Archive for September 17th, 2008
ETA tries to kill a policeman in Vizcaya
You know, they are peaceful guys these ETA lads:
ETA terrorist group tried to kill a policeman on Tuesday with a bomb placed on the underside of his vehicle. The bomb did not explode because its mechanism of activation was defective. It was detected by agents from the National Police Corps in the agent’s car when it was entering Basauri’s police station. The agent went from Bilbao to Basauri with the bomb ready to explode.
ETA intenta asesinar a un policía nacional en Vizcaya – Libertad Digital – Nacional.
On other news, Spanish Supreme Tribunal has considered illegal the political party, Basque Nationalist Action, because of its connections with ETA. They have considered that this political party is the political heir of Batasuna, already illegalised, and has been used as an instrument by ETA.
Naser Khader calls on Denmark to condemn Islamism at Durban II
Later this year, the United Nations will hold a conference on racism. Durban II in Geneva. In spite of this conference, which, like the first, is being hijacked by Islamic countries to support Sharia, the Danish government has chosen to participate. Other countries, including Canada, will boycott it. Now that Denmark chooses to participate, this opportunity must be seized to make a firm stand.
I believe that the Danish government should use Durban II to propose a condemnation of political Islam as a racist ideology. We owe it to ourselves and to our soldiers, who set their lives on the line fighting terrorism on the battlefield, that we at the lofty conferences in the international society act equally firmly and with principle against Islamism.
The Secular Conscience: Naser Khader calls on Denmark to condemn Islamism at Durban II.
- Nasser Khader in Wikipedia.
- Nasser Khader’s website (in Danish).
Related posts:
Bolivia: Pando’s Prefect under arrest
Bolivian Army has arrested the Prefect of the Department of Pando, Leopoldo Fernández. He had been accused of the recent political violence which left at least 30 dead.
The capital of the departmen, Cobija, is now under the Army’s control.
Feernández had said that the Government wanted to arrest him and placed Pando under military control to prevent people “from knowing the truth” of the violent deeds committed last week.
BBC Mundo | América Latina | Bolivia: arrestan a prefecto.
More on Bolivian unrest:
- A Crisis Highlights Divisions In Bolivia – NYTimes.com
- Bolivia’s president calls unrest an attempted coup
- Bolivia’s Morales defiant after unrest
After González’s arrest, the prefects from Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas, and the one from Tarija, Mario Cossío, signed a pre-agreement to open the negotiation with Evo Morales and central Government.
We have, on the other hand, to know if the prefects from Beni, Ernesto Suárez, and Chuquisaca, Savina Cuéllar, sign this pre-agreement or not. If this is the case, political dialogue in Bolivia will begin in Cochabamba on Thursday. It will be about all the subjects which have caused the confrontation between the Government and the oposition. Catholic Church, several European countries and several inter-American international organizations will take part in it as mediators.
Related posts: Morales struggles to control Bolivia amid violence.
Technorati tags: Evo Morales,Bolivia,Leopoldo Fernández,violence,violence in Bolivia,Pando
Pakistan: couple falls victim to honour killing
Honour killing took the lives of yet another couple here in the Sherakot area of district Kohistan in the wee hours of Monday. Sources said Saleem, son of Mairaj, and Khazana Bibi, wife of Rawan Shah, were allegedly shot dead on suspicion of having illicit relations.
Couple falls victim to honour killing.
This happens after the monstruous killing of five women (three teenagers and two relatives who wanted to protect them) by being buried alive. For a background on this story, read here and here.
Also the rate of rapes is growing in Karachi: at least 100 rapes a day.
Somalia: French Army frees another two hostages
A French couple held hostage by Somali pirates for two weeks have been freed by the French army in an operation in which one pirate was killed, the Elysee presidential palace announced Tuesday.
As a result, Sarkozy has called upon international community to fight piracy:
(…) “The pirates now know that they are taking risks, big risks,” Sarkozy said.
Sarkozy said he ordered the rescue when it became clear that the pirates planned to take the hostages to Eyl, a Somali zone that serves as a base for numerous pirates.
Freeing them would have been difficult once they got there and “their captivity could have lasted months,” Sarkozy said.
Vicki writes why this operation is really important in the fight against piracy:
Eyl is a port town in the autonomous region of Puntland. At least 10 ships are known to be held there, along with approximately 130 hostages. Most of these languish there for months until the ship owners pay increasingly large ransoms. Sarkozy said that no ransom was paid in this instance. That is good news, since the profits from the ransoms are being invested in drug trafficking, which in turn is being used to sponsor insurgency movements in Somalia’s unstable coalition of states.
For a background on this story, click here.
Related article: Somali pirates plunder is used to fund terrorism, expers fear (via EuropeNews).
Related posts:
If you want to defend the rights of kidnapped hostages, you can join the Facebook group Pray for the hostages. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, just that you’re interested in praying for them.
Erdogan, Zapatero and the Alliance of Civilizations
In a sign of his simmering anger about what he sees as baseless accusations against Islam in the West, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, has called on the international community to declare the enmity against Islam a “crime against humanity”.
Addressing Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, his Spanish counterpart, and about 2,500 other guests in Istanbul at a celebratory iftar meal on Monday, Mr Erdogan said: “No culture, no civilisation should belittle the other, despise the other or see the other as an enemy.” [...]
In the Alliance of Civilisations, Mr Erdogan has emerged as a leading representative of the Islamic countries, said Semih Idiz, a foreign policy columnist with the daily Milliyet. As a politician with roots in political Islam and leader of a party that has many pious Muslims among its voters, Mr Erdogan is very sensitive to what he sees as western prejudices towards Muslims, Mr Idiz said.
Jihad Watch: Turkish Prime Minister: “Islamophobia” a “crime against humanity”.
Meanwhile Zapatero is leading the defense of Turkey before the European Union:
(Zapatero) used his trip to Istambul to defend that EU needs Turks to achieve the “projection and the strategic leadership that today, in some cases, it does not have”. A vision that is not supported neither by French President, Sarkozy, nor German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
His insistence in the suitability of Turkish entry in the EU is related to his defense of the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative that is seen by Erdogan with the same enthusiam as Zapatero. And it explains fully why the Prime Minister and leader of moderate Islamist political party AKP (Development and Justice) has invited Zapatero to the banquet by which Muslims break Ramadam’s fast.
(…) Rodríguez Zapatero, a so committed laicist that he provoked uneasiness in the Vatican when he refused to attend the Pope’s Mass in Valencia in July 2007, thanked Erdogan because of his “hospitality” and stated before nearly 2.500 people attending the banquet his will to enjoy of the celebration not as a “foreigner, but with the attitude of someone who is President of Spain, a country which is proud of the influence of Islam in our history and of its rich legacy in our language and in our artistic heritage”.
The ceremony was very simple. A supper which began with a prayer and ended with two speeches. Zapatero was also given a rug, similar to the one which is used for praying.
What would happen if Don John of Austria and the rest of Spanish people who fought at Lepanto would rise from the dead? Perhaps they would die again out of emotion…
By the way, anyone seeing any contradiction between being a “convinced laicist” and attending an Islamic prayer?
Related post: Erdogan in Germany: “Assimilation is a crime against humanity”.
Breaking! Car bomb explodes outside US embassy in Yemen (+)
A car bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen on Wednesday, officials and witnesses said.
An embassy spokesman told NBC News that the heavily-fortified compound’s main gate was hit by an explosion at 9:15 a.m. local time. The blast was followed by “several secondary explosions”, the spokesman said. Witnesses also reported hearing heavy gunfire.
Smoke was seen rising from the site and regional TV news networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya reported that one of the embassy’s buildings was ablaze.
According to local reports, a second car carrying gunmen in police uniforms arrived at the scene soon after the car bomb exploded. They reportedly immediately began firing at the embassy’s guards.
Car bomb hits U.S. Embassy in Yemen – Mideast/N. Africa – msnbc.com.
(+) According to a US official, the attack has killed 10 people (six Yemeni guards and four civilians) and wounded seven Yemeni nationals .
