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Latest News: Thursday, November 17, 2005
Sex, shopping and the death of a regime By Mark LeVine When and if President Bashar Assad and his Ba'athist regime collapse, chances are it won't be because of a US invasion, or even a small contingent of special ops forces fomenting chaos at the center of Syrian power. Rather, sex, shopping and expensive real estate will likely be the principal culprits. .... In this context, what is saddest about the intersection of Assad's speech and Emaar's newest project is that they suggest that the ostensible reasons behind the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri - to preserve Syria's massive racketeering operation in Lebanon (without which an otherwise destitute Syrian government would have a hard time functioning) - were seriously misplaced. More than one commentator has described the contest between Assad and Hariri as one between an old-style mafia family and a savvier and increasingly globalized former associate (and now competitor). Viewed this way, the belief that getting rid of Hariri would help the Assad "family" preserve the status quo is betrayed by the presence of Emaar, which reveals that the old order is already slipping away, one Damascene hillside at a time. ... According to Syrian journalist Abdjullah Ta'i, his interviews with young Syrians who went to Iraq to join the insurgency reveals that one of the more common reasons given for doing so was not religious or nationalistic. Rather, as one returnee put it, "My friends and I went to fight in Iraq because we thought we would find lots of sex there. People said that sex and prostitution are available in streets because of the poverty and disorder. We wanted to exploit that situation." Sadly for the largely Sunni sex-jihadis, there wasn't much sex to be had in Iraq, largely because prostitutes, like most women, have been driven from the public space they used to occupy by the violence of the insurgency. (If they were Shi'ite, they might have been able to avail themselves of the innumerable Iranian-run "temporary marriage" hotels that have sprung up in Baghdad and the cities of the south). But while many went home disappointed, others stayed and were hired by Islamist militias - and here the 72 virgins available to newly martyred jihadis is a particularly useful hiring incentive; although a few have actually married Iraqi women, thereby solving the problem that led them to Iraq in the first place. Read More Monday, November 14, 2005
Y. professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC By Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor. In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones. In a paper posted online Tuesday and accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, Jones adds his voice to those of previous skeptics, including the authors of the Web site www.wtc7.net, whose research Jones quotes. Jones' article can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html. Stuart Johnson, Deseret Morning News"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three (WTC) buildings," BYU physics professor Steven E. Jones says. Jones, who conducts research in fusion and solar energy at BYU, is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation "guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations. "It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all," Jones writes. As for speculation about who might have planted the explosives, Jones said, "I don't usually go there. There's no point in doing that until we do the scientific investigation." Read More Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Why Paris is burning By Ehsan Ahrari Why is Paris burning? That's the red-hot question. Newsweek, in its latest edition, showed its ignorance and insensitivity by coming up with an Islamophobic slant: "Will the riots swell the ranks of jihadists in Europe?" The question remains, why is Paris burning? The answer goes to a detailed description of the hypocrisy of French political culture, which gleefully depicts itself as too civilized, too secular and too "sophisticated" to nurture hostility or animus toward any ethnic group or religion, including Islam. The reality, alas, is quite the contrary. The demonstrators, to be sure, are young men, mostly of North African origin. Almost all of them are second- or even third- generation Frenchmen, but that depiction remains only in the government record of birth certificates. For the blue-eyed, blonde-haired French, all those young people of North African origin will always be "Africans" or "Arabs", words that manifest their not so latent disdain. These people of North African origin form 10% of the total population and unemployment among them runs at 21%. The number of underemployed is considerably higher. Most of them hold "dead-end" jobs as janitors, grocery store clerks and other oddjobbers. The French middle class did not expect them to register any protest. They were expected to consider themselves much too lucky to be living and breathing on French soil. These people of North African origin form 10% of the total population and unemployment among them runs at 21%. The number of underemployed is considerably higher. Most of them hold "dead-end" jobs as janitors, grocery store clerks and other oddjobbers. The French middle class did not expect them to register any protest. They were expected to consider themselves much too lucky to be living and breathing on French soil. The very reason why they are in France today is because France direly needed them during the glorious days of economic expansion of the post-World War II decades - the so-called "les trentes glorieuses". During that era, the ancestors of today's protestors were brought to France not only to serve as cheap laborers, but also to make up for the loss of native French manpower following that war. Moreover, their usefulness also stemmed from the fact they were passive and not expected to strike, unlike those Frenchmen and women who were members of the country's communist unions. Many of these immigrants were known as "Harkins", ie, those Algerians who sided with their French colonial masters during Algeria's struggle to overthrow the yoke of French colonialism. More than 100,000 Harkins were massacred by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) for being "collaborators". Those who entered France "were parked in unspeakable, filthy, crowded concentration camps for many long years and never benefited from any government aid - a nice reward for their sacrifices for France, of which they were, after all, legally citizens". Read More Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Paris Burning: How Empires End by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted Nov 7, 2005 The Romans conquered the barbarians—and the barbarians conquered Rome. So it goes with empires. And comes now the penultimate chapter in the history of the empires of the West. This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires. ... The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe. Nevertheless, their numbers must grow. For not only do they have a higher birth rate than the native-born Europeans, no European nation, save Moslem Albania, has a birth rate (2.1 births per woman) that will enable it to endure for many more generations. The West is aging, shrinking, and dying. Yet, to keep Europe’s economy growing and taxes coming in to fund the health and pension programs of Europe’s rising numbers of retired and elderly, Europe needs scores of millions of new workers. And Europe can only find them in the Third World. ... Colonization of the mother countries by subject peoples is the last chapter in the history of empires—and the next chapter in the history of the West—that is now coming to a close. Read More
US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah 08 Nov 2005 Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells. [Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it and video.] Read More Sunday, November 06, 2005
Published Sunday, November 6, 2005 Driver Gets House Arrest The former teacher avoids prison time in a 2004 accident that killed two children. By CANDACE RONDEAUX St. Petersburg Times TAMPA -- After a marathon hearing that ran well into the early hours Saturday morning, a Hillsborough judge allowed teacher Jennifer Porter to avoid prison after pleading guilty in a March 2004 accident that left two children dead and two injured. Judge Emmett Lamar Battles sentenced Porter to two years of house arrest, three years of probation, and 500 hours of community service work. She was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The judge indicated that he gave great weight to the fact that she was a first-time offender, and appeared to be moved by the testimony of mental health experts. "This offense, as horrible as it is, was committed in an unsophisticated manner," he said. Read More
Ludlow Massacre The Ludlow massacre of April 20, 1914 was one of the bloodiest assaults on organized labor in American history. It took place in Ludlow, Colorado (today a ghost town) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado and was the climax of an effort to suppress a strike by twelve thousand Colorado coal miners. Labor unrest in the United States in the years preceding World War I was particularly tense in the West. When a union activist was killed in the fall of 1913, workers at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation's (CF&I) coal operations and other Colorado coal mines went on strike. The miners evacuated the coal mining camps on September 23 to protest low wages ($1.68 a day) and poor working conditions. Contrary to state law, miners were paid in scrip, which was redeemable only at the company store, where prices were high. Miners were cheated at the scales where the coal they dug was weighed. Many mines maintained two separate systems of weights: one for the miners' transactions, and another for the coal buyers. In Colorado mines, "dead work" was not paid. Dead work included timbering the mine for safety. The death rate of Colorado miners was approximately twice the national average. Miners frequently complained that company mules were treated far better than their human counterparts. Years after cave-ins or mine explosions, miners' anecdotes recount the first words of the coal operators when a mine collapsed: did the mules get out? Read More
Is Jimmy Massey telling the truth about Iraq? By Ron Harris POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU 11/05/2005 For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq. ...Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill, Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports. Earlier this year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan, and he's spoken at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others. News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth. He wasn't. Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal. Read More Tuesday, November 01, 2005 
CRISIS OF FAITH IN THE MUSLIM WORLD PART 1: Statistical evidence By Spengler ...If America faces discomfort, and Europe faces crisis, Muslim countries face breakdown. America now has a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of US$40,000 and a diversified economy. Iran has a per capita GDP of just $7,000 and depends on oil exports for the state subsidies that keep its population fed and clothed - and Iran will no longer be able to export oil after 2020, according to some estimates... Read More |
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