Islami News

US diplomat Richard Holbrooke dies

2010-12-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died after undergoing a second round of surgery to treat a heart condition, the state department said.

Holbrooke was admitted to George Washington University Hospital in the nation's capital on Friday morning after he fell ill and collapsed at the state department. Surgeons spent more than 20 hours trying to repair a torn aorta, but were unsuccessful.

Barack Obama, the US president, said he was saddened by the death of a man who "served the country he loved with honour and distinction."

"Michelle and I are deeply saddened by the passing of Richard Holbrooke, a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected. He was a truly unique figure who will be remembered for his tireless diplomacy, love of country, and pursuit of peace."

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said the United States had lost one of its "fiercest champions".

"Richard Holbrooke served the country he loved for nearly half a century, representing the United States in far-flung war zones and high level peace talks, always with distinctive brilliance and unmatched determination," Clinton said in a statement.

"He was one of a kind - a true statesman - and that makes his passing all the more painful," she said.

Holbrooke's death is a significant blow to the Obama administration just days before it is scheduled to announce the latest review of US policy in Afghanistan. He was a key member of the team seeking to steer the US on a course of gradually reduced involvement in the country and transfer of responsibility towards the Afghan military forces.

'The Bulldozer'

Holbrooke's forceful style earned the 69-year-old nicknames such as "The Bulldozer" or "Raging Bull."

He brokered the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Balkans war, and was a key player in Obama's efforts to turn around the faltering nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Holbrooke served as the US ambassador to the United Nations during the Clinton administration. He was also an ambassador to Germany from 1993 to 1994 and then assistant secretary of state for European affairs.

Holbrooke was once called "Washington's favourite last-ditch diplomat'' and "America's toughest diplomatic tactician'' by Time magazine, a US publication. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seven times.

Holbrooke joined Obama's administration in 2009 as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which involved co-ordinating the approach to trouble spots that are key foreign policy priorities for Obama.

He had been very critical of former president George Bush's Afghanistan policy, and his position Obama administration was considered critical as the new president sought to crackdown on al-Qaeda and Taliban in the region.

A torn aorta is a condition in which a rip develops in the inner wall of the body's largest artery, allowing blood to enter the vessel wall and weaken it.

The problem can lead to rapid death if not corrected. It causes serious internal bleeding, a loss of normal blood flow and possible complications in organs affected by the resulting lack of blood, according to medical experts.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies

Daily Update

Leaks show UK Afghan failure

2010-12-03T00:47:00.000-08:00

US diplomats and Hamid, Karzai, the Afghan president, criticised the role of UK troops in Afghanistan as "not up" to standard, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

In the US embassy memos published by the Guardian, a UK newspaper, on Friday, senior officials derided the forces' efforts in the southern Helmand province, a stronghold of the Taliban.

"We and Karzai agree the British are not up to the task of securing Helmand," US diplomats from the Kabul embassy said in a 2008 cable.

In a separate cable sent in February 2009, Karzai complains that UK forces had allowed law and order to breakdown in Helmand.

'Dismayed'

"When I first returned to Afghanistan, I had only 14 American soldiers with me," the cable quoted Karzai as having said.

"Helmand was safe for girls to go to school. Now ... British soldiers are in Helmand, and the people are not safe.

"We must stand on a higher moral platform than the bad guys."

General Dan McNeill, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan from 2007-2008, was reported to have said to a US drug-control officer in April 2007 that the British "had made a mess of things in Helmand, their tactics were wrong".

Gulab Mangal, Helmand's governor, was also quoted in a cable sent from the US embassy in Kabul as telling a US team led by Joe Biden, the vice-president, that US forces were needed urgently due to British security in the town of Sangin failing to extend even to the main bazaar.

"I do not have anything against them [the British] but they must leave their bases and engage with the people," Mangal said.

"Stop calling it the Sangin district and start calling it the Sangin base - all you have done here is built a military camp next to the city."

The UK has reacted to the leaked memos, stating that their troops had performed well and that safety in Sangin - which the US now maintains responsibility for - was improved by their presence.

"British forces did an excellent job in Sangin, delivering progress by increasing security and taking the fight to the insurgency," the UK's ministry of defence said in a a statement.

"Both Afghan leaders, including the governor of Sangin, and the US Marines have publicly recognised and paid tribute to the sacrifice and achievements of British forces in that area," a spokesman added.

Afghan graft

The cables also show that US staff were concerned of widespread corruption within the Afghan government, with one memo from October 2009 stating that Ahmed Zia Massoud, the then vice-president, had been found with $52m in a suitcase when stopped at Dubai airport.

Massoud has denied the claim.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, in Kabul, said that the documents showed US fears of corruption within the Afghan government and criticism of Karzai.

"Certainly there is criticism of some of the things he has done, like releasing some prisoners from jail ... said to be for tribal, political reasons.

"The cables show a progression of when Karzai has been in power from total confidence in him to now when they are deeply concerned."

Nato forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, following a US invasion of the country to remove the Taliban, whom they accused of harbouring al-Qaeda operatives connected to the September 11 attacks, from power.

This year has been the most violent since the campaign began.

The UK has 10,000 troops in the country, now costing more than £5bn ($7.7bn) a year, of about 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The WikiLeaks website began releasing a trove of classified US diplomatic cableson Sunday, infuriating Washington, which called the leak an "attack on the international community".
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Daily Update

Appeal sought in US Sharia case

2010-12-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

The Oklahoma State Election Board has voted to ask the attorney general to appeal a court's decision to grant a preliminary injunction on a ban preventing the use of Sharia and other international laws in the state.

The vote comes after the state legislator who wrote the proposal on Tuesday lashed out at the judge who blocked it, calling her a "liberal, activist judge".

Rex Duncan, a former Republican state representative, criticised US district judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange's ruling this week to grant a preliminary injunction, preventing the state from certifying the results of the November 2 election.

More than 70 per cent of voters approved State Question 755 (the "Save Our State Amendment" proposition), which would place the Islamic (Sharia) law ban into the state constitution. The question proposed to preemptively ban "considering or using" international law and Sharia.

Duncan said "one would surmise that her [judge's] sympathies were with the plaintiff".

"But hers won't be the final order on the matter," he added.

The plaintiff, Muneer Awad, is a Muslim living in Oklahoma who claims the proposed ban is unconstitutional.

Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Oklahoma, Awad sued to block the law from taking effect. He argues the ban on Islamic law likely would affect every aspect of his life as well as the execution of his will after his death.

Duncan has charged that Muslim rights groups such as the CAIR want to hijack the US legal system.

Precedent-setting potential

He said he has also heard from legislators in as many as a dozen US states who are interested in introducing similar bills intended to prevent foreign laws from being used, although he declined to say which states.

The move could also complicate the way US courts already recognise some aspects of Sharia, as National Public Radio reported, in business contracts and divorce settlements.

But when pressed, the courts will always rely on US laws over faith-based ones and avoid having to interpret religious laws.

Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor specialising in US constitutional law and religious studies, told Al Jazeera that the ban in Oklahoma "almost certainly" violates the First Amendment rights of of Muslims.

He called the ban "a surprising piece of legislation that came out of the Islamophobia that has unfortunately surfaced in the US in the past few months", and said that striking the ban down is the right course of action for the courts to take.

"Under existing law, you cannot endorse or disfavour a particular religion, and the passage of this constitutional amendment is intended to disfavour Islam," said Feldman, who was unaware of any similar precedent.

"It's a violation of the free exercise of Muslims in Oklahoma and it's a violation of the separation between church and state."

International issue

Sharia and other faith-based laws were used in Ontario, Canada since 1991, allowing Christian, Jewish and Muslim Canadians access to faith-based tribunals to resolve family and domestic disputes.

But a major backlash against specifically the use of Sharia put an end to the practise in 2005, effectively doing away with faith-based courts in the country.

One of Canada's national newspapers, the Globe and Mail, reported at the time that "moderate Muslims" were "overjoyed" and that orthodox Jews and Christian leaders were "disappointed" by the decision.

In Britain, faith-based courts, including ones following Sharia are commonly used and groups in Sweden and Holland have also had debates on the issue, with - in Sweden's case - Sharia courts operating outside the scope of the law.
Source:Al Jazeera and agencies

Daily Update

Iran: West behind scientist's death

2010-11-29T21:12:00.000-08:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has accused Israel and Western governments of being behind the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist.

Assailants on motorcycles attached bombs to the cars of two nuclear scientists as they were driving to work in Tehran on Monday, killing one and wounding the other, Iranian officials say.

Ahmadinejad said that “undoubtedly the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved'' in the killing. But he said the assassination won't stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear programs.

Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief, said the man killed was involved in a major project at the country's chief nuclear agency, though he did not give specifics.

Some Iranian media reported that the wounded scientist was a laser expert at Iran's defence ministry and one of the country's few top specialists in nuclear isotope separation. State TV blamed Israel and the US for the attacks.

At least two other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in recent years in what Iran has alleged was part of a covert attempt by the West to damage its nuclear programme. One of those two was killed in an attack similar to those on Monday.

Mohammad Reza Rahimi, the Iranian vice-president, also blamed Israel, saying it had "picked up the weapon of terror".

"We will remove this mask and devilish cover from their face and reveal their identity," he said during a joint news conference with Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, who is in Tehran on a state visit.

Some Iranian media have reported that the second scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, had been killed in the attack as well, however Tehran's police chief said on Monday that he survived.

The dead scientist, Majid Shahriari, was a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. His wife, who was in the car with him, was injured.

The second separate attack that wounded Abbasi, also injured his wife, who was in the car with him.

'Cable release orchestrated'

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad, said the US government had orchestrated the release of thousands of US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks to pursue its "political goals".

According to the cables released on Sunday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf leaders repeatedly urged the US to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program.

"We don't give any value to these documents," Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Tehran, Iran's capital. It's without legal value. Iran and regional states are friends. Such acts of mischief have no impact on relations between nations," Ahmadinejad said.

"These documents are prepared and released by the US government in a planned manner and in pursuance of an aim. It is part of intelligence warfare and will not have their desired political impact," he said.

Despite countries calling for a political resolution to the controversy over Iran's uranium enrichment project, the cables show that in addition to Riyadh, both Manama and Abu Dhabi suggested a radical solution may be necessary.

Saudi Arabia also offered to promote energy ties with China if the Chinese government backed sanctions against Iran, according to one of the diplomatic cables, the New York Times reported.

Ahmadinejad announced on Monday that Iran has accepted a date for new round of talks with world powers about its nuclear programme.

The talks will be held in Geneva on December 5, Russia's RIA news agency quoted the Iranian ambassador to Moscow as saying.
Source:
Agencies

Daily Update

Daily Update

2010-11-28T17:23:00.000-08:00

US judge bans Guantanamo witness The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge told prosecutors they cannot call their star witness.	Crews race to tackle Hungary spill Rescue crews are working to clear roads and homes after a torrent of toxic red sludge swept over three Hungarian counties, killing four people and injuring 120.
Brazil set to pick Lula's successor Brazilians are preparing to go to the polls to pick a successor to the hugely popular Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the outgoing president.	Ecuador president declares victory Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, has declared victory over renegade police officers he said were part of an attempt to overthrow, just days after violence that left eight people dead and 274 wounded.
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Crews race to tackle Hungary spill

2010-10-06T23:49:00.001-07:00

Rescue crews are working to clear roads and homes after a torrent of toxic red sludge swept over three Hungarian counties, killing four people and injuring 120.

Hungary declared a state of emergency after thick red sludge burst from a reservoir at Ajkai Timfoldgyar Zrt metals plant in Ajka, in the country's southwest.

An estimated 700,000 cubic metres of the waste, a by-product of aluminium production, poured through Kolontar and two other villages, leading hundreds of people to be evacuated.

Many have suffered from burns and eye irritations caused by lead and other corrosive elements in the mud.

Fears for Danube

There are fears that the pollution has already found its way into the Marcal river, which is connected to the Danube River, one of Europe's major waterways.

Sandor Toth, deputy chief of the water management company for western Hungary said the sludge could potentially reach the Danube within four or five days.

"From the point of view of water management, it's a catastrophe," he said.

The European Union said on Wednesday that it feared the disaster could spread to half a dozen European nations and was ready to offer help.

"This is a serious environmental problem," Joe Hennon, an EU spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency. "We are concerned, not just for the environment in Hungary, but this could potentially cross borders."

Emergency workers and construction crews are pouring plaster into a river near the spill in an attempt to neutralise the waste and prevent it entering major river systems.

Timea Petroczi, a spokeswoman for the disaster relief services, said that efforts to neutralise the pollution was "already getting good results showing that alkaline levels in the water are falling".

"We've got 500 people involved in the clean-up today. We're using high-pressure water jets to clean roads and houses."

'Caustic effect'

Hungary's national disasters unit defined the red mud on its website as: "A by-product of alumina production".

"The thick, highly alkaline substance has a caustic effect on the skin. The sludge contains heavy metals, such as lead, and is slightly radioactive. Inhaling its dust can cause lung cancer."

A Greenpeace expert said the impact from the mud spill could be much worse than a cyanide spill at Baia Mare in Romania 10 years ago, when cyanide-tainted water was discharged from a gold mine reservoir, polluting the Tisza and Danube rivers.

"This disaster is seven times as large as the incident in Baia Mare," Katerina Ventusova, a Greenpeace expert for toxics, said.

"The ecological impact can be very wide and take a long time to neutralise because heavy metals and caustic soda form a very dangerous toxic mix."

Anna Nagy, a government spokesperson, said an investigation was under way to "find the person criminally responsible".

"It is obviously not a natural catastrophe - it was caused by human mistake," she said.

The country's state secretary said there was a suspicion that the company which owns the reservoir had stored more red sludge than was allowed, or that containers had not been properly fitted.

Greenpeace also said satellite imagery taken a day before the disaster showed "catastrophic cracks in the tank's walls".

However, MAL Zrt has insisted it had done nothing wrong.

"According to the daily and annual checks, everything was working fine," Zoltan Bakonyi, MAL chief, said.

MAL Zrt said on Wednesday that it wanted to restart production at the weekend. The government suspended production after Monday's spill.

Polluted homes

People in Kolontar, which lies closest to the burst reservoir, were trying to recover their belongings on Wednesday but police were not yet letting them return to their polluted homes.

"My bathtub is full of this sludge ... when the dam burst, it made a terrible noise. I was in my yard, and I had to run up the steps to the porch but the water was rising faster than I could run," Ferenc Steszli, 60, said.

Farmland around the village was covered in the sludge and many livestock was killed.

Nagy told it is "forbidden and impossible" for local residents to return to their homes.

"Everything is covered in this poisonous toxic sludge. There is no radiation, fortunately, but it causes severe burning and casualties when touched. Surface waters are polluted but deep water, where drinking water is supplied from, is not, which is very lucky," she said.

She said that there was a good chance of preventing the mud from entering big river systems such as the Danube.

MAL Zrt, the owner of the plant, said in a statement that there had been no sign of the impending disaster, and that the red sludge did not qualify as hazardous waste according to European Union standards.

Reporting from the disaster area, said that the damage from the spill is enormous.

"They [MAL Zrt] are claiming it is not hazardous waste, which is a bit of a semantic game they are playing at the moment.

"The red sludge is not classified as hazardous waste per se, but the EU said today, that does not mean it is not toxic and does not mean it is not dangerous, because very clearly, it is both," our correspondent said.

MAL Zrt recommended people to clean off the sludge with water to neutralise the substance.

Daily Update

US judge bans Guantanamo witness

2010-10-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

The first civilian trial for a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been delayed after a judge told prosecutors they cannot call their star witness.

Lewis A Kaplan, the US district judge, blocked the government on Wednesday from calling a man who authorities said, sold explosives to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the defendant.

Defence lawyers say investigators only learned about the witness after Ghailani underwent harsh interrogation at a secret CIA-run camp overseas between 2004 and 2006.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," Kaplan wrote. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."

The government immediately asked for a delay of the trial, which had been expected to begin with opening statements on Wednesday, so that it has time to appeal the ruling, should it decide to do so.

The judge sent a pool of 66 jurors home until Tuesday, but not before warning them to avoid following the case on the news or discussing it with anyone.

Ghailani is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

The attacks killed 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

The judge issued his written three-page ruling after a hearing three weeks ago in which Hussein Abebe, the witness, testified about his dealings with authorities.

"The government has failed to prove that Abebe's testimony is sufficiently attenuated from Ghailani's coerced statements to permit its receipt in evidence," Kaplan wrote.

The defence had asked the judge to exclude Abebe's testimony on the grounds that it would be the product of statements made by Ghailani to the CIA under duress.

On that point, Kaplan said, "Abebe was identified and located as a close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA. The government has elected not to litigate the details of Ghailani's treatment while in CIA custody. It has sought to make this unnecessary by asking the court to assume in deciding this motion that everything Ghailani said while in CIA custody was coerced."

The judge noted that he had previously rejected defence motions to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Ghailani was deprived of a speedy trial and that his treatment by the CIA was so outrageous as to require termination of the charges.

Daily Update

Ecuador president declares victory

2010-10-02T19:57:00.001-07:00

Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, has declared victory over renegade police officers he said were part of an attempt to overthrow, just days after violence that left eight people dead and 274 wounded.

"This was a great victory for the government," Correa said in a nationally broadcast address from the presidential palace on Saturday.

Correa blamed supporters of Lucio Gutierrez, a former army colonel who was president from 2003 to 2005, for the chaos on Thursday, when he was trapped in a hospital by police protesting over plans to cut their benefits.

Airports were closed down, roads were blocked and renegade police officers clashed with supporters of the president before the army stepped in to bring the unrest to an end.

In his televised address, Correa said that Thursday was "surely the saddest day of my entire government and one of the saddest of my life".

"Lives were lost, there were dozens of injured, Ecuadoreans against Ecuadoreans. How could it happen?" Correa asked after ordering three days of mourning for the victims.

Police investigated

Three police colonels have been placed under criminal investigation for failing to stop their subordinates from staging the protests, which spread to police stations in at least five of the country's 24 provinces.

Officials did not name the three detained police colonels, but local media identified them as Manuel Rivadeneira, Julio Cesar Cueva and Marcelo Echeverria.

Correa on Saturday urged the public to support the police, saying the rebellion was the work of just "a few dozen bad elements".

Reporting from Quito said that Correa has said that there would be "no forgiveness" for those involved in the violence.

"As they say here, heads are expected to roll, and obviously there will be a purge of the police and certain small factions of the military forces as well," she said.

Despite plans to punish those responsible for the uprising, Doris Soliz, the Ecuadorean policy minister, told the Reuters news agency on Saturday that Correa was planning some changes to the austerity measures that prompted the violence. She said that the law would be rewrite to clarify it, but ruled out any major changes.

Soliz also said that Correa had backed off the idea of dissolving congress and ruling by decree.

Correa, 47 was re-elected last year to a second term as president of the South American country of 14.5 million people.

Ecuador has a history riddled with violent political upheaval. Three of Correa's predecessors from 1996 to 2006 - including Gutierrez - were ousted before completing their terms.

The US-educated economist has taken a tough stand with foreign investors and refused to repay some foreign debt, in moves welcomed by supporters who have blamed the effects of the economic crisis on foreign liberalism.

Daily Update

Brazil set to pick Lula's successor

2010-10-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Brazilians are preparing to go to the polls to pick a successor to the hugely popular Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the outgoing president.

Opinion polls suggest that Dilma Rouseff, the candidate from Lula's Workers' Party and the president's former chief of staff, will win Sunday's election, but some obsevers have said that she could need a second round run-off to defeat Jose Serra, her main challenger.

Rouseff needs more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round to avoid facing her closest challenger in another poll on October 31.

Lula has dominated campaigning despite being barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive term and Rouseff joined the outgoing president in his hometown of Sao Bernardo do Campo on Sao Paulo's southern outskirts on Saturday ahead of the election.

The president enjoys an 80 per cent popularity rating unprecedented in Brazilian politics and many voters are prepared to support Rouseff on his endorsement. For her part, Rouseff has pledged to continue many of her mentor's investor-friendly policies.

Reporting from Sao Paulo, said that the main change in Brazil after the election was likely to be the gender of the president.

[Rouseff] is very much the candidate of continuity. She is promising no more, no less, than to President Lula's economic, social and foreign policies," she said.

'Lower politics'

However, her domination of the polls has been threatened by allegations of ethics violations by a former aide and internet rumours.

In Sao Bernardo do Campo, the former leftist rebel who has never held an elected office hit out at what she said were underhand tactics by her rivals.

"In this campaign there have been sneaky lies that came from the lower world of politics, from those who didn't have the courage to appear in public," she told reporters. "But the population is mature."

Two opinion polls released on Saturday indicated that Rouseff, who would become the country's first female president, would just sneak home in the first round but the margin of error meant that victory on Sunday was far from ensured.

Rousseff had 51 per cent of valid votes, compared with 31 per cent for former Sao Paulo state Governor Serra in a survey by pollster Ibope, according to the Globo network's website. A survey by the Datafolha firm showed her winning 50 per cent, compared with Serra's 31 per cent.

"Candidate Dilma Rousseff has a chance of winning on Sunday as the latest Data Folha poll has shown. This victory is likely to happen with a small advantage, with a margin of two to four percentage points," Ricardo Ismael, a political analyst, said.

"But there is also another possible scenario. Fifteen days ago we were not considering it, but now it is a possible outcome, that there may be a second round."

Serra and Marina Silva, a former environment minister who is running third in the polls, have found themselves unable to get within striking distance of Rousseff in the polls laregly because of Lula's enthusiastic stumping for his candidate.

Lula's farewell

Lula himself had tears in his eyes on Saturday as he accompanied Rouseff.

"He is very moved because he did so much for us ... He suffered what we suffered," Cleila Santos, a 54-year-old health worker wearing the red of a Lula campaigner, said.

"We sure are going to miss him. He was everything in our lives, and we will never have another president like him," she told AFP.

Programmes initiated by the outgoing leader are credited with lifting 20.5 million people from poverty since 2003 and boosting another 29 million into the middle class, creating new consumers who help drive the economy.

Voters in the world's fourth most populous democracy will begin voting at 8am (11:00 GMT) on Sunday. They will also select candidates for congress and state governorships.

The nearly 20,000 candidates in Brazil's 26 states and Federal District are identified by a number which they have been drumming into voters' heads for the past months.

Daily Update

US 'sorry' over syphilis experiment

2010-10-01T22:14:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama has personally apologised "for all those affected" in a US-led study that deliberately infected hundreds of prisoners, soldiers and mental patients in Guatemala with sexually-transmitted diseases.

The US president telephoned Alvaro Colom, his Guatemalan counterpart, offering deep regret for the experiment conducted by US health researchers in the Latin American nation in the 1940s.

Obama and other US officials voiced their outrage over the "reprehensible research", in which hundreds of people were infected with gonorrhea or syphilis and then allowed them to have unprotected sex.

"This is shocking, it's tragic, it's reprehensible," Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said.

Obama vowed that all human medical studies conducted today would be held to exacting US and international legal and ethical standards.

Gruesome crime

In an impromptu news conference in Guatemala on Friday, Colom denounced the study and said he was told of the gruesome years-long experiment by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state.

"What happened all those years ago is a crime against humanity and the government reserves the right to lodge a formal legal complaint over it," Colom said.

However, he acknowledged that the experiments were not the actions of those in power now.

"We are aware that this is not the policy of the United States... this happened so long ago," he said.

Clinton called Colom to express her deep regret, saying the injection of Guatemalan citizens was "clearly unethical".

"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health," Clinton said in a joint statement with Kathleen Sebeliu, the health human services secretary.

"We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."

Clinton said a thorough investigation was under way and that current regulations would prevent any repeat of similar experiments.

The federal-funded experiment, which ran from 1946 to 1948, was discovered by Susan Reverby, a Wellesley College medical historian, who stumbled upon archived documents on it.

It apparently was conducted to test whether penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent infection with sexually transmitted diseases.

Sex workers infected

Initially, the researchers infected female commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then allowed them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates.

"When few of these men became infected, the research approach changed to direct inoculation of soldiers, prisoners and mental hospital patients," background documents on the study show.

A total of some 1,500 people took part in the study, which lay hidden for decades.

"The studies went on until 1948 and the records suggest that, despite intentions, not everyone was probably cured," Reverby said in a statement.

The research was led by John Cutler, a US public health doctor, who was involved in the highly-controversial Tuskegee experiment from 1932 to 1972.

In that study scientists tracked 600 black men in Alabama who had late-stage syphilis but who did not know it, and were never given remedial treatment.

Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US government body that funded the study, called it "deeply disturbing" and "an appalling example in a dark chapter in the history of medicine".

Collins said the US surgeon-general in the 1940s, Thomas Parran, appeared to have been aware of the experiment, as were "components" of the Guatemalan government at the time.

He said independent experts under the umbrella of the US Institute of Medicine will conduct a fact-finding probe of the Guatemala study.

The US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues will convene international experts to review standards surrounding human medical research, he added.

Daily Update

Deadly train crash in Indonesia

2010-10-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

At least 34 people have been killed after two trains collided in central Indonesia, officials have said.

Another 27 people were wounded, many with broken bones and burns, in the accident near Pemalang, a city on the northern coast of Central Java province, early on Saturday.

A train from the capital, Jakarta, crashed into the back of another waiting at Petarukan station, causing severe damage to both trains.

Many of the dead and injured were trapped in three carriages, which had derailed and flipped over.

Local media reported that rescue workers were late to arrive at the scene and lacked equipment to free passengers trapped in the wreckage.

"The number of victims could still increase because the evacuation is ongoing," Bambang Ervan, a transport ministry spokesman, told Antara news agency.

'Hospitals understaffed'

Reporting from Jakarta, said the accident occurred in a pretty remote area.

"The hospitals are quite small in that area and severely understaffed," she said.

"People have been brought to four or five hospitals. The doctors and nurses are complaining that they can't cope with that many patients so people have been left unattended. They don't have enough medication so people have actually been asked to go other places to find help."

Iskandar Hasan, the national police spokesman, said the collision was likely caused by a signal error.

"The suspected cause of the accident was a mistake in the traffic management system," he said.

"We're still investigating to see if it was due to negligence of the driver or because signalling equipment on one of the trains was faulty," he said.

Sugeng Priyono, a spokesman for the national railway PT Kereta Api Indonesia, said the Argo Bromo Anggrek train was travelling from Jakarta to the East Java provincial capital of Surabaya, when it ploughed into the stationary Senja Utama train before dawn.

"The Petarukan station is where double tracks change to a single track. Initial report is that the Argo Bromo Anggrek train had not yet been given permission to go ahead when it hit the other train," he said.

"However, this is still under investigation, so there could be other causes."

Vaessen said that although this was the first big rail crash for some time, accidents on the country's rail network were not uncommon.

"There have been many accidents in the past, many train collisions like this, because many of the Indonesia lines are single track so it is very prone to accidents."

Metro TV and El Shinta radio reported that another passenger train had crashed in the town of Solo on Saturday, killing at least one person.

Daily Update

India braced for mosque verdict

2010-09-29T21:48:00.001-07:00

Authorities in India have tightened security across the country ahead of a court ruling that will decide whether Hindus or Muslims own land around a disputed mosque, the demolition of which in the 1990s led to one of the country's worst riots since independence.

The verdict, aiming to resolve the dispute over the Babri Mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya, will be announced on Thursday by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

India's Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for the lower court to decide on the ownership of the Babri Mosque, over which the Hindus and Muslims have quarrelled for more than centuries.

Hindus say the mosque stood on the birthplace of their god-king Rama and was built only after the destruction of the longstanding Hindu temple by Muslim invaders in the 16th century.

The dispute flared up in 1992 after a Hindu mob destroyed the mosque and nearly 2,000 were killed in rioting between Hindus and Muslims across the country.

Security challenge

Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, described the 60-year-old Babri Mosque-Ram Temple case as one of the biggest security challenges in India - in addition to the Maoist insurgency and the Kashmiri separatist rebellion.

In the western state of Gujarat, police have stepped up security at railway stations, bus terminals, shopping centres and were frisking all vehicles entering into the state.

Shabbir Hussain Shekhadam Khandwawala, Gujurat's police chief, said more than 70,000 security personnel have been deployed to ensure there is no violence in the state which witnessed nearly 2,000 deaths in 2002 violence between Hindus and Muslims.

Meanwhile, in Ludhiana, in the northern state of Punjab, Hindus were holding special prayers to maintain peace, regardless of the outcome of the court ruling.

"The purpose of performing these prayers is that whatever decision is announced by the court, all the religions should accept it with an open heart and should respect the decision pronounced," Rajesh Mehen, a Hindu devotee, said.

Hindus hope to see a temple rebuilt on the site, while Muslims demand the reconstruction of the mosque.

Any verdict will present the ruling Congress party with a difficult decision.

Endorsing a pro-Hindu verdict will damage the secular party's links with the Muslim population, while a pro-Muslim verdict could lead to the political nightmare of ordering the eviction of Hindu groups from the site.

A decision against Hindus, who make up 80 per cent of India's population, would give political capital to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

But, any verdict will almost certainly be challenged in the Supreme Court, and a final decision could take years to emerge.

Daily Update

Koreas hold military talks

2010-09-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

North and South Korea have begun their first military talks in two years, aimed at trying to ease tensions heightened by the sinking of a South Korean frigate near their disputed sea border.

Seoul's defence ministry said on Thursday that officers from the two sides met at the border truce village of Panmunjom after the North had accepted the South's revised date for the meeting.

North Korea earlier this month proposed the military meeting to discuss the western maritime border and anti-North Korean leaflets spread by South Koreans.

Seoul's defence ministry would not confirm what was on the agenda.

History of tensions

The poorly marked western sea border, drawn by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, is a constant source of tension between the two Koreas.

Seoul has repeatedly rejected the North's long-standing demands that the sea border be changed. The navies of the two Koreas engaged in three bloody skirmishes near the area in 1999, 2002 and 2009.

Military tensions have been high since the Cheonan, a South Korean patrol ship sank in March, killing 46 sailors. South Korea and the United States say the vessel was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, a claim Pyongyang denies.

Seoul and Washington responded to the sinking by staging series of joint military exercises off the peninsula, and by squeezing the North's economy with tougher sanctions.

The talks on Thursday come as South Korea and the US hold another set of naval drills in the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, near where the South Korean vessel sank.

The exercises are the second in a series of joint manoeuvres focusing on anti-submarine warfare tactics, techniques, and procedures, according to the South Korean defence ministry.

Daily Update

Venezuelan leader claims 'victory'

2010-09-28T04:47:00.001-07:00

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has claimed victory in the country's legislative elections, in which the opposition bloc made big gains and denied the governing party a two-thirds majority.

Chavez declared on Monday, in his first news conference since the vote, that his Socialist party had won most of the votes with 98 seats in the 165-member National Assembly, compared with 65 for the opposition coalition.

He claimed his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) had won most of the votes - 5,422,040 - while the Unity Table (MUD), a broad coalition of opposition parties, won 5,320,175 votes in Sunday's elections.

He said another 520,000 votes won by the leftist Homeland For Everyone (PPT), which broke off from PSUV, could not be included in the opposition tally, as his opponents have done.

Seat breakdown

The electoral commission has only released figures for the seats, not votes.

According to the official vote count so far, PSUV won 95 seats, while the MUD won 63, and the PPT two.

Controversial new changes to electoral rules mean Chavez's party can have many more seats than its vote share would imply.

But the results fall far short of the 110 seats Chavez needs to continue to push his socialist programme through the legislature.

"As always they're lying, manipulating. The forces of the revolution won a very important victory on Sunday," he said.

Chavez promised an "acceleration" of his socialist policies, saying an opposition presence in parliament was no threat to his agenda.

"They won't be able to win a majority unless they raise both hands," he said.

Sights on presidency

Opposition parties boycotted the last election in 2005, giving Chavez complete control of parliament.

The bloc has now set its sights on ousting Chavez in the 2012 presidential election.

"It's been demonstrated that the country has an alternative, formed thanks to the convergence of very different people," Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, the spokesman for the opposition coalition, said early on Monday.

In more than a decade of tumultuous rule, Chavez has nationalised public utilities, key industries and media, and launched health clinics and subsidised food programmes for the poor.

He has also increased pressure on opposition groups and dissidents.

The opposition's campaign focused on issues like Venezuela's murder rate, one of the highest in the world, and record inflation.

Daily Update

Moscow mayor Luzhkov sacked

2010-09-28T04:47:00.000-07:00

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has signed a decree dismissing the mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, according to Russian news agencies.

The order came a day after he defied the Kremlin, saying he had no plans to resign of his own free will and effectively challenging Medvedev to back off or sack him.

Medvedev, who has not publicly commented on Luzkhov, was on an official visit to China when the decree was signed. The reason given was that Luzhkov had "lost the trust of the president of the Russian federation", Itar-Tass news agency said.

Luzhkov, 74, has led the Russian capital since 1992 but lately faced harsh criticism from the Kremlin. He has angered the Kremlin by criticising Medvedev and suggesting the country needs a stronger leader in 2012 presidential elections.

The clash is widely seen as a test of the resolve of Medvedev, the junior partner to Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, in the run-up to the election.

Some Russians believe Luzhkov's downfall is part of a wider political tussle between Putin and Medvedev. However, Dmitry Babich, a specialist in Russian politics, plays down such talk.

"I think it's too simplistic, because rumours about Luzhkov's resignation have been circulating for a long time, even before President Medvedev's coming to power," he told Al Jazeera from Moscow.

Referring to Medvedev and Putin's relationship, he said: "They are pragmatic politicians. They understand that if they now stage a quarrel, that will end badly for both of them."

Target of campaign

Whatever the reality, there is no denying that the state media has run a vigorous campaign against Luzhkov. Television programmes have accused him of corruption and mismanagement while unnamed Kremlin sources have been quoted as saying he should resign.

But on his first day back at work in Moscow after a one-week holiday in Austria, Luzhkov was defiant.

"I have no plans to leave of my own volition," Luzhkov told the Interfax news agency early on Monday. Looking harried and distracted, he declined all comment when pressed on his plans by reporters at a later public speaking engagement.

Russia's constitution allows Medvedev to sack Luzhkov, along with other regional officials, at will and to appoint a successor.

Luzhkov is one the last of a generation who ruled their regions as mini-states under the fragile presidency of Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s. Putin reined in the regions after replacing Yeltsin as president in 2000, abolishing elections for these posts in 2004.

Medvedev has continued the push, replacing several veteran leaders in recent months, including in Volgograd, Sverdlovsk and Bashkortostan.

Daily Update

Japanese held for illegal filming

2010-09-23T22:32:00.001-07:00

Four Japanese nationals have been arrested in China for allegedly filming a military facility, but Japan says it does not see their detentions as part of a simmering diplomatic row.

The four employees of Fujita, a Tokyo-based construction company, had been on a work trip to China's in Hebei province to do research, an executive of the firm said in Tokyo on Friday.

"They were They were bidding for a project to dispose of chemical weapons that were left in China by imperial Japanese forces after World War II, the executive said.

China had told Japan that the four were being held "based on China's laws on the protection of military facilities and on criminal procedure", Yoshito Sengoku, Japan's most senior government spokesman, said. He said Tokyo was trying to get more details through its embassy in China.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency said earlier that the four Japanese men are being investigated for having entered a military zone without authorisation and illegally videotaped military targets.

Fishing boat row

The detentions come as diplomatic relations remains inflamed due to Japan's arrest of a Chinese fisherman earlier this month, with Beijing calling off all high-level official meetings.

China has repeatedly protested and demanded Japan to release the captain of a trawler which Japan suspects intentionally rammed two Japanese coastguard ships in waters near a disputed island chain in the East China Sea.

Japan warned on Friday that the deepening row with China could hurt both of Asia's two biggest
economies and sought to draw a line between a feud over the disputed island and the detainment of four of its nationals.

"I don't think there is any correlation between this issue and the problem surrounding the Senkaku islands", referring to the island chain called Diaoyu by China.

Tokyo and Beijing have agreed that up to 400,000 chemical weapons, left in China as Japan surrendered in World War II, remain in the country, although the exact figure has long been the subject of debate.

Under the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention, Japan is responsible for cleaning up the weapons. Tokyo has started the process, although technical and diplomatic problems have held up progress.

Daily Update

UN walkout over Ahmadinejad speech

2010-09-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

US diplomats and other Western delegations have walked out of a United Nations summit as the Iranian president said some believe the 9/11 attacks on the US was the work of Americans to save Israel.

Two US officials led the walkout as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the General Assemly in New York on Thursday. They were quickly followed by the British and other Western delegations.

Ahmadinejad said there was a theory that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.

"The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view," he said.

PJ Crowley, the US assistant secretary of state, told Al Jazeera the statement was "totally outrageous".

"[Those killed in the attacks] were people of all faiths, all nationalities. They were killed by 19 people, a plot perpetrated by al-Qaeda," he said.

"We know who did it and they have admitted who did it. This idea that nine years later there is still some debate about who did it and why is outrageous."

Lawrence Cannon, Canada's foreign minister, called Ahmadinejad's comments "unacceptable" and "a blatant violation of international standards and of the very spirit of the UN".

About 3,000 people died when hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and a fourth aircraft plummeted into a Pennsylvania field in 2001.

'9/11 denier'

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said: "[Ahmadinejad's] attack on the traditional version of the 9/11 story was similar to his attack on the traditional version of the holocaust.

"So you can now say President Ahmadinejad is both a 9/11 denier and a Holocaust denier.

"And that simply does not set a positive tone for any negotiations with the Americans, but also underlines that Iran is not interested in talks anytime soon."

Ahmadinejad briefly touched on the four sets of UN sanctions imposed on his country over Tehran's refusal stop enriching uranium and to prove Iran is not trying to build an atomic bomb.

Some members of the Security Council have "equated nuclear energy with nuclear bombs," Ahmadinejad said.

He accused the US of building up its nuclear arsenal instead of dismantling it and reiterated his call for a nuclear-free world.

The UN Security Council in June imposed a fourth set of sanctions against Iran and the European Union and the US have added even more extensive sanctions targeting its foreign trade.

Iran insists that its nuclear programme has only peaceful intentions.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad condemned some of the permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US - for monopolising nuclear power.

He said the criticism of Iran comes "at the same time they have continued to maintain, expand and upgrade their own nuclear arsenals."

He said 2011 should be declared a year of nuclear disarmament - "Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None".

Ahmadinejad said that Iran was ready for negotiations but dismissed suggestions that such an act would be giving in to international pressure.

"We have never submitted to illegally imposed pressures nor will we ever do so. It has been said that they want to pressure Iran into a dialogue," he said.

"Firstly, Iran has always been ready for a dialogue based on respect and justice. Secondly, methods based on disrespecting nations have long become ineffective."

US 'door open'

Hours before Ahmadinejad's speech, Barack Obama, the US president, told the General Assembly that the US was open to diplomacy with Iran only if it proves that its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

"The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it," he said.

"But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear programme."

However, Obama also noted that he made the same overture, in the same forum, a year ago, and tensions continue.

About 800 people including many of Iranian origin protested outside the UN headquarters as Ahmadinejad was attending the General Assembly.

They chanted "Ahmadinejad is a terrorist" and staged a street performance depicting people stained with fake blood and scenes of hanging and stoning.

"It is time for the international community to stop dealing with Ahmadinejad and finally recognise and empower the opposition, so that the Iranian people can finally get the democratic change it deserves," Ali Safavi, a demonstrator, said.

Many of the demonstrators were affiliated with the the People's Mujahidin Organisation of Iran, which is officially listed as a foreign terrorist organisation in the US, although a judge ruled in July that it should be removed from the blacklist

Daily Update

Pope ends 'successful' UK visit

2010-09-19T21:32:00.001-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI has completed a four-day state visit to the UK, with the Roman Catholic Church hailing the trip as a "great success."

The Vatican said on Sunday that it believed the Pope had reached out to the nation despite anger there at the sex abuse scandal surrounding the Church and weariness about his message.

Reverend Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the UK public had received "with profound interest" the Pope's warnings over increasing secularisation in society.

Lombardi described the trip as "a spiritual success."

Beatification

David Cameron, the prime minister, met with the Pope before his departure from Birmingham Airport, and stated: "Faith is part of the fabric of our country. It always has been and it always will be."

Cameron added that the visit had made the UK "sit up and think."

Earlier in the day, Benedict had beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th century Catholic priest, in front of 55,000 pilgrims in Birmingham, central England.

He said that Newman, a intellectual convert to Catholicism, had "outstanding holiness," and that his teachings are as relevant today as they were more than a century ago.

The Pope renewed his criticism of the abuse of children by Catholic priests, stating at a meeting of Bishops that it "seriously undermines the moral credibility of Church leaders."

As he met five victims, he apologised for the uncovered sex-abuse of children in the Catholic Church on Saturday, saying that the crimes had caused "immense suffering."

On the same day the Pope held a prayer vigil in London in front of a crowd of 80,000, however, a significant opposition to the visit manifested itself beforehand. About ten thousand people took to the streets to express their opposition to the Pope.

The visit was also said to have brought Catholics and Anglicans closer together.

Benedict on Friday met with Rowan Williams, the worldwide Anglican leader and Archbishop of Canterbury.

It was the first papal visit to the UK since John Paul II in 1982 and the first ever state trip.

Daily Update

BP declares deep-sea well 'sealed'

2010-09-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

US officials have declared that BP, the British oil giant, has finally sealed the deep-sea well that gushed millions of oil into the Gulf of Mexico since April.

"We can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees the US government response to the disaster, said in a statement on Sunday.

Last Thursday, a relief well bored into the bottom of the Macondo well to pump in cement and seal the reservoir for good. BP pumped cement for seven hours on Friday, and finished a pressure test early on Sunday that showed the well was "effectively dead," Allen said.

BP had pumped cement into the well from the top on August 5. That attempt provided the first cement plug. The second round into the bottom through the relief well was considered the final assurance that the well was plugged for good.

Rich Robson, the offshore installation manager on the Development Driller III vessel, said that while the declaration will be a significant milestone, it would be difficult to celebrate too much given the tragedy of the oil spill.

"It's kind of bittersweet because we lost 11 men out here," he said.

"There isn't going to be any real celebration. To a lot of people, the water out here is a cemetery."

Barack Obama, the US president whose approval ratings were hurt by public discontent over government's initial response to the spill, welcomed the long-awaited development as an "important milestone".

Obama said his administration was now focused on making sure the Gulf Coast "recovers fully from this disaster".

"This road will not be easy, but we will continue to work closely with the people of the Gulf to rebuild their livelihoods and restore the environment that supports them," Obama said in a statement.

Worst oil spill

The catastrophe began on April 20, when an explosion killed 11 workers, sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in the US history.

The Gulf well spewed 206 million gallons (780 million litres) of oil before the gusher was first stopped in mid-July with a temporary cap.

Mud and cement were later pushed down through the top of the well, allowing the cap to be removed.

BP is a majority owner of the well and was leasing the rig from owner Transocean Ltd.

The spill posed major environmental challenges and has been an economic nightmare for people along the Gulf Coast.

With oil still in the water - some of it still washing ashore - fishermen are still fighting the perception that their catch is tainted.

The oil spill, which has brought increased governmental scrutiny of the oil and gas industry, also wiped about $70bn from BP's market value and spurred BP to replace its gaffe-prone Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, with an American, Bob Dudley, effective October 1. It also triggered civil and criminal investigations.

A costly moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling is still in place as a result of the spill.

Daily Update

Turkey votes for new constitution to redefine country’s future

2010-09-17T20:40:00.001-07:00

Turks have approved constitutional changes that are set to reshape the judiciary and curb the powers of the military, in a referendum seen as a tussle between an Islamist-influenced government and its secular opponents.

A provisional count, after polls closed at 14:00 GMT on Sunday, showed 58 per cent of voters approving the amendments, with 99 per cent of ballot boxes counted, according to NTV, a Turkish broadcaster.

“According to provisional results, the changes were approved by about 58 per cent … The turnout was between 77 and 78 per cent,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said.

Earlier opinion polls had suggested up to 56 per cent of Turks could approve the 26 constitutional amendments or that it might be too close to call.

“We have passed a historic threshold on the way to advanced democracy and the supremacy of law,” Erdogan told cheering supporters of a vote that was seen as a crucial test for his governing Justice and Development Party (AKP).

‘Good for the government’

Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught reporting from Ankara, the capital, said the results are “probably better than what the government had hoped for … a slim win for the government would have been destabilising”.

Semih Idiz, a columnist for Milliyet newspaper, agreed that preliminary results were “a good margin for the government”.

“It’s better than expected, and it’s a good endorsement ahead of next year’s elections … I think the prime minister must be feeling pretty comfortable,” Idiz told the Reuters news agency.

Defeat could have damaged the AKP’s morale before a parliamentary election due by July 2011.

Erdogan has said changes are needed to strengthen democracy and bring Turkey closer to European norms, as the country continues its bid to join the European Union.

Critics of the overhaul from the “no” camp, said some of the changes would allow Erdogan’s party to take over the courts, undermining the secular nature of the Turkish state.

Some 50 million people were eligible to vote in the referendum that fell on the 30th anniversary of the 1980 military coup, which produced the current constitution, which critics say gives too much power to the military and court officials.

Kurdish activists in Turkey’s southeast, who have waged an armed campaign against the government, had called for a boycott of the vote.

EU position

The EU’s executive European Commission has backed Ankara’s attempt to reorganise the judiciary, but accused the government on Tuesday of stifling public debate over the proposals.

The AKP evolved from a series of Islamist parties banned by the courts, but denies having any aims to roll back the republic’s traditional secularism.

Polarisation over the referendum reflects Turkey’s fractured political landscape, in which a rising middle class of observant Muslims who form the backbone of the AKP have challenged a secular elite which has traditionally held power since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923.

“The battle is really not between Islamists and secularists; the battle is between reformists and those who defend the status quo,” Ibrahim Kalin, a senior adviser to Erdogan, told Al Jazeera.

Our correspondent in Ankara said that opposition parties did not mount an effective campaign against the changes.

“The leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) [the main opposition] could not vote because his paper work was not in order, which was symbolic of the problems in the ‘no’ campaign,” McNaught said.

To celebrate his party’s victory, the Turkish prime minister will watch his country play the United States in the 2010 Basketball World Championship final in Istanbul, our correspondent said.

Daily Update

Pakistan floods not over yet: millions still face hunger & disease

2010-09-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Donor fatigue kicks in after a week or two of any natural disaster. It is a very natural process as things move very quickly on the world stage. People forget about a godforsaken place as a disaster unfolds in some other corner of the world. The best antidote to this lassitude is a relentless media campaign. And that’s what is missing in the Pakistan floods.

While the coverage had been pervasive during the first two weeks, it has taken a backstage in recent days. Google News search for ‘Lady Gaga’ returned 20,200 results whereas ‘Pakistan Floods’ had a return of 12,300. True that news is still published but mostly in the back pages thus diminishing their chance of being read by people — and reducing any chances of further donations. One cannot blame the news writers and layout editors as other — and more important — news has taken center stage. Nevertheless, a little more highlighting will be good for the millions of victims.

More coverage is needed because the floods have not subsided yet. Manchar Lake, the largest fresh water lake in South Asia, is expected to burst its banks, thus causing more damage in the already ravaged Sindh province. This will uproot hundreds of thousands of people and thus create more problems for the flood managers of Pakistan.

There is also a perception that the devastation has not been extensive in Pakistan. People are not to blame for this. One unconsciously evaluates a disaster by looking at the death toll, which has remained rather low for Pakistan with around 1,800 deaths. Many are also not aware of the river floods that are devastating but slow moving. They are not like the tsunami that destroys everything in its path but recedes within a few hours. They affect far greater areas and work like slow poison, killing everything in their path but without making much of a noise. Lives were saved as evacuations were ordered but people lost their livestock and crops — their only livelihood in the dirt poor rural areas of Pakistan.

Compassion is thus still needed because the first phase of flooding is not over. As for the rehabilitation, Pakistan is stretching its muscles and the IMF has already extended a helping hand. The Pakistani government is intent on accepting this loan despite the fact that they can generate their own resources for the rehabilitation process. The country has a poor taxation system and the lack of land reforms has crippled the governance. Global donors should also scale back their grants or loans for the rehab process as that’s not a right thing to do.

It is, however, still the first stage. And it requires global attention to save lives.

Daily Update

Pope prays for a warm welcome

2010-09-16T21:51:00.003-07:00

In 1982, Pope John Paul II came to Britain. The charismatic Pole drew huge crowds wherever he went. The Catholic Church was reinvigorated. People spoke of the feel good factor he left in his wake.

Twenty eight years on, Pope Benedict will come on a short state visit which has already been plagued by discontent and threats of protest.

There are three main reasons why events during this Papal visit might still not be sold out, why people are questioning the wisdom of a visit right now.

First there is church dogma.

Despite strong medical evidence that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that can lead to Aids and that they can help with population control, particularly in poorer countries, the Catholic Church still believes their use is sinful, that they are against God's teachings. Many Catholics believe this - and the Church's position on homosexuality - are out of step with society.

Then there is the child abuse scandal which has engulfed the church globally.

Many victims believe the Church historically ignored the problem and even now is only taking action to protect its reputation and finance. The last scandal on Belgium detailed abuse linked to the Church over fifty years, with more than 300 victims and linked to at least 13 suicides.

And finally personality.

Pope Benedict simply doesn't enjoy the level of affection inspired by his predecessor. He's seen as cold, clinical and out of touch.

In such times, it would be hard to lose sight of the good the Catholic Church does. It's support for the needy and vulnerable around the world; the good people with good hearts who use their religion to do good.

The pope will use his UK trip to give voice to those people - to that work.

He'll have to pray his message isn't drowned out.

By Alan Fisher

Daily Update

Waiting for justice

2010-09-16T21:51:00.002-07:00

"Amelia," a Filipina domestic worker who sought shelter at her embassy in Beirut earlier this year, had one wish: "I just want to get my money [unpaid wages] and to go back to the Philippines." Her employer had savagely beaten her with a stick - as photos taken by the forensic doctor clearly showed - and allegedly owed her $3,800 in unpaid wages. But while Amelia’s wishes were clear, her circumstances were complicated - a situation she shared with many other migrant domestic workers in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Under Lebanon’s kafeel (sponsorship) system, she lost her legal residency as soon as she left her abusive employer. She was consequently confined to her embassy - which was already overcrowded with other domestic workers who had fled similar situations. It would probably take at least two years for her to seek her back wages in court. And she faced an additional hurdle: Her employer held her identity papers and had filed a theft claim against her - a claim she vehemently denied and which her embassy appointed lawyer believed her employers filed to pressure her into dropping her claims.

I met Amelia during my research for Human Rights Watch into the recourse available to domestic workers against abusive employers in Lebanon. We interviewed abused domestic workers in shelters, as well as the lawyers and diplomats who assisted them, and reviewed 114 judicial decisions affecting domestic workers.

For years, we had documented the abuses these workers suffered. Now we wanted to know how the stories ended for these young women who came from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Bangladesh, to live and work in houses of complete strangers. Many had positive experiences. But what happened to those with valid complaints against their employers? What recourse did they have if an employer did not pay the wages owed? Did Lebanon’s courts punish employers who committed crimes against these workers?

Human Rights Watch’s report, published this week, shows a justice system with inaccessible complaint mechanisms, lengthy judicial procedures, and restrictive visa policies that dissuade many workers from filing or pursuing complaints against their employers. Daunted, many of the workers settled for a ticket home, hoping to end their nightmare.

A labour attaché at one of the embassies said: "When we tell a worker the legal process will take years and she will have to stay here, she immediately backs away." In our sample, criminal cases by workers against employers took an average of 24 months to resolve. Complaints for unpaid wages took between 21 and 54 months. Even simplified complaints brought before labour courts took 32 months on average.

When domestic workers did file complaints, the police and judicial authorities regularly failed to treat certain abuses as crimes. We did not find a single example among the 114 cases we reviewed in which an employer faced charges for locking a worker inside a home, confiscating the worker’s passport, or denying the person food, although we know from our fieldwork that these violations of the law are commonplace. This was disappointing, but not particularly surprising, given that police officers and prosecutors are often themselves employers of domestic workers and consider it "normal" to hold a worker’s passport or to lock her inside the house to ensure that she does not "run away".

Even cases of physical violence against migrant domestic workers often failed to garner sufficient attention from police and prosecutors. In a 2005 case, the police waited 21 days to begin investigating a complaint that an employer was beating a domestic worker. The most severe sentence that a court has imposed on an employer for beating a domestic worker was a one-month prison term, handed down last June 26. While such a ruling shows the positive role that the judiciary can play, it remains an exception: Employers have been sentenced to prison in only a handful of beating cases.

If the Lebanese authorities are committed to improving the treatment of domestic workers - and the Lebanese ministers of interior and labour say they are - then they need to train law enforcement officials and labour inspectors to identify and prosecute violations against domestic workers. When an employer locks a domestic worker in the house or beats the worker up, that is a crime, and the authorities need to prosecute this behaviour. To find these violations, the police and labour inspectors need to conduct home inspections - even if this displeases Lebanese employers. Finally, Lebanon’s parliament needs to reform the sponsorship system so that a worker’s legal residency is no longer tied to the will of an individual employer.

These reforms may not be popular, given widely held views by employers that no one should interfere with what happens inside their homes. But to continue to turn a blind eye to these violations is to be complicit in the ongoing abuses. As for Amelia, she left Lebanon before her case concluded and is still waiting for her wages.

Daily Update

S Africans charged in 'organ trade'

2010-09-16T21:51:00.001-07:00

A prominent South African hospital chain and its chief executive have been charged in connection with trafficking human organs in a case that authorities say stretched to Israel and Brazil.

Vish Naidoo, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency on Thursday that 11 suspects were ordered to appear in court in November.

He declined to name them, but the board of directors of the Netcare hospital chain said in a statement that the parent company, its chief executive officer, Richard Friedland, and its subsidiary in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal received subpoenas on Wednesday.

"The board has been advised that the allegations made are unjustified and that neither Netcare nor Dr Friedland are guilty of any wrongdoing,'' the statement said.

Illegal kidney transplants

Five South African doctors were also charged as part of the case with performing illegal kidney transplants for rich Israelis using organs bought from poor Brazilians and Romanians, South African newspapers reported.

The Star newspaper reported on Thursday that prosecutors claimed 109 illegal operations were conducted between 2001 and 2003.

The Times newspaper reported that "Israeli citizens in need of kidney transplants would be brought to South Africa for transplants at St Augustine's Hospital. They paid kidney suppliers for these operations".

The kidneys "were initially sourced from Israeli citizens, but later Romanian and Brazilian citizens were recruited as their kidneys were obtainable at much lower costs than those of the Israeli suppliers."

Israelis were paid about $20,000 for their kidneys, while the Brazilians and Romanians were paid an average of $6,000, prosecutors said.

J-P Du Plessis, a senior journalist with Eyewitness news in Johannesburg, said big international network was involved in the alleged organ trade.

"They had people operating in three different countries," he told Al Jazeera.

"People who would source kidneys from poor people, arrange payments, have organs transplanted and transport them from those countries to South Africa, which is not a small feat in its own. To get them through customs you obviously need the right documentation."

High demand

Five years ago, South African police tried to bring a case against Ilan Perry, an Israeli who is believed to be the head of the syndicate.

That case was never brought forward and Perry has now turned state witness, The Times reported.

Netcare, meanwhile, has said it will defend itself against the charges in court.

"After several years of co-operating fully with the South African Service Police and providing the investigating officer with countless affidavits, it has come as a great surprise and disappointment that the prosecuting authority has seen it fit to bring charges" against the firm, Netcare said in a statement.

There is a high demand and small supply of kidneys, which can be taken from a living donor.

The black market is said to be thriving around the world. The World Health Organisation calls the shortage of organs "a universal problem".

Daily Update

Pope admits church lacked vigilance

2010-09-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI has criticised his church for being "insufficiently vigilant" over child sex abuse allegations, in what amounts to his strongest criticism of the raging scandal so far.

As he flew to the UK for a historic visit on Thursday, he said that he was shocked by what he called "a perversion" of the priesthood.

"It is also a great sadness that the authority of the church was not sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick and decisive in taking the necessary measures," Benedict said.

His visit, the first ever official state trip by a pontiff to the UK, has been marred by anger over revelations of decades of child abuse within the Catholic church.

The comments of a close aide to the pope, who likened landing in Britain to arriving in a "Third World country", have also threatened to overshadow the trip.

Victims of abuse have dismissed the pontiff's comments, describing them as "hurtful, not helpful".

"It's disingenuous to say church officials have been slow and insufficiently vigilant in dealing with clergy sex crimes and cover ups," Joell Casteix of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) said.

"On the contrary, they've been prompt and vigilant, but in concealing, not preventing, these horrors."

Symbolic prayers

Benedict, who touched down in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Thursday morning, was met by Queen Elizabeth II and hosted an open-air mass in Glasgow, before travelling to London on Thursday evening.

He used the mass to warn young Catholics against the "temptations" of money, drugs, sex, pornography and alcohol.

Alan Fisher said that the mass had been a success. "What the pope got here in Glasgow was what we would have expected from the faithful," he said. "It's not just Scots that are here; we've seen flags from all over Europe. They were able to put the controversy behind them, for a few hours at least."

The highlight of the four-day trip will be a beatification mass in Birmingham for a 19th century English cardinal, John Henry Newman.

It will also feature symbolic prayers with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the head of the world's Anglicans.

But the visit has come under fire from campaigners complaining that $18m of British taxpayers' money is being used to fund the state visit while the church is still under fire over its handling of clerical abuse cases across the world.

Margaret Kennedy of Ministry and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors said that victims would demonstrate as the pope travelled around the country.

"We have been refused three times access to the pope," she said.

"In other words, this visit means that the only way survivors can meet the pope is by protesting in the street."

Peter Saunders, the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, urged Benedict to do more to help the victims of clerical abuse and said that he hoped the issue would be addressed in the coming days.

"I would tell him that I was sick and tired of telling my story of abuse, because every time I tell it I relive some of it, but the reason I have to keep telling it is that we're not doing enough to support survivors of abuse and not doing enough to protect victims," said Saunders, who remains a Catholic despite being abused as a boy.

"And I would tell the Pope what it was actually like to be abused and how it left me feeling."

Other opponents of the visit, including human rights campaigners and secularists, are angry at the Vatican's stance on homosexuality, abortion and contraception, among other issues. They have organised a "Protest the Pope" march for Saturday.

'Hostility' acknowledged

The Catholic church acknowledged that there was some "hostility", but brushed off the planned protests.

"I think everywhere there are critics to the Catholic church, to the proposals of church, but this is rather normal, and we are not surprised by this," Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, told.

"I don't think that it's very wide or diffused hostility."

The Vatican has also sought to play down comments by Cardinal Walter Kasper, who recently retired from the Vatican's office in charge of relations with other Christian denominations, comparing the UK with a developing nation.

"Britain today is a secularised, pluralistic country. If you arrive at Heathrow airport, you sometimes think you had arrived in a Third World country," he reportedly told Germany's Focus magazine this week.

Lombardi said Kasper's comments were not intended as a slight, but simply reflected the cultural diversity instantly evident upon landing in London.

He intended to refer to "a cosmopolitan reality, a melting pot of ordinary humanity and all of its diversity and its problems", Lombardi said.

Kasper had been due to take part in the visit but pulled out last minute citing illness.

British apathy

Benedict's visit to the UK is the first by a pontiff since Pope John Paul II made a non-state pastoral visit in 1982. Benedict's visit has failed to excite the public imagination like that of his predecessor.

An Ipsos Mori poll conducted for the Catholic magazine The Tablet and published last week revealed widespread indifference among Britons, with 63 per cent neither in favour nor against the visit.

Disappointingly for organisers, this has been reflected in ticket sales for the planned masses. Only 55,000 people are expected at the main event in Birmingham which is able to host 80,000 worshippers.

Pilgrims have been asked to pay up to $39 to attend the masses as a contribution towards the cost of the visit.

Daily Update

French Roma scheme aids integration

2010-09-06T22:39:00.003-07:00

There is increasing anger among many elements of French society over the government's recent removal of members of the Roma community from the country.

But away from the controversies and politics, Laurence Lee finds a truly pioneering scheme in Paris which is working to help integrate the Roma.

Outside Paris' city limits, stuck under a railway line and boxed in between industrial units, is a tiny, but extraordinary, example of what some campaigners say gives the lie to the usual story about all Roma being thieves or beggars.

It is a simple collection of about 20 small pre-fabricated box homes. They are not big, but they are a whole lot better than living on the streets.

They only came into being in the first place because of an accident. Over the road was a Roma campsite, but much of it burned down in a fire.

The police told the Roma they had to leave. But after persistent lobbying by a charity, the local authority was persuaded to erect the houses on one condition - that the Roma who would live there agree to find employment and send their children to school.

When you go there it looks like a series of show-homes. There is a pebbled courtyard with a palm tree and a bench in the middle.

Many of the houses have pot plants sitting outside, which the children carefully water.

Inside, the homes are spotless. There are fridges, cookers, coffee makers, showers.

They reminded me of a static caravan I recently stayed in with my family on the west coast of France, and which French people routinely go to on their holidays. Not great, but perfectly liveable.

Children safe

All the children speak perfect French, and will tell you excitedly about how much they enjoy going to school and about the French friends they are making. They are impeccably mannered, as are their mothers.

"School is very important," says 16-year-old Steluza Crizantema.

"Because if you don't have school you do nothing in life. You can't work, you'll be on the street, it's everything for life, you learn."

Some of the fathers though show worry on their faces.

That is partly because they cannot forget what life was like before they moved here, and partly because when they leave the calm of their commune they have to face the rest of France.

Adrian Radasanu now works as a mediator between his community and the authorities, helping other Roma with their papers and to get jobs.

When he first came to France, he worked on building sites where he would tell people he was Portuguese. When the truth came out, he said people's faces fell.

The security guard at the entrance to the camp is important to him and his children's safety.

"In the slum you live in fear, you live today but you don't know what will happen tomorrow," says Radasanu.

"The first thing about this place is the people are more relaxed. There is security here, which means you are being watched but you are being protected too."

'Prejudice'

Marion Nairelet is the tireless charity worker who bounced the authorities into agreeing to the project.

She is absolutely apoplectic about the predisposed views much of France have about the Roma.

"People have to stop thinking they are thieves, it's a prejudice which the president has only made worse," says Nairelet.

"It makes me feel sick because they are people like everyone else, who just want a house and the possibility to work, that's all."

The project is the first France has ever attempted to give the Roma the benefit of the doubt over their claims that they are willing to integrate, and it is evident that a little dignity has paid its rewards.

The project has been copied elsewhere in the country, though it appears most French people do not have a clue about it.

The current debate among the political elite in France presupposes that most Roma are incapable of doing what the people we met have proved entirely capable of.

Daily Update

Obama unveils infrastructure plan

2010-09-06T22:39:00.002-07:00

Barack Obama, the US president, has unveiled an ambitious plan to revamp US transport infrastructure in a bid to kickstart the country's ailing economy ahead of forthcoming mid-term congressional elections.

Obama is expected to face intense pressure over the economy in the run-up to the November 2 election, which could see his Democratic Party lose control of Congress under a barrage of Republican criticism.

The $50 billion plan, which was formally announced by Obama on Monday, outlines improvements to the US road system, an acceleration of high speed rail projects, and establishes a centralised "Infrastructure Bank" to coordinate planning and funding the projects.

It targets rebuilding 240,000 kilometres of roads, adding 6,400 kilometres of rail and replacing 240 kilometres of airport runway. The plan is designed to answer critics who have said the American highway network is in poor condition and to create jobs at a time of high unemployment in the US. Almost one in ten Americans out of work and the economy shedding jobs every month.

End tax breaks

The White House says the plan could be paid for by cancelling tax breaks for American oil and gas companies, thus avoiding adding the country's spiralling national deficit.

"This is a plan that will be fully paid for. It will not add to the deficit over time -we're going to work with Congress to see to that," Obama said as he outlined the proposals.

But plan has been met with stiff opposition from Republicans, who see the initiative as the Obama administration attempting to spend its way out of trouble.

"A last-minute cobbled-together stimulus bill with more than $50 billion in new tax hikes will not reverse the complete lack of confidence Americans have in Washington Democrats' ability to help this economy," Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in a statement.

"After the administration pledged that a trillion dollars in borrowed stimulus money would create four million jobs and keep the unemployment rate under eight per cent, their latest plan for another stimulus should be met with justifiable skepticism," he said.

John Boehner, the Republican leader of the house of representatives, was equally dismissive of the president's plan.

"We don't need more government 'stimulus' spending -- we need to end Washington Democrats' out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses," Boehner said.

Obama admitted on Monday that there is no "silver bullet" for the economy, but pledged to dedicate his presidency to improving the economic plight of many Americans. "I am going to keep fighting, every single day, every single hour, every single minute to turn this economy around," he said.

Administration officials have said that they hope the plan will be passed into law quickly. "The economy needs additional investment as quickly as possible, but we want to do something that will help the economy over the next six years," a White House official said.

But it is unlikely that the investment plan will be passed by Congress before the mid-term elections, which are being seen as a referendum on Obama's economic managment during his first two years in office.

If, as feared by many Democrats, Republicans win back control of the Congress in the elections, Obama will find passing legislation more difficult, as Republicans have overwhelmingly rejected his calls for a bipartisan approach to tackling America's economic difficulties.

The infrastructure plan is part of wider bid by the White House to stimulate slowing growth rates. The US saw second-quarter growth of just 1.6 per cent after first-quarter figures of 3.7 per cent, raising fears that the country is slipping back towards recession.

On Wednesday Obama will visit Ohio, also badly hit by the recession and its aftermath, where he will unveil a $100 billion series of tax-breaks for small businesses.

Daily Update

More floods peril in Pakistan

2010-09-06T22:39:00.001-07:00

Pakistani authorities are racing to protect two southern towns and their 360,000 residents from surging floods, as the nation struggles to cope with its worst natural disaster in nearly a century.

Advancing floodwaters continue to threaten towns in Sindh province, where 19 of its 23 districts have been deluged, displacing more than 2.8 million people, according to provincial authorities.

"The situation is a bit serious in Johi town and Dadu. We are taking all-out measures to save them from ravaging floodwaters," provincial irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo told AFP news agency on Monday.

"The water is 20km away from Dadu city but we cannot rule out a serious threat to this city," one of the largest in the north of Sindh, Dharejo said.

"We are making all our efforts to save Dadu and Johi," he added.

Dadu and Johi are about 320km north of the main southern port city of Karachi and officials fear the waters will breach protective embankments unless they are quickly strengthened.

District coordination officer Iqbal Memon said Johi was most in danger of the advancing floods.

"The floodwaters are fast heading towards Johi town after inundating most parts of Khairpur Nathan Shah and Mehar towns and several surrounding villages in Dadu district," he said.

"For two days, we are employing all available means to strengthen the protective embankments around Dadu and Johi but the threat still remains," he said.

About 80 per cent of the Johi's population of 60,000 had already fled to safer areas.

Meanwhile, troops had evacuated 2,644 people from flood-hit areas of Jati, Mehar, Johi, Shahdad Kot and Sujawal, the military said in a statement.

Milions aid dependent

"Army has established 25 relief camps in Sindh," it said, adding that 33,047 people were given cooked food during the previous 24 hours.

A month and a half after monsoons caused devastating floods throughout the country, submerging an area the size of England, eight million people remain dependent on handouts for their survival, which many say are too slow coming.

The UN has warned that the slow pace of aid pledges could impede relief operations and says Pakistan faces a triple threat to food supplies - with seeds, crops and incomes hit.

The floods have ruined 3.6 million hectares (8.9 million acres) of rich farmland, and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said farmers urgently needed seeds to plant for next year's crops.

Prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has warned that the country faces inflation of up to 20 per cent and slower growth because of the disaster.

The floods have killed 1,760 people but disaster officials have said the number of deaths is likely to rise "significantly" when the missing are accounted for.

Daily Update

Warnings against Quran burning plan

2010-09-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

US military commanders in Afghanistan have said that a small Florida church's plan to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks could endanger the lives of American troops.

Two senior US commanders in Afghanistan said on Monday the proposed burning of the Muslim holy book risked undermining President Barack Obama efforts to reach out to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.

They said it could also trigger retaliation against US forces serving in Afghanistan.

The warnings come amid angry protests by several hundred people in the Afghan capital, Kabul, who chanted "Death to America" as they denounced the planned burning event by the Dove World Outreach Centre church in Gainesville, Florida.

The centre, calling itself a "New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church", says it will go ahead with the torching of the Quran on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the 2001 attacks against the US.

Gainesville authorities have said the event will contravene fire safety rules.

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," David Petraeus, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, said in a statement to US media organisations.

"It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world, we are engaged with the Islamic community."

'Popular anger'

Lieutenant-General William Caldwell, commander of the Nato training mission in Afghanistan, told CNN that news of the planned Quran burning by the little-known Florida church was already provoking popular anger in Afghanistan.

"It's their holy book, so when somebody says that they're going to destroy that and cause a desecration to something that's very sacred to them, it's already stirred up a lot of discussion and concern amongst the people," he said.

"We very much feel that this could jeopardise the safety of our men and women that are serving over here."

The US embassy in Kabul said the "United States government in no way condones such acts of disrespect against the religion of Islam, and is deeply concerned about deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups".

"Americans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds reject this offensive initiative by this small group in Florida, a great number of American voices are protesting the hurtful statements made by this organization," it said in a statement.

Pastor's remarks

In comments broadcast on CNN, Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Centre, said it would be "tragic" if anybody's life was lost as a result of the planned Quran burning.

But he said: "Still, I must say that we feel that we must sooner or later stand up to Islam, and if we don't, it's not going to go away."

The church's website says it seeks to "expose Islam" as a "violent and oppressive religion".

It displays a sign reading "Islam of the Devil".

In Kabul, the demonstrators, mostly students from religious schools who gathered outside Kabul's Milad ul-Nabi mosque, said they would continue their protests.

"We call on America to stop desecrating our Holy Quran," Wahidullah Nori, a student, told the Reuters news agency.

The dispute comes at a time of already heated debate in the US over a proposal to build a cultural centre and mosque two blocks away from the site in New York City of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre.

Opponents of the building plan say it is insensitive to families of the victims of the attacks by al-Qaeda.

US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan soon after those attacks after it refused to hand over al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

Demonstrations and riots triggered by reported desecration of the Quran are not infrequent in Afghanistan and other Muslim countries.

The most violent protests came after cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

Last January, Afghan troops shot and killed eight demonstrators and wounded 13 in southern Helmand province in a riot triggered by a report that foreign troops had desecrated the Quran during a raid, though a spokesman for Nato forces denied the report.

Daily Update

Guatemala landslides bury hundreds

2010-09-05T22:11:00.001-07:00

An overnight landslide caused by flooding may have buried around 100 people trying to rescue victims of a previous landslide along the Inter-American Highway in the Guatemalan highlands.

Martin Asturias, reporting from the scene of the incident near the town of Santa Maria Ixtaguacan, said that 23 bodies have been pulled from the mud so far.

Those buried Sunday were working to rescue victims of a previous landslide, which swept over a bus on Saturday and killed at least 12 people.

The government estimates that 38 people have died in the past two days of flood-triggered landslides, but the 12 people killed Saturday combined with the 23 bodies recovered from the second landslide amounts to a death toll of 45 - a number that is likely to rise as more bodies are found.

Heavy rains on Sunday afternoon forced rescue work to be suspended until Monday, said David de Leon, a spokesman for the national disaster response effort.

'National tragedy'

Unrelenting rains and severe weather have lashed Guatemala for weeks, in what the country's president has called a "national tragedy".

Alvaro Colom, the Guatemalan president, declared a state of emergency. The president also told citizens to stay off the nation's highways to avoid more landslides.

The Inter-American Highway has been cut by more than 30 landslides in a 50-kilometre span. Guatemala's national radio station reported that other landslides created a traffic jams up to 75km long.

The highway is now "practically closed," Guatemala's government said Sunday. Week of heavy rain have caused flooding that have affected some 40,000 people in the country.

At least four other people died in a house in western Quetzaltenango on Saturday after it collapsed due to a landslide - adding to weather-related deaths from Friday.

Colom warned that 24,000 more people are at risk as the government runs out of funds to deal with the crisis.

"Top priority at present is dealing with this emergency. There are no funds left to deal with earlier disasters like the one caused by [tropical storm] Agatha," in late May, Colom said on Saturday after touring some of the affected areas.

High cost

He said weeks of heavy rains - including the latest torrent brought on by Hurricane Frank - had caused between $350-500 million in destruction across the country.

Meteorologists have forecast another 24-36 hours of heavy rain throughout much of Guatemala.

Meanwhile the weather forecast of more rain across Central America has prompted officials in Mexico to take precautions against landslides.

Heavy flooding in the Mexican Gulf state of Tabasco forced thousands of people from their homes, while authorities in neighbouring Chiapas and Oaxaca states, which border Guatemala, and the state of Veracruz also reported serious flooding.

"The bad weather in the southeast has caused the worst rainy season on record. We are marshaling aid for the affected area," Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, wrote on his Twitter page.

Mexico's power company opened floodgates on some hydroelectric dams in the region, worsening the flooding in some low-lying areas, but no related deaths were reported.

Daily Update

Landmark Istanbul hotel aims to revive past grandeur

2010-09-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

Pera Palace aims to regain its place on social map of city now teeming with posh hotels, night clubs.

A favourite of royals seeking luxury, writers looking for the muse and undercover spies, Pera Palace -- Istanbul's hotel of mysteries and pomp -- has reopened after a major facelift to revive its past grandeur.

Built in the late 19th century for the passengers of the legendary Orient Express, the 115-room hotel has hosted generations of illustrious guests, from King Edward VIII and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain or the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I, to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock or Greta Garbo.

It was the place where crime writer Agatha Christie, one of the hotel's most ardent visitors, crafted "Murder on the Orient Express", and where Ernest Hemingway is said to have sipped at a whisky, watching the sunlight play on the waters of the Golden Horn.

Other, more discreet visitors also took up residence in the hotel.

Kim Philby, British double agent in the pay of the KGB, is believed to have been among the guests at the end of World War II.

He was preceded shortly by Elyesa Bazna, better known by his codename Cicero, in the service of Nazi Germany, says historian Jak Deleon in his book "A taste of old Istanbul".

A stay by iconic dancer and spy Mata Hari, registered among Orient Express passengers in 1897, is also very likely, according to Deleon.

The histories of the express, inaugurated in 1883, and the hotel are closely linked.

Carrying travelers of a new kind -- businessmen attracted by the growing Western hold on Ottoman economy, artists and wealthy adventurers in search of the exotic -- the Orient Express needed a place to meet the expectations of its passengers.

Construction started in 1892 and the Pera Palace opened its doors in 1895, becoming Istanbul's most luxurious establishment.

It was the city's first building, barring the Ottoman palace, to have electricity, and the only one to provide hot running water to its guests. The hotel's electric elevator was unprecedented in Turkey.

But after 111 years of service, the building needed a serious renovation. It was closed in 2006 for an inventory before renovation work started in April 2008.

"It is the first renovation on such a scale in the history of the Pera Palace. Anything you can think of -- every pipe, every cable -- has been changed," hotel manager Pinar Kartal Timer said.

"Our objective was to preserve the nostalgia of Pera Palace while incorporating the technology of the 21st century," she said. The renovation cost 23 million euros (29.3 million dollars).

But on the ground floor, which is listed as a historical monument, all original pieces were left untouched, meticulously restored by a team of academic experts.

Once the heart of Istanbul's social life -- in the 1920s, people came to dance the foxtrot, drink champagne or attend Turkey's first fashion shows -- the Pera Palace aims to regain its place on the social map of a city now teeming with posh hotels and night clubs.

"We would like to revive the traditions," said Kartal Timer.

Next month the hotel plans to stage a "Republic Ball," an event dating back to the establishment of modern Turkey in 1923.

The hotel's re-opening Wednesday coincided with the arrival of an old friend, the Orient Express, which today makes a single annual run from Paris to Istanbul.
By Nicolas Cheviron

Daily Update

Carnage in Quetta

2010-09-05T15:19:00.001-07:00

It was Friday afternoon as people went around shopping for Eid in Pakistan's border city of Quetta. With less than a week before the Muslim celebration marking the end of Ramadan, no one there seemed to anticipate that within minutes, this busy part of town - a hub of activity - would be awash in blood, and on a scale seldom seen in the city.

This happened despite warnings from the Pakistani interior ministry that large processions should be avoided in order to minimise the threat of an attack by suicide bombers - who have, time and again, targeted large processions.

Authorities had advised that the Shia gatherings marking Al Quds day in solidarity with Palestinians, should be kept indoors to avoid large-scale bloodshed. However, not paying heed, a procession of Shia students from the Imamia Students organisation was holding its march.

They were allowed to continue until a safe point and were advised by the police high-ups not to proceed into the congested areas where other people were shopping for the festive season. A senior police officer told the procession not to go any further, but they would not be budged and started to move ahead.

Indiscriminate fire

Once the crowds swelled and the speeches started, a suicide bomber came into the throng and blew himself up, killing between 6-8 people. What happened after that was something people will not forget.

The procession, according to witnesses, had guards brandishing guns, who then started to fire indiscriminately, apparently killing people at random. When it was all over, 50 people lay dead in the bazaar and over 100 were badly wounded.

People rushed their loved ones to the nearest hospitals in rickshaws and on motorbikes, but except for at the military hospital, doctors did not show up for at least two hours, fearing they may themselves become targets.

According to one senior reporter, many people died because they did not get help in time. Amongst them, Mohibullah, reported for CNN during the Afghan war, was hit by a bullet, which pierced his kidney. He was in hospital until late at night, waiting for a doctor before finally succumbing to his wounds.

Mohibullah left seven daughters and a young son to mourn his death. But there were many others who lost someone dear. Some people told me in Quetta that the suicide bombing was an act of terror, but what followed was an even bigger terror.

Daily Update

The elephant in the room

2010-09-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

Excluding Hamas from current and future Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations is an exercise in futility.
Larbi Sadiki
Sidelining Hamas in any process to craft genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians is a glaring omission tantamount to ignoring an elephant in the room. Whether it is Obama's or the UN's negotiating room, pretending something of that size absent is an exercise in futility. Hamas is definitely an elephant with many tales. Telling some of these tales recounts the Islamist movement's rise to power against all odds.

A movement under ‘siege’

Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas exists in a world that does not want it and in which it is 'wanted', a world some might argue it does not also want. It is lumped with the bogeymen and 'demons' of world politics on whom are blamed 'terror' and the state of 'structured chaos' in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, amongst other hotspots. Hamas is no angel and there are no angels in politics. Indeed, part of the problem lies not only in the political strategies Hamas occasionally deploys, but also in the excessive secrecy surrounding most of the movement's activities.

Understandably, Hamas's siege mentality is owed to it being consistently the target of Arab, Israeli and Palestinian espionage activities as well as serious attempts to eliminate it from the political stage and liquidate its military and political commanders.

However, because of secrecy the world knows little about the movement's internal institution-building, diversity of opinion, consultative processes, and voting procedures. Along with neo-Orientalist depictions making it reducible to a 'militia' or 'terrorist' organisation, Hamas's own secrecy and miscommunication have solidified in Western public opinion stereotypes of hostility to peace and embrace of violence for the sake of violence.

Deconstructing Hamas

Hamas is oversimplified. It is no exaggeration to note that Hamas is made up of several sets of Hamas - 'mini Hamases' - whose diverse trends of thought are all integrated into an overarching cohesive organisation. Its wide political spectrum has 'peaceniks' and 'refuseniks', 'soft' and 'hard' ideologues, 'extremist' and 'centrist' positions.

These tendencies and currents are all guided by internal discipline, consultative and democratic procedures for resolving differences and disagreements within the organisation, and, above all else, commitment to the organisation's ideals of independent statehood within a Muslim Brotherhood frame of reference.

May be the world does not want to know Hamas but it should care to know that there are those inside Hamas who would readily speak directly with Israel. Their reasoning is that it is better to get it directly from the horse's mouth, as it were, rather than hear from Israel through third parties. This is neither absolute or yet crystal-clear outside Hamas, nor a solid or uncontested position within Hamas.

However it is a trend conditioned by the specific context of Egyptian-Palestinian relations. At its core is the stalemate in Egypt-Hamas relations. Cairo's pro-Fatah leaning and clearly anti-Hamas stance has cast a shadow over the utility of Egypt’s role as an honest or positive mediator.

Mirroring its hostility to and standoff with its own Muslim Brotherhood inside, Egypt has tended to do all it can to undermine and downsize Hamas. Hamas is denied the taste of political triumphs no matter how insignificant. The Islamist movement points the finger at Egypt for the failure of the swap of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in 2006, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

The Israeli embargo has crippled Gaza mostly because Egypt maintains a partial blockade of its own on the Rafah border. Like Israel, Egypt is building its own US-funded barrier locking up one-and-a-half million Gazans into inhumane internment in conditions of abject poverty, uncertainty, and food and cash-starved economy. If it were not for the tunnels, paradoxically partly operated with Egyptian tacit complicity, Gaza would starve.

Obama and Hamas

Much hope was pinned on the hype created by Obama's arrival into the White House and the appointment of George Mitchell to oversee the peace process. That hope is today fading. Like Bush, Obama speaks to Mahmoud Abbas and ignores Ismail Haniya who is equally elected and his movement commands the loyalty of nearly half of the Palestinian constituency.

He is considering to engage with extremists in Afghanistan and Iraq and yet his administration's foreign policy-makers, under the spell of a powerful pro-Israel lobby, seems loth to contemplate the creation of mechanisms for engaging with Hamas's elected leaders and cadres. Ignoring the elephant in the room happens at the perils of credible and productive peacemaking.

Perhaps Hamas is not the only party suffering from a siege mentality. Peace-brokers, Arab and Western, display symptoms of the same pathology.

Resilience: Hamas in the political process

Hamas is not about to disappear. Until this simple axiom of Middle Eastern politics is firmly grasped, talking and making peace without the Palestinian Islamist movement will remain noted by continuous absence rather than presence. Metaphorically, the elephant in the room may have 'bad manners' and may be 'dangerous' and 'clumsy'.

Nonetheless, it exists. This existence is borne out not only of its internal diversity and discipline, but also of the very various phases of its evolution into a resilient, and steadfast organisation. Three factors call for special attention: leadership renewal, message, and political resourcefulness.

Not many organisations lose a number of leaders in a short time of span and yet keep their coherence. Part of the phalanx of Hamas's founding fathers was wiped out by Israeli assassinations in a matter of a few years.

In March and April 2004 Hamas had to absorb devastating blows to its leadership and morale following the killing of two of its charismatic icons: respectively, Shaykh Ahmad Yassine and Abd Al-Aziz al-Rantissi. The organisation's demography is dynamic and varied, having at any time four generations of leaders. The loss of individuals does not make a difference to Hamas. Arafat left a huge vacuum within Fatah and the PLO. The death of Yassine or Al-Rantissi did not.

There is a wider base from which to recruit leaders who upgrade into leadership roles through long years and ongoing trials and responsibilities. Assassinations and detention, today jointly carried out by Fatah and Israel, deplete Hamas's human resources.

However demography has always been on the side of Palestinians at the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Hamas boasts one of the most youthful leaderships anywhere as far as Islamic movements are concerned.

Hamas is resolute in its commitment to a set of political ideals. Topping these ideals is resistance by various means, including militarily, to keep up psychological pressure against a fierce adversary that is superior and equally resolute in the use of force, at times disproportionately such as during the December 2008-January 2009 massive bombing and ground deployment against Gaza.

Since the kidnapping of Shalit no serious armed operations or suicide bombings have taken place. Hamas has observed a unilateral armistice (hudnah) for a number of years, punctuated by intermittent firing of rockets from Gaza but not necessarily by its own military arm, the Qassam Brigades.

The recent Hebron killings by the brigades interrupted the hudnah. Generally, however, there are doubts over Hamas's striking capability deep inside Israel such as in the late 1980s during the first intifada, and up to the time of the second intifada in the 2000s.

Even within Fatah there are those who remain committed to resistance but these are increasingly being co-opted, contained or isolated. Arafat himself tried to combine a political modus operandi with a form of military resistance. This was most probably what eventually sealed his fate.

Hamas vs Arafat and Heirs

Of course, it was also Arafat who dealt a blow to Hamas whose members were rounded in the hundreds. One of key security chiefs, the notorious Muhammad Dahlan, applied his own 'iron fist' in his prisons against Hamas. The torture that military commanders meted out to Hamas's members was at the core of Hamas's second birth after Arafat's Ramallah-based authority released most in the late 1990s and early 2000.

The same torture in prisons that led to the creation of the violent Islamic groups in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s, reinvented Hamas. It made its commanders and leaders adamant and resolute in the pursuit of military parity with Fatah. In a matter of years that parity was achieved, and on June 14, 2007 it proved to be Dahlan's nemesis, overthrowing the security apparatus that was itself geared and committed to eliminating Hamas.

That military feat, in its turn, may have compromised if not put in jeopardy Hamas's short and embattled experiment in government. Haniya's forming of the 10th government following the January 2006 Oslo-Accords-mandated elections was already conspired against internally, regionally and internationally. The quartet insisted on Israeli recognition, recognition of previous agreements with Israel, and renouncing of violence, all of which were unacceptable to Hamas not having concrete incentives and decolonising measures on the ground.

So post the June 2007 take-over (or so-called hasm), the boycott of Hamas's rule in Gaza deepened. However it is a moot point whether Hamas should have engaged with politics altogether, but failure of the political experiment validates voices which favour political disengagement and military engagement. These voices remain in check for the foreseeable future.

Hamas between dogmatism and pragmatism

Hamas's steadfast message has meant that it is not a pliant client in any negotiations either regarding Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation or Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks have come to a stand still. The so-called Egyptian Paper (al-waraqah al-misriyyah) of 2009 gathers dust on Omar Sulayman's desk.

Egypt's chief mediator told Mahmud Al-Zahhar, one of Hamas's Gaza-based supremos, in response to the Islamist movement's refusal to rubber-stamp it, 'take it, or leave it'. To which Zahhar replied, 'I'll leave it'. Again, the Egyptians diluted the final draft agreed by Hamas, altering meaning. Terms that originally read (in relation to a set of reforms) 'through agreement' were changed to 'through consultation', making it easier for the National Palestinian Authority to rig the Palestinian factions 'common will'. The same with the meaning, insisting on reform of the security apparatus in Gaza and the West Bank, was altered to exclude the West Bank from the reforms.

Finally, Hamas's political resourcefulness is that it is by nature not only a diverse movement within, but is also four-tiered system: Gaza, West Bank, diaspora and prisons. Each one of these is a field of action with its own resources and consultative processes. In the diaspora the Politburo run from Damascus has been a sounding board and a second 'chamber' where big decisions are discussed and made.

There is an abundance of politics within Hamas. The February 2007 Saudi-sponsored Mecca Agreement gave hints of the full potential of Hamas as a dynamic player capable of pragmatic decisions in the political process. Zahhar, Haniyya, Khaled Meshaal, amongst others, rubbed shoulders, discussed, prayed and ate with their morbid enemies.

Zahhar never forgave Fatah for the humiliating torture he was subjected to under its 'reign of terror'. Yet all seemed to work. However that was only for some time before the coalition government agreed crumbled to the dismay of the Saudis. Without Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation peacemaking may not come to any logical fruition. Hamas has reached to willing interlocutors overseas from Moscow to Oslo.

The Swiss are sympathetic too. So are other states which prefer to remain unnamed. Hamas receives all kinds of support from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Qatar is ready to rebuild Gaza, and contributed generously to bailing out the Gaza economy under siege. So would Turkey. Algeria says it would provide free oil.

However, no amount of political resourcefulness is sufficient if it is not translated into palpable political dividends that speed up reconciliation with Fatah, with the international community, especially the key peace brokers, and even Egypt with whom borders are not alterable.

Similarly, there is a challenge for the US, and Mitchell and Obama in particular, to think the unthinkable and draw Hamas to the negotiating table. Without this investment in partial talks where the full gamut of Palestinian's will and choice is demonstrable, peace in the Middle East will embody the elephant in the living room.

Dr Larbi Sadiki is a Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, and author of Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009) and The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (Columbia University Press, 2004), forthcoming Hamas and the Political Process (2011).

The views expressed in this article are the author's own

Daily Update

French Muslims ask when is “Halal” really Halal?

2010-09-05T11:07:00.002-07:00

The French market for halal food is expanding rapidly, giving rise to a number of issues – not least, how do we know it’s halal?

This week the fast food chain Quick – the number two burger chain in France after McDonald’s – announced that 22 of its outlets would serve halal meat only.

It has been trying out the idea at eight restaurants for the past nine months, prompting criticism from some politicians and intellectuals concerned that the secular values of the French Republic are being betrayed.

Halal food is big business in France, and is growing fast. With the largest Muslim population in Europe at about six million, France’s halal market it is already reckoned to be worth 5.5bn euros (£4.5bn) – twice the size of that for organic food.

While the burgers served at Quick are genuinely halal, experts have doubts about much of what is sold elsewhere.

Rachid Bakhalq, the owner of a halal supermarket in Nanterre, a suburb to the north of Paris, says the market is swamped with bogus products.

He told me “80% – most of the halal products based on meat – are not halal at all.”

Asked what evidence he had, he said that, at the wholesale market he attends outside Paris, “there are people there ready to stamp whatever you want halal simply because they want to have money and they take 15 cents per kilo simply to stamp whatever product you want to be stamped halal.”

This claim seems to be generally accepted by many Muslims.

Imperfect system

Abbas Bendali, a marketing expert who specialises in ethnic and minority products, says the problem is that there are too many different organisations involved in certifying that products are halal.

“In France today, there are nearly 50 different organisations which certify that meat is halal,” he told me.

“It’s logical that for a market which will be worth 5.5bn euros in 2010, there should be a single certification. That’s what the consumers want and it’s what the industry wants.”

Officials at several mosques in Paris said that with limited resources and different organisations involved, it was difficult to make sure that there were qualified personnel on site all the time to monitor that all animals were being slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic dietary laws.

According to Muslim tradition, animals must be killed by having their throats cut, and all the blood must be allowed to drain out.

Kamel Kabtane, rector of a large mosque in Lyon, and in charge of the halal question at the French Muslim Council, told Le Parisien newspaper that checks are not strict enough for 40-50% of products sold as halal in France.

The council wants to introduce a national charter to be signed by all mosques and organisations involved in certifying halal meat.

Secular fears

Another development which could change the current situation is the entry of the large food companies into the halal market.

There is no suggestion that any of Quick’s products are not genuinely halal – and Quick is only one example of a large food company which is waking up to the potential of the halal market.

Over the past three years, many big food manufacturers have started introducing halal products, and they know that they cannot afford to get it wrong.

Mr Bendali says surveys carried out by his company, Solis, indicate that 90% of consumers of halal products are concerned about certification, which is a main factor in their decision to buy a product.

“Under pressure from the large food manufacturers and the distributors, we’ll certainly move towards a single certification,” he said.

I spoke to about 20 Muslims who were buying food for the evening meal to break the Ramadan fast in and around Paris, and not a single person was surprised by the claim that many halal products are in fact not halal at all.

One woman suggested that there should be European standards to cover halal, which would apply in all countries of the European Union.

And several people I spoke to said those involved in certification should face penalties or legal proceedings if it was proved that they had failed to follow the correct procedures.

But France is not used to catering for minorities as large as its Muslim community.

When Quick began serving Halal burgers nine months ago, there was an outcry.

Many French people are anxious about what some see as an increasingly assertive Muslim population.

The country has been through an uncomfortable debate on national identity launched by the government last year, and is on the verge of banning the Muslim face-veil in public.

One man I spoke to outside a Quick outlet told me that the secular values of the French republic would be undermined if there were restaurants serving only halal food.

“What we want to avoid in France is any attempt to impose the customs of any particular community,” he said.

“It’s dangerous to have separate restaurants where you eat halal, kosher or pork. They should offer a choice for everyone, because this kind of separation between communities sets people against each other.”

But when I put that argument to Muslims, they pointed out that it is impractical to serve halal and non-halal food in the same restaurant, and kosher restaurants have existed in France for a long time without attracting this sort of controversy.
by David Chazan

Daily Update

Wilders beheading comments two years old and out of context: Sheikh Feiz

2010-09-05T11:07:00.001-07:00

Sheikh Feiz Mohammad has released a statement in response to media reports claiming that he was calling for the beheading of the Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ labeling them as ”sensationalist”, “out of context” and based on “limited knowledge”.

In the press release, exclusively obtained by MuslimVillage.com, Sheikh Feiz defended himself by explaining the context behind his recorded comments and dismissed the media reports as serving ”only to further cause division between myself and the community”.

The Sheikh also stated that the recordings were made while he was overseas in 2008 in response to the release of Wilders’ controversial and universally condemned Islamic hate documentary “Fitna’ and not in response to Wilders’ recent appearance on the SBS Dateline program where he labeled Islam as having a “retarded culture”.

In his statement Sheikh Feiz said “these comments were made online to a specific audience whereby I was addressing a religious question regarding treason in Islam and the repercussions under Islamic Shariah law”.

“ It must be noted that in the context of this topic, any capital punishment in Islam can only exist when there is a caliphate or a nation run by Islamic Leaders. This was clearly stated in my comments and in the available recording.”

”Although capital punishment still exists in modern western societies such as the USA, it is illegal in Australia. We do not have an Islamic caliphate in Australia and my comments are purely based on previous Islamic history and law”.

Sheikh Feiz also called upon the Australian government to condemn Wilders who is planning to visit Australia in the near future as part of a his desire to establish a global Islamophobic Anti-Islam political movement.

He also pledged his admiration for Australia, stating ”Australia and its people are a great nation. The success of multiculturism (sic) in this country is a great example for the world to envy and follow”.

The Sheikh’s release further went on to state that he was against violence of any nature.

“I personally do not condone violence of any sort whether it be physical or in the form of verbal abuse as is the case with Geert Wilders and his violent and divisive opinions”.

As reported by MuslimVillage.com yesterday, leaders of Australia’s Muslim community are deeply concerned about the ramifications and potential social unrest that may arise from a planned visit to Australian by Geert Wilders.

It is understood that once a new government is finally formed, they will seek an urgent meeting with the Federal Attorney General to lobby against granting Wilders entry into Australia.
by Ahmed Kilani

Daily Update

US likely to stay in Iraq after 2011

2010-09-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

Analysts stress US military presence in Iraq is needed to quell sectarian tensions, train Baghdad’s military.

The United States likely will need to keep thousands of troops in Iraq beyond 2011 to keep a lid on sectarian tensions and to bolster Baghdad's fledgling military, experts and former officers say.

American officials privately acknowledge that the US military presence in Iraq will almost certainly be extended, even though a security agreement in force requires all US forces to depart by the end of 2011.

The US military will be needed not only for technical tasks to keep the Iraqi armed forces afloat, but as a reassuring presence for Iraqis fearing a revival of sectarian and ethnic bloodshed, analysts said.

Baghdad's military remains heavily dependent on US logistical support, air power, equipment and expertise, while most Baghdad politicians are anxious to retain American troops as a peacekeeping force in reserve.

"The more pressing requirement is less teaching them how to use weapons and more providing reassurance to threatened internal communities that they won't be exploited by their erstwhile internal rivals," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"What you're trying to do is make the size of the troop presence proportional to the residual fear that the groups feel towards each other," Biddle said.

Delivering technical help while playing a limited peacekeeping role would require a relatively modest number of troops, perhaps as few as three brigades or roughly 10,000 troops, several former military officers said.

"I think it could get down to even less than 10,000 and still be viable," John Ballard, a professor at National Defense University and a retired army officer, told AFP.

Nearly 50,000 US troops are now in Iraq under an "advise and assist" role, after President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared a formal end to the US combat mission.

The White House, keen to wind down the US role in Iraq, has played down the possibility of a large US force. Vice President Joe Biden's national security advisor, Anthony Blinken, has said only "dozens or maybe hundreds" of troops could remain.

But Iraqi army chief of staff General Babaker Zebari said last month that his country's forces would require US support for another decade, while some analysts in Washington argue for keeping about half of the current force after 2011.

Iraq's "leaders are likely to ask that tens of thousands of American troops stay on for an extended period," Richard Haas, a top diplomat during George W. Bush's presidency, wrote Thursday.

Beyond 2011, the US military would be needed to provide badly-needed logistical support for an army that has been designed mainly as a counter-insurgency force.

The United States would provide some fire power, helicopters, fighter jets to defend a country with virtually no air force, naval defenses for ports and coveted intelligence collected from unmanned robotic planes.

The mission likely would include US special forces assisting Iraqis in manhunts of Al-Qaeda figures, according to James Danly of the Institute for the Study of War, who served in Iraq as an officer.

Apart from operational and tactical support, a US force also would have to be prepared for possible worst case scenarios, Danly and other analysts said.

If relations between the country's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds threatened to spiral out of control, or if vital oil or other infrastructure came under threat from within or outside Iraq, Baghdad could turn to the US force for help, he said.

In addition to soldiers in uniform, US officials are planning to employ thousands of private contractors to take up security duties formerly performed by troops.

Any talks on the future of the US presence will have to wait for a new government in Iraq, where politicians have failed to agree a power-sharing deal since parliamentary elections in March.

Forging agreement on a post-2011 US mission would present a delicate political challenge for Iraq, as leaders there privately back a continued presence but are reluctant to publicly endorse it.

"It's going to be very hard for any government in Iraq to negotiate anything sizable or enduring," said Ballard. "This puts us in a difficult situation."

The current security accord signed in 2008 was negotiated under a shroud of secrecy, he said, and a follow-on mission also would have to be agreed discreetly, perhaps without a detailed, long-term agreement.

"There's a need, there's a rationale. But it's going to be difficult to put it in any sort of formal way."
By Dan De Luce - WASHINGTON

Daily Update

U.S Muslim leaders to focus on unifying their community

2010-09-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

As expression of anti-Muslim sentiment has risen across the United States in recent weeks, Muslim leaders say they are stepping up efforts to unify their communities and push for greater public and political engagement.

While some U.S. Muslim groups tried after Sept. 11, 2001, to promote greater dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, recent events make it clear that not enough has been done, said Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), who spoke Monday at an interfaith news conference at Western Presbyterian Church in the District.

“Definitely there is the need for an American Muslim narrative,” Al-Marayati said, adding that U.S. Muslims need to become more savvy technically and politically. “The story of what mainstream American Muslims stand for has not been told effectively. We as Muslim Americans need to do a lot of changing and soul-searching.”

The interfaith event was among a surge of responses to hostility sparked by a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. Protesters have targeted mosques under construction elsewhere in the country; a Florida church announced that it will burn Korans on Sept. 11; and a Muslim taxi driver was stabbed in New York.

On Tuesday, the Congressional Muslim Staff Association will hold a panel on Capitol Hill titled “Muslims in America: Myths and Realities: A discussion on faith in the Wake of the Park 51 Controversy,” and on Monday, a grass-roots organization called My Faith My Voice unveiled a public service announcement showcasing diverse Muslims discussing their religion.

Although Muslims have made some inroads into mainstream American politics and media in recent years, the pace has not been rapid enough, community leaders say, noting that the diversity of sects, native languages and ethnicities has made it harder for a unified voice to emerge.

The community in the United States is also relatively new, said Naeem Baig, executive director of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Council for Social Justice, who also spoke at the interfaith event.

“For Muslim organizations, it’s still a learning process,” he said in an interview, adding that while past efforts to consolidate a message failed to gain traction, the current crisis has reminded Muslim groups of the necessity of renewing that push. Several groups, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), ICNA and MPAC, are working on forming a National Muslim Leadership Alliance, Baig said.

“What’s pushing us now to jointly work together, to come up with some strategy, is it is not affecting just one Muslim organization, it is affecting Muslims,” he said. “There’s a real serious threat of violence against individuals.”

Asma Hanif, chair of the Council of Muslim Organizations in the Washington area and one of the interfaith speakers, said community leaders may not have realized the lasting damage of the Sept. 11 attacks to Muslims’ image.

“We didn’t think it was going to have this kind of continuing effect, go on and on and on,” she said.

In addition, mainstream Muslims must combat the negative publicity created by those who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam, Al-Marayati said.

“Our message isn’t as sensational as the extremists’ message,” he said, adding that better organization would help disseminate mainstream views.

“We’ve had scholars issue a fatwa against terrorism; we’ve had national grass-roots campaigns to fight terrorism. The substance is there, but not the reach, though it is improving.”
by Tara Bahrampour

Daily Update

Islamophobic leader of Christian party Fred Nile, engulfed in net porn scandal

2010-09-03T21:09:00.003-07:00

The leader of the Christian Democratic Party in NSW, a notorious Islamophobe that was trying to introduce legislation to ban the wearing of the Niqab (see:Australian burqa ban doomed to failure), has been caught up in an embarrassing internet porn scandal.

Reverend Fred Nile has been identified as one of the biggest viewers of internet pornography in an audit of NSW parliamentary computers by the Department of Parliamentary Services.

The audit, which claimed the front-bench career of a Labor minister yesterday, showed that adult content had been accessed under Reverend Fred Nile’s log-on. Sources said that up to 200,000 suspect hits had been recorded. Mr Nile denied viewing pornography and said that his staff had used his log-on for research purposes. His office added that 200,000 hits was impossible.

The audit was ordered by Speaker Richard Torbay after revelations a former parliamentary staffer had accessed online gaming.

A firewall was installed in July for Legislative Assembly MPs so they could not view pornography, but Legislative Council President Amanda Fazio elected not to install a firewall for the Upper House.

A staffer for Mr Nile, David Copeland, confirmed he had viewed sites to research the activities of the Australian Sex Party and also the proposed internet filter.

Daily Update

On-line anti-Muslim game sparks outrage

2010-09-03T21:09:00.002-07:00

A far-right party in Austria has sparked outrage by launching an online video game which allows players to shoot down minarets and muezzins calling for prayer.

The game, called “Moschee Baba”, or “Bye Bye Mosque”, gives players 60 seconds to collect points by placing a target over cartoon mosques, minarets and Muslims and click a “Stop” sign.

It is being used by the Freedom Party (FPOe), which has a link to the game on its website, to encourage voters to elect Gerhard Kurzmann, the party’s candidate in the picturesque region of Styria.

“Game Over. Styria is now full of minarets and mosques!” it says at the end of a session, before inviting players to vote for Kurzmann on September 26, when local elections are being held.

The website then invites viewers to take part in a survey which asks them whether the construction of minarets and mosques should be banned in Austria, and whether Muslims should sign a declaration in which they accept that the law takes precedence over the Quran.

According to the Austria Press Agency there are no mosques with minarets in Styria, where 1.6 per cent of the population is Muslim, and only four such buildings in the entire country.

‘Religious hatred’

Anas Schakfeh, the leader of Austria’s Islamic community, has described the game as “tasteless and incomprehensible”.

“This is religious hatred and xenophobia beyond comparison,” he told Austrian broadcaster ORF.

Austria’s Social Democrats and Green Party have joined the Islamic community in condemning the video.

“The FPOe is targeting minarets that don’t even exist,” Werner Kogler, the Green candidate in Styria, said.

The game also appears to have divided the FPOe camp, with its deputy, Manfred Haimbuchner, quoted as saying the party should “seek attention with substance, not with constant provocations”.

However Herbert Kickl, the party secretary, defended the game saying it did not involve any real shooting, but rather “the pushing of a stop-button to halt a bad political decision.”

European debate

The Islamic community and the Green party filed complaints for incitement of hatred and degrading of a religion on Wednesday, which can be punished with prison sentences of up to two years.

Prosecutors in Graz, the capital of Styria, have launched an inquiry and will decide whether to take the game off the Internet.

Islamic buildings and dress have sparked debates in many European countries recently, with French and Belgian MPs voting to outlaw the niqab, and Swiss voters backing a ban on building minarets.

Austria’s Freedom Party wants a special vote on banning mosques with minarets and Islamic face veils.

Heinz-Christian Strache, its leader, has said he wants to see anti-Muslim protests similar to those in New York over the building of a Muslim cultural centre near the World Trade Center site.

The debate isn’t just coming from the right. In Germany central banker Thilo Sarrazin, a Social Democrat, has provoked uproar for saying that Muslim immigrants undermine German society, refuse to assimilate, and sponge off the state. He has also said “all Jews share a particular gene” angering people across the German community.

The Freedom Party said its “Bye bye Mosque” game was in part in reaction to Sarrazin’s comments saying they would prefer to have “Sarrazin rather than muezzin,” in Austria. Freedom wants to “deal with a situation which has already long been widespread in Europe,” Kurzmann said. He said young people needed to be informed about the problem.

With its catchy slogans and youthful leader, the Freedom Party enjoys strong support from young people in Austria, polling 17.5 percent of the vote at a national level in 2008.

Daily Update

Australian Muslim cleric calls for beheading of Islamophobic Dutch politician

2010-09-03T21:09:00.001-07:00

Controversial Australian Muslim cleric Sheikh Feiz Muhammad has called for the beheading of Dutch Islamophobic politician Geert Wilders, according to reports published in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

Sydney-born Sheikh Feiz posted a speech on an internet site in which he condemned Wilders as “this Satan, this devil, this politician in Holland” and explained that anyone who talks about Islam like Wilders does should be executed by “chopping off his head”.

The comments by Sheikh Feiz follow on from the airing of an interview with Wilders on Australian television last Sunday. In that Interview on SBS TV’s Dateline program, Wilders said that “Islamic culture was retarded”. The program also revealed that Wilders was planning to visit Australia as part of his plans to establish a global anti-Islam movement.

Wilders, who campaigns for an end to Muslim immigration and a ban on the building of new mosques and the Koran in a bid to end the “Islamisation” of the Netherlands, has been under 24-hour protection since 2004.

Wilders is currently on trial in the Netherlands for inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims.

Wilders was charged because of outspoken remarks in the media, such as an opinion piece in a Dutch daily in which he compared Islam to fascism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”.

The Freedom Party leader also made a film in 2008 which accused the Koran of inciting violence and mixed images of terrorist attacks with quotations from the Islamic holy book.

Of late he has been in the news for plans to speak out against a planned mosque in New York City on the ninth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks.

His views have also made him extremely popular with a segment of the country uneasy about the Netherlands’ commitment to multiculturalism.

Despite this his Freedom Party scored the biggest gains in the Netherland’s June 9 polls and he was negotiating to form a new minority government with the Liberals and Christian Democrats until these talks collapsed in the last 24 hours. Polls show Wilders would win a new election if one was called now.

De Telegraaf did not say when the comments By Sheikh Feiz were made but said it and the Dutch secret service both had copies.

Sheikh Feiz is no stranger to controversy and left Australia a few years ago. During that time he has lived in Malaysia and has also spent some time in Lebanon.

Despite media reports to the contrary, MuslimVillager.com can confirm that Sheikh Feiz returned to Australia in early 2010 and has recently started giving lessons and sermons again.

According to information received and confirmed by MuslimVillage.com, Sheikh Feiz gave the Friday Prayer sermon at the newly established ASWJ centre in Campbelltown, south west of Sydney yesterday.

Wilders’ reported planned visit to Australia is concerning leaders of the Australian Muslim community. MuslimVillage.com is aware that Islamic community leaders will begin lobbying to block Wilders’ visit to Australia once a new government is hopefully formed in the coming days.

If he is banned from entering it won’t be the first time. Wilders was previously refused entry into Britain in 2009 on security grounds.
by Ahmed Kilani
Source: News agencies

Daily Update

Take me out of your box, for humanity’s sake

2010-09-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

By Sara Khan

Islamabad - Travelling alone as a Muslim Pakistani female hasn’t been all that easy in a post-9/11 world. In fact, being ”Muslim”, “Pakistani” and a “woman” simultaneously can be too many red flags attached to one identity.

While pursuing my education abroad I had many experiences dealing with airport security and immigration staff – particularly during my travels between Costa Rica, the United States and Pakistan. But I also learned through these experiences that sometimes a little act of kindness can go a long way in transforming our view of the ”other”, helping us to realise and appreciate the inherent good in people.

In my mind I had put airport authorities everywhere in a box labelled “Ruthless-officials-securing-their-country”. And the box they might have had for me was, well, “She-must-be-up-to-something”. My interaction at the airport served as a microcosm of the larger Muslim-Western relationship, rife with stereotyped ideas and deeply held, hardly questioned beliefs about the other, further polarising the two groups.

My box guided my behaviour in front of airport security officials. This meant no extra talking, only brief answers, doing what they said and praying in my heart to come out of the question-and-answer session alive and kicking, and not detained somewhere in Guantanamo. Though this box helped me control my behaviour for the situation at hand, deep down I developed bitterness, fear, mistrust and anxiety of entering any country other than my own, especially a Western one.

It also compelled me to judge security officials I came across during my international travels in a negative way – as the “other”.

There was one particular occasion that at first bolstered this sentiment. I was waiting for a flight to Pakistan with a ten-hour transit in a UK airport. My hand luggage included nothing extraordinary except for a very unusual umbrella that a friend had given me during a visit to the Harvard Art Museum in Massachusetts. A professor at Harvard, this friend showed me the university and bought me an umbrella with an image of Harvard and the Charles River painted on it. That umbrella signified her kind friendship, love and belief in me. To me, it was not just an umbrella, but a connection to the world of knowledge that I admired and wanted to immerse myself in.

Afraid that I might lose it, I kept the umbrella as part of my carry-on. Though it passed through all the security checks in the United States, it was declared a “security risk” in the UK. Security officials asked me to throw it away before boarding the plane to Pakistan.

Bewildered by the seemingly random changes in security standards between airports, I tried in vain to argue. But I was not allowed to board the plane with the umbrella, and had to throw it away.

As I walked away, wiping my tears, I heard a security official yell out: “Excuse me, Ma’am! I have a solution!”

He took the umbrella out of the trash, a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and started cutting the ribs and stretchers off the canopy of the umbrella. He meticulously removed the canopy off the shaft of umbrella, neatly folded it and handed it over to me with a smile: “Now you can take this,” he said. “Please get it remade once you are back home.”

I certainly did not expect this kind of action from a white British security official. His act of kindness did not fit in the box I had created for him. I had cast him as the “other”. But he proved otherwise.

No matter how hard we try, today’s circumstances push us to box, stereotype, categorise and judge individuals or groups who are different from us. In recent times stereotyping has become the most comfortable response mechanism while dealing with security issues, both for Muslims as well as Westerners. Such stereotyping widens the gap that exists between Muslim and Western worlds. It limits both groups’ ability to allow for individuality and critical judgment when faced with challenging situations, generating further mistrust.

This incident helped me realise that there are moments and spaces in which our individual actions can alter the stereotypes that we carry for one other. The action that I witnessed left an indelible impression on me, and a renewed belief in the inherent goodness of human beings. Individual actions that go beyond stereotypes might not be a panacea to problems that exist between the Muslim and Western worlds, but they are a step toward better understanding and harmony.

-- Sara Khan is Media Manager at Search for Common Ground-Pakistan. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Middle East Online

Daily Update

When UAE desert welcomed England's rose

2010-09-01T06:17:00.003-07:00

Princess Diana's visit to United Arab Emirates remembered on 13th anniversary of her death.

By Tahira Yaqoob – ABU DHABI

As the doors to the plane flew open, one blue court shoe reached tentatively for the steps.

Slowly a figure emerged from the shadowy interior of the plane: sheathed in a high-waisted, electric-blue skirt, and a cropped white jacket with blue lapels and topped with a matching blue disc, surrounded by a broad white brim pulled so low as she concentrated on each careful step that the face beneath it was hidden from view.

Those on the ground waited for the wearer to reveal herself.

When she finally reached the bottom step, the rakishly-angled brim tipped up to reveal a stylish blue turban beneath it, framing a peaches-and-cream complexion, the wearer peered up coyly through thick, sweeping eyelashes and there was no mistaking that shy smile.

It was a moment that was to go down in fashion history as Princess Diana once again showed her innate ability to spot up-and-coming designers and start trends.

As the princess arrived in the UAE for her first and only visit, she showed what she was best at: pleasing people.

Not only did she manage to demonstrate her respect for cultural sensibilities with the Philip Somerville turban hat that subtly covered her hair and a demure Catherine Walker suit, she did it in the most stylish way possible and entranced her hosts, male and female alike.

Diana and her husband Prince Charles, were on a whirlwind tour of the Middle East in 1989. Realising the growing importance of Abu Dhabi and Dubai in global trade, the royal couple went on a charm offensive, visiting their royal counterparts in the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, eating in their homes, learning about their culture and meeting the women of the household.

And as these pictures unearthed from the archives of royal photographers on the 13th anniversary of the princess’s death show, she was uniquely adept at melding into any environment and instantly setting people at ease – even when her own life was in turmoil.

They also provide a fascinating insight into Princess Diana’s status as a fashion icon, her fragile state of mind in a troubled marriage, glimpsed in moments when she is caught unawares, and her power to charm all those who came into contact with her.

“Whenever there was a photo opportunity, everyone from the UAE royal family wanted to sit next to her and be photographed with her,” recalls Anwar Hussein, an acclaimed photographer who has followed the British royal family on tour for the past four decades.

He accompanied the prince and princess on their Gulf visit and remembers the welcome they received.

“Her hosts were absolutely charming to her, and charmed by her,” he says.

“She seemed amazed by everything she saw. Charles has always admired Islamic culture and art and she was fascinated by the Middle East so it was a real experience for them both.

“At certain moments, though, you could see her unhappiness starting to show. It was really obvious at times.”

It must have been a bewildering experience for the princess, whose sheltered upbringing left her ill-prepared for what was to come: marriage to the heir to the British throne at the age of 20, two children by 25, eight years into a relationship with a philandering husband, which was already lurching towards divorce, and through it all, having to maintain a cheerful facade on tours across the world.

Ostensibly the 27-year-old princess was a consummate performer, able to mask her private distress with the compassionate public face which led her to become known as the Queen of Hearts.

But the cracks were already starting to show. Here she is in Kuwait at the start of her Middle Eastern tour, her bright polka dot dress, which now seems hopelessly dated, at odds with the plaintive expression on her face, those enormous eyes rimmed with blue eyeliner gazing mournfully at her husband.

Or on a visit to the engineering faculty at Emirates University hosted by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, the current Minister of Higher Education, where she lingers behind her husband, her arms crossed defensively, her head bowed and a doleful air about her.

Let us not forget this was a crucial period in their marriage: as it emerged later, a rift had started between the couple as early as 1985, and Prince Charles was later to admit, during a now infamous television interview in 1994, that he had embarked on an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, now his second wife, in 1986 after his marriage had “irretrievably broken down”.

Nine months after the UAE visit, the couple were about to become embroiled in the biggest scandal of their ill-fated union: the illicit recording of intimate tapes which would expose their sham marriage to the rest of the world.

In December 1989, Princes Charles made an embarrassingly frank and graphic phone call to his lover, recorded by a scanner which picked up their confidences. Three years later the tape was made public three years later, it was dubbed the “Camillagate” tape.

The same month, the princess was making her own furtively intimate phone calls to her admirer James Gilbey and she too was recorded admitting: “I can’t stand the confines of this marriage.”

Her admissions, which were also exposed by British tabloids in 1992, were named “Squidgygate” after Gilbey’s nickname for her. The royal marriage eventually ended in divorce in 1996.

Back to March 1989, though, and a public display of togetherness was still the order of the day. At times, Princess Diana cannot help but revel in her love of attention and finery.

She seems thoroughly delighted as she poses in a stunningly ornate rich burgundy jelabiya in Kuwait, heavily embroidered with gold sequins and impressing her hosts as she carries off the look.

Even when adopting a demure look, such as the turban hat she wore when arriving in Dubai, she does it with such aplomb that she starts trends with the ease of one who understands what suits her.

Long gone are the high-necked, frilly, ruffled blouses and frumpy country tweeds she favoured before her marriage.

Soon after her engagement, Diana realised that what she wore would be commented on even more than what she said. At her wedding in 1981, 750 million people around the world watched as she stepped from a carriage wearing a lavish ivory silk taffeta gown, with a 25ft train and a bodice encrusted with 10,000 pearls and sequins – and a fashion icon was born.

She sought the help of staff from the magazine Vogue to find her own style and started to support up-and-coming British designers, such as Bruce Oldfield, Amanda Wakeley, and, of course, the ubiquitous Catherine Walker.

Their union, which outlasted her marriage, began a few months after the wedding and continued until she died at the age of 36 in 1997. It was Walker who designed the outfit she was buried in. And it is Walker’s touch that is seen throughout the princess’s tour of the Emirates. A hot-pink and red dress worn for her arrival in Abu Dhabi, its clashing colours and large gold buttons very much style signposts of the Eighties. A peach suit with a flowing calf-length skirt and huge shoulder pads, paired with a single string of pearls and pearl earrings is the outfit of choice for a trip to Emirates University, flanked by Sheikh Nahayan bin Mubarak and Sheikh Tahnoun bin Mohammed, who accompanied the couple throughout their stay.

The suit might seem outdated now but this was the 1980s, when the emphasis was on power-dressing, boxy suits and shoulder pads inspired by the TV soaps Dallas and Dynasty; Madonna was topping the charts, capitalism had yet to become a dirty word, and Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister and queen of the power-suit-and-pearls look, was in charge in Britain.

If Thatcher was the stern face of the power suit, Princess Diana gave it a softer touch. At the camel races near Al Ain, she tops her peach suit with a pair of huge white-framed sunglasses and seems to relish the spectacle, giggling like a schoolgirl and chatting animatedly with the sheikhs, while her husband adopts the air of an awkward Brit abroad, sunglasses perched precariously on his nose as he looks hot and bothered in a suit.

As the trip progresses, her garb becomes more lavish: a navy blue and white silk striped dress for an event at the British embassy in Abu Dhabi, a light blue chiffon Zandra Rhodes floor-length gown for a reception at the British consulate in Dubai, the plunging neckline thoughtfully covered with a cream pashmina for her meeting with Sheikh Mohammed. The two seem completely at ease with one another, laughing as they chat.

One of the most charming pictures shows the welcome she receives in Sheikh Zayed’s private majlis in Al Ain. Sitting cross-legged on the low cushions with their distinctive blue and white embroidery wearing a floral shalwar kameez, her hair slightly tousled, Diana looks completely relaxed.

Most endearing is the expression on her face: even the smiling public persona she normally has to adopt for the cameras gives way as she gawps at the astonishing spread laid before her, complete with mounds of rice, an entire sheep and platters of fruit.

But perhaps the most poignant moment of their trip was when royalty met royalty. In rare footage, a smiling Sheikh Zayed greets the princess – who suddenly looks serious and unsure of herself – with a warm grasp of the hand.

They exchange pleasantries with the help of a translator: Prince Charles jokes about the weather in Britain and Sheikh Zayed asks after the health of his mother, Queen Elizabeth.

Then the late UAE president turns to the princess to tell her of his plans to develop an island with many gazelles.

The island was, of course, Sir Bani Yas. Neither Sheikh Zayed nor Princess Diana survived to see his dream finally come to fruition. But there is little doubt the legacy of both lives on.

Daily Update

Royal Mecca Clock Tower an investment in national pride

2010-09-01T06:17:00.002-07:00

Colossal Saudi clock tower may just succeed in changing the watches of the world.

By Frederick Deknatel

If you were a monarch a century ago, you invested in the “inevitable technical trappings of modernity,” in the words of the Turkish historian Selim Deringil: trains, telegraphs, factories, steamships, world fairs and clock towers, which ordered people around hourly workdays, travel timetables and other benchmarks of modern life. The Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II was no different, and he celebrated his silver jubilee by building clocks: elegant towers in public squares from Izmir to Jaffa. The last Sultan to hold absolute power in Istanbul before being deposed by the Young Turks in 1909, Abdulhamid was a kind of reformer, even if he is dismissed in Turkey as the last despot before constitutionalism and Ataturk.

Abdulhamid’s clock towers were grand for their time – three storeys, made of stone, not too garish. He commissioned over a hundred clock towers throughout the Ottoman Empire as symbols of modernity and projections of Istanbul’s power in the increasingly restive provinces. How would Abdulhamid’s ghost look upon the colossal, seven-tower Abraj al Beit complex underway in Mecca today? Centred on the 600-metre Royal Mecca Clock Tower and its claims to house the world’s largest clock atop the world’s second tallest skyscraper, the project is nothing if not grandiose. But it is also a contradiction: it recalls and, at the same time, seeks to rebuke the era of modernisation and technological development in the late Ottoman Middle East.

The clock tower and complex is a hospitality project and, its developer hopes, a magnet for tourists. For the King Abdul Aziz Endowment that is behind the development, Abraj al Beit is part of a plan to triple the number of pilgrims that Mecca can handle during haj, to 10 million. The development reportedly will boast the most building floor space in the world, tying with Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3. It could hold 65,000 people during the haj amidst its hotels, luxury apartments, malls, prayer halls and conference centres. The clock, six times the size of Big Ben, represents an investment in national pride, with the requisite Islamic flavour. Its 21,000 white and green lights – visible from 30 kilometres away – will flash five times each day, calling the faithful to prayer

The first of its four faces, 40 metres in diameter, began ticking at the start of Ramadan and will run for a three-month trial – the first step, some hope, toward supplanting the 126-year-old Greenwich meridian with “Mecca time”. It’s only prudent, some clerics and scholars argue, since Mecca is the “true global meridian” and “in perfect alignment with the magnetic north”, according to the popular Egyptian TV cleric, Yusuf al Qaradawi. A 2008 conference in Doha that he and others attended, called “Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice”, argued that Mecca was the centre of the globe and that “the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power”, according to the BBC. Mohammed al Arkubi, the manager of the Fairmont hotel located in the coveted clock tower, put it simply: “Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal.”

But credible science says definitively that Mecca is not on a line with the Magnetic North Pole. And Greenwich Mean Time has already been replaced – since 1972 – by a global network of atomic clocks (which keep the more egalitarian Coordinated Universal Time). The rhetoric around the giant Mecca clock seems unaware of the history of clock building and time setting in the region. A century ago, Sultan Abdulhamid fashioned himself as an Islamic reformer carrying on the spirit of the Tanzimat, the liberal reorganisation of the empire that historians generally date from 1839 to 1876, when a new Ottoman constitution was drafted. Abdulhamid suspended that constitution in 1878 but continued to modernise Ottoman cities, one of the Tanzimat’s central objectives.

“The Ottoman Sultan, the Meiji emperor, the Russian tzar, the Habsurg emperor were all drawn towards the 20th century at different tempos,” the historian Deringil writes in The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909. But they all trod “down broadly similar paths.” In the early 1900s, clock towers were likely as much a novelty to residents in Jaffa as they were in a wayward town in modern-day Russia or Germany. Trains and clock towers were the product of a competition between kings, based on “how their peers were playing the role of ‘civilised monarch’”, as Deringil puts it. Western Europe was the model – industrial France and Britain, home of Big Ben, which opened in London in 1859, in honour of Queen Victoria. The development of clock towers across the Sultan’s Arab provinces was a nod to all that, not just an autocrat’s assertion of control and progress. They reflected a desire to be modern, if not western. They were “secular bids for legitimacy”, as Deringil writes, that sprang up near the multitude of mosques that were also built or refurbished and stamped with the Sultan’s seal across the empire at the time.

But today Abdulhamid is not remembered for his clocks: he ruled during an era of great Ottoman public works, in particular the Hijaz Railway that connected Istanbul with Medina. (It never reached Mecca, as intended.) A self-described defender of the faith and promoter of an essential, Islamic Ottomanism, Abdulhamid reasserted his right to the title of caliph, which previous Sultans had shunned. Today the only monarch who claims such a title is the king of Saudi Arabia. In 1986, in a move to bolster the kingdom’s Islamic standing after the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and counter the rise of internal Islamist critics, King Fahd adopted a new title, “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”. “Your Majesty” and other secular honours were out. King Abdullah, Fahd’s successor, is a kind of reformer too – who, as The Economist says, “deserves much credit for the general lightening of tone” in the conservative kingdom. He has pushed quiet social changes in the Saudi context – still no female drivers – and put billions into education and public works. He has a much smaller dominion than Abdulhamid, and will, it seems, be satisfied with one, giant clock.

And yet when Abdulhamid’s clock towers were springing up across the Middle East, the world had only recently adapted the arbitrary Greenwich standard. GMT was established during the height of the British Empire, when its ships ruled the sea lanes and set their chronometers, which measure time and longitude astronomically, relative to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. In 1884, 25 nations at the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC adopted Greenwich as the prime meridian. Like any monarch seeking to be modern, Abdulhamid and his advisers used clocks, ultimately set to that distant standard, to signal a newly ordered world – or at least “an appearance of order,” in the historian Timothy Mitchell’s terms.

In the Sultan’s jubilee year of 1900-1901, clock towers were announced in Arab towns like Acre, Haifa, Safed and Nazareth, and in new or refurbished public squares in Tripoli, Aleppo and Jaffa. Beirut’s clock tower, central to the new skyline of the growing Ottoman port city, had just been built in response to local demands for a public clock with the mandatory Muslim prayer times. (A number of “foreign institutions” had public clock towers in Beirut, the governor wrote to the Sultan, but “all of them with a western clock”). The clocks were “components of a concerted imperial policy,” as Jens Hanseen writes in Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital, to plant a modern, Ottoman architectural identity in provincial cities. They were a sign that “the empire would evolve with the times, its days properly divided into hours and minutes,” according to Adam LeBor’s description of the Jaffa clock tower in City of Oranges.

The champions of Mecca time who describe GMT as an imposition from the West are gazing at the 21,000 green and white lights atop the Mecca clock tower, and not at history. If anything, it was the Turkish Sultan who imposed Western time on his Arab provinces, even if many Arab administrators, merchants and residents were calling for it. It was the way to be modern – Abdulhamid and his advisers promoted a European standard of time as a measure of municipal reform meant to extend a modernising but fading Ottoman identity beyond Istanbul. More than a century later, the Mecca clock tower, arguably one of the least attractive buildings to be erected during the last decade’s skyscraper boom, has a rather more modest aim despite its grandiose pretensions: to challenge the international timekeeping standard through size and flash alone.

Frederick Deknatel, a former Fulbright fellow in Syria, is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and other publications.

Daily Update

Nissan electric car targets Abu Dhabi

2010-09-01T06:17:00.001-07:00

Nissan looking to bring world’s first mass-market electric car to United Arab Emirates.

By Chris Stanton, Hassan Hassan and Armina Ligaya – ABU DHABI

Nissan is looking to bring the world’s first mass-market electric car to the UAE and is hoping for a partnership with Masdar, the Abu Dhabi Government’s clean-energy company to do it.

By December, Nissan will begin selling the Leaf, an all-electric hatchback with a range of 160km, in the US and Japan. The car “will change the image of transportation for the future”, Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s chief executive, said in the capital on Monday.

“Strong international partnerships are valuable [for Nissan],” he said in a lecture at the diwan of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

“I applaud the plans to develop the world’s first city powered by renewable energy, and we think there are a lot of possibilities for very objective and realistic collaboration in order to support, with our own technology … the development of this reality,” Mr Ghosn said.

The first stage of Masdar City, the carbon-neutral development at the edge of the capital, is scheduled to open this month. Later stages of the development are likely to see privately owned, all-electric cars used in the city, Masdar officials said this year.

“With Masdar City you are seeing the world as it could be and you are learning to realise that vision,” Mr Ghosn said.

“Vision without action becomes a dream, and action without vision just passes the time. We can connect the vision with action, particularly with a strong partnership.”

A spokesman for Masdar said the company had not had formal talks with Nissan. “We’re always interested in exploring new partnerships, but at this point in time I’m not aware of any discussions on this subject,” said the spokesman.

The Nissan Leaf is one of two electric cars to go on sale this year, a development that some observers say represents a breakthrough for the vehicles. The other car is the Chevrolet Volt, which also has a petrol engine that is used when the battery runs out.

Price is still a factor in the wider acceptance of such vehicles. The Leaf will cost about US$37,000 (Dh135,892), and the Volt, which has an electric range of 64km before the petrol engine is activated, will cost about $41,000. The cost of batteries remains the main barrier to achieving lower prices for electric cars, Mr Ghosn said.

The Nissan chief, who has been credited with turning around the car maker, Japan’s second-largest, said he believed electric cars could become commercially successful in the region but that such progress would hinge on the co-operation of local governments.

The technology is gaining traction in the US, in California in particular, because the state’s government has subsidised the sale of the vehicles and offered incentives to consumers.

Still, electric cars will not be coming to the region in the first wave of distribution, starting in December, Mr Ghosn said.

The Leaf will be delivered first to the US, Japan and Europe, where governments have pledged their support, he said.

Daily Update

America and its core values compatible with Islam

2010-09-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Imam Rauf: American way of thinking 'extremely co-congruent' with Islamic world view.
By W.G. Dunlop - DUBAI

America and its core principles are compatible with Islam, the US imam behind a controversial initiative to build an Islamic centre near the site of the 9/11 attacks said Tuesday in Dubai.

"The American way of thinking, the American construct, is extremely co-congruent with the Islamic world view," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at the Dubai School of Government.

His visit to the United Arab Emirates is the last leg of a US State Department-sponsored trip that has already taken him to Bahrain and Qatar.

The aim of the visit was for Abdul Rauf to "talk about Muslim life in America" and his "work promoting inter-faith dialogue," according to a statement by the US embassy in Abu Dhabi announcing the visit.

Abdul Rauf specifically singled out principles outlined in the 1776 US Declaration of Independence from Britain as being in line with Islamic thought.

He noted that the Declaration describes life, liberty and property -- changed in the final version to the "pursuit of happiness" -- as "inalienable rights."

"I cannot fail but be struck by how these rights that are described, parallel what Islamic jurists have written, six centuries before it and more," Abdul Rauf said.

There was a consensus among Islamic scholars at that time that "the whole objective of Islamic law... is to further and protect five, and some say six, fundamental issues" -- life, dignity, religion, family, property and intellect, he said.

"The very definition of the American way of being, the very definition of the American existential viewpoint... is consistent with the very thinking of Muslim scholars," Abdul Rauf said.

Freedom of religion in America also squares with the Islamic principle that "there shall be no coercion or compulsion in matters of faith or religion," he said.

"The real battlefront" is between moderates and extremists, not Muslims and non-Muslims, Abdul Rauf said.

The plan to build the Islamic centre, which is to include a prayer space, near the site of the World Trade Center that was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, has fueled a political furore in the United States.

Proponents say the centre would be a platform for promoting inter-faith dialogue and tolerance. Opponents, some of whom have termed the centre the "Ground Zero mosque," say it is insensitive to build it near the site of the attacks.

Planners say the centre will include an area for prayer, sports facilities, theatre and restaurant, and would be open to the public.

Construction of the centre, a 100-million-dollar (79-million-euro), 13-storey glass-and-metal building to be built on private property, has been approved by city officials.

Abdul Rauf has been the imam of a mosque twelve blocks from "Ground Zero" for the past 27 years, according to the website of the Cordoba Initiative, an organisation promoting inter-faith dialogue and understanding, which he founded.

Daily Update

Old places and new myths in Berlin

2010-08-29T22:34:00.003-07:00

By Melanie Sevcenko

Twenty-one years after the reunification of Germany, gentrification is taking its toll on much of the eastern part of the culturally vital but economically troubled capital.

But as property prices creep upwards, parts of the city remain derelict and abandoned. The spaces that once functioned as factories, embassies and government offices under the German Democratic Republic (GDR) remain redundant.

Haunted amusements

Kulturpark Planterwald was the only amusement park in the GDR and remains as a relic of communist childhood in the centre of Berlin's Treptower Park. With an assortment of patched fencing around its parameter and the sort of back-story that would make for a movie script, the park is an essential break-in zone for those who brave the patrolling security.

Since 1989, the former amusement park has been under the ownership of the Spreepark Berlin GmbH Company, headed by Norbert Witte. Shortly after he went bankrupt in 2001, Witte, who was more than $14mn in debt, escaped to Lima, Peru. But in 2004, he was charged with smuggling cocaine from Peru to Germany in the park's flying carpet ride.

Emge Sicherheitsdienste, a security company contracted by the city, now presides over the grounds. But exactly who owns the park remains disputed, which is one reason why potential investors have consistently shied away while moss and grass has consumed the Ferris wheel and rollercoaster, an English village and pirate boat, swan rides, a rusty circus tent and even a love canal that was never put into operation.

The former Iraqi embassy to the GDR stands ominously in a cul-de-sac in Berlin's northeast region of Pankow. Abandoned during the final stages of the first Gulf War in 1991, it inhabitants appear to have left in a hurry. Typewriters and telephones, fax machines and filing cabinets remain with Arabic documents strewn about the desks and floor. The wind blows a delicate lace curtain through smashed doors that lead onto a veranda.

To the southwest of Berlin, in the former East's Potsdam-Mittelmark district, is Beelitz-Heilstatten - a vast hospital complex designed by architect Heino Schmieden. Beelitz-Heilstatten became a military hospital during World War I, when a young Adolf Hitler was treated there for a leg wound.

In 2008, architect Torsten Schmitz took ownership of the buildings and has since been looking for investors to help restore them. But, the resurrection of the old sanatorium is not a lucrative prospect. Irene Krause, a Beelitz historian and tour guide, says it is more economically sound to build a new hospital than to renovate an old one.

Suggestions for the future of the buildings come and go, from school campuses to retirement homes, but nothing has been seen through to fruition. "German investors no longer invest in Germany, they go abroad," says Krause.

After a fatal accident in one of the buildings, the mayor of Beelitz asked Schmitz to lock the facility down - the boarded up windows and doors now add to its ghost town faÃ§ade. But the boards have not stopped nature from creeping inside and overrunning the barren interiors. A young forest has devoured the entire top floor of one building in the west wing.

Most of the rooms are stripped of their equipment and furniture, but Krause says what remains is evidence of ingenuity in engineering and design. "I hope people will see that this is a place that was made for the next generation, but I don't know if anybody will spend the money on it."

Fading legacy

During the Cold War, the National Security Agency (NSA) built a listening station on top of the Teufelsberg Hill in the former West to eavesdrop on Soviet and East German military traffic. The Allies had originally constructed the hill from the rubble of buildings destroyed during World War II.

But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the station was neglected and now exists in a state of purgatory between the city investors who toy with the idea of building a spy museum and the Field Station Berlin Veterans Group which campaigns vigorously to erect a memorial there.

"One more theatre of the Cold War goes down," says Barbel Simon of the Cold War Museum in Berlin, "a [sign] that the Cold War and its legacy is starting to fade, unfortunately."

In 1998, the Berlin Senate forcibly reclaimed ownership of Teufelsberg for $43mn. But with no viable investors in the opinion of the city - even filmmaker David Lynch's proposal to construct a transcendental meditation centre on the site was denied - Teufelsberg remains a playground for urban explorers. On any given day, the pulverised interiors and defaced exteriors are strewn with photographers, sunbathers, artists, bloggers, and even campers who pitch tents and bring portable grills.

'Pure urbanity'

In a city that is no stranger to financial instability and shifting political fortunes, money seems to be at the root of the hesitation to rejuvenate these historically and culturally significant spaces.

Mediaspree, a multi-tiered investment project that plans to commercialise real estate on both sides of Berlin's Spree riverfront by converting unused property into lofts, hotels, telecommunication and media companies, has been trying to entice wealthy investors since the early 1990s. But development is a slow trickle, leaving ambitious plans only partially realised.

Christopher David, the creative director of Kooper David Creative Property Development, a company that specialises in transforming utility spaces for arts and creative industries, feels that "Germans are very detailed and bureaucratic, hence progress is more gradual and less about boom and bust cycles".

But not all locals support the ambitions of the development firms. The independent street art blog, Urban Artcore, reported that 30,000 Berliners voted in a referendum against Mediaspree and its gentrification plans in 2008, claiming the investment project contradicts Berlin's affordable urban persona.

Urban Artcore founder, Brenna, feels that abandoned spaces "are an example of pure urbanity, places without ads, places without CCTVs, places without angry citizens".

But Berlin is home to some sites that have succeeded in changing their function after a period of uncertainty. Tempelhof, one of Europe's iconic pre-World War II airports, was closed in 2008 but reopened its gates this year as a vibrant people's park. In 2009, Kooper David Creative Property Development turned a defunct city swimming pool in the Wedding region into a gallery and performance space for local and international artists.

David thinks Berlin offers unique opportunities for such transformations because "two world wars and a dividing wall have left massive amounts of unused industrial space. Combine that space with the very cheap cost of living and you get the ideal location for artists to begin their work".

But Brenna says that the number of abandoned factories in the former GDR is dwindling. "It becomes harder from year to year to find buildings without security guards. I guess the time for the majority of the now-abandoned places to be put back into use is very near."

Rebuilding history

As the epicenter of World War II and the one time dividing line between opposing economic ideologies, Berlin has one of the most turbulently rich histories in Europe.

But most Germans do not believe that these buildings have been abandoned as part of some bid to forget or erase that history. Christine Wolf of the Berlin Monument Authority sees a correlation between abandoned buildings and "major changes like the development of Berlin from an industrial city to a service-orientated city".

Still, one cannot help but wonder why the GDR's central parliament, the Palast der Republik, was dismantled in 2006 on the order of the German Bundestag. The Berliner Stadtschloss (City Castle), the building that has been proposed for the site, is essentially a replica of the historical Palace Square of the old Berlin, which was demolished in 1950.

Martin Sabrow, a political scientist and historian at Berlin's Humboldt University, says that although there has been no overriding move to ignore East Berlin's recent history, there was in the early 1990s "a strong wish to destroy all reminders of the GDR regime, including the whole Berlin Wall. There was also a long discussion about the future of the Palast der Republik. Not only its symbolic value, but also its presence in the middle of Berlin were the reasons why especially the former GDR citizens wanted to destroy it".

But architecture, like the collective memory of citizens, is more than just empty disused buildings - it encloses a history and can speak volumes about a city's antiquity. But Sabrow steers clear from the idea of Berlin as a vast museum or memorial to the past. "There are many old buildings, but for example, Potsdamer Platz is a view into the future. Berlin has its places of memory and many other memorials, but it also has places to live everyday life."

Daily Update

Iraq's troubled young hearts

2010-08-29T22:34:00.002-07:00

In the August heat, the waiting room of the Sulaimany Centre for Heart Disease was packed with worried parents. Some had been waiting for this day for months. Others just showed up. They had heard on TV that for 11 days an international team would be fixing children's hearts for free. They dressed their sick children in suits and taffeta dresses and came, prepared to beg.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, an estimated 4,000 children are waiting for heart surgeries. Decades of malnutrition, intra-family marriage and, many believe, the remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons deformed their hearts at birth. The deformities are exquisitely complex - a challenge for even the best pediatric surgeons. But Kurdistan has none.

Though Iraqi Kurdistan's economy has blossomed since the fall of Saddam in 2003, healthcare has not seen the rapid changes and improvements of other sectors. Instead, parents are forced to rely on a loose network of NGOs to heal their children of their heart problems.

Waiting list

On the other side of the double doors into the cardiac ward, the team was assembling. The group of surgeons and medical staff were from the International Children's Heart Foundation. They were ebullient because the first child they operated on was already walking around the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), less than 24 hours after surgery. It seemed to bode well for their trip.

At the head of the group was Dr. William M. Novick, the organisation's founder. Novick is a giant. At well over 6 feet tall and known for his cigars and searing intellect, he could convince you of just about anything. The Memphis, Tennessee native has spent the last 20 years jumping from one underserved community to the next, building sustainable cardiac programmes where governments and communities have few options.

Coming from him, the future of Iraq's young hearts seems particularly desperate. "This is a hideous problem," he explained. "I've covered every possible place for heart surgery in this country. All six of them put together are not operating on 400 kids a year. This country has a population of 30 million. With a birth rate of 35 per thousand, they are generating in excess, by conservative estimates, 6,000 new children a year that need surgery."

On this trip, his 16-person team planned to help up to 28 children, with the hope that continued training of local surgeons will eventually lead to the treatment of more.

They wrote each child's name on a whiteboard in the corner of a conference-cum-examination room, trying to sort out which families had arrived and which cases are were urgent.

Most children on the list were patients of Dr. Aso Faeq, northern Iraq's only pediatric cardiologist. Faeq visits two cities and 150 children each week, trying to keep up with his growing list of patients. He can only diagnose these children's hearts - hearts with holes, or no hole where there should be one; hearts that grow upside down or twice as large as they should; hearts that need immediate care, or they will stop beating all together.

Then there is the backlog. "For the last decades, there was no treatment for congenital heart disease in this region," Faeq explained. "The patients here are either previously undiagnosed cases or the families who couldn't pay for the travel and treatment in Baghdad. So many patients are collected over years here."

In all of Iraq, the waiting list for pediatric heart surgery is well above 20,000.

Death sentence

Next to Faeq, Jeremy Courtney, the executive director of the Preemptive Love Coalition, flipped through a stack of papers with dozens of children's names. He was the only one in the group wearing a suit. Of anyone in the room, he had the most to gain from these surgeries. He and his wife moved to Kurdistan three years ago from the US with a few friends. They had a vague notion of trying to help people in the region.

Not long after, they stumbled across Kurdistan's pediatric heart surgery problem and formed a small nonprofit organisation to send these children to neighbouring countries for surgery at reduced costs. His organisation contacted Novick almost two years ago for help. By arranging surgeries inside Iraq, Courtney could help fix more hearts in a matter of days than his organisation facilitated in its first year - and for one-fifth of the cost.

In the hospital, he was trying to stay on top of every detail and looked up from his list with surprise. "Where is Samal?"

Samal Sirwan Hussein was one of the first children scheduled for surgery. Five months after she was born, her parents took her to the doctor with a simple case of flu. They were told she had a congenital heart defect and would die without surgery within the next year.

The diagnosis kept her father, Sirwan Hussein, up at night. Other people in his family had heart problems. He knew this kind of diagnosis could be a death sentence for his daughter.

"My cousin had a heart problem, she wasn't well. They didn't find anyone to do surgery for her and after six or seven years she had a heart attack and died," he said. "I don't know what I do. All day, all time, all hours, I see her, she has a problem and I can't do anything for her."

Jeremy found Hussein and his wife Parween cradling their daughter in a corner of the waiting room. They had driven for five-and-a-half hours from the mountain town of Rwandz to the hospital, just three days after Samal's first birthday. But there were so many mothers jostling to meet the American doctors that they could not get past the door.

As Hussein's wife carried the baby into the examination room, she began to quietly cry. Her daughter reclined on the examination table, unfazed. Her huge brown eyes focused on an episode of Winnie the Pooh that Courtney held up on his laptop as a cardiologist performed her pre-surgery examination. With her stubby pigtails and near-constant smile, it was hard to imagine this child was sick. But when she waved her hands toward the screen, her fingertips were blue.

Decimated healthcare system

The visiting cardiologist was getting frustrated. The local doctors tapped to assist and learn from his team kept disappearing into their offices as patients came through.

Cardiology and other high-impact medical professions are not popular in Iraq, explained Dr. Rekawt H. Rashid Karim, the general director of health in Sulaymaniyah.

"Our people are not interested. They all go to the simple branches, like dermatology, like ultrasound; they go to branches that don't have much responsibility," Karim said. "These branches are more comfortable and have more money, because we have a bad system."

Healthcare is officially free in Iraq. In reality, there are both public and private sectors and all the country's doctors work in both branches. Doctors are paid the same flat salary in the public system no matter what their area of expertise.

Doctors who deal in complicated or urgent medical problems, like pediatric cardiac surgeons, are often required to stay longer or work harder at public hospitals. Meanwhile, doctors like dermatologists maintain dependably set hours and have more time to serve paying patients in private sector clinics.

Because of this, there are not enough trained doctors to fill the new hospitals being built to address Kurdistan's heart problems and other urgent needs, Karim explained.

To make the situation even more pressing, Kurdistan's hospitals do not only service northern Iraq. The rest of the country's healthcare system has been decimated since the US invasion, leaving thousands to seek help in functional hospitals in the north.

Karim estimates that 40 per cent of the regional hospitals' patients are from southern Iraq, but only 17 per cent of central and southern Iraq's budget goes to the north, stretching their resources thin.

For the children who do not receive help from Novick's team, their options are unclear, even to Karim. "There is no fixed programme. That is the problem," he said.

Some children might be helped by other visiting teams, shipped out of the country for care through the Preemptive Love Coalition or taken to Sudan or India through emergency aid groups. The government will sometimes give families a few thousand dollars for their care. But Karim admits that there is no long-term plan to address the new cases of deadly heart defects that crop up each year.

Political obstacles

For the NGOs who try to fill the gap in Iraqi Kurdistan, the political and cultural obstacles are intense.

"There are days when it comes to a head and there's a family that doesn't want to go to Turkey, to go to the 'enemy Turks'. To have the 'enemy Turks who are bombing northern Iraqi villages' help their child," Courtney explained.

"Occasionally there are funding disputes or there's a kid from this part of the country who is a constituent of that political party and if we're appealing for money from another political party, then we run into problems."

"If we get to, on any level, help overcome some of the petty politics inside northern Iraq to help save a child's life, that's meaningful for us," Courtney said.

For Novick, politics are more of a sticking point than an opportunity. "I'm not interested in becoming a political ping pong ball," he said.

But the nature of his work demands that Novick work on a high governmental level to ensure sustainable care once he leaves. He knows that in order for a long-term programme to work in Iraq, he must have both of Kurdistan's political parties behind him, as well as some level of agreement between northern and southern Iraq.

"One of my obstacles, if not the major obstacle, is figuring out the political landscape," he explained. "I don't want to step on toes and defeat the purpose of the programme before it ever starts."

As his daughter was prepped for her operation, Sirwan Hussein fidgeted in an empty bed in the cardiac ward. Samal's blood type, A negative, was hard to find, so he donated about a litre of blood in case his daughter needed it. He passed out after all of Samal's tests were finished and she was snugly awaiting her operation.

It took more than five hours before they received word from the doctors that Samal had made it through the surgery but the outlook was not good. Her heart had stopped even before the operation was underway and she was extremely weak. Less than 24 hours later, Samal died in the ICU.

For the Hussein family, Samal's death was bittersweet. An estimated 7 million children worldwide need heart surgery but have not received it. Samal had beat immense odds, but it had not been enough to save her.

In the basement of the Sulaimany Centre for Heart Disease, four more children's names were written on the surgery board for the following day. In the waiting room outside, families continued to gather, hoping to be one of the thousands put on the surgical team's waiting list.

Daily Update

Thousands flee south Pakistan city

2010-08-29T22:34:00.001-07:00

More than 175,000 people have fled Pakistan's southern city of Thatta, leaving it virtually empty, as flood waters threatened to submerge the city's outskirts.

Troops and civilians were struggling on Sunday to protect the city after floodwaters broke through levees on the Indus.

"The water is still two kilometres away from Thatta where the armed forces and the local administrative workers are working on war footing to save the city," Hadi Bakhsh Kalhoro, a senior city official told the AFP news agency.

"The army brought a maximum of resources to try to fill up the breach. Almost all the people have left Thatta to safer places, all shops and schools are closed," he said.

Thousands of people sought shelter on the high ground of a historic cemetery outside Thatta and others headed to nearby towns and cities.

'Incapable government'

Many were angered by lack of help, and on Saturday, a number of villagers blocked the main road in protest against the government, saying they had not received any food or assistance.

Lakano Barani, a resident from Thatta, blamed officials for not taking the necessary steps to prevent the third levee from breaking.

"Nothing was done and now it is too late. If they [the government] had taken action, then the historic city of Thatta could have been saved," he told.

"The government has not told the people where to go or what to do. It is the most incapable government I have ever seen."

About 17 million people have been significantly affected by the floods and about 1.2 million homes have been destroyed or badly damaged, according to the United Nations.

More than 1,500 people have been killed.

The UN, the Pakistani army and a host of local and international relief groups have been rushing aid workers, medicine, food and water to the affected regions, but are unable to reach many people.

More than eight million people are in need of emergency assistance across the country.

Disease and hunger

The UN said that aid workers were becoming increasingly worried about disease and hunger, especially among children in areas where even before the disaster, acute malnutrition was high.

"We fear the deadly synergy of waterborne diseases, including diarrhoea, dehydration and malnutrition," Karen Allen, a senior Unicef official, said.

Martin Mogwanja, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator, said the international response to the disaster must be more assertive.

"If nothing is done, an estimated 72,000 children, currently affected by severe malnutrition in the flood-affected areas, are at high risk of death," he said.

In Islamabad Phoebe Greenwood, from the international children's charity Save the Children, told "We have acute malnutrition here, which is when in a disaster children and families are not getting enough food at all. This has long-term implications for their health.

"There is an immediate need to get normalcy back into these children’s life."

Greenwood said that it would be important to set up temporary schools across the affected areas of Pakistan in order that children will be able to interact with each other although more funding was needed.

Meanwhile, the aid effort is gathering pace. Almost $700 million has now been donated to the flood appeal, both directly and through the UN.

The United States is taking the lead - contributing more than $100 million to the relief effort, while Saudi Arabia has handed over $34 million and the UK has donated more than $20 million.

Daily Update

Muslim nations donate nearly $1 billion to Pakistan

2010-08-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD — Muslim countries, organizations and individuals have pledged nearly $1 billion in cash and relief supplies to help Pakistan respond to the worst floods in the nation’s history, the head of a group of Islamic states said Sunday.

The announcement came as floodwaters inundated a large town in Pakistan and authorities struggled to build new levees with clay and stone to prevent one of the area’s biggest cities from suffering the same fate.

Foreign countries have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to help Pakistan cope with the floods, which first hit the country about a month ago after extremely heavy monsoon rains. But some officials had criticized the Muslim world for not contributing enough.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of the 57-member Organization of The Islamic Conference, likely sought to counter that criticism by announcing that Muslims have pledged nearly $1 billion. The pledges came from Muslim states, NGOs, OIC institutions and telethons held in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, he said.

“They have shown that they are one of the largest contributors of assistance both in kind and cash,” said Ihsanoglu of the various donors. He spoke during a joint press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad.

Ihsanoglu did not provide a breakdown of the pledges or say how much of the money would flow through the Pakistani government versus independent organizations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani criticized donations made to foreign NGOs rather than the Pakistani government Sunday, saying much of the money would be wasted

“Eighty percent of the aid will not come to you directly,” said Gilani, referring to Pakistani citizens.

“It will come through their NGOs, and they will eat half of it,” he said during a press conference in his hometown of Multan.

The floods began in the mountainous northwest about a month ago and have moved slowly down the country toward the coast in the south, inundating vast swaths of prime agricultural land and damaging or destroying more than 1 million homes.

Floodwaters surged into the southern town of Sujawal on Sunday after breaking through a levee on the Indus River two days earlier, said Hadi Baksh, a disaster management official in southern Sindh province. Most of the town’s 250,000 residents had already fled, but the damage to homes, clinics and schools added to the widespread devastation the floods have caused across Pakistan.

Authorities in Sujawal were trying to limit the flood damage, but the water level has already risen up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) in the center of town and 10 feet (3 meters) in the surrounding villages, said Anwarul Haq, the top official in Sujawal.

The floodwaters also threatened Thatta, a historic city of some 350,000 people who have mostly fled to higher ground. Thatta is the base of operations for local authorities trying to cope with a disaster that has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and international partners who have stepped in to help.

Authorities rushed to build makeshift levees across the road connecting Sujawal and Thatta, parts of which were already flooded, Baksh said.

“We are trying to plug the bridges at three different points to stop the water flow toward Thatta,” said Baksh. “We are trying all our best efforts.”

Thatta is located about 75 miles (125 kilometers) southeast of the major coastal city of Karachi and 15 miles northwest of Sujawal.

Many of the people who fled Sujawal and Thatta headed to Makli, a hill just south of Thatta that contains a vast Muslim graveyard.

About half a million flood victims are camped out on the hill, Baksh said. Most lack any form of shelter and are desperate for food and water.

“We don’t have water to drink, not to mention food, tents or any other facility,” said Mohammed Usman, a laborer who fled Sujawal several days ago and needed water to help cope with a painful kidney stone.

The United Nations, the Pakistani army and a host of local and international relief groups have rushed aid workers, medicine, food and water to the affected regions, but are unable to reach many of the 8 million people who are in need of emergency assistance.

The U.S. said Saturday it would deploy an additional 18 helicopters to help with the relief effort. The U.S. military is already operating 15 helicopters and three C-130 aircraft in the country, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.
by Asif Shahzad
Source: Associated Press

Daily Update

Negative media portrayl of Muslims drives Islamophobia

2010-08-28T21:19:00.002-07:00

The western media is reporting that a poor image of Pakistan may be behind the lacklustre response to fund-raising appeals to support rescue efforts. The widespread coverage of violent protests against western countries on the streets of Pakistan has indeed, helped generate a negative stereotype of Pakistan.

While we may not be able to quantify how the rest of the world views Pakistan, we may still be able to see how the rest of the world views Muslims in general.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project conducts opinion polls about matters of global interest. The opinion poll conducted in spring 2009 carried a question about what opinion people had of Muslims. The question was put to 20,000-plus respondents in 25 countries, including some Muslim majority countries. I got hold of the raw data set, which I analysed to determine whether people held a favourable or unfavourable opinion of Muslims.

As expected, Muslims living in Muslim majority countries indeed had a very high opinion of themselves. However, a very large segment of respondents from Muslim minority countries reported having somewhat of an unfavourable view of Muslims. No fewer than 42 per cent of the respondents hailing from Muslim minority countries reported unfavourable opinion of Muslims. On the other hand, only 10 per cent respondents from Muslim majority countries reported an unfavourable opinion of Muslims.

The graph below indicates that Egyptians, Indonesians, Lebanese and Pakistanis have the most favourable opinion of Muslims, as is indicated by the green colour bars. Over 90 per cent of the respondents in these countries reported a favourable opinion of Muslims. Not much surprise there.

The western media is reporting that a poor image of Pakistan may be behind the lacklustre response to fund-raising appeals to support rescue efforts. The widespread coverage of violent protests against western countries on the streets of Pakistan has indeed, helped generate a negative stereotype of Pakistan.

While we may not be able to quantify how the rest of the world views Pakistan, we may still be able to see how the rest of the world views Muslims in general.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project conducts opinion polls about matters of global interest. The opinion poll conducted in spring 2009 carried a question about what opinion people had of Muslims. The question was put to 20,000-plus respondents in 25 countries, including some Muslim majority countries. I got hold of the raw data set, which I analysed to determine whether people held a favourable or unfavourable opinion of Muslims.

As expected, Muslims living in Muslim majority countries indeed had a very high opinion of themselves. However, a very large segment of respondents from Muslim minority countries reported having somewhat of an unfavourable view of Muslims. No fewer than 42 per cent of the respondents hailing from Muslim minority countries reported unfavourable opinion of Muslims. On the other hand, only 10 per cent respondents from Muslim majority countries reported an unfavourable opinion of Muslims.

The graph below indicates that Egyptians, Indonesians, Lebanese and Pakistanis have the most favourable opinion of Muslims, as is indicated by the green colour bars. Over 90 per cent of the respondents in these countries reported a favourable opinion of Muslims. Not much surprise there.

Daily Update

Somalis pay price of U.S idiocy

2010-08-28T21:19:00.001-07:00

The US decision in 2006 to send Ethiopian troops into Somalia in 2006 was one of the stupidest moves in a very stupid decade. This week, some of the chickens spawned by that decision came home to roost.

On Monday the Al-Shabaab militia launched a “massive war” against the 6,000 African Union peacekeepers, most of them Ugandan, who are protecting the so-called government of Somalia. In reality, however, all it actually governs is a few dozen blocks in Mogadishu, and its members are just a group of Somali warlords and clan leaders who proclaimed themselves to be the “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) in 2004.

Six “members of Parliament” were among the 40 people killed when an Al-Shabaab suicide squad stormed the Al-Muna hotel in Mogadishu on Tuesday, but there will be no by-elections to replace them. They were never elected in the first place. The TFG made no progress in reuniting the country, and now its surviving members sit surrounded by Al-Shabaab fighters who control most of the sprawling capital.

Southern Somalia has been trapped in an unending civil war since the last real government collapsed in 1991, but the current round of killing was triggered when the United States invited Ethiopia to invade the country in 2006. This was a bit high-handed, especially since Ethiopia was Somalia’s traditional enemy, but Washington’s aim was to destroy the “Islamic Courts “ in Somalia.

The TFG failed utterly to impose its authority and restore order in Somalia, but the Islamic Courts Union took a different approach. Its roots were in the merchant class in Mogadishu, who simply wanted a safer environment to do business in, and they understood that Islam was the only common ground on which all of the country’s fissiparous clans and militias might be brought together again.

The Islamic courts, applying Shariah law, were the instrument by which the society would gradually be brought back under the rule of law — and for about six months, it worked amazingly well. The zones of peace and order spread throughout southern Somalia, the epicenter of the fighting, and trade and employment revived. A made-in-Somalia solution had spontaneously emerged from the chaos.

Inevitably, some of the younger supporters of the Islamic Courts movement enjoyed ranting in public about the virtues of Al-Qaeda, the wickedness of Americans, and other matters of which they knew little. Almost every popular movement has a radical youth wing that specializes in saying stupid and provocative things. It is the job of the adults, inside and outside the organization, to contain their excesses and NOT TO PANIC.

Alas, the United States panicked, or at least its intelligence agencies did. The mere word “Islamic” set off alarm bells in the Bush administration, which had the lamentable habit of shooting first and thinking later.

Washington, therefore, concluded that the Islamic Courts Union, Somalia’s best hope of escaping from perpetual civil war, was an enemy that must be removed. Since the TFG was clearly not up to that task, Washington asked Ethiopia, Somalia’s old enemy, to provide the necessary troops.

Ethiopia agreed because it does NOT want stability in its old enemy, Somalia. The Ethiopians understood perfectly well (even if Washington did not) that the presence of their troops in Somalia would drive out the moderate leaders of the Islamic Courts Union and leave the country at the mercy of the crazies in the youth wing. A prostrate and divided Somalia was clearly in Ethiopia’s long-term strategic interest, so why not? Especially since the United States financed the whole operation.

The Ethiopian troops invaded in late 2006 and the Islamic Courts Union was destroyed, leaving the field clear for the movement’s radical youth wing, Al-Shabaab (The Youth). Attacks on both the TFG and the Ethiopians multiplied, and civil war and chaos returned to Mogadishu. After two years the Ethiopians, having thoroughly wrecked any prospect of peace in Somalia, pulled their troops out and went home.

Since late 2008, only the 8,000 African Union troops in the country have kept alive the fiction of a Somali government friendly to the United States, but Al-Shabaab has now gone on the offensive. The two suicide bombs that killed 74 people in Kampala last month were a warning to Ugandans to bring their troops home from Somalia, and Al-Shabaab is now trying to overrun the last small patch of Somali territory still held by the TFG.

The northern half of former Somalia, ruled by the breakaway states of Puntland and Somaliland, is already at peace and will remain so. Southern Somalia will probably have to endure more years of violence and despair because Washington never understood that the Islamic Courts Union could be its tacit ally in stabilizing Somalia.

But nothing particularly bad will happen to anybody except Somalis, so that’s all right.
by Gwynne Dyer
Source: Arab News

Daily Update

Discrimination against Aboriginals, Muslims embedded in Australia:UN

2010-08-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

The United Nations human rights panel has rebuked the Australian government over its treatment of Aboriginals.

At the release of a report from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in Geneva, one of the authors said discrimination has become “embedded” in the Australian way of life.

Committee member Patrick Thornberry lamented the fact that the Australian constitution lacks any entrenched protection against racial discrimination.

He said that that had led to a kind of structurally embedded discrimination in the way the Aboriginal intervention was being handled in the Northern Territory.

“That may be a certain disappointment, if I may say so, that this issue particularly to do with Aboriginal communities – it could have been handled in a more sensitive and culturally sensitive way,” he said.

The committee criticised what it called the “unacceptably high level of disadvantage and social dislocation” for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory.

It welcomed the Labor government’s national apology to Indigenous Australians, but said that concrete steps to increase life expectancy or improve the rate of deaths in custody had not yet been demonstrated.

The committee’s recommendations were issued in a report following a regular review of Australia’s compliance with an international treaty of 1969 prohibiting racism.

The report also raised concerns about the handling of refugees and asylum seekers, as well as anti-terrorism measures; discrimination against newer, mainly Muslim, ethnic communities; and assaults on foreign students.

Refugees

CERD voiced concerns that the policy of processing refugees outside Australia meant that people seeking shelter in Australia were not being treated properly.

The treatment of refugees, especially those arriving from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka by boat, was a contentious issue during the federal election campaign.

On processing refugees, the committee recommended that the government:

•Review its mandatory detention regime for asylum seekers so that detention is a measure of last resort;

•End the suspension of processing visa applications from Afghanistan and standardise asylum processes regardless of the country of origin or form of entry;

•Develop proper reception arrangements, especially for children, some of whom are kept in detention-like conditions away from their parents;

•Ensure that asylum seekers are not forced back to their countries of origin when they are being returned.

Companies targeted

The panel also said Australia must tighten rules governing the behaviour of its companies, especially mining firms, towards indigenous people at home and abroad.

“The committee notes with concern the absence of a legal framework regulating the obligation of Australian corporations at home and overseas whose activities, notably in the extractive sector, when carried out on the traditional territories of indigenous peoples, have had a negative impact on indigenous peoples’ rights to land, health, living environment and livelihoods,” it said.

The 18-member committee of independent experts on racism also told Australia to do more to integrate recent immigrants from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and other Muslim countries and tackle racism against Indigenous people in Australia.

Suggestions included negotiating a treaty with Indigenous Australians, giving them better access to legal aid and tackling laws in the Northern Territory that discriminate on the basis of race.

The committee bemoaned the fact that Australia had not complied with all its previous recommendations and asked the government to report back on what it was doing about the latest concerns and recommendations at the end of October, 2012.
by Emma Alberici
Source: ABC News / Reuters

Daily Update

Ground Zero Mosque - STRAWMAN

2010-08-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Today as I was fiddling around fixing things in the garage, it suddenly struck me...

"Why is the left suddenly all excited and supportive of the "right to exercise your religious faith"?

"Why are people who regularly attacking people of faith suddenly supporting the right of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to practice his faith wherever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants?"

I know that they don't really support the right to exercise your faith. Examples abound where they attack people of Christian or Jewish faith for practicing their religion in public. Their hatred for Jews and Christians is well established.

And I know that religious faith can be exercised, but not without limits. You cannot build anything, anywhere and simply avoid restrictions by claiming that such restrictions violate your freedom of religion.

I think back to when I was a member of a church that was attempting to expand its sanctuary and the local government would not allow it. It was not a question of "freedom of religion" but rather the local neighbors complained about the plan. They did not like the style of the building, the height, the number of people it would draw in.

Then it occurred to me. "The pastor should have started screaming "1st amendment!!!" The fact that he was subject to the community approving his design was irrelevant if he simply screamed "1st amendment!!!" every time someone challenged his right to do what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted. After all...who is against the 1st amendment?

This is the strawman.

They claim its about freedom of religion but its not.

Its about the people of the community deciding who and what they want in that location. If the community does not want a Rauf, or a mosque in that location, then the people should speak out.

Rauf was recorded blaming the United States for the murder of Islamic people. "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims,"

If the people of New York do not want this guy to build in their town, they have the right to speak out against him. And the government of that town has the right to listen to their people and refuse him.

This is not about 1st amendment rights. Its about the right of a community to decide whether or not they want a hate-monger to build his building in their town.

The strawman argument is exposed.

Daily Update

Beauty and tragedy in Pakistan's floods

2010-08-27T22:21:00.003-07:00

By Imran Khan
It's an odd feeling to be surrounded by water, when you should be in the middle of a field.

In southern Pakistan lies a small village called Rahimabad. It is so remote and tucked away, if you blinked you would miss it.

Now it's completely submerged in water. At dusk when the sun hits the flood waters the reflection paints an orangey hue. It's simply stunning. And tragic.

Stunning in the beauty of that sunlit moment, tragic in that Rahimabad's villagers are homeless due to the floods, children are starving and adults despondent.

This is something I have trouble reconciling. As I bob up and down in a rickety boat on the water, I hear nothing.

There's no sound of the call to prayer, no tractor pulling wheat, no children running wild.

The only sound is birdsong.

Yet in that peace, that beauty, you realise it's a moment you can't enjoy.

Hope after tragedy

The boat ride from Rahimabad to Sukkur, where I am based, takes three hours. In those three hours, each one of my travelling companions would gaze out upon the water and have the same thought: How can such beauty come from such tragedy?

Each one of my travelling companions checks themselves. Ultimately such sunsets cannot be beautiful.

But in this tragedy there is hope. That's important.

I leave the south of Pakistan today.

I leave behind four million people affected by the floods in the south of this country alone.

I leave behind haunting imagery of babies fainting in the heat, young girls the same age as my daughters, who have no clue why their lives have been ripped apart.

But I also leave behind small moments of hope, such as the many tales of heroism from communities so moved by the crisis they took action to help the most vulnerable.

They didn't wait for aid agencies, the government or for the United Nations. They acted out of love.

It's moments like those that allow you to glimpse a better future - that the misery faced by millions can and will be alleviated. At least you dare to hope that it will.

It's an awful thing to see beauty in tragedy.

But to see hope in the darkest of hours, is truly bliss.

I will return in a couple of weeks.

I have no idea what awaits me when I do, but I carry hope with me.

Daily Update

Don't panic, it's only Islamic

2010-08-27T22:21:00.002-07:00

By John Terrett
Approximately 400 people gathered in lower Manhattan this weekend to protest about the building of an Islamic cultural centre and mosque near the World Trade Centre site.

The demonstration was countered by a much smaller group of people who turned-up near by to shout slogans in favour of the complex.

The anti-Mosque demo had a healthy turn out but it was hardly the "thousands" the organisers had predicted would descend on the area angry at the proposed construction.

Heavy rain may have kept people away but those who were there were clearly worked up that a mosque could be build just steps from Ground Zero.

Here's what some of the people there had to say:

"The issue here is not religious freedom the issue is it's holy sacred ground and what is most interesting is how they can't understand that."

"I don't want the mosque here ... I know what constitution says but they are spitting in our face, the mosque people."

"They're putting a flag on their victory. This is not about peaceful Islamic people. This is about extremist groups that are going to be here."

Some say there's a real irony in the protest against the mosque because this is New York where businesses and organisations jostle side-by-side, elbow-to-elbow. In the same street as the proposed mosque there’s an off-track betting shop and a nightclub where girls can regularly be found semi-naked.

Round the corner a smaller group was making a different point – welcoming the proposed Islamic cultural centre and mosque to the area around Ground Zero.

Here's what they said:

"It's a response to this climate of fear, this climate of racism, this climate of Islam phobia and fear mongering and scapegoating and all this nastiness that has been churned up over the last few months out of nowhere."

"This is not about a mosque it is about a cultural centre where people of all faiths can go, talk, spread, talk about their cultural differences."

"We're not trying to denigrate the memories of those persons that were lost in that tragic incident nine years ago however we do have the right to pray, to worship, to live."

The mosque issue has been elevated to a national debate by President Obama and politicians campaigning for this November’s crucial mid-term congressional elections.

The wife of the imam trying to build the cultural centre and Mosque said she fears it’s the start of a backlash against Muslims.

Daisy Khan told ABC News:

“I think we are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasised anti-Semitism. That's what we feel right now. It's not even Islam phobia, it's beyond Islam phobia. It's hate of Muslims. And we are deeply concerned.”

There’s talk of a deal to build the cultural centre and mosque further away from Ground Zero – a move so far resisted by the developers.

However, until the temperature of the rhetoric is lowered … scenes like this are likely to spread here and at other potential new mosque sites across America.

Daily Update

Maid abuse case hits Saudi Arabia

2010-08-27T22:21:00.001-07:00

A Sri Lankan woman working as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia says she has been severely abused for complaining about being overworked.

LT Ariyawathi's Saudi employers reportedly hammered 24 nails and needles into her hands, legs and forehead, which had to be removed later with surgery.

Sri Lanka's government says it will report the incident to Saudi authorities.

Al Jazeera's Laura Kyle reports on a case that rights organisations say is all too common.

Hussein Shobokshi, a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat, the pan-Arab daily, told Al Jazeera that this "kind of story triggers the talk and debate to improve labour laws in the country.

"It is an issue that has been discussed for quite some time now through the Sharia Council and Human Rights Commission.

"You will soon see the ministry of labour, the Shariah Council and the Human Rights Commission jointly activate important rules and regulations in order to prevent such incidents from occurring again and punishing people who are responsible for it.

"Nowadays you hear the cases being brought to justice, you hear the issues being put out in the media. This is a novelty; it had not been the case in the past."

Daily Update

In the face of Islamophobia

2010-08-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

By Sean Bonner
Last Monday, August 23rd, artist Glen E Friedman fueled by frustration hung 9 banners out of an apartment window in downtown Manhattan's Liberty Street. The message being relayed was one of unequivocal religious tolerance. Further still, the apartment currently owned by hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, gazes directly down onto the 'Ground Zero' site.

This bold statement had two intentions. Firstly to remind those who in recent times having voiced their right to speak out against the building of Cordoba House (for its close proximity to the site), that the United States was founded on the principles of self-representation and a spectrum of personal freedoms.

Secondly, to showcase the diversity of opinion within the United States to those following this event across the globe, opposition to the cultural project is by no means the default position, and especially not in New York. Contrary to how the main stream media has chosen to portray the issue.

The Design

Though I was tasked to design the banners, the protest was a collaborative project with significant input from Glen; however the original idea was the brainchild of Russell Simmons and his wife. Measuring 7' x 3' the banners are highly visible not only in size but the context of location has given great mobility to our message of tolerance.

In fact, the apartment windows have a short but significant political history. In response to the invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2004, the 'Liberty Street Protest' was launched canvassing an anti war message, that no invasion could be justified by the events of 9/11. These windows have served as a pulpit to preach a uniting sermon of peace, acceptance and co-operation, and will continue to do so under present ownership.

The protest in 2004 served again to send a clear message that public opinion in the United States, more specifically within New York, was not blindly in favour of an invasion. The efforts of the 'Liberty Street Protest' were relayed in the domestic and international news for weeks, successfully spreading the message of peace and solidarity to millions. Hopefully the current protest can have a similar effect.

The Message

The design of the banners utilized symbols from the various major global religions to spell out the word 'coexist'. On the face of it, rather an ironic creation, as Glenn and I are of the Atheist tradition, however the symbolism reflects our attitudes towards religious practice perfectly. We ourselves may not hold your beliefs but we respect you for holding them and we cherish your right to practice them.

The inclusion of the Biblical verse (Mark 12:31) 'Love your neighbour as yourself', was primarily to demonstrate that coexistence is a millennia old concept, a value of a faith practiced by many of those opposed to the creation of Cordoba House. Something that has clearly slipped their collective attention or maybe an ad hoc insertion of the following caveat: 'Love your neighbour as yourself, as long as they hold your beliefs'.

Reverting back to the present, we pride ourselves in the United States that the first Amendment in our Constitution ensures that freedom of religious practice is protected. However, there are forces within the socio-political landscape that would prefer to circumvent such freedoms pushing an agenda of intolerance onto the unassuming, unquestioning masses.

Diversity's Asset

New York is possibly the most cosmopolitan multi racial city in the world, a bold statement, but one few could deny. It is not only frustrating but misleading for people from far afield to associate New Yorkers as a whole with the xenophobic protests against the building of the Mosque and cultural centre. While our viewpoint isn't universal in the city, it is widely held, a position that is not being reflected by the main stream media.

Our city is notorious for the many buildings for religious worship; Mosques are located all over the island and across the boroughs, along side churches, chapels, synagogues and temples. Giving the city not just a plethora of places to worship, but adding distinctly to the cultural makeup of the city, creating a great wealth of diversity in ideas, beliefs and practices that make this city the unique place it is. A diversity enjoyed by the many millions that call New York home.

Shared Values

So not only is this current spate of anti-Muslim protests 'Unamerican' as decreed by our Constitution, but also belies the ethos and spirit of the city of New York. Our banner is a better reflection of such spirit, one of collaboration, diversity, innovation, tolerance and solidarity. Values held by our friends and fellow citizens who lost loved ones in the shocking events that unfolded on September 11th, 2001.

The anti-Muslim protest is another feather in the cap of the xenophobic right; such fear mongering should not go unchecked. Such elements talk strongly about pride in American Values, but clearly have little connection to them, and this is where our frustration is born. We will fight to better represent ourselves using the mediums at our disposal, in this case, possibility the most political set of windows in Manhattan.

Sean Bonner is a pioneer in the modern internet subculture of social media, being heavily involved in a host of projects including Metblogs and Neoteny Labs.

Daily Update

Pledges to Pakistan top $800m

2010-08-26T21:36:00.003-07:00

Donors from around the world have pledged more than $800 million to help victims of its disastrous floods, Pakistani authorities say.

The continued floods have forced about 150,000 people to flee for higher ground in just the last 24 hours, the Pakistani foreign minister said on Sunday.

At least six million people have been made homeless in three weeks of floods, and 20 million affected overall.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the foreign minister, expressed gratitude for the $815.58 million in international assistance to ease the suffering from one of the worst disasters in Pakistan’s history.

“In such a situation, when the West and Europe and America are in recession and donor fatigue is being discussed, this kind of solidarity for Pakistan, I think, is very encouraging,” he told a news conference in Islamabad.

The UN had appealed for $459 million in initial response funds.

“We have already provided shelter for a million people and ordered shelter for a further 2.4 million, which is in the pipeline,” Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Islamabad, told the AFP news agency.

“We have more than doubled the rate at which we are delivering relief but, since August 11, the number of people who need emergency help has undoubtedly more than tripled. We are in a race against time.”

Response ‘too slow’

Officials expect the floodwaters will recede nationwide in the next few days as the last river torrents empty into the Arabian Sea, state news agency APP reported.

But when that happens, millions of Pakistanis will almost certainly want the government, which was already struggling with a fragile economy before the flood, to quickly deliver homes and compensation for the loss of livestock and crops.

The government has been accused of moving too slowly and Islamic charities, some with suspected links to militant groups, have moved rapidly to provide relief to Pakistanis, already frustrated with their leaders’ track record on security, poverty and chronic power shortages.

“My village has been inundated. We travelled several hours in a bullcart and now the dispensary is locked,” said Shazia Bibi, standing outside a government health centre in Punjab province.

“We use to think they were terrorists but that’s not right. They were first who came to help us,” said Hidayatullah Bokhari, a 45-year-old farmer. “We don’t want them to become our rulers but they’re not bad guys.”

Government setback

Pakistan said last week the floods meant the country would miss this year’s 4.5 per cent gross domestic product growth target, while its fiscal deficit is now projected to widen to more than eight per cent of GDP. Floods caused widespread crop damage.

If plans to spend on infrastructure, schools, factories and security forces in former Taliban strongholds in the northwest are scrapped because of the costs of the flood, that could set back government efforts to win public support.

Half a million people are living in about 5,000 schools in flood-hit areas of Pakistan where poor hygiene and sanitation, along with cramped quarters and the stifling heat, provide fertile ground for potentially fatal diseases such as cholera.

The International Monetary Fund said it would review Pakistan’s budget and economic prospects in light of the disaster in talks with government officials on Monday.

by Jonah Hull

Daily Update

Egyptians prepare for life after Mubarak

2010-08-26T21:36:00.002-07:00

So here comes the latest Egyptian joke about 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak. The president, a keen squash player – how else could he keep his jet-black hair? – calls up the sheikh of Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni Muslim cleric in the land, to ask if there are squash courts in heaven. The sheikh asks for a couple of days to consult the Almighty. Two days later, he calls Mr Mubarak back. “There’s good news and bad news,” he says. Give me the good news, snaps Mr Mubarak. “Well,” says the sheikh, “there are lots of squash courts in heaven.” And the bad news, asks the president? “You have a match there in two weeks’ time!”

The fact that the intelligence services ignore the usual suspects when this sort of joke is made does not signify a new freedom of speech or – dare one say it – a new democracy in Egypt. The truth is that the president, in poor health since a gall bladder operation in Germany, is a very old man who has no appointed successor and whose imminent demise is the only story in town, told with that familiar vein of cruel humour in which Egyptians are rivalled only by the Lebanese. The days when Mr Mubarak was called “La vache qui rit” (the cow who smiles) – the Egyptians know the joke in its French form – are gone.

A lot of them want him dead – not out of personal animosity, but because they want political change. They probably will not get it. Telling Egyptians that “only God knows” who the next president will be – Mr Mubarak actually said this – is ridiculous. Will it be his son, Gamal? The head of Egyptian intelligence, Omar Sulieman? He’s probably had too many heart problems.

But either way, it would change nothing. Of Mohamed ElBaradei, more later. The opposition “Kifaya” – “Enough” – party is regularly attacked by the security services. Perhaps Mr Mubarak does not care.

Cairo has been labouring under an intense heat wave these past two weeks – when the local papers report it on page one, you know it’s serious – and in the foetid slums of Beaulac al-Daqrour, sweating through 47 degrees, the millions of Egyptians who live under Mr Mubarak’s exhausted rule have little time for politics.

Like the Iraqis under UN sanctions, whom the West always hoped would overthrow Saddam, most Egyptians are too weary to rise up against the regime, more anxious to protect their families from poverty than to abuse the man who leaves them in such misery. Even the open sewers of al-Daqruor have dried up, leaving a black stream at the bottom, in which barefoot children play.

Just as Victorian governments always feared revolution amid the slums of London, Manchester and Liverpool, so the Egyptian authorities have layered the slums with a carapace of competing intelligence services to ensure that no serious political opposition can be sustained amid the piety and filth of Cairo.

A splurge of posters carrying a photograph of Mr Mubarak’s 47-year old businessman son, Gamal, below the bleak caption “Gamal … Egypt” – a sad gesture to Egypt’s 28 per cent illiteracy rate rather than a chic slogan by his National Democratic Party – has been disowned by his supporters, who now oddly include a member of the opposition leftist Tagammu party, Magdy el-Kurdi.

True to the methods of all good Arab socialist movements, poor Mr el-Kurdi is to be “interrogated” for violating the Tagammu’s principles. “…We don’t support individuals,” the party’s co-founder said. “Rather, we seek democracy.”

And so say all of us. The problem with Mr Mubarak’s presidency – and with Gamal, if this is to become the second caliphate in the Middle East (the capital of the first being Damascus) – is that after decades of promised improvements, most Egyptians still feel that their country has no physical or political movement. The country’s state of emergency curbs their tongues. Poverty breaks down their energy. They have been injected with political boredom.

The rich live in gated communities outside the city; indeed, all the major hotels in Cairo have become gated communities for foreigners, tourists and businessmen and women, who breathe air-conditioning, sip cold beers beside the pool, sweep to their appointments in luxury buses or limousines. For the rich, there are tennis clubs, horse-riding, boutiques, concert performances. For the poor, there is controlled religion, Dickensian housing and television soap opera. No wonder Egyptian television is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the slogan: “We started big, and we remain big.” Big – as in fat.

For, as a Cairo freelance writer, Nael Shama, noted last month, Egyptian television’s Nile News, launched in English and French in 1994 as a rival to CNN, is a flop.

“Because Nile News has … been owned and run by the Egyptian state, its freedom of expression has always been curtailed … As in all dictatorships, news reports must start with highlighting the inane announcements of the president followed by the ‘less important’ world news, be it the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York, or the start of a new war in the Middle East …”

Demonstrations and strikes – trade unions have grasped back a little power in recent months – are rarely reported. The Muslim Brotherhood, the theoretically banned but tolerated opposition party, is forbidden from all Nile News programmes.

That’s the way Egypt is run. There is a kind of facade of toleration. It’s like riding on a familiar old train, puffing round the Cairo loop-line to Giza. You already know the names of the stations by heart. Call Egypt a dictatorship and the government will tell you that democracy takes time – at least 29 years under Mr Mubarak and counting – and ask why the Brotherhood can campaign at elections if the country is so undemocratic. Forget for a moment that an awful lot of the Brotherhood are regularly banged up, and you will also be told of the freedom of the press. Forget for a moment that journalists are regularly banged up, and you will be told that even the president enjoys the jokes told against him.

“If this was a Saddam-style dictatorship,” an old friend and Mubarak loyalist asked me, “do you think we’d have the internet so freely available to our youth?”

But there you have to signal red and stop the train. For, two months ago, a 28-year old human rights activist called Khaled Said was dragged out of an Alexandria internet cafe by two cops, Awad Sulieman and Mahmoud Salah Mahmoud – the names are important because Egyptian policemen are usually allowed anonymity – who, in a vicious assault, smashed his head against a wall and killed him. The reason for his murder, his mother suspects, is that Mr Said possessed a videotape of some cops sharing out drugs seized during a police raid.

Even before the autopsy, however, the Egyptian interior ministry said that Mr Said had criminal convictions, evaded national service and had swallowed a packet of marijuana when he saw the police arrive. The initial autopsy claimed that Mr Said died by asphyxiating on this plastic wrap of drugs, a conclusion disputed by international forensic pathologists, who said that photographs of the autopsy were “disturbingly amateurish”, and questioned the lesions on Mr Said’s corpse.

The pathologists said they were consistent with a beating during arrest rather than the rather extraordinary police claim that their prisoner had “fallen from a stretcher while being taken to an ambulance”. Why would he fall from a stretcher?

In any event, when the case came to court last month, it turned out that the cops were charged only with “misuse of force”, which carried a sentence of one year’s imprisonment.

In court, lawyers for the Said family demanded the charges should be changed to murder. Yet, in a society where police brutality is regarded as routine – a policeman sentenced for sodomising a prisoner with a broom returned to the force after a brief period of imprisonment – no one has high hopes that justice will be done.

Many remember the case of a man in Upper Egypt who was charged by police with murdering his absent wife. After the usual fisticuffs and battering of the prisoner, he confessed to the crime – another police “success” which lost some of its glow when the wife returned to her village, explaining that she had stayed with neighbours after a row with her husband. It must, as they say, have been quite an interrogation.

It’s as if the police don’t have enough on their hands already. In Old Cairo, for example, they man iron barricades around the Coptic streets. Whereas the occasional patrol would move through the area a few years ago, there are now muhabarat intelligence service members guarding the barriers. Even tourists must dismount from their buses and be checked by the cops to visit the Christian churches. Just how bad Muslim-Coptic relations have become was evident last month when a priest claimed that his wife had been kidnapped.

Word went round that she had been seized by Muslims. The cops found her staying with Coptic friends because – like the wife in Upper Egypt – she had had a row with her husband. The police took her. President Mubarak has renewed the emergency laws under which Egypt has been governed for decades, because of “serious threats against national security” and “the struggle against terrorism and drug trafficking”. Although 500 prisoners under “administrative detention” – including 191 Muslim Brothers – were freed under an amended law three months ago, around 9,500 men remain in prison for largely political offences, men who should also have been given their freedom, according to the president of the Egyptian parliament, Ahmad Fathi Surour.

Complaints against the government – for widespread corruption, of course, for suppression of human rights, for police brutality – rise almost monthly. There is widespread criticism of Egypt’s new agreement with oil companies over the sharing out of profits on oil exploration in the desert, on the grounds that it gives greater advantages to foreign investors than to Egypt. The man who signed the most important exploration agreement in the history of Egypt was Tony Hayward of BP.

Meanwhile, even in education, the Mubarak regime plays off Muslim and Western fears. No sooner had the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Hany Halal, last month banned female students from wearing the “niqab” covering in Egyptian universities – thus bringing Egypt into line with Syria (and France) – than the Minister of Education, Ahmed Zaki Badr, announced that private international schools in Egypt – the British School and the Canadian School, for example – must include Arabic language and the religion and history of Egypt in their courses; their pupils must salute the Egyptian flag at the start of each school day. Give state school Muslims a taste of secularism here, make the secular schools remember religion. It’s typical “Mubarakism” – it confuses the masses while you arrange the next elections.

It’s next year’s presidential elections, of course – rather than the imminent parliamentary poll – that Mr Mubarak is watching. Forget, I fear, poor Mr ElBaradei, beloved by the elite youth and middle classes of Egypt for his vague intention to oppose Mr Mubarak. He will only stand, he says, if the elections are truly democratic – which is like asking the Nile to flow upstream. The government’s election riggers have honed their practice to PhD standards since Nasser’s dictatorship, and they are not likely to change. ElBaradei is what you might call a “nice” man, but Egyptian elections, which usually anoint the pharaoh with a result in the 90 per cent range, are unlikely to embrace the former UN arms inspector.

And what of Egypt as a great Arab power? Its status as the Great Peacemaker is fading. Turkey is – or was – the Great Negotiator in the Middle East. And the peace treaty with Israel – which Anwar El Sadat believed would give international prestige to Egypt – has neutered his country’s independence. In Gaza, Egypt finds itself acting as a colonial vassal, sealing off 1.5 million Palestinians to maintain Israel’s outrageous siege.

The American-Israeli alliance, along with the UN and the EU, has forced Egypt into the complicity of semi-occupation. Egypt briefly opened its frontier to Gaza after the Turkish flotilla killings – but why did it not do this before? Because, needless to say, it fears Hamas even more than Israel. Because if Israel regards Hamas as an Iranian proxy, Egypt regards it as an infection. It will willingly help Israel to bottle up the Islamist germs if this protects Egypt from a return to an Islamist insurgency.

Egyptians know their history. They know what Gamal Abdel Nasser represented – heroism and failure – and what Sadat represented: heroism, peace and humiliation. And Mr Mubarak? Let’s see when the squash courts open.

Candidates for succession

1: Gamal Mubarak

Both Gamal and his father have denied that he wants to take over as president of Egypt, but his steady ascent through the country’s political life has indicated otherwise. He has long been seen within the country as the heir apparent. And a poster campaign that touted him as Egypt’s new leader had to be disowned by his party. If he did take over from his father, he would be following the lead of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who took over after his own father’s death.

2: Omar Suleiman

The senior intelligence official for Hosni Mubarak has not publicly expressed interest in the leadership position. But he is a major figure in the leadership structure of Egypt. He is involved in the constant negotations with Hamas over the future of Gaza. However, health problems, specifically his heart, do count against him achieving the country’s top job.

3: Mohamed ElBaradei

The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei has not yet confirmed whether he will stand for the presidency, but many in Egypt are hoping that he will and see him as the man to bring democratic reform to the country. Dr ElBaradei – who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 while in charge of the UN’s nuclear agency – is leading a campaign for constitutional change that has so far gathered around 770,000 signatures, and he has stated that he will only think about running for president if the election is fair.

by Robert Fisk
Source: Independent (UK)

Daily Update

Poll shows Americans conflicted on Islam

2010-08-26T21:36:00.001-07:00

New poll reveals sharp drop in support for Muslim faith since 2005 even though less see it as violent.

Americans are conflicted on Islam, a new poll showed Tuesday, revealing a sharp drop in support for the Muslim faith since 2005 even though less people see it as a violent religion.

A slim majority (51 percent) objected to the building of an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.

But 62 percent of the 1,003 people surveyed last week by the respected Pew Research Center agreed that Muslims should have the same rights as other groups to build houses of worship in local communities.

In July 2005, 41 percent of those questioned in a similar poll had a favorable opinion of Islam. That number plummeted to just 30 percent in Tuesday's survey.

However, the percentage that were unfavorable to Islam rose only slightly from 36 percent to 38 percent, and almost a third of those questioned said they didn't know how they felt about the Muslim faith.

Last year, 38 percent of those polled said they thought Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. That number had slipped to 35 percent in the latest poll.

But fewer people, 42 percent rather than 45 percent, believed the inverse was true and almost a quarter were now undecided on Islam's propensity to drive violent behavior.

The results, as in the past, were partisan. By a ratio of more than two-to-one, Republicans had an unfavorable opinion of Islam, whereas 41 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of the faith.

Almost three-quarters of the Republicans polled (74 percent) were opposed to the construction of an Islamic center and mosque just a few blocks from Ground Zero, while only 39 percent of Democrats objected.

Several hundred protesters staged rival demonstrations Sunday for and against the controversial mosque building plans, some brandishing signs against Islam and others denouncing religious bigotry.

The protests reflect an intensifying national debate that has exposed a raw nerve over US attitudes toward Islam nearly nine years after Al-Qaeda militants flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Daily Update

Iranian foreign policy – delusional or pragmatic?

2010-08-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

Book review of Shireen Hunter’s 'Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order'.
Benjamin Tua – BRAZIL

Speculation has spiked concerning the confrontation between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany over Iran’s nuclear program. At issue is whether the Obama administration’s measured policy of selective pressure and engagement with Tehran will create a dynamic that will unfreeze the deadlock between the two countries or the failure of sanctions and diplomacy to resolve the differences over the nuclear program will lead to Israeli and/or US military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In this context, Shireen Hunter’s new book, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order (Praeger, 2010), is especially timely.

Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat, served in London and Geneva, and at the UN, between 1966 and 1978. She has an intimate feel for the nuances of Iranian foreign policy; and her book is a valuable, detailed critique of the Islamic Republic’s foreign relations since its founding in 1979.

Swimming against the Tide

Hunter tells us that Iran has hurt itself by not adjusting to the new international realities brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The demise of the USSR, she argues, freed the West to toughen its policy towards Iran and caused countries such as Turkey to see Iran more as a rival than a partner in containing the Soviets. But her real point is that Iran cannot achieve its national goals as long as it continues to butt heads with the United States. Hunter considers Iranian foreign policy and diplomacy “astonishingly inept” and naïve; and she castigates the Iranian leadership for not realizing that Iran’s relations with the US “affect everything.”

Hunter notes that Iran pays a huge price for the tensions its nuclear program engenders with the United States. Tehran’s provocative tone towards Israel simply underscores the failure of Iranian elites to understand “the domestic political dynamics of US foreign policy.” It consolidates Israel’s view of Iran as an implacable foe that must be constrained at all costs, and leads it to seek to ensure that America will not engage with Iran.

Tied up in Knots

Hunter also argues that Iran is a victim of its own diversity. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 shifted the balance of power and privileges to religious elements. However, it also revived deep-rooted pre-Islamic culture and identity. Those who lean toward the “Iranian pole” favor a more nationalistic and realist foreign policy than the Islamists. However, the tensions engendered by Iran’s historical experience have endowed Iran’s foreign policy with a measure of unrealism about the country’s international role and position not matched by its actual power and ability.

Moreover, personal rivalries and Iran’s complicated decision-making system make foreign policy formulation and decisions torturously complex and difficult. Thus, Hunter believes, the rivalry between President Ahmadinejad and the speaker of the parliament, as well as criticism from some reformist politicians, forced a delay in Iran’s acceptance of the October 2009 draft agreement with the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany on the transfer of low-enriched uranium from Iran.

The Pragmatic Side

Despite the pervasive criticism, Hunter appears to be of two minds regarding Tehran’s diplomacy. She acknowledges that Iran has shown caution in many instances; and she gives many examples of Iranian pragmatism and sophistication in its diplomatic efforts.

Iran has cited close US-Israel ties as a reason for not having relations with Washington. However, Tehran has ignored Sino-Israeli relations, which include large arms sales to China. In fact, apart from the US and a few Western countries, Iran does not go out of its way to antagonize its interlocutors. Iran has played down the ideological factor in its relations with Turkey and in its outreach to its Arab neighbors, and has not retaliated against Pakistan despite attacks on Iranian officials in Pakistan and competition for influence in Afghanistan, where the two countries have backed different groups. Indeed, despite US support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran exercised moderation and outreach towards the US and has adopted a similar policy with respect to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hunter notes instances where Iranian restraint seems to have paid off, as in Pakistani-Iranian intelligence cooperation. Also, Iran’s cautious policy toward the Caucasus and the Muslim-inhabited republics of the former Soviet Union helped stabilize Russo-Iranian relations.

The Broader Context

However, Hunter largely ignores developments which might help explain the thinking behind Iran’s policies that bring it into conflict with the US. In this category is the changing balance of forces in the Middle East, including the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas, and Israel’s increasing isolation in the region, as evidenced in part by its growing alienation from Turkey, which has moved closer to Iran. She underplays the importance of Iran’s relations with Syria and the Gulf states, and the Islamic Republic’s high standing with the Arab people – and with Muslims worldwide – because of its support for Hezbollah and the Palestinians.

Iran has calculated that the US is over-extended in the Middle East and that Israel’s policies are not sustainable over the longer term. Tehran seems to think that its current policies will position the country to take advantage of an emerging realignment of forces in the region and beyond, which will allow the country to serve as a bridge between Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Unfolding Opportunities

The changed international and regional environment has created opportunities as well as new problems for Iran. The collapse of the Soviet Union, for example, opened up possibilities for Iran to develop ties with the former Soviet republics, with which it has historical, cultural and other ties; and it has allowed Iran to adjust its relations with Russia and Turkey.

Hunter also ignores the utility to Iran of the ambiguity surrounding its nuclear program. This uncertainty has helped induce the international community to begin to address the matter of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear policy also increases the pressure on both the Arab states and Israel to achieve a regional peace. A satisfactory settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict would diminish both the need for Israel to maintain a nuclear capability outside the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection regime and the motivation for others to develop their own programs.

Hunter discusses the involvement of Israel in the mid-eighties in the arms-to-Iran for US-hostages-in-Lebanon deal generally known as the Iran-Contra affair. However, she is silent about earlier contacts between Israel and the Islamic Republic regarding military sales. Iran and Israel have a considerable history of cooperation, and, in the event of a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, both sides could quickly change their attitudes to one another. Such a change also could occur in the context of an impending shift in US-Iranian relations.

Public attention normally focuses on President Ahmadinejad’s controversial comments on the Holocaust and Israel’s right to exist. However, Iran also has made more moderate statements regarding the Arab-Israeli peace process and Tehran’s readiness to accept a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is acceptable to the Palestinians.

Finally, Hunter’s book would have benefited from additional discussion of how the United States might encourage the Iranian regime to continue to moderate and mature, as well as what role Iran might play in regional security arrangements. As Hunter points out, Iran has advanced several proposals in this regard.

Benjamin Tua, an independent analyst, is a retired US Foreign Service Officer. He served in Brazil, the former Soviet Union, Israel, Italy, Japan, and Lesotho.

Daily Update

Algeria creates special anti-corruption agency

2010-08-26T06:06:00.003-07:00

Algerian government says 'centralisation will improve effectiveness of fighting corruption'.

ALGIERS - The Algerian government decided Wednesday to create a special anti-corruption agency to improve the country's ability to combat corruption.

The council of ministers approved the creation of a central anti-corruption office whose officers will be empowered to conduct investigations across the north African country.

"This centralisation will improve the effectiveness of fighting corruption inside the country, as well as facilitating, in the future, international cooperation with Interpol against this scourge," the government said in statement.

Algeria's parliament adopted a law in 2006 that called for the creation of a central anti-corruption agency as part of an overall national strategy to battle corruption.

Suspicions of corruption have swirled around the state-owned energy giant Sonatrach as well as the construction of a major highway in the west of the country.

Daily Update

Sri Lankan maid returns from Saudi with 24 nails inside body

2010-08-26T06:06:00.002-07:00

Housemaid says tortured by employer as Sri Lanka coordinates probe with Saudi authorities.

COLOMBO - A Sri Lankan housemaid has returned home from Saudi Arabia with 24 nails embedded in her body after allegedly being tortured by her employer, officials said Wednesday.

A government minister said police were investigating a complaint from L. T. Ariyawathi, 49, that her Saudi employer tortured her and drove nails into her body as punishment.

"We are conducting an investigation and we will coordinate with Saudi authorities to have the suspects arrested," Economic Development Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena told reporters.

The woman travelled to Saudi Arabia in March and returned home last week, complaining of abuse by her employer.

Abeywardena said doctors who examined the woman found the nails inside her body and she was currently being treated at a local hospital.

Some of the nails are about two inches (five centimetres) long, according to pictures of the X-rays published in the local press, and were driven beneath the skin of Ariyawathi's hands, feet and legs.

According to Sri Lanka's Foreign Employment Bureau, around 1.8 million Sri Lankans are employed abroad, of whom 70 percent are women.

Most are employed as housemaids in the Middle East, while smaller numbers work in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Complaints of harassment are made regularly and the government has made it compulsory for migrant workers to register with local authorities, to ensure they can be provided with consular services if they encounter problems.

Daily Update

Ancient Egyptian city found in oasis on desert trade route

2010-08-26T06:06:00.001-07:00

Archaeologists uncover pharaonic settlement in Egyptian oasis dating back to 1600 BC.

CAIRO - Archaeologists have uncovered a pharaonic settlement in an Egyptian oasis that may have supplied food for troops along Saharan trade routes, Egypt's antiquities department said on Wednesday.

Yale University's American-Egyptian mission, which found the site in Kharga, the most southerly of the ring of oases that circle Egypt's Western Desert, believes it was a major administrative centre dating back to around 1600 BC.

The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said that the site measured one kilometre (more than half a mile) by 250 metres (yards) and lay along the bustling desert caravan routes connecting the Nile Valley through the Western Desert with points as distant as Darfur in western Sudan.

The head of the Yale mission, John Coleman Darnell, said part of an ancient bakery was also found with enough remains in rubbish dumps outside to suggest it may even have been feeding an army, the antiquities department said.

Egyptian Culture Minister Faruq Hosni said the find was made as part of a wider effort to map pharaonic Egypt's trade routes into the Sahara dubbed the Theban Desert Road Survey.

Daily Update

Hejab at the seaside in Iran

2010-08-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

Women in Iran required to maintain strict dress requirements when swimming in public.
By Javad Montazeri – CASPIN SEA, Iran

The shores of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran is the land of my childhood, on which I still look back with nostalgia.

These pictures, taken nearly 30 years after my own seaside memories, show how much things have changed, especially for women who now come to the beach in full hejab or Islamic dress where they would once have worn swimming costumes or bikinis.

When I was six or seven, my family lived in the coastal town of Nowshahr in Mazandaran province. Every Friday, my father would take my brother and me to the seaside so that we could spend the weekend swimming and relaxing on the beach.

Nowadays, men can still swim freely and boys freely whereas women have to be are completely covered up, even when they go into the sea to swim.

Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women could wear bikinis without attracting the looks that men now cast on them even though they are fully clothed.

Sometimes my father would point out a yacht moored near the shore belonging to the Shah’s family, with the monarch himself at the helm. At that time I did not grasp the significance of a national leader relaxing with no entourage of bodyguards around him.

Iran has long shorelines in the south as well as on the northern Caspian coast, offering the potential for tourism all year round.

After the revolution, the beaches gradually became neglected and holiday villas, beachside hotels and recreational centres were seized by the new regime.

These days, there are hotels and tourist lodges along the Caspian coast, which play host to families from the capital Tehran and other parts of Iran in the summer.

Iranian officials have on occasion talked of segregating beaches with fibreglass partitions, which would allow women to go into the water in swimwear, but little has come of these plans.

Javad Montazeri is a photojournalist and multimedia expert. He formerly ran the photography desks at several Iranian daily newspapers.

Daily Update

Russian Authorities Kill 5 Suspected Rebels in Dagestan

2010-08-25T06:12:00.002-07:00

Russian authorities killed five suspected rebels in the volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan who opened fire on police as they attempted to stop their car, officials said on Wednesday.
The latest skirmish between authorities and militants took place during an attempted identity check late Tuesday in the town of Khasavyurt near Chechnya, the site of two bloody wars with separatists in the 1990s.
"Five members of an illegal armed group have been eliminated by return fire," the regional interior ministry said in a statement. Three automatic rifles and ammunition were found in the car during a search, it said.
Dagestan is part of Russia's volatile North Caucasus region where shootings and bomb attacks are nearly a daily occurrence.
Source: Al Manar

Daily Update

San Diego Muslims to Hold Youth Conference

2010-08-25T06:12:00.001-07:00

the San Diego Muslim community will hold a day-long conference for American Muslim youth at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD). The theme of the conference is “Muslim Youth in America: Seeking the Straight Path.”

WHAT: “Muslim Youth in America: Seeking the Straight Path” Conference
WHEN: Saturday, July 24th, 10 a.m. – 11 p.m.; A Press Conference for the event will be held at 1 p.m. in the 2nd Floor Library, Islamic Center of San Diego.
WHERE: Multipurpose Room (1st Floor) Islamic Center of San Diego, 7050 Eckstrom Avenue, San Diego, CA 92111
CONTACT: CAIR San Diego Public Relations Director Edgar Hopida, 619-913-0719 or 858-278-4547, E-mail: ehopida@cair.com

The conference will feature dialogue-oriented sessions on the development of a good Muslim spiritual character and the importance of obtaining both religious and secular education. Other discussions will focus on “Radicalization of American Muslim Youth: Myth or Reality” and on social problems that are experienced by Muslim youth.

“The purpose of this conference is to provide Muslim youth a constructive environment in which to discuss issues of spirituality, education, activism, and social problems in order to help them pursue a path that will positively impact the broader society,” said CAIR-San Diego Public Relations Director Edgar Hopida.

The conference is sponsored by the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD), Masjidul Taqwa, the Council on American Islamic Relations - San Diego Chapter (CAIR-San Diego), Logan Islamic Community Center (LICC), and Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth San Diego.

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties group. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

Daily Update

MCB Congratulates British Muslims Named in Queen's Honours List

2010-08-25T06:12:00.000-07:00

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, today congratulated those who were named in the Queen's Birthday Honour's List. He said: "These honours recognise those who have made valuable contributions to our country. I congratulate all those who have been named, including those British Muslims whose contribution to our country and to our community has been recognised by the Queen. They are role models for our community."

Those honoured include Judge Khurshid Drabu, election commissioner and advisor to the Muslim Council of Britain. He was conferred a CBE. While Jehangir Malik, of MCB affiliate Islamic Relief, was honoured with an OBE.

Full list of British Muslims honoured:

Mrs Naila ZAFFAR CBE
Headteacher, Copthorne Primary School, Bradford. For services to local and national Education. (Bradford, West Yorkshire)

Judge Khurshid Drabu CBE
For services to Community Relations. (Winchester, Hampshire)

Dr Husna AHMAD OBE
Chief Executive Officer, Faith Regeneration Foundation. For services to Disadvantaged People.

Maqsood AHMAD OBE
Lately Head of Police Equality and Diversity
Policy, Home Office.

Mockbul ALI OBE
Islamic Issues Adviser, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Dalwardin BABU OBE
Chief Superintendent, Metropolitan Police Service. For services to the Police. (London, N10)

Dr Maha Taysir BARAKAT
Co-Founder, Imperial College Diabetes Centre, Abu Dhabi. For services to medical research, training and public health in the United Arab Emirates

Mashuq HUSSAIN OBE
For services to Young People and to Community Relations in Burnley and Pendle, Lancashire.
(Nelson, Lancashire)

Taha Mohammad IDRIS OBE
Chief Executive, Swansea Bay Race Equality Council. For services to Community Relations.

Jehangir MALIK OBE
For services to Islamic Relief.

Mohammad NAZIR OBE
Chairman, West Midlands Ethnic Minority Business Forum. For services to Business.

Ms Saima AFZAL MBE
For services to the Police and to Community Relations in Lancashire.

Zaheer AHMAD MBE
Constable, British Transport Police. For services to the Police. (London, E17)

Basheer AHMED MBE
Honorary Life Vice-President, Race Equality Council of Lincolnshire. For services to Community Relations. (Lincoln, Lincolnshire)

Ms Shanaz AHMED MBE
For services to the Asian community in the East End of London. (London, E1)

Miss Ronika AMIN MBE
Grade D, Ministry of Defence. (Middlesex)

Dr Mahvash HUSSAIN-GAMBLES MBE
Founder and Chief Executive, Saaf International Ltd. For services to the Beauty Industry and to International Trade. (Leeds, West Yorkshire)

Bakhtiar Ahmad GILANI MBE
For services to the community in Greater Manchester. Greater Manchester)

Ms Hanan Ally IBRAHIM MBE
Founder, Somali Family Support Group. For services to Black and Minority Ethnic People. (Middlesex)

Mrs Abida IQBAL MBE
For services to the community in London Borough of Redbridge. (Ilford, Essex)

Mrs Marzia SAYANI MBE
Executive Officer, Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions. (Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire)

Dr Salah EL-SHARKAWI MBE
Consultant Clinical Oncologist, South West Wales Cancer Centre, Swansea. For services to Medicine.(Swansea, West Glamorgan)

Mrs Souad TALSI MBE
For services to the British Moroccan community in London. (Surrey)
Source: The Muslim Council of Britain

Daily Update

Zakir Naik Exclusion Order a Serious Error of Judgement

2010-08-25T06:11:00.000-07:00

The Muslim Council of Britain deplores Home Secretary Theresa May’s uncharacteristically intemperate move to ban the renowned Indian mainstream Islamic scholar Dr. Zakir Abdul-Karim Naik, from a speakers’ tour in the UK, reported in the media (Daily Telegraph, 18th June 2010), apparently because of his “unacceptable behaviour” and that his visit “would not be conducive to the public good”.

The Home Secretary’s action serves to demonise the very voices within the world ready for debate and discussion. The tour would have been a golden opportunity for young Muslims who are eager to hear the true messages of Islam which promote understanding between communities.

It appears that Government has responded to a recent campaign of vilification against the scholar, ignoring what Dr Naik stated on 11th June 2010: “the purpose of this statement is in response to the recent press reports about my intended tour to the UK in June 2010, including the things I am supposed to have previously said including their context and my views about terrorism and violent extremism in the light of the beautiful faith of Islam...as a student of comparative religion my work has involved engaging in constructive discussion with people of other major faiths, promoting similarities and converging values for a common platform of Peace using the commonalities that bind us all together....”

Expressing his grave concern at the decision, the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari said today "this exclusion order demonstrates the double standards practised by the government concerning freedom of speech. While preachers of hate such as Geert Wilders are free to promote their bigotry in this country, respected Muslim scholars such as Dr Naik are refused entry to the UK under false pretences. It is deeply regrettable this is likely to cause serious damage to community cohesion in our country."
Source: The Muslim Council of Britain

Daily Update

Dubai airport July passenger traffic hits 4.3 million record

2010-08-24T09:52:00.002-07:00

Busiest travel hub in Middle East hits monthly record in July, up 14.3% from year earlier.

DUBAI - Dubai Airport, the busiest travel hub in the Middle East, said on Tuesday it hit a monthly record in July by handling 4.3 million passengers, up 14.3 percent from a year earlier.

This was the first time the airport broke the threshold of four million passengers in one month, Dubai Airports said.

It brought the total figure of passengers handled in the first seven months of this year to 26.9 million.

The airport had handled 3.77 million passengers in July 2009, while the total figure for 2009 was 42 million.

"This is an important milestone that reflects the consistent growth we have seen in recent years," said Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports.

In June, Dubai opened its second airport, the Dubai World Central-Al Maktoum International Airport. Touted to become the world's largest when completed, it will be confined to cargo in the first nine month of operation.

Daily Update