That he was raised as a Muslim and schooled for four years in an Indonesian Madrassa, even suggesting that he

“He was a Muslim, but he concealed it,”

and

the young Obama was given the name Hussein by his Muslim father

Killing two birds with one stone, the smear was claimed to have come from the other lead Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, also without sources.

After a number of major (conservative) news networks put it on, a few “corrections were made”. Said the Co-Host of “Fox and Friends”

We’re just being fair

.

Some are even going so far as to suggest he is some kind of Manchurian Candidate of radical Islam.

CNN easily debunked all of this of course, I wish this had been a joke, but it wasn’t. The idea that somebody would fabricate a rumour of this kind is revolting, so too is the regretable fact that claiming him to be Muslim is in itself considered enough to derail a campaign.

What a world………

It seems he’s decided to shake things up. No more being cushy on Shiite militias, increased presence and action in Anbar province.

What I found most worrying was when he discussed the broader picture, he is going to engage other countries in the region as many have proposed, but not quite as has generally been suggested saying that:

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity – and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

This goes even further than the previous periodic accusations aimed at Iran. He also brought up the recent deployment of another carrier in the Persian Gulf.

Are strikes on targets in Syria and Iran really being considered? Hard to say but it is certainly worrisome.

He also has further outlined the crucial position of Iraq in his view of the “global war on terror”, and while many here in the U.S. have been describing this as the last serious effort to fix Iraq the U.S. has the patience to make (the Iraqis government is generally blamed here for not trying hard enough), Bush’s words have made it abundantly clear that he does not share that opinion, or at least won’t admit it if he does.

A Bahraini athlete who ran and won a marathon in Israel without permission has been stripped of his citizenship.
Bahrain’s sport authorities said Mushir Salem Jawher, who was born in Kenya but moved to Bahrain in 2003, had violated the laws of the country.

Link

Who comes up the idea to do these kinds of things? and in what conflict besides the Arab-Israeli one do such absurd snubs have so much importance?

This committee could just have easily have congratulated him on beating the Israelis as condemned him for competing, and then everyone would have been happy. Maybe what pissed off the committee was the comment that

even though Bahrain has no official diplomatic ties with Israel, it is a “free country”

Apparantly Jawher was in a large part mistaken on that count. More’s the pity.

As the UIC (Union of Islamic Courts) has expanded control over the Southern Somalia after its capture of the capital of Mogadishu from warlords a peculiar thing happened, there was suddenly renewed interest in the perpetually interim government which controls a tiny portion of the country. Ethiopia is afraid of a unified Somali state because of the huge Ogaden region of its country is ethnically Somali. So they have sent troops to prop up the interim government which has neither power nor legitamacy.

They have recently made their presence there (8,000 or so troops and more recently tanks), which they long denied, official announcing that they have been “forced” into war. They claim the UIC is a terrorist organization, Ethiopia has U.S. support as an ally in the war on terror and one of Africas largest armies.

The fact however is that as early as October 24th they were claiming to be “technically at war” with the UIC.

The UIC gets support from several Arab countries (who are pressing for peace) and has invited foreign volunteers to help fight Ethiopia. It is also supported by Eritrea, which is an enemy of Ethiopia. Even as I write this Ethiopian planes bomb Somali towns and civilians flee for their lives.

Ethiopian victory is not at all certain however, the transitional capital of Baidoi is cut off and surrounded and it has very little support in Somalia, meanwhile all Ethiopian supply lines to their forces occupying Somalia must pass through the Somali populated Ogaden region, indeed the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front) already is claiming to have destroyed Ethiopian military convoys headed to Somalia.

The Eritreans have also shown themselves a match for the Ethiopians, and whether if they open a Northern front the Ethiopians can achieve victory in the south without collapse in the north is questionable.

This conflict cannot merely be seens as a struggle against terrorism or even Islamism, it is the struggle of the Somalis to rebuild their national unity from within, having been abandoned from without. By what right can a foreign country that has not been attacked to relegate them back to anarchy so that it may rest easier. I’m reminded of the South African policy of destabilizing it’s African neighbors so that they cannot unite against it (as the Balkan countries once did to the Ottoman Empire), they have no such right.

The Somalis deserve a state and the Ethiopians have to come to terms with that, it looks like it may take a war to teach them that lesson, and a war they now have.

Update:

In a strange turn the Interim Government has announced closing the air and sea links (which it does not control) of Somalia, strange at least until you read of the Ethiopian bombings of airports on the pretext that they are operating illegally. This is a good article on recent war news. Essentially Islamists have been somewhat pushed back and lost a few towns to the transitional government (with heavy Ethiopian air support) and Ethiopian troops are driving deep into Somalia.

Eritrea has refrained from inervening thus far, and Islamist fighters continue to stream into Somalia.

I found another adorable Ethiopian Government quote from yesterday “No airforce involved, but we are using tanks, we do have the right to do so,” their propaganda is so shameless it makes me feel embarrassed.

The AU has endorsed Ethiopian actions:

Patrick Mazimhaka, the deputy chairman of the AU’s Commission, told the BBC the African Union would not criticise Ethiopia as it had “given us ample warning that it feels threatened by the UIC”.

He added: “It is up to every country to judge the measure of the threat to its own sovereignty.”

Mr Mazimhaka said the international community had a responsibility to support the transitional government.

The African Union would meet in two days to discuss the situation, he said.

I’ve a few things to say about this:

1. Advance warning of a threat does not make it any more real or justifyable, if anything that fact that you can feel threatened for a time without anything coming of it indicates that the threat is less urgent or existant.
2. It is not “up to every nation to measure the threat to its own sovereignty”, that essentially renounces the entire concept of justifiable action. It’s hard to see a country occupying parts of Somalia as having its sovereignty violated by that fact.
3. The two day delay seems pretty clearly an opportunity for Ethiopia to alter the status quo as much as possible before they withdraw or halt ostensibly in response to some AU decision. And no, I don’t think that is an excessibly cynical view.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Iraq Study Group called the situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating” Wednesday and recommended a radically different approach from President Bush’s current policy, including the withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008.

In delivering its report to Bush and Congress, the bipartisan panel listed 79 recommendations for change in Iraq strategy, including direct talks with Iran and Syria as part of a “diplomatic offensive.”

All 10 members of the panel, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, met with Bush at the White House to present the bound report. (View the complete report — PDF)

The Bush administration has repeatedly rejected calls to seek help from Iran and Syria.

But the report states that “Iraq’s neighbors and key states in and outside the region should form a support group” to help Iraq achieve long-term security and political reconciliation — “neither of which it can sustain on its own.”

LINK

This is a much awaited and hyped report. The full text is available here. Everyone expects it to solve all the problems of the American Iraq strategy or lack therof, the report tries to do more than that, it’s members seem to think that a number of incredible goals are easily obtainable like such classics as:

-Ending Support of Hezbollah by Syria and Iran
-Return of the Golan Heights to Syria
-Recognition of Israel by Hezbollah

I really don’t know where they got the notion that this was either related or plausible goals of U.S. policy.

According to the report (from UNHCR)there are 1.8 Million Refugees from Iraq and 1.6 Million IDPs (internally displaced persons who are not refugess as they haven’t left their home country), the CIA World Factbook estimates the July 2006 Population of Iraq at 26,783,383, so according to my math 12.7% of the Iraqi population is Refugee or IDP, that’s pretty bad. Most of these are presumably fleeing demographically mixed areas in which Ethnic Cleansing is under way to those of people of similar ethnicity.

The report primarily suggests emphasizing training over combat operations and the dim hope of with drawing combat troops in 2008. Dream on.

It’s worth skimming for anyone who has the time, although claims, especially about support Iran and Syrian culpability should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

While reading the Reporters Without Borders site, which has recently added Egypt to its “Enemies of the Internet” list for it’s criminal behavior (Such as regarding Kareem) I found they free copies of this.

The two versions of it can be found here

Much of the matter is technical and I’m not, but the last few chapters should be of value to those concerned about government persecution.

Though I don’t need to worry (Although a recent Pentagon division formed to moniter and “correct” online content and news is a bad sign) I know that others do, this may be of use.

Congress is ready to celebrate with a $20 million victory party.

Lawmakers included language in this year’s defense spending bill, approved last week, allowing them to spend the money. The funds for “commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan were originally tucked into last year’s defense measure, but they went unspent amid an uptick in violence in both countries that forced the Pentagon to extend tours of duty for thousands of troops

Many are calling this fiscal mismanagment but in fact it explains much of the war on terrorism as practiced.

For instance why did Bush invade Iraq? Considering this revelation and the well established fact of his poor grammer and vocabulary there is a remarkable new possibility.

He could quite possibly have confused a “war party” of the festive type with another definition “war party”:

A band of warriors engaged in fighting or raiding an enemy

Amazing! a simple misunderstanding! And the bombs!
macabre party favors? poorly made party invitations? Who can really say?

Or maybe the U.S. congress and White House are just full of fiscally irresponsibly warmongers.
The 20 million ought to be spent in Washington right now on a going away party for the whole bunch.

The Report concludes in part that the war in Iraq is fuelling the spread of global Jiihad. Which is far from the picture the Bush administration desires to present, especially with upcoming elections. After several attempts at dismissing these conclusions Bush on Sep. 26 caved into pressure and released the full document.

This shouldn’t have surprised anyone, the war in Iraq promptly and openly brought about a massive surge in anti-american sentiment. It seems inconceivable that this would not have be represented in higher recruitment by global terrorist organizations, and although recruitment figures are of course not easy to obtain it has long been known that the war is being used as a recruitment tactic.

The administration has sought to play down these facts for a long time, there is enough opposition to the war based on pre-war untruths, causalties, cost and it being an unecessary diversion without this.

Another unpopular comment was this:

Twelve million people voted last December. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma, because there is — my point is, there is a strong will for democracy.

Now that it is clear the war not only was a diversion but counterproductive to the defeat of Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations it will be interesting to see what develops. It is hard to believe it fail to hurt the republicans, especially in light of other scandals, in the upcoming election, but perhaps I overestimate other voters.

At least all can take heart that American intelligence agencies now realize that the actions and reputation of the country are important to why so many people hate it, and fight it. A lack of such understanding is in large part what lead to the situation that now exists in the first place.

The usual stuff about democracy and American achievements, metioning Hezbollah without transition in the same breath as 19-11 and Al Qaeda.

At the start of the 21st century, it is clear that the world is engaged in a great ideological struggle, between extremists who use terror as a weapon to create fear, and moderate people who work for peace.

Five years ago, I stood at this podium and called on the community of nations to defend civilization and build a more hopeful future. This is still the great challenge of our time; it is the calling of our generation.

Yeah sure, president Bush defender of civilisation, hard to believe.

He mentions the Universal Declaration of Human Rights very proudly although working to bring the U.S. openly out of compliance with the geneva conventions.

Anyway he mentions most countries by name:

Algeria has held its first competitive presidential election, and the military remained neutral. The United Arab Emirates recently announced that half of the seats in its Federal National Council will be chosen by elections. Kuwait held elections in which women were allowed to vote and run for office for the first time. Citizens have voted in municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, in parliamentary elections in Jordan and Bahrain, and in multiparty presidential elections in Yemen and Egypt

He speaks directly (why I mention it here) to:

Iraqis
Afghans
Lebanese
Iranians
Syrians
(Darfurians?)
Palestinians

Worth a read.

I’m just making sure everyone knows when someone’s talking to them!

Pope’s remarks about Jews ‘unwise in current climate’

John Hooper in Rome
Monday September 18, 2006
The Guardian

Having just stirred up a global storm by quoting from a text fiercely critical of Islam, it might have been expected that Pope Benedict would steer well away from anything alluding to another religion that could be open to misinterpretation.
Yet only minutes after saying that he was “deeply sorry” about the reaction to his earlier remarks, he cited a passage from the New Testament highlighting the gulf between Christian and Jewish attitudes to the crucifixion of Jesus.

He said that, before leading the crowd in the traditional midday prayer known as the Angelus, he wanted to comment on two recent Roman Catholic festivals relating to the crucifixion. What, the Pope asked, was the point of exalting the cross – a tool of execution?

In reply to his rhetorical question, he quoted a verse from St Paul, the New Testament author most often accused of anti-semitism.

In the Italian translation, used by the Pope, it runs as follows: “We preach the crucified Christ – a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the pagans”.

He works pretty damn fast!

Barely having appologized to Muslims (not a real apology, he’s sorry for “The Reaction” to his comments not the comments themselves) he’s moved on to Jews.

He picks something which places Jews as worse than pagans and implies them to be Christ killers.

Now on to Hinduism?