BBC´s Newsround fed youngsters al-Qaeda propaganda, claims ex-spy chief

Britain's former spy chief accused the BBC of "parroting" Al Qaeda propaganda to children as young as six.
Dame Pauline Neville Jones, who is also a former BBC governor, is infuriated at the stance the corporation's Newsround programme took on the September 11 attacks. She accused the flagship children's news bulletin of feeding an "ugly undercurrent" which suggests the terrorist outrage was somehow justifiable. Newsround is aimed at viewers aged between six and 12.
On its website it answered the question concerning 9/11, "Why did they do it" by saying: "The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al Qaeda - who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks."
After the public complained, the text was amended. More...

Taliban Constitution

A Taliban constitution for Afghanistan made public recently would ban "un-Islamic thought" and require women to be fully covered.The 23-page shadow constitution, which would allow education for women only within the limits of Sharia, has been offered as an alternative to the government of President Hamid Karzai, Britain’s Telegraph reported. The newspaper said the Constitution of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, written in Pashto and Dari languages, says, “Every Afghan has the right to express his feelings through his views, writings or through other means in accordance with the law,” but also warns violators of Islamic thought “will be punished according to Sharia.”"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wishes good working relations with all the neighboring countries and specially those who have supported the Afghan nation during jihad," the document says. More...

Al Qaeda leaves Iraq and goes to Algeria, says Iraqi Prime Minister

Algeria may be attacked by Al-Qaeda according to a "whole file" still unknown and non-identified, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki told a newspaper. Al-Maliki said he ordered to present this information to Algeria. "Few days ago, I was recommended to transmit a complete file about Al-Qaeda to Algeria because it is going to carry out dangerous acts there," he told the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat.
Asked whether Al-Qaeda members started leaving Iraq or running away from it, Al-Maliki said they started going out. "We have information from Al-Qaeda that it wants to move or transfer a part of its acts to prove its presence," he said. "Al-Qaeda members escaped to Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. A part of them have come back to North Africa to Algeria," he added. More...

No Jews in State Department program, no Jewish bullets in Iraq, Afghanistan

As desperate as State is for translators, that won't hire Jews that speak Arabic. (YidwithLid, via Tomorrow War.)
According to Israel National News. The US State Department was funding a business training course for middle east residents, run by the University of California (no surprise there). This program was initially open to citizens of "Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (limited to Israeli Arab citizens), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen."

On the other hand:
"Israeli-made bullets bought by the U.S. Army to plug a shortfall should be used for training only, not to fight Muslim guerrillas in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. lawmakers told Army generals on Thursday."
(Useful Fools, via Tomorrow War.)

Putin Turns His Face to Tehran, His Back to Bush and Sarkozy

Iran’s suspect nuclear program is further polarizing the big powers.
A week ago, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner warned that the world faced war if diplomacy and sanctions failed to curb Iran’s nuclear activities.
But Vladimir Putin pulled in the opposite direction when he decided to be the first Russian president to visit Tehran on Oct. 16. The visit, in the framework of the Caspian Asian Summit, is planned to encompass much more than state ceremonial and ritual photo-ops, although there will be plenty of that too.
The Russians are uneasy about the new Washington-Paris alliance. They were alarmed by the outspoken rhetoric coming from Sarkozy and Kouchner slamming Iran and aligning with the US - up to and including military conflict. Putin sees the French president moving into position as Bush’s leading foreign partner in place of Britain’s Tony Blair as a portent of a potential American-European fence to block off Moscow’s influence in Europe. He links this potential with Washington’s plan to set up missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and perceives a strong line forming on the map of Europe that threatens to reverse his diplomatic gains on the continent and circumscribe his drive for the control of its supplies of energy.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources in Moscow and Washington, the Russian president will be on hand to underscore Moscow’s concern and conviction that the last two or three months of 2007 will take the controversy over the Iranian nuclear program to crisis point and could determine whether or not America resorts to the military option.

Armed Children in Iraq Featured in New Propaganda Video

In one scene, a small child who appears to be around seven- or eight-years-old is holding an AK-47 and reciting what he says are quotes from the prophet Mohammed. Then a group of small children are seen, each holding an AK-47.
The narrator is heard over the footage saying, "In conclusion we say to Bush, the Muslim ummah [Muslim community] that you have tried with all your strength to wage war against, is an ummah [community] that will never die. And it has, with the blessings of God, allotted for you a new generation of Mujjahideen." More...

A Time to Outline Iran-Al Qaeda Ties

Douglas Farah - One of the more surprising things about Iran and the visit of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is that Bush administration's unwillingness to lay out the case of Iran's unusual complicity with al Qaeda.
It seems that tactical alliances can be made and endure. Hatred for the United States and a shared desire to create Islamist states seem to be enough in this case to unite the old guard of al Qaeda with the Ahmadinejad regime. The tactical alliance is not new, but it is passing strange that, in light of the relationship, the current administration does not focus more explaining the Iranian threat.
This alliance alone is enough to negate Ahmadinejad's request to visit Ground Zero in New York.

Anti-Ahmadinejad Ad

Freedom's Watch release this ad today in the New York Times:

"Freedom's Watch could not sit back and allow a terrorist to come toAmerica masquerading as a world leader. We have an obligation to warnthe world of the dangers of a nuclear Iran and to uncover the trueintent, that being, the destruction of the United States and the Stateof Israel. Let's be clear, Iran today kills American soldiers in Iraqand they will not stop there," said Bradley A. Blakeman, President ofFreedom's Watch.

As Gatewaypundit says: “sadly, this Pro-American Freedom's Watch ad did not get the same discount as the liberal democratic group MoveOn.org did when they called General Petraeus a traitor."

Al Baghdadi bounty

"Muslims Against Sharia praise the courage of Lars Vilks, Ulf Johansson, Thorbjorn Larsson and the staff of Nerikes Allehanda and Dagens Nyheter and condemn threats issued by Abu Omar Al Baghdadi and the Islamic State of Iraq. Muslims Against Sharia will provide a payment of 100,000kr (about $15,000) for the information leading to capture or neutralization of Abu Omar Al Baghdadi."

The al Qaeda manual

Citizen Warrior - A significant purpose of fundamentalist Muslims is to try to establish Islamic states everywhere in the world until the whole world is Islamic. Organizations like al Qaeda are working hard to do just that. (...) Part of the strategy is to undermine trust in a government's ability to protect its citizens by committing dramatic acts of terror. But to do this, a terrorist needs to blend in to the foreign society until the appointed hour of destruction. (...) Because Islamists exploit a moral principle in western democracies, they are actually gaining ground on what would seem to be an impossible goal. (...)

Tactics for concealing one's true identity in the land of the infidels. (...) Measures that should be taken by the Undercover Member:

Have a general appearance that does not indicate Islamic orientation, avoid visiting famous Islamic places (mosques, libraries, Islamic fairs, etc.), not resort to utilizing letters and messengers except in an emergency, not speak loudly, not contacting the overt members except when necessary. Such contacts should be brief. More...

Full manual

Iran completes test flight of domestic fighter jets

Iranian air force pilots on Thursday successfully completed a test flight of two domestically manufactured fighter jets, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
"The test flights of a new generation of Azarakhsh jet fighters, called the Saegheh, were completed by brave pilots from Iran's air force," Iran's Defense Minister Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted as saying by IRNA. "The two will officially join the air force on Saturday."
Najjar said the research, design and production of the jets were done by Iranian experts. The plane was first tested in 2006 and is derived from re-engineered components of US combat aircraft.
IRNA said the Saegheh jets were a new generation of the Azarakhsh class of fighter planes. Both Azarakhsh and Saegheh mean lightening in Farsi.

Extremist threatens to bomb girls' school

A religious extremist in have threatened to bomb a girls' school in Taxila in Pakistan's Pubjab province, if the teachers and students do not wear veils. The principal of the local government high school received a letter from an unidentified man who threatened to bomb the school if the female students and teachers did not wear veils.After receiving the threat, the school administration immediately told the police and they put the school on high alert and deployed armed policemen at the school gate. Security personnel in plainclothes have also been deployed at the school.Some of the girls at the schools, aged between nine and 10 were seen wearing veils. “Yes we have received a threatening letter from a religious fanatic and we are scared,” Shakeela, acting principal of the school told the Pakistani daily Dawn. She said the school management did not keep the threat secret and told the students about it. We have told the students that nothing will happen if they wear a veil, she added.

The Counterjihad Calendar: October

Gates of Vienna - The month of October in the Counterjihad Calendar is represented by the Netherlands.The Netherlands’ large industrial cities are among the most thoroughly Islamized in Europe. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has reported extensively on the problems in her adopted country, and Theo Van Gogh paid with his life for helping her.Some of our Dutch readers say that many people in the Netherlands are still in denial about the significance of Mr. Van Gogh’s murder. They simply don’t want to confront what is happening to their country.More so than any monumental public building, the windmill is iconic for the Netherlands, representing the long Dutch tradition of productive labor and industrious ingenuity.

Testimonials

Apostates of Islam - We are ex-Muslims. Some of us were born and raised in Islam and some of us had converted to Islam at some moment in our lives. We were taught never to question the truth of Islam and to believe in Allah and his messenger with blind faith. We were told that Allah would forgive all sins but the sin of disbelief (Quran 4:48 and 4:116). But we committed the ultimate sin of thinking and questioned the belief that was imposed on us and we came to realize that far from being a religion of truth, Islam is a hoax, it is hallucination of a sick mind and nothing but lies and deceits...

YouTube jihadi of the day: baitalmaqdes

From Internet Haganah

Israel enhances military intelligence capabilities versus Iran in its first double spacecraft liftoff with India

DEBKA - US and Indian military sources say that, if successful, the twin launch by the same Polaris/TecSat vehicle Sept. 17-20 will add Israel to the few nations with imaging radar reconnaissance satellites able to distinguish camouflaged vehicles from rocky terrain – by night and through foliage.
The Israeli military satellite will lift off along with India’s first military recon spacecraft, Cartosat 2A. They will be fired in an approximately 600-km polar orbit atop the same Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from an island in the Bay of Bengal. The data-gathering features of Polaris 1 are especially pertinent for a potential attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Israeli satellite’s ability to “see through” cloud and foliage and distinguish between camouflaged vehicles and rocks, provide an answer for Iran’s ingenious camouflaging methods employed by Hizballah in the 2006 Lebanese war.

The links between North Korea and Syria

Syria possesses the biggest missile arsenal and the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the Middle East, built up over the last two decades with arms bought from North Korea. North Korea has become critical to Syria’s plans to enhance and upgrade its weapons. Syria’s liquid fuelled Scud-C missiles depend on “essential foreign aid and assistance, primarily from North Korean entities,” said the CIA in a report to the US Congress in 2004.
Both North Korea and Syria are secret police states and among the hardest intelligence targets to crack... But earlier this year, foreign diplomats who follow North Korean affairs took note of an increase in diplomatic and military visits between the two. They received reports of Syrian passengers on flights from Beijing to Pyongyang, almost the only air route into the country. They also picked up observations of Middle Eastern businessmen from sources who watch the trains from North Korea to the industrial cities of northeast China.
The Scud-C is strategically worrying to Israel because Syria has deployed it with one launcher for every two missiles. The normal ratio is one to 10. The conclusion: Syria’s missiles are set up for one devastating first strike. The second cause for concern is that the Scud-C is a notoriously inaccurate weapon. It is better for scattering chemical weapons than hitting one target.
China sold a 30kw nuclear reactor to Syria in 1998 under IAEA controls. And american intelligence officials believe Syria then recruited Iraqi scientists who fled after the fall of Saddam Hussein. More...

Al-Qaida: Bounty on Swedish cartoonist

The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq offered money for the murder of a Swedish cartoonist who recently produced images deemed insulting to Islam, according to a statement carried by Islamist Web sites Saturday.
On Aug. 19, the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published a cartoon by Lars Vilks that depicted the Prophet Muhammad with a dog's body.
Muslims in Sweden rallied outside the newspaper's offices to demand an apology, and the governments of Iran and Pakistan lodged formal protests with Sweden, but other than that the reaction to the cartoon was muted.

In the half hour audio file entitled "They plotted yet God too was plotting," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi also promised a new offensive in Iraq during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Muslim group behind ‘mega-mosque’ in London seeks to convert all Britain

A Muslim group that wants to open a giant £100 million mosque in London has set its sights on “winning the whole of Britain to Islam”.
Tablighi Jamaat aims to build an Islamic complex near to the site of the 2012 Olympic stadium, with a mosque for 12,000 people, by far the largest religious building in Britain.
The organisation, which has millions of followers worldwide, insists that it is a peaceful, apolitical revivalist movement that promotes Islamic consciousness among individual Muslims. However, intelligence agencies have cautioned that the group’s ability to fire young men with a zeal for Islam acts as a staging post, for some, along a path that leads to jihadist terrorism.
Kafeel Ahmed, the Indian doctor who died from burns last month after trying to set off a car bomb at Glasgow Airport, is the latest in a line of terrorists for whose initial radicalisation Tablighi Jamaat has been blamed. The group (literally, the preaching party) belongs to the ultra-conservative Deobandi school. More...

Israel spots nuclear installations in Syria

Washington official says Israeli surveillance shows possible Syrian nuclear installation stocked by North Korea, Israeli Arab newspaper claims target of alleged raid last week was Syrian missile base financed by Iran
Israel believes that North Korea has been supplying Syria and Iran with nuclear materials, a Washington defense official told the New York Times. “The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,” he said.
Meanwhile on Wednesday the Nazareth-based Israeli Arab newspaper The Assennara cited anonymous Israeli sources as saying that Israeli jets "bombed a Syrian-Iranian missile base in northern Syria that was financed by Iran... It appears that the base was completely destroyed."
According to the Times, American officials confirmed Tuesday that Israeli jets launched an airstrike inside Syria. Sources said that Israel struck at least one target in northeastern Syria, but could not provide more details.
The most likely target was, according to some administration officials, weapon caches sent by Iran to Hizbullah through Syria. More...

Petraeus Says Iran Wants Iraqi 'Hezbollah' Force

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq says there is hard evidence of Iranian efforts to establish a permanent militia presence in Iraq, and that Iraqi leaders have addressed the issue in meetings in Tehran.
General Petraeus says the capture of key insurgent operatives in mainly Shiite southern Iraq, including a senior official of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, resulted in irrefutable evidence of Iran's efforts.
"This is evidentiary," Petraeus said. "It is not just intelligence. It rises to the level of evidence, particularly what we captured when we got the hard drives of the computers from the individuals that we picked up." More...

Austrian suspects may have had ties to kidnappers of BBC's Alan Johnston

Three alleged al-Qaida sympathizers arrested in connection with an online video threat against Austria and Germany may have had links to the Army of Islam, a shadowy group that kidnapped a BBC journalist earlier this year, said SITE Intelligence Group. More...

NATO force chief suggests new ways to fight Afghan opium production

US General Dan McNeill, on a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, said he had made suggestions about what else the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) could do to NATO's top military and civilian commanders. But he insisted that ISAF, whose aim is to provide security so that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government can spread its influence throughout the insurgency hit country, should not start destroying poppy fields.

NATO officials acknowledge privately that the sight of soldiers ripping up opium crops would probably undermine their efforts to win the confidence of ordinary Afghans and turn them away from their former Taliban rulers.
"The fundamental principle is that the Afghans must take the lead for very obvious political reasons," added NATO spokesman James Appathurai.
Afghanistan produces about 93 percent of the world's production illegal opium, the raw ingredient for heroin.
The crop jumped by a third this year, helped by good rainy weather, despite international efforts costing millions of dollars. Most of the production is in southern areas where the Taliban-led insurgency is at its fiercest.
The Afghan government has made a similar call, saying it had asked the international forces based here to clear insurgents from opium-growing areas so its own forces can move in to destroy the illegal crop. More...

Pakistan: Buddha images survive blasts

ADNKRONOS - In a grim reminder of the destruction of world famous Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban six years ago, militants tried on Tuesday to blow up a seventh-century Buddhist rock carving in Pakistan's Swat valley, northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The image of the sitting Buddha is carved into a 40-metre high rock in the mountains.
The Gandhara civilisation site was not damaged by the blasts.
Before the recent deterioration of the law and order situation in the valley, hundreds of tourists, mainly Buddhists, used to visit the site.

Bomb kills top Sunni sheik cooperating with U.S. against al-Qaida in Iraq

Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, also known as the Anbar Awakening -- an alliance of clans backing the Iraqi government and U.S. forces.
No group claimed responsibility for the assassination but suspicion fell on al-Qaida in Iraq, which U.S. officials say has suffered devastating setbacks in Anbar thanks to Abu Risha and his fellow sheiks.
A Ramadi police officer said Abu Risha had received a group of poor people at his home earlier in the day, to mark the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity out of security concerns, said authorities believed the bomb was planted by one of the visitors. More...

Al-Qa'eda 'as strong today as it was on 9/11'

DAILY TELEGRAPH - "Core" al-Qa'eda is proving adaptable and resilient and has retained the ability to plan and co-ordinate large-scale attacks in the Western world, says the Strategic Survey published yesterday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).Nigel Inkster, a former director for operations and intelligence for MI6, who contributed to the al-Qa'eda section of the report, said it showed that the tactics being used in the war on terrorism were proving ineffective.
"The bottom line is that for six years the United States and its allies have been struggling to eliminate this threat and it is becoming increasingly clear that they have not succeeded in doing so," said Mr Inkster.
The report argues that the challenge for governments in Western and Muslim countries was to "confront" extremist ideology that gives rise to the terrorism promoted by al-Qa'eda and affiliates. They must tackle, for example, Muslim views of being victims of non-Muslim aggression.

Advanced Russian Air Defense Missile Cannot Protect Syrian and Iranian Skies

DEBKA - The Pantsyr-S1E missiles, purchased from Russia to repel air assailants, failed to down the Israeli jets accused of penetrating northern Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean the night before.
The new Pantsyr missiles therefore leave Syrian and Iranian airspace vulnerable to hostile intrusion.
Western intelligence circles stress that information on Russian missile consignments to Syria or Iran is vital to any US calculation of whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program. They assume that the “absolute jamming immunity” which the Russian manufactures promised for the improved Pantsyr missiles was immobilized by superior electronic capabilities exercised by the jets before they were “forced to leave.”

Turkey: Security barrier 'to be built along the Iraqi border'

Turkey will erect a separation wall along the border with northern Iraq aimed at stopping infiltration of rogue elements of the nationalist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside their territory, the Turkish daily Yeni Shefak reported, quoting unnamed military sources.The Turkish army will built a 470 km separation wall along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan at an estimated cost of 2.8 million dollars, the paper said. The wall will be protected with surveillance cameras, while rugged areas where the wall cannot be built will be electronically controlled to detect any violation of borders.

Osama is in Chitral: US experts

US television channels and newspapers quoted US counter-terrorism experts as saying that bin Laden is hiding in Chitral because it is remote and its rugged terrain makes it impossible for Pakistani forces to look for him there.
Daniel Benjamin of the Brookings Institute says that the Al Qaeda chief also has sympathisers in that area. “They have a code of hospitality for guests, and they’ve probably also gotten a fair amount of money from bin Laden,” said Mr Benjamin who tried to track bin Laden down during the Clinton administration.He believes bin Laden is surrounded by bodyguards armed with surface-to-air missiles and good intelligence.“I think it’s quite likely he has a very good early warning system (and) that there are perimeters set up so people know who’s coming and going in the area that he’s living,” Mr Benjamin said. More...

Bin Laden Unplugged: Analyzing the latest video

Pakistan: Militants behead two 'prostitutes'

Islamist militants have beheaded two women in northwestern Pakistan who they accused of being prostitutes. The women, both in their mid-40s, and identified as Maino and Malaki, were reportedly abducted from Bannu on Thursday by masked and armed men who bundled them into a car. A note was found near the bodies accusing the women of "acts of obscenity" and of doing their business in connivance with the police. More...

Hardline takeover of British mosques

Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.
Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques.

Germany considers increased spying on Muslims

After thwarting what might have become a "massive" attack on American installations, German authorities will review ways to fight homegrown terrorists, including a proposal to allow Internet spying on all German converts to Islam.
The search for seven other suspected members of a German cell of the Pakistan-based Islamic Jihad Union continued into Thursday night, with investigators saying only that they knew who they were seeking.
Anti-terror police arrested three men in a village in central Germany Tuesday, outside a vacation cabin where they were suspected of building a bomb. Germans were shocked to learn that two of the alleged bombers were native-born and had common German names, Fritz and Daniel. All three were unemployed and living on German government benefits. More...

Partial Osama video

2007: Ben Laden réapparait en vidéo
Uploaded by lefigaro

'Play music in your trucks and face bombs,' Jihadis warn transporters in Pakistan

Unidentified people, believed to be pro-Taliban militants have distributed pamphlets threatening public transporters in Swat district of NWFP from playing music and displaying obscene pictures in their vehicles, failing which their vehicles would be blown up.
Earlier, on Wednesday, unidentified militants blew up six music shops in Ishaq Market and partially damaged 20 nearby shops and three houses after issuing warnings to shop owners in the area to stop their "un-Islamic" business.
Non-government organisations (NGOs) have already shut their offices in the region after receiving threatening letters, while representatives of pharmaceutical companies have stopped wearing trousers in the Swat Valley after the militants warned them to wear local dresses. More...

Pastor: Korean Hostage was Killed for Refusing to Convert to Islam

The youth pastor who was leading the group of 23 South Korean aid volunteers in Afghanistan was killed for refusing to convert to Islam, the head pastor of the church revealed after the final 19 former hostages arrived home.
“Among the 19 hostages who returned on the second (of September), some were asked by the Taliban to convert and when they rejected, they were assaulted and severely beaten,” reported Park Eun-jo, pastor of the hostages’ home church, Saemmul Presbyterian Church in Bundang, just south of the South Korean capital Seoul.
“I heard from the hostages that they were threatened with death,” he added, according to Christian Today Korea. “Especially it is known that the reason Pastor Bae Hyung-kyu was murdered was because he refused the Taliban’s demand to convert.”
A hospital chief also said on Monday that some of the five South Korean men freed from captivity last week reported being beaten by their Taliban abductors for refusing to convert to Islam and for protecting their female colleagues. More...

Palestinians back caliphate over politics

A growing number of supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic fundamentalists who reject modern democracy in favour of a pan-Islamic religious caliphate, are gathering in the West Bank to recruit the thousands who have grown disillusioned with the vicious stand-off between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas.
"Any person living in Palestine now realises political parties, especially the Islamic ones, have not achieved anything for the individual," said Sheikh Abu Abdullah, a thin-framed man with a wiry beard.
His is the commanding voice behind weekly Hizb lessons at the al-Faruq mosque in the middle-class suburb of Kfar Aqab, past a crowded Israeli checkpoint where east Jerusalem melds into Ramallah. More...

Gaza clinics closed, retaliation for doctor strikes

Four private clinics in the Gaza Strip were closed on Tuesday after doctors staged work stoppages in protest at how Hamas was running the enclave's health system.
Earlier this month, Hamas sacked the head of Gaza's Shifa hospital and briefly detained one of its directors. This prompted widespread protests by hospital staff who oppose Hamas attempts to tighten control of health institutions.Hamas has accused Fatah of inciting public employees to commit acts of civil disobedience to undermine its rule in Gaza.Since Hamas took over Gaza, many institutions have been in a state of confusion, with rival directors, appointed respectively by the Islamists and Fatah, insisting they are in charge. More...

Muslims caught red-handed destroying Temple artifacts

Archaeologists kept out as WND obtains photo of pulverized antiquities at Judaism's holiest site. Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple. More...

Prayers For President Gul: Don't Imitate Stinking, Fossilized, Rotten West

At the court of the mosque where he went for Friday prayer, former Turkish PM Necmettin Erbakan offered his support and prayers to the new Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who was his protégé, MP, a minister and deputy in his government. He said, “May Allah protect him from sins and evil and may he act according to the wishes of the people and not of the evil. This is how I pray for him.”On AKP’s success in the recent general elections Erbakan said, “Our people have protected our values for centuries. Why should we [Muslims] that have built countless civilizations, leave our essence and identity in order to imitate the stinking, fossilized, rotten West? Our people are rejecting this and are step by step returning to their real selves.

Mehdi Army hiatus a relief for U.S. military

In a statement issued Saturday, the military said al-Sadr's order would enable the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi security forces to "intensify their focus on al Qaeda in Iraq...without distraction from [Mehdi Army] attacks."
Al-Sadr's suspension -- which one of his senior aides said would be a period for restructuring -- comes after nearly 60 people were killed and scores were injured during recent street fighting between armed Shiite factions in Karbala and Baghdad.
"Muqtada al-Sadr's declaration holds the potential to reduce criminal activity and help reunite Iraqis separated by ethno-sectarian violence and fear," the U.S. military said.
The military believes rogue members of al-Sadr's group have smuggled weaponry and received training from Iran. More...

Iran reportedly bombs villages in northern Iraq

Iranian troops have been accused of bombing border areas for weeks against suspected positions of the Free Life Party, or PEJAK, a breakaway faction of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Iran says PEJAK — which seeks autonomy for Kurds in Iran — launches attacks inside Iran from bases in Iraq. The Iranian shelling has been criticized by Iraqi officials and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned it could have negative effects on the crucial relations between Iran and Iraq’s Shiite-led government.
Ari Yashir, a PEJAK member, took a reporter in a tour around several deserted villages and claimed the Iranian attacks only serve to harm civilians. As explosions boomed in the distance, a Kurdish woman stood outside her house and pointed to where shells scorched parts of her father’s grapes and plum orchards. “It was a bad day when some 20 shells hit our village in a single day last week. We were crying as we prayed to God to protect us from the bombs of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Serwa Ibrahim, one of the few remaining villagers in Mardow, about 25 miles from the Iranian border. More...