later it appeared to retract the pledge amid renewed violence.

The initial statement had raised the possibility that a week of violence could be winding down.

Forum: The Middle East
But several hours later, Israeli forces surrounded a house in the northern West Bank village of Qabatiyeh and fatally shot two Islamic Jihad militants, Palestinian witnesses and security officials said. One of those killed, Jihad Zakarne, was believed to have been involved in planning a suicide bombing in Israel last week, The Associated Press reported.

Islamic Jihad had said that its pledge depended on a halt in Israeli military operations. After the Israeli raid, the organization released a statement saying that "after this crime, we reiterate that there will be no security for the residents of Sederot and Ashkelon," two Israeli towns just outside Gaza.

Prince Charles

“I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational...”

-- Prince Charles

Dhimmi Boy?

His Lord Majesty, the Prince of Wales, has some problem with the exercise of our freedom of speech, apparently. I cite His Dhimmified Highness the Declaration of Independence. [edited for clarity, or something]