MIAMI (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge ruled on Monday that President Bush has no authority to order an American citizen jailed indefinitely as an enemy combatant, and ordered terrorism suspect Jose Padilla be released within 45 days.

Padilla, who at one time was accused of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb,” was arrested in May 2002 and has been held without charge in a South Carolina Navy prison under sweeping presidential powers enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. A Justice Department official in Washington said the department would appeal the court’s decision.

Bush had designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” but U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd ruled that the president had no authority to hold Padilla or to suspend his right to due legal process. “The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold Petitioner as an enemy combatant,” Floyd ruled in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Floyd said the case was a law enforcement matter, not a military one, and that unless Padilla is charged with a crime, he should be freed. The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling “yet another setback to the administration’s misguided belief that it does not have to follow our constitutional traditions in pursuing terrorists.”

“As Judge Floyd recognized in his opinion, President Bush’s actions in the Padilla case flout the checks and balances that ensure our democracy and liberty,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said

Well, where do I start? 1) Again, if the ACLU was in charge, we would have lost WII. They care more about our enemies then our safety.
2) Calling the war on terror a law enforcement matter is stupid to the point I think the English language needs to invent a new word for it.
3) And yes, I think he needs to be charged with something, but the belief that we can fight this war just like all the others in the past shows the utter failure of the liberals to understand any of the basics elements of this war. They are using our own system against us. For the liberals who are working against the best interests of this country, again, I ask, where is the documented proof of abuses resulting from the enactment of the Patriot Act? The fact that a nuclear weapon has not gone off anywhere is something I am more and surprised in. Stupidity like this only makes this event more and more likely.

By Nadim Ladki

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Jubilant opposition supporters in Lebanon have vowed to carry on with their protest in central Beirut in a bid to drive Syrian forces from the country after the collapse of the Damascus-backed government. The pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned on Monday after two weeks of protests, piling more pressure on Damascus, already under fire from the United States and Israel.

Thousands of demonstrators turned Beirut into a sea of Lebanese flags and exploded into riotous celebration when the government unexpectedly quit after a parliament debate on the killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. “This is just the first step. We are staying here to make sure they don’t set up a new government that is just the same. We are staying until we have independence,” said Carla Khoury, draped in a Lebanese flag. Many also demanded the resignation of Lebanon’s Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud.

Syria plays a dominant role in Lebanon and maintains 14,000 troops there. Pressure has been growing within Lebanon and from abroad for a complete military withdrawal. Protesters have gathered in Beirut’s central Martyrs’ Square, which they dubbed Freedom Square, ever since Hariri’s assassination on Feb. 14 to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the resignation of all top pro-Syrian political and security officials.

Opposition deputies, many war-time foes, have joined forces, capitalizing on fury over Hariri’s death to pressure those they blame — Syria and the government

Remember this quote, ““It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” explains one protester. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” He goes on to say this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.” It seems again, that Bush’s vision has taken root, not that any Liberal will give him credit for it. They have become a party with the same vision as Neville Chamberlin. Also, note that none in the liberal media or in the government have given Bush any credit for this. They care more about getting back into power then anything else, even freedom spreading throughout the middle east.

By Haider Abbas and Mussab al-Khairalla

HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed 125 people and wounded 130 by detonating a car near police recruits in a crowded market south of Baghdad on Monday, the single bloodiest attack in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The bomber blew the car up next to a line of recruits waiting at a health center to take an eye test so they could join the Iraqi police in the town of Hilla, 62 miles south of the capital, witnesses said.
Many of those killed were at the market across the road, and were caught in the blast as they shopped in morning sunshine.

“I was standing in the queue when I saw this Mitsubishi coming slowly toward us,” Ameer Hassan, one of the recruits, told Reuters at a nearby clinic. “Then it blew up in a huge fireball. When I opened my eyes again, I was in hospital.” Reuters television footage showed a pile of bloodied bodies outside the building. Smoke rose from the wreckage of burned-out market stalls as bystanders loaded mangled corpses on to rickety wooden carts, usually used to carry fruit and vegetables.

Others, their limbs ripped to shreds, were piled into the back of pick-up trucks. Nearby buildings were pockmarked by shrapnel. People wept, clutched their heads in despair and shouted “God is greatest” as rescuers led the injured away. “The suicide bomber came from a nearby alleyway,” said Zeyd Shamran. “There were two people in (the car) and when it stopped one man got out, shook hands and kissed the other man.” Moments later the car exploded, he said.

For those foolish enough to think these are freedom fighters resisting American aggression, the people targeted and killed were Iraqi police recruits, not American soldiers, and most of the violence is directed by foreign groups like Syria and Al Qaeda. Polls show most of the Iraqis support the election. This is a war against Democracy and freedom, nothing else.

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden recently asked his chief ally in Iraq (news – web sites), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to consider the territory of the United States as a target for terrorist attacks, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Monday. “”There has been communication between bin Laden and Zarqawi, with bin Laden suggesting to Zarqawi the U.S. homeland as a target,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official called the bin Laden communication “a fairly recent development” but declined to provide details for fear of compromising U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. The Department of Homeland Security said it issued a classified intelligence bulletin over the weekend warning state officials that the federal government had received nonspecific information about al Qaeda plans to attack the United States.

Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the threat was still being analyzed, but was not enough to raise the U.S. terrorism alert level, which is currently set at yellow to signify an elevated threat. “The interesting thing is the implication here that Zarqawi could pull such a thing off, that he has that reach,” said Daniel Benjamin, a terrorism analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s particularly interesting that bin Laden would think that Zarqawi could do this,” he said.

Here is more proof that Iraq is part of the war on terror. Sadam did have WMD’s. There is no proof he destroyed them, and he has a history of shipping his weapons to other countries. (..when his planes sent to Iran in the first Gulf War.) He did fund terrorists groups. He did commit genocide. He invaded three countries. He was trying to get around the sanctions and restart his WMD program. And best of all, it seems Iraq’s election has started a domino effect of freedom throughout the Middle East. Not that the liberals care about that….

Like many a political convert, I took it on myself to openly oppose the politics of those with which I once shared world views. Beyond writing, I put myself on the front lines of this ideological battle by taking part in counterprotests at the antiwar rallies leading up to the war in Iraq. This turned out to be a further wake-up call, because it was there that I encountered more intolerance than ever before in my life. Holding pro-Iraq-liberation signs and American flags, I was spat on, called names, intimidated, threatened, attacked, cursed and, on a good day, simply argued with. It was clear that any deviation from the prevailing leftist groupthink of the Bay Area was considered a threat to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

It was at such protests that I also had my first real brushes with anti-Semitism. The anti-Israel sentiment on the left — inexorably linked to anti-Americanism — ran high at these events and boiled over into Jew hatred on more than one occasion. The pro-Palestinian sympathies of the left had led to a bizarre commingling of pacifism, Communism and Arab nationalism. So it was not uncommon to see kaffiyeh-clad college students chanting Hamas slogans, graying hippies wearing “Intifada” T-shirts, Che Guevera backpacks, and signs equating Zionism with Nazism, all against a backdrop of peace, patchouli and tie-dye.

Being unapologetically pro-Israel, I was called every name in the book, from “Zionist pig” to “Zionist scum,” and was once told that those with European origins such as myself couldn’t really be Jewish. In the end, the blatant anti-Semitism on the left, even among Jews, only strengthened my political transformation. I was, in effect, radicalized by the radicals.

But more than anything, it was the left’s hypocrisy when it came to the war on terrorism that made me turn rightward after 9/11. I remember, back in my liberal days, being fiercely opposed to the Taliban and its brutal treatment of women. Even then, I felt that Afghanistan should immediately be liberated, as Malcolm X once said in another context, by any means necessary. But when it came time, it turned out that the left was mostly opposed to such liberation, whether of the Afghan people or of the Iraqis (especially if America and a Republican president were at the helm).

Indeed, liberals had become strangely conservative in their fierce attachment to the status quo. In contrast, the much-maligned neoconservatives (among whose ranks I count myself) and Bush had become the “radicals,” bringing freedom and democracy to the despotic Middle East. Is it any wonder that in such a topsy-turvy world, I found myself in agreement with those I’d formerly denounced?

The war on terrorism is nothing more than the great struggle of our time, and, like the earlier ones against fascism and totalitarianism, we ignore it at our peril. Whether or not one accepts that we are engaged in a war, our enemies have declared it so. It took the horrors of 9/11 to awaken me to this reality, but for others, such lessons remain unlearned. For me, it was self-evident that in Islamic terrorism, America had found a nihilistic threat that sought to wipe out not only Western civilization but also civilization itself.

The Islamists have been clear all along about their plans to form an Islamic caliphate and inhabit the entire world with burqas, stonings, amputations, honor killings and a lack of religious and political freedom. Whether or not to oppose such a movement should have been a no-brainer, especially for self-proclaimed “progressives.” Instead, they have extended their misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists.

In the end, history will be the judge, and each of us will have to think about what legacy we wish to leave to future generations. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since 9/11, it’s that it’s never too late to alter one’s place in the great scheme of things.

read the whole article here .
hat tip LGF .

My child is in the 7th grade in Scottsdale, Arizona. The school’s officially adopted social studies textbook is titled Across the Centuries and is published by Houghton Mifflin. However, Across the Centuries has been shelved and the school is piloting a brand new book from Teacher’s Curriculum Institute, aka TCI, titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond (this book is not permitted to go home). In my opinion, this book is highly biased towards Islam, historically incorrect and also includes fake history along with Islamic religious proselytizing and indoctrination techniques.

The school has spent approximately 5 weeks of the third quarter grading period teaching Islam to 12 and 13 year olds. The children had to write a full biography on the life of Muhammad, using the information from the textbook – an extremely indoctrinating exercise. This biography will be a large portion of their grade for the 8 week period. Michael H. Hart’s top 100 list of the most influential people in the history of the world was presented to teach that Muhammad was #1, Sir Isaac Newton was #2 and Jesus was #3. The school hosted two professional Muslim speakers, from the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, to speak to all 7th grade social studies classes. This took one whole day. The Muslim speakers brought prayer rugs and taught the children to pray the Muslim way. I also believe that there were recitations from the Koran and possibly an Islamic “fashion show”.

To the best of my knowledge, in this Islamic program, there are none of the negative aspects of Islam touched upon. It is my opinion that in the book, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, Christians are trounced and portrayed as murderers of the Muslim and Jewish people. The Jewish people are only mentioned, and very briefly, in order to be victimized, persecuted and murdered by the Christians. All the while, Islam builds great and grand new empires, has many great and wonderful achievements in architecture, education, science, geography, mathematics, medicine, literature, art and music, and ultimately rules benevolently over the Jewish and Christian people.

Islamic indoctrination in American education is a highly successful insidious industry that is extremely well organized, well connected, legally savvy, brazenly influential, and without successful opposition. When individuals complain to the schools, we often find ourselves engaged in a seriously daunting uphill battle. There should be an opposing and equally aggressive and well connected organization of people who are willing to stop the Islamization of our school children and of our public schools. This is a big job. Sharing information, increasing awareness and being connected are half the battle.
from LGF .

There were plenty of screams Friday afternoon at Liberty Hall, but none of them came from Howard Dean.

Instead, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee was cheered enthusiastically by a sign-waving crowd gathered to hear Dean’s message that the party must build its strength in traditionally Republican states such as Kansas.
….
And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.” from the HedgeHog

Students taking ROTC and attending class in the uniform of the United States military – including female students – are regularly told by their own professors that they are “baby killers.”

At Ball State University in conservative Indiana, a “peace studies” course called “Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution,” amounts to an indoctrination for students to sympathize with our enemies. The lecturer isn’t even qualified to teach the course – he’s a saxophone professor! Students who voice opinions that differ from his are quickly silenced.

At Duke University, weather terrorist Katherine Whitehorn, who served 14 years for bombing the Pentagon in the 1970s, was brought to campus in 2003 by the Black Students Department as a “human rights activist.” The previous year, the same university paid Professor Sami al-Arian to keynote a symposium on “National Security and Civil Liberties.”

Six months earlier, appearing on the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly exposed al-Arian’s public statements calling for “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and said, “If I were the CIA I would follow you everywhere you go.”

Duke University apparently considered this a recommendation to give al-Arian an academic platform. Al-Arian is currently in jail having been indicted by the Justice Department as the North American head of Palestine Islamic Jihad, responsible for the suicide bombing murders of more than 100 innocent civilians, including several American citizens.

from the center for the study of popular culture

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened Sunday to freeze peace efforts if the Palestinian leadership does not crack down on militant groups after a weekend suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed four Israelis and wounded dozens.

Sharon said Sunday in response to a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, “There will not be any diplomatic progress, until the Palestinians take vigorous action …”
Menahem Kahana, Getty Images

At a Cabinet meeting, Israel decided to suspend a plan to turn control of five West Bank towns over to the Palestinians and free 400 more prisoners. Those gestures were agreed upon at a Feb. 8 summit in Egypt, where Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared a truce.

The attack and the Israeli measures underlined the fragility of the truce and its vulnerability to violence by extremists who oppose any accommodation.

A familiar pattern appeared in danger of re-emerging: a truce, a Palestinian attack, Israeli retaliation, another Palestinian attack — and ultimately the end of the truce and rekindled violence.

Sharon charged that Syria was behind the suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv night spot Friday, killing four Israelis.

Click here for the link!.

Proceedings will not be tape-recorded, and the report will not be for the public

by Nat Hentoff

what is now an international story about charges that some professors in Columbia’s Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) bully and intimidate students who don’t agree with them. Since one of my beats is education—from pre-kindergarten on—I have covered a number of dysfunctional college and university administrations around the country. But the handling of this controversy by Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, and provost Alan Brinkley is a model of how to confuse and worsen a situation while trying to resolve its core problems.

In December, Brinkley and Bollinger appointed a special committee to investigate the charges by students in the film Columbia Unbecoming, which brought to widespread light the bullying bias of certain MEALAC professors that has been known on campus for a long time.

Susan Brown, a spokeswoman for Columbia University, told the online edition of The Jerusalem Post: “We take student concerns of this nature very seriously and believe the ad hoc committee will evaluate these charges in a rigorous and utterly objective manner.”

As I will show next week, this is largely a rigged rather than an objective committee, and if I were to appear before such a committee, I would demand that I be able to bring my own tape recorder.

But first, let’s look at a session of this “rigorous” committee as provided to me by students belonging to Columbians for Academic Freedom, some of whom appear in the film Columbia Unbecoming.

As the members of Columbia’s investigating committee were seated at a roundtable, before a student witness, Professor Ira Katznelson, presiding, said, “There will be two reports [by the committee]: an internal report by the committee, which will be full and frank and detailed, and a public summary.”

I left a message for Columbia spokeswoman Susan Brown, asking why the Columbia community and the general public would not also be getting a full and frank report. My call to her was not returned.

Professor Katznelson was asked by one of the students in Columbians for Academic Freedom whether there’d be a tape recording of the committee’s sessions.

The answer: “Notes will be taken by a professional note-taker but a tape recording will not be made.”
from the Village Voice.
Hat Tip LGF .

Shortly before nine o’clock one Monday evening earlier this month, Hatin Sürücü left her five-year-old son asleep in their small apartment in the Tempelhof district of Berlin and made her way to a bus stop in the main Oberlandgarten Strasse.

Minutes later, a volley of pistol shots rang out but no one came to help Mrs Sürücü, 23, who was of Turkish origin. A bus driver discovered her body, with multiple wounds to the head and chest, about 40 minutes later and called the police.

Last week, Mrs Sürücü’s three brothers, aged 18 to 25, who were arrested six days after the attack, were formally charged with the murder. They have pleaded not guilty and were remanded in custody.

Police are investigating whether Mrs Sürücü was the victim of a so-called “honour killing” after she made the decision to leave the cousin with whom she had been forced into an arranged marriage eight years earlier.

The police said that Mrs Sürücü had frequently complained of being threatened by her brothers.

If they are found guilty, Mrs Sürücü’s murder will be the sixth “honour killing” within Berlin’s 200,000-strong Muslim community in four months. Shocking as that is, the reactions of some Turkish immigrant children at a school whose main gates are yards from the scene of the shooting has caused even graver concern.

Asked by teachers what they thought of the murder, several 13-year-old pupils are said to have implied that they thought Mrs Sürücü had “earned” her death. “Well, she lived like a German, didn’t she?” remarked one. …

In an open letter last week, the headmaster of the school publicly denounced the attitude of his pupils. Other head teachers in Berlin, however, said that they were not surprised by the children’s reaction.

“This type of thinking is latent in their minds,” said the head of another predominantly Turkish immigrant school in the district, who asked not to be identified. Their remarks, he said, reminded him of the spontaneous “victory dances” which immigrant pupils at his school had staged after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The five Muslim women killed in recent months were murdered by their husbands or partners because they had “insulted” the family honour by wanting to end the relationship. One woman was strangled; another drowned in a bath. In another case, a 21-year-old Turkish woman who was forcibly married to her cousin was stabbed to death on the street by her husband in front of their three-year-old daughter.

from LGF .

By Paul Hughes

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Russia and Iran signed a nuclear fuel supply deal long opposed by Washington Sunday, paving the way for Iran to start up its first atomic reactor next year. The agreement, inked by the two countries’ nuclear energy chiefs at the Bushehr atomic plant in southern Iran, came as Tehran faced heightened pressure from the United States, which accuses it of secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Iran, OPEC’ s second largest oil producer, denies the charge and has received strong backing from Moscow, which is keen to play a major role in expanding Iran’s nuclear energy program.

“This is a very important incident in the ties between the two countries and in the near future a number of Russian experts will be sent to Bushehr to equip the power station,” Iranian state television quoted Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency, as saying.

A key part of the agreement obliges Tehran to repatriate all spent nuclear fuel to Russia. Moscow hopes this will allay U.S. worries that Iran may use the spent fuel, which could be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium, to develop arms.

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A half-brother of Saddam Hussein closely involved in insurgency has been captured with help from a Syrian government seeking to ward off U.S. charges it abets Iraqi militants, government officials said on Sunday. The government said in a statement Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, a top-level Baathist accused by the government of directing the Iraqi insurgency from Syria, had been caught, without saying when, where or how he was seized.

Ibrahim, an intelligence chief and one-time adviser to Saddam, was number 36 on the U.S. military’s list of the 55 most-wanted people in Iraq– the six of diamonds in the U.S. military’s pack of playing cards. The government did not say whether U.S. or Iraqi forces had captured him. It was expected to give more details on Monday.

However, a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Syria, feeling pressure over accusations it was behind recent attacks in Israel and Lebanon, had played a role in the capture of Ibrahim. “The Syrian authorities, because of the tremendous pressure on them, did something about Ibrahim,” the official said.

“I’m assuming (Michael Kelly’s) family won’t be reading this, but frankly, I’m gratified to learn that he paid the ultimate price for his sins of warmongering. This guy was scum. My first thoughts on seeing the thread were that I hoped it was that scum Post warmongering writer. My second thought was that it was a late April Fool’s joke. But no false sadness from me, only happiness that someone as mean and vicious as Mike Kelly got what was coming. As for all the posts about “coming by his views honestly” and “not speaking ill of the dead”, congratulations on taking the high road guys, but *ssholes like Kelly have to die sometime, and I prefer it is as a direct result of their sins. But what do I know, I’m happy that Reagan has Alzheimers and that * has access to pretzels. I wish death on my enemies, and these guys are enemies.” — jackswift on the death of Michael Kelly in Iraq

3) “When the 2nd plane hit the WTC I remember thinking……OMG, he’s got his war now. Then, the next day or the day after that, when the roar of “war with Iraq and Afganistan” really got going I couldn’t help but think “well Bush II get’s to finish Daddy’s work now”. As for when the plane hit the Pentagon and the other plane went down in that field in Penn I screamed at the TV, “Get the WH, for God’s sake you missed the WH.” I invented some cuss words on that one. There were times before 9/11 as well as in the days to follow that the boy king mentioned Saddam “tried to kill my Dad” and couldn’t help but scream at the TV each time, “Well, give him a medal for effort anyway.” — LiberalLibra

1) “I realize that not every GI Joe was 100peeercent behind Prseeedent Booosh going into this war; but I do know that that is what an overwhelming number of them and their famlies screamed in the face of protesters who were trying to protect these kids. Well, there is more than one way to be “dead” for your country. They are not only not accompishing squat in Iraq, they are doing crap nothing for the safety, defense of the US of A over there directly. But “indirectly” they are doing a lot.

2) The only way to get rid of this slime bag WASP-Mafia, oil barron ridden cartel of a government, this assault on Americans and anything one could laughingly call “a democracy”, relies heavily on what a sh*t hole Iraq turns into. They need to die so that we can be free. Soldiers usually did that directly–i.e., fight those invading and harming a country. This time they need to die in defense of a lie from a lying adminstration to show these ignorant, dumb Americans that Bush is incompetent. They need to die so that Americans get rid of this deadly scum. It is obscene, Barbie Bush, how other sons (of much nobler blood) have to die to save us from your Rosemary’s Baby spawn and his ungodly cohorts.” — Starpass

“Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream… giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every– They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.” — U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada

7) “…And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger. Do you want to salvage our country? Be a savior of our country? Then vote for John Kerry and get rid of the whole Bush Bunch.” — From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club

4) “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places

( from from rightwing news .)

On a cold afternoon this week, Hatin Surucu gazed gravely from a large poster behind a bus stop lined with flowers, cards and candles.

To the people who came to this bleak part of Berlin’s Tempelhof district for Tuesday’s solemn vigil — called not by the city’s Muslim community but a gay and lesbian organization — the image of the young woman in a headscarf, a baby in her arms, was familiar from newspapers and television. A few notes at the memorial read, “Hope you get a better deal in your next life,” and “Live a life on your own terms.”

“It’s a scandal,” said Ali K, 33. “All Muslims in Berlin should take to the streets to protest.” Yasemin, 22, said, “It’s horrific. All Hatin was doing was leading her life the way she wanted.”

But it was a choice she paid for with her life. On Feb. 7, 23-year-old Hatin Surucu was gunned down at the aforementioned bus stop. She died on the spot. Shortly afterwards, three of her brothers — who reportedly had long been threatening her — were arrested. Investigators suspect it wasa so-called “honor killing,” given the fact that Surucu’s ultra-conservative Turkish-Kurdish family strongly disapproved of her modern and “un-Islamic” life.

Surucu grew up in Berlin and was married off at 16 to a cousin in Istanbul. After a few years, she returned to the German capital with her young son, moved into a home for single mothers, completed school and began to train as an electrician. She stopped wearing a headscarf and was said to be outgoing and vivacious.

Experts continue to insist this murderous, misogynous custom has nothing to do with the Muslim community. But facts and statistics say otherwise:

Experts insist that the problem is in no way a purely “Islamic phenomenon” and that the remarks of a few shouldn’t be allowed to taint an entire community. But, statistics in Berlin show that murders ostensibly meant to uphold the honor of the family are high among Muslims.

At the juvenile prison in the Berlin suburb Plotzensee, six of the current 529 inmates are serving time of six years and more for manslaughter in so-called “honor crimes.” All come from the Muslim world. Aged between 18 and 22, one of them, an Afghan national, was 16 when he helped relatives kill a widowed aunt who had refused to marry her brother-in-law.

Prison director Marius Fiedler said most of the murders are often carefully plotted in the family with the support of all, including women. “Usually the patriarch selects the youngest son to carry out the crime because he knows that judges in Germany don’t usually give the maximum sentence of 10 years to a minor for manslaughter,”he said.

Fiedler admitted that getting the inmates, who undergo psychological therapy, to reform or change their attitudes is difficult. “Many come from rural areas in Turkey or Lebanon and just don’t know the concept of individualism,” he said. “They don’t feel any regret for what they did though some even kill their favorite sister. Instead, they’re honored and feel like martyrs for having been chosen to carry out the crime.”
from LGF .

Egyptian president orders parliament to amend election law. Mohamed El-Dakhakhny, AP

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in a surprise announcement that the country needed “more freedom and democracy.” The surprise announcement, a response to critics’ calls for political reform, comes shortly after historic elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, balloting that brought a taste of democracy to the region. It also comes amid a sharp dispute with the United States over Egypt’s arrest of one of the strongest proponents of multi-candidate elections.

Opposition figures and reform advocates welcomed Mubarak’s announcement, but some feared it may only be a superficial change to appease pressure at home and abroad. The step came as a dispute sharpened with the United States over Egypt’s arrest of one of the strongest proponents of multi-candidate elections.

“The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will,” Mubarak said in an address broadcast live on Egyptian television.

Mubarak — who has never faced an opponent since becoming president after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat — said his initiative came “out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy.”

By Larry Carson
Sun Staff
Originally published February 25, 2005

Word that Turf Valley Resort and Conference Center – in an upscale, tranquil part of western Ellicott City – is hosting an alternative sex convention this weekend has created a stir among some area residents. Assurances from hotel management that no sign of the weekend’s sold-out activities will bother club members using the indoor pool or the hotel’s restaurant hasn’t assuaged some fears. “Would you want to put your baby on the bedspread? This hotel is a residential community. Is it appropriate for our community?” said Ingrid Holzman, 42, who lives with her husband and two children in a home on the 800-acre golf course property. “I moved here eight months ago from Massachusetts. I’m not a prude.”

But the idea that her family might have gone to dinner at the hotel restaurant without knowing about the “Dark Odyssey -Winter Fire” participants walking the same hallways upset her, she said. The two-day event is so popular that the hotel’s 220 rooms are full, and some participants are renting rooms in other hotels, according to the event’s Web site.

“I understand they’re going to have a great deal of security and such, but I don’t believe they can have a truly secure area,” Holzman said. “[Anybody] can use the pool.”

Turf Valley has two golf courses, a hotel and 170 homes in a conservative part of Howard County. The hotel is a venue for weddings and dances and is advertising a “Kidz Konvention” March 13, for expectant parents, parents and young children. An Easter Buffet is scheduled for March 27.

On its Web site, Dark Odyssey is billed as “a vacation where you can explore the many facets of sexuality in a private, intimate community of like-minded people,” featuring “a multitude of partnering possibilities, from swinging and open relationships to threesomes.” Joe LaVerghetta, general counsel for the hotel, which is owned by Mangione Family Enterprises, said, “This is a private event. The management should be given credit for understanding and dealing with it in a proper way. Most people’s concerns are unfounded.

“We’re keeping it low profile. That may upset people that we’re not going to react to a bunch of e-mails.” Mangione Family Enterprises also owns conservative-oriented WCBM 680 AM radio station.

The upset residents said they feel a breach of trust. “They put money before how it affects residents in the neighborhood,” Holzman said. from The Baltimore Sun .

I just find it interesting the same company that owns conservative WBAL would host this group.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian police arrested two suspected militants Saturday in connection with a suicide bombing that killed four Israelis at a Tel Aviv nightclub, acting on orders from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to track down those responsible for what he called an act of sabotage. In a phone call from Lebanon, an official from the Syria-based leadership of the Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility Saturday for the suicide bombing, contradicting a denial issued by the militant group in the Palestinian territories shortly after the beachfront attack late Friday.

Israeli security officials said on condition of anonymity they were convinced that Islamic Jihad carried out the attack, with orders coming from headquarters in Syria. The two other main militant groups — Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — have denied involvement, as has the Iranian-backed, Lebanese-based Hezbollah.

Palestinian security officials had pointed to Hezbollah, which has been trying to disrupt an informal Mideast truce agreed to Feb. 8.

By Robert Green

CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) – A Florida judge on Friday ordered the feeding tube removed from a severely brain-damaged woman in three weeks, paving the way for her husband to allow his wife to die after a long court dispute with her parents.

Fifteen years to the day since a heart attack put Theresa “Terri” Schiavo into what some doctors call a persistent vegetative state, Circuit Judge George Greer ruled the feeding tube that keeps her alive should be removed on March 18. That would give the parents time to appeal the ruling to higher courts, and their attorney immediately made clear they planned such appeals.

Schiavo, 41, has been at the center of a bitter seven-year legal fight that has become a rallying point for right-to-life activists, advocates for the disabled and proponents of the right to die. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, who is her legal guardian, says his wife had told him she would not want to live in such a condition. Her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, believe their daughter is in a “minimally conscious state” and say she could improve with treatment.