International law is a joke whilst we keep being so biased when applying it.
Breach of UN Resolutions and the possibility of Saddam having WMD were the
reasons that were accepted to wage war on Iraq. We have the same issues with
Israel. Israel certainly has illegal WMD and is not shy of using them and is
in breach of more UNR’s than any other country.

The influence that Israel has over US and UK Politics undermine our so
called Democracies.

As the Diplomatic Bags in Bangkok get used to smuggle diamonds in three
times a week (and have done so for the last 10 year to my knowledge) and
after the Mossad Death Squad’s trip to Dubai it is quite clear that Israel
is a criminal state with no regard for International law. Anti Semitism is a
name thrown at all who criticise Israel.

I don’t know of any individual or group of people who have been hated en
masse because they were decent. If I was Israeli I might question my
people’s behaviour if I was concerned as to why people hated me. From my
experience with Israelis in the diamond business for the last 20 years they
have no concern if they are hated at all. They are ‘the chosen ones’ and I
have been told on several occasions that I was “a very nice guy, for a
Gentile”.

It’s quite amazing how the Political Correctness nonesense has made the
population view the word at such an odd angle. Racism is rife throughout the
world but only reported when a white person commits the crime. Sometimes, as
in the case of the two attacks in Melbourne over Xmas that shocked the world
and caused the Indian press to portray the Police Chief of Melbourne in KKK
clothes the truth hardly or never gets reported….. The Indian that was set
on fire in a racist attack burned himself and was charged with Insurance
fraud and the murdered Indian that started the drama after he died in a
racist knife attack was himself murdered by Indians who are now in custody.

The “white supremacist” Eugene Terreblanche was murdered after the head of
the ANC Youth wing (who is a black supremacist but this is not allowed to be
said) sang songs saying “kill the Boer: Boer is now used as a derogatory
word for white people in SA in the same way Bule or Farang are used in SE
Asia. This song has now been banned by the Supreme Court in SA but the ANC
are appealing as indeed they are a racist group.

Remember the trouble Prince Harry got in for calling his friend a Paki?? I
am pleased that my Brit and Aussie friends are not so sensitive. However you
know who really gets upset about being called a Paki???? Yes you guessed it
the Indians and this is because they have a pathological racist hatred of
Pakistanis. People call me a scouser and I call people Worzels that come
from Somerset…… it really is ridiculous just how far this nonesense has
all gone. PC needs to got ino the bin.

I could waffle on all day about how intolerant so many of these groups,
religions are etc and give numerous examples especially using Islam as the
whipping boy but I won’t.

Enough to say Political Correctness is nonesense. We are not all the same.
We all have things to celebrate and things that we are weak in.
If Political Correctness was true then we would have to say that “Malay
people work as hard as Chinese” Anyone who has worked with the two races
knows the truth in that situation. Also how and why have the oppressed
minority Chinese people in the SE Asia managed to own such a hug amount of
the wealth if we are all equal????

Have a great weekend!!!

Deciding as to whether or not a particular name is offensive or not surely must depend a lot on context. It is ok for a black guy to call his friend a nigger but offensive if a non black guy uses the so called ‘N’ word.

Is the word ‘farang’ offensive? As I am the most politically incorrect creation that was ever shat into existence should I really care? You make your own mind up. If using a name to describe a person by race and stereoptypical beliefs is offensive to you like “Nigger, Spick, Wop or Kike” then I reckon ‘Farang’ is offensive. If not I suggest you are a biggot.

The Farang is a white man. The name does not apply to other races and is never used to describe just a foreigner as so many people state.

The Farang appears in advertisements here, unable to consume spicy food and of course always wanting to fight. The Thais are quite amazed when they see that Da Wizard can eat spicy food and always comment in wonderment as to his ability to consume Thai food. Thais forget that it is not us; the cosmopolitan well traveled who are limited in their ability to eat food.

When they hear Ralph talking to Da Wizard in her native Asian tongue they always assume that she is speaking French. The Nigger couldn’t possibly have learned another language!!! How scary a multi lingual Nigger would be?

DW was climbing out of his pool yesterday and a local kid who shares the same cave complex was smiling at him. The pool attendant pointed and educated the aforementioned Rug Rat ‘Farang Farang!!’ The Rat just looked and smiled his first lesson in racism complete.

Nigger or Farang take your pic! You choose too as to whether you wish to be offended by the terms. I think there are more important things in the world to worry about that than just now!!

No longer should the peace business be undermined by the arms business

09/13/06 “The Independent” — – For many years, I’ve been involved in the peace business, doing what I can to help people overcome their differences. In doing so, I’ve also learnt a lot about the business of war: the arms trade. In my opinion it is the modern slave trade. It is an industry out of control: every day more than 1,000 people are killed by conventional weapons. The vast majority of those people are innocent men, women and children.

There have been international treaties to control the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for decades. Yet, despite the mounting death toll, there is still no treaty governing sales of all conventional weapons from handguns to attack helicopters. As a result, weapons fall into the wrong hands all too easily, fuelling human rights abuses, prolonging wars and digging countries deeper into poverty.

This is allowed to continue because of the complicity of governments, especially rich countries’ governments, which turn a blind eye to the appalling human suffering associated with the proliferation of weapons.

Every year, small arms alone kill more people than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Many more people are injured, terrorised or driven from their homes by armed violence. Even as you read this, one of these human tragedies is unfolding somewhere on the planet.

Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed violence recently flared up again, and millions have died during almost a decade of conflict. Despite a UN arms embargo against armed groups in the country, weapons have continued to flood in from all over the world.

Arms found during weapons collections include those made in Germany, France, Israel, USA and Russia. The only common denominator is that nearly all these weapons were manufactured outside Africa. Five rich countries manufacture the vast majority of the world’s weapons. In 2005, Russia, the United States, France, Germany and the UK accounted for an estimated 82 per cent of the global arms market. And it’s big business: the amount rich countries spend on fighting HIV/Aids every year represents just 18 days’ global spending on arms.

But while the profits flow back to the developed world, the effects of the arms trade are predominantly felt in developing countries. More than two-thirds of the value of all arms are sold to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

In addition to the deaths, injuries and rapes perpetrated with these weapons, the cost of conflict goes deeper still, destroying health and education systems.

For example, in northern Uganda, which has been devastated by 20 years of armed conflict, it has been estimated that 250,000 children do not attend school. The war in northern Uganda, which may be finally coming to an end, has been fuelled by supplies of foreign-made weapons. And, as with so many wars, the heaviest toll has been on the region’s children. Children under five are always the most vulnerable to disease, and in a war zone adequate medical care is often not available.

The world could eradicate poverty in a few generations were only a fraction of the expenditure on the war business to be spent on peace. An average of $22bn is spent on arms by countries in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa every year, according to estimates for the US Congress. This sum would have enabled those countries to put every child in school and to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015, fulfilling two of the Millennium Development Goals.

This year, the world has the chance to finally say no to the continuing scandal of the unregulated weapons trade. In October, governments will vote on a resolution at the UN General Assembly to start working towards an Arms Trade Treaty. That Treaty would be based on a simple principle: no weapons for violations of international law. In other words, a ban on selling weapons if there is a clear risk they will be used to abuse human rights or fuel conflict. The UN resolution has been put forward by the governments of Australia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya, and the UK. These governments believe the idea of an Arms Trade Treaty is one whose time has come.

I agree. We must end impunity for governments who authorise the supply of weapons when they know there’s a great danger those weapons will be used for gross human rights abuses. Great strides are being made towards ending impunity for war criminals. It cannot be acceptable that their arms suppliers continue to escape punishment. No longer should the peace business be undermined by the arms business. I call on all governments to put the control of the international arms trade at the top of their agenda.

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; C01

NEW YORK

He felt no shiver of doubt in those first terrible hours.

He watched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and assumed al-Qaeda had wreaked terrible vengeance. He listened to anchors and military experts and assumed the facts of Sept. 11, 2001, were as stated on the screen.

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief. He wondered why Bush listened to a child’s story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America’s Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

“To me, the report read as a cartoon.” White-haired and courtly, Griffin sits on a couch in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, unspooling words in that reasonable Presbyterian minister’s voice. “It’s a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives.”

Such as?

“There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives.”

If that feels like a skip off the cliff of established reality, more Americans are in free fall than you might guess. There are few more startling measures of American distrust of leaders than the widespread belief that the Bush administration had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11 in order to spark an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll of 1,010 Americans found that 36 percent suspect the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its hands. Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers. Twelve percent believe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon.

Distrust percolates more strongly near Ground Zero. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed the government “consciously failed to act.”

You could dismiss this as a louder than usual howl from the CIA-controls-my-thoughts-through-the-filling-in-my-molar crowd. Establishment assessments of the believers tend toward the psychotherapeutic. Many academics, politicians and thinkers left, right and center say the conspiracy theories are a case of one plus one equals five. It’s a piling up of improbabilities.

Thomas Eager, a professor of materials science at MIT, has studied the collapse of the twin towers. “At first, I thought it was amazing that the buildings would come down in their own footprints,” Eager says. “Then I realized that it wasn’t that amazing — it’s the only way a building that weighs a million tons and is 95 percent air can come down.”

But the chatter out there is loud enough for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to post a Web “fact sheet” poking holes in the conspiracy theories and defending its report on the towers.

Yeah, as if . . .

The loose agglomeration known as the “9/11 Truth Movement” has stopped looking for truth from the government. As cacophonous and free-range a bunch of conspiracists anywhere this side of Guy Fawkes, they produce hip-hop inflected documentaries and scholarly conferences. The Web is their mother lode. Every citizen is a researcher. There’s nothing like a triple, Google-fed epiphany lighting up the laptop at 2:44 a.m.

Did you see that the CIA met with bin Laden in a hospital room in Dubai? Check out this Pakistani site, there are really weird doings in Baluchistan . . .

The academic wing is led by Griffin, who founded the Center for a Postmodern World at Claremont University; James Fetzer, a tenured philosopher at the University of Minnesota (Fetzer’s an old hand in JFK assassination research); and Daniel Orr, the retired chairman of the economics department at the University of Illinois. The movement’s de facto minister of engineering is Steven Jones, a tenured physics professor at Brigham Young University, who’s studied vectors and velocities and tested explosives and concluded that the collapse of the twin towers is best explained as controlled demolition, sped by a thousand pounds of high-grade thermite.

Former Reagan aide Barbara Honegger is a senior military affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. She’s convinced, based on her freelance research, that a bomb went off about six minutes before an airplane hit the Pentagon — or didn’t hit it, as some believe the case may be. Catherine Austin Fitts served as assistant secretary of housing in the first President Bush’s administration and gained a fine reputation as a fraud buster; David Bowman was chief of advanced space programs under presidents Ford and Carter. Fitts and Bowman agree that the “most unbelievable conspiracy” theory is the one retailed by the government.

Then there’s Morgan O. Reynolds, appointed by George W. Bush as chief economist at the Labor Department. He left in 2002 and doesn’t think much of his former boss; he describes President Bush as a “dysfunctional creep,” not to mention a “possible war criminal.”

You reach Reynolds at his country home in the hills of Arkansas. His favored rhetorical style is long paragraphs without obvious punctuation: “Who did it? Elements of our government and M-16 and the Mossad. The government’s case is a laugh-out-loud proposition. They used patsies and lies and subterfuge and there’s no way that Bush and Cheney could have invaded Iraq without the help of 9/11.”

They are cantankerous and sometimes distrust each other — who knows where the double agents lurk? But unreasonable questions resonate with the reasonable. Colleen Kelly’s brother, a salesman, had breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on Sept. 11. After he died she founded September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to oppose the Iraq war. She lives in the Bronx and gives a gingerly embrace to the conspiracy crowd.

“Sometimes I listen to them and I think that’s sooooo outlandish and bizarre,” she says. “But that day had such disastrous geopolitical consequences. If David Ray Griffin asks uncomfortable questions and points out painful discrepancies? Good for him.”

Griffin’s book, “The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11,” never reviewed in a major U.S. newspaper, sold more than 100,000 copies and became a movement founding stone. Last year he traveled through New England, giving speeches in whitewashed churches and gymnasiums. He came to West Hartford, Conn., on a rainy autumn evening. Four hundred mostly middle-aged and upper-middle-class doctors and lawyers, teachers and social workers sat waiting.

Griffin took the podium and laid down his ideas with calm and cool. He concluded:

“It is already possible to know beyond a reasonable doubt one very important thing: The destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by domestic terrorists,” he says. “The welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed.”

The audience rose and applauded for more than a minute.

“Reality is a thin line between denial and paranoia.”

– Author unknown, but often quoted by the 9/11 truth movement

“Me?” You’ve asked the Rev. Frank Morales, the bohemian Episcopalian minister with the hipster goatee, where he stands on the nature of the conspiracy. We’re standing in the ancient graveyard of St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery on Second Avenue. “I lean to LIHOP.”

The 9/11 truthers share a lieutenant colonel’s love of acronyms. They divide themselves into LIHOPS and MIHOPS and differences are not trifling. LIHOP stands for “Let It Happen On Purpose,” which means someone inside the U.S. government intentionally let the terror conspiracy go. MIHOP means “Made It Happen On Purpose,” and its gradations center on whether Bush was in or out of the loop (a surprising number believe he was clueless) and whether the Mossad or British intelligence was dealt into the deal.

Morales, 57, who came out of the Lower East Side housing projects, spent days at Ground Zero performing last rites for the dead, many little more than a collection of body parts.

“I didn’t presume to know who did it,” he says. “There was a lot of shucking and jiving. I wonder at what point massive incompetence crosses over into negligent homicide.”

To make sense of the truth movement’s anger, you need to hit the rewind button to early 2001, with the hindsight of today. There was, as the 9/11 Commission hearings made clear, a bad moon rising. Warnings kept coming of a “high probability” of a “spectacular” terrorist attack. A national security adviser warned Condoleezza Rice there were terrorist cells, probably al-Qaeda guys, in the country. CIA chief George Tenet said the “system was blinking red.”

A presidential bulletin on Aug. 6 had a catchy title: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Bush did not discuss it again with Tenet before Sept. 11.

So give the truth movement, many of whom are based in New York City, their props. They may be paranoid, but something nasty came our way. They pore over the paper trail with a Sherlock Holmesian intensity, alert to intriguing discrepancy.

Such as:

Former transporation secretary Norman Mineta told the commission he arrived in the presidential operations center — under the White House — at 9:20 a.m. on Sept. 11 and found Vice President Cheney. When an aide asked Cheney about the hijacked plane fast approaching the Pentagon, Mineta says the vice president snapped that the “orders still stand.” Mineta assumed the orders were to shoot the plane down. Conspiracy theorists interpret this to mean: Don’t shoot it down.

Cheney later said he was not in the operations center until after the plane hit. The commission never mentioned Mineta’s contradictory version.

In September 2001, NORAD generals said they learned of the hijackings in time to scramble fighter jets. But the government recently released tapes claiming to show the FAA did not tell the military about the hijackings until three of the four planes had crashed.

That would mean the FAA repeatedly lied. It would also mean, as Griffin points out, that the entire military chain of command stayed quiet about huge inaccuracies for four years “even though . . . the true story would put the military in a better light.”

More mysteries pile up. The 9/11 Commission says Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37. But Honegger says clocks stopped at the Pentagon at 9:32. Then there’s the collapse of the twin towers, which Jones, the physics professor, timed at just short of free fall. Griffin cites firefighters, including a captain, who said in hearings and on tapes from that day that they saw flashes and heard the sound of explosions before the collapse.

“It’s like the Nazi-facilitated Reichstag fire,” Honegger says from her home in California. “They guided and secretly protected it to justify their global agenda.”

Let’s put aside the could-anyone-do-something-that-spectacularly-twisted? question and touch on practicalities. Isn’t the problem with big ugly conspiracies — from the Gulf of Tonkin to My Lai to the 1961 Pentagon plan to provoke a war by attacking Americans and blaming it on Castro — that they are too big and ugly to keep secret?

Griffin shrugs. History is littered with government black-bag jobs. “How do you know they can’t keep big secrets? Can you be sure you know what you don’t know?”

* * *

There is a “morning after” quality to the conspiratorial romance. One moment you groove on the epiphanies and the next moment you’re lost in a dull haze of “this cannot be a coincidence,” “perhaps significantly” and “if so . . .”

What of incompetence? Or the raw absurdity of life? The truth movement makes much of a 2001 BBC report that a half-dozen of the hijackers were still alive. They mention Waleed al Shehri, a pilot who still flies commercial runs in Morocco. But the BBC retracted that.

It turns out the live guy and the dead hijacker spelled their names differently.

Then there’s the theory that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon and United 93 did not crash in Shanksville, Pa. But, like, what happened to the passengers? (Among the passengers on Flight 77 was Barbara Olson, wife of former U.S. solicitor general Ted Olson).

“Why should any of us know where it went?” Griffin says. “It could have been it crashed in Kentucky. We don’t need a theory where it went.”

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-based left-leaning think tank, is no fan of the 9/11 Commission. He believes a serious investigation should have led to indictments and the firing of incompetent generals and civilian officials.

But he has no patience with the conspiracy theorists.

“They don’t do their homework; it’s a kind of charlatanism,” Berlet says over the phone. “They say there’s no debris on the lawn in front of the Pentagon, but they base their analysis on a photo on the Internet . That’s like analyzing an impressionist painting by looking at a postcard.”

Now comes a loud sigh.

“I love ‘The X-Files’ but I don’t base my research on it,” he says. “My vision of hell is having to review these [conspiracy] books over and over again.”

Let’s move on to Eager of MIT. “Demolition experts say, ‘Ohhh, it’s all science and timing.’ Bull!” Eager says. “What’s the technique? If 200,000 tons gives way, where do you think it’s going? Straight down.”

In the days after Sept. 11, experts claimed temperatures reached 2,000 degrees on the upper floors. Others claimed steel melted. Nope. What happened, Eager says, is that jet fuel sloshed around and beams got rubbery.

“It’s not too much to think that you could have some regions at 900 degrees and others at 1,200 degrees, and that will distort the beams.”

The truth movement doesn’t really care for Eager. A Web site casts a fisheye of suspicion at the professor and his colleagues. “Did the MIT have prior knowledge?” notes one chat room. “This is for sure another speculative topic . . . “

“It is no measure of health to be sane in an insane society.”

– Krishnamurti

Nico Haupt, a gaunt fellow in black sneakers, black socks, black jeans and black T-shirt, stands up in St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery. He holds aloft two blue Oreos boxes taped to resemble the twin towers. A pen juts out, kind of like a Boeing airplane.

For an hour he’s shown videos of planes hitting the towers. If you note the glinting sunlight and angle of wings and you’re honest about vectors and maybe the hashish is kicking in, you’ll realize there were no planes .

Truth movement veterans distance themselves from Haupt, who has a bit of a temper. But Reynolds, the former Labor Department economist, also is a “no-planer.”

“There were no planes, there were no hijackers,” Reynolds insists. “I know, I know, I’m out of the mainstream, but that’s the way it is.”

But what about all those New Yorkers who saw airplanes hitting the twin towers? A chuckle rumbles down the phone line. “I don’t believe anyone in Lower Manhattan,” he says. “You hire three dozen Actors’ Equity dudes and they’ll say anything .”

Some days the 9/11 truth movement resembles an Italian coalition government — dissolution is a certainty. Honegger and Griffin believe bombs brought down the twin towers but have little truck with make-believe planes. There’s a faction that says the Mossad did it and another that says that’s insane, and maybe anti-Semitic.

Where are we going here? There’s a Journal of 9/11 Studies, documentaries, CDs and DVDs. Is conspiracy thought getting codified?

“That’s our worry, of course,” Griffin says. “I want my life back. But how can I ignore that we have become entranced by demonic power, so focused on lust for wealth and control that almost anything becomes possible?”

You reach Honegger a few nights later. She’d like to give it up, too. “I am sitting here in my little office trying to figure out what happened to my country on this day. I wouldn’t be a patriot if I didn’t try to prove the government’s story is preposterous.”

I wonder if the dhimmi Eurabian non-Muslim populations understand the difference. Tamimi, whose duplicity was unmasked here, also reiterated his support for suicide jihad martyrdom attacks. “Firebrand Islamic academic: ‘dying for your beliefs is just,’” from the Daily Mail, with thanks to John Doe:

A British-based Muslim radical appeared to back suicide bombing yesterday when he claimed that dying for your beliefs was ‘just’.Dr Azzam Tamimi told an 8,000-strong crowd that standing up for your principles was the ‘greatest act of martyrdom’. The 51-year-old was speaking at the ExpoIslamia convention in Manchester.

The Palestinian-born academic – who previously boasted he would carry out a suicide bombing in Israel – also repeated his public backing for Hamas, which remains banned in the UK.

He said: “The greatest act of martyrdom is standing up for what is true and just. Martyrs are those who stand up and stand up in defiance of George Bush and Tony Blair. You stand up to them and you say desist. Stop this injustice. Stop this oppression.”

Dr Tamimi claimed the war on terrorism was a war on Islam. “We are Muslims in Europe, not European Muslims,” he added.

“Being fair and just means finding the middle path. The middle path is not rubbing shoulders with Tony Blair and George Bush.”

The crowd erupted with cheering and applause when he said that Israel had been defeated by Hezbollah. He continued: “Hamas is making sacrifices for you. We tell this government Hamas is not a terrorist group. It is elected by the people of Palestine. We are not terrorists. We are defenders of the truth. Fighting those who invade Muslims is a just cause.

“The government is trying to turn the war on terror into the war on Islam.”

In November 2004, Dr Tamimi told the BBC that he was prepared to be a suicide bomber if the opportunity arose. In an interview which was roundly condemned, he said that 2sacrificing myself for Palestine was a noble cause. It is the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity”.

Dr Tamimi, a prominent member of the Stop The War coalition, is married with three children and lives in Willesden, North West London. After coming to Britain from the Middle East more than 30 years ago, he and his family have become British citizens and live in a council block.

He has repeatedly spoken out in support of Hamas and described their suicide bomb tactics as ‘the courage of man’.

In July 2004, he invited the radical Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi to the UK. Al Qaradawi, who spoke at a taxpayer subsidised conference in London – has called for a war on Jews and the execution of homosexuals.

A short news piece appeared on the BBC website this afternoon in which a mention is made of the Police tipping off the Muslim community:

“Police had spoken to a good number of community leaders to make them aware that a major operation was under way.”

This is an incredible statement for the police to make and shows how the Police place a greater emphasis on ensuring smooth relations with the Muslim community than relations with the non-Muslim majority.

Here we have British police, no doubt at a senior level talking to representatives of the very community from which these terror suspects emerge WHILE the operation is still under way.

Putting lives at risk

This must raise a question over the loyalties and professional sensibilities of the senior security officials to their own staff and to the general travelling public. Every beat office, every investigator and every security agent places his or her own life firmly on the firing line whenever they go on duty. The twenty one terror suspects arrested were, according to police reports just a small element of a much larger group. How many individuals within the Muslim community have been alerted by their community representatives that a Police was underway and have now taken steps to avoid their apprehension? At any time were any police and other security officers placed at risk because of this blatant disclosure of information to smooth relations with the Muslim community?

Further it is important to note that there was no parallel “tipping off ” of the non-Muslim majority. Police could have alerted radio and tv stations in the early hours that British airports and international flights were the suspected targets of the religious fanatics and that those with travel plans on Thursday should stay away, partly to avoid the inconvenience and delay but more importantly to stay away from buildings and the infrastructure which may have been a target of the crazed bomb plotters. Muslim community leaders would undoubtedly have passed on the Police information to their family and friends. How many potential Muslim travelers were alerted by their community leaders and avoided the disruption and inconvenience of delayed and cancelled flights?

Why is there one set of rules for Police dealings with the Muslim community and another set for Police dealings with the non-Muslim majority.

Is it a case that the Police are happy to continue playing the role of “dhimmis” and act only with the cognisance and approval of Muslim community leaders?

Note: dhimmi – a non-believer (i.e. non Muslim) who is given permission to live and work under Muslim rule.

Another fruit of the politically correct refusal to ask Muslim applicants for airport jobs hard questions about their views on jihad and Sharia. Of course, honest answers could not be expected; but if officials were even aware of the nature of jihad preaching and recruitment, they could watch for some of the danger signs.

The obvious thing to do, of course, is to bar Muslims from sensitive positions until Western Muslim communities can produce some reliable assurance that those who take such positions will not be jihadists. But that will never happen, not least because Western authorities calling for it would fold in the face of the Muslim indignation that would follow such a declaration. But in light of the fact that Muslims themselves have made no organized attempt to expel jihadists or teach against their ideology in mosques in Western countries, it’s an entirely reasonable measure.

“Plane plot involved ‘explosive cocktail,’ official says,” from CNN:

Among those arrested were a Muslim charity worker and a Heathrow Airport employee with an all-area access pass, according to Britain’s Channel 4.

In an update on this story, the Indonesian Foreign minister discards national police deputy spokesman Anton Bahrul Alam’s assertion that “We can and will prevent them from leaving.”

From Reuters: “Indonesia says can’t keep militants out of Mideast”

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia has no way to prevent Muslim militants travelling from its shores to the Middle East or elsewhere to wage war against Israel, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said on Tuesday. The self-styled head of the Jakarta-based ASEAN Muslim Youth Movement said last week that more than 200 militants had been sent on missions to attack Israel’s interests and countries that support the Jewish state.

Militant groups in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, have made claims in the past of sending volunteers to participate in conflicts overseas which have often proved exaggerated.

“We are a country with a system in which people are extremely free to travel overseas and no exit permit is required,” Minister Wirajuda told reporters.

“Therefore we don’t have a method to prevent people (from travelling) but we have issued a travel advisory… to remind our citizens that it is not safe to travel to Lebanon for any purpose,” he said.

Wirajuda’s comments appeared to contradict earlier police statements that they would prevent people from going to the Middle East or elsewhere to fight.

[...]

On Tuesday, a spokesman for a group led by firebrand Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, said 500 volunteers were ready to be dispatched to Lebanon and Palestinian territory.

“We should not let anyone stand in the way of the intention by some Muslims to go to Lebanon and Palestine,” Fauzan al Anshori told Metro TV.

Wirajuda said sending volunteers to fight Israeli troops would be a “reckless” move.

But go ahead and travel to Lebanon, and we’ll trust you not to fight.

“There are many ways to carry out jihad (holy struggle). What’s most urgently needed by the Lebanese is humanitarian assistance such as medicine and medical supplies,” he said.

An opportunity squandered in Pakistan, as a cabinet committee chips away at reforms of the Hudood rape laws. Sharia Alert from the Daily Times: “Hudood Ord amendments: Cabinet body to delete adult age clause” ISLAMABAD: The cabinet committee formed to review draft amendments to the Hudood Ordinances has decided to delete a proposed change that would make sex with a girl below the age of 16 the offence of rape.

Cabinet sources told Daily Times that several minister had objected to this clause when the draft amendments were presented to the cabinet for approval a week ago. The prime minister formed a six-member ministerial committee to resolve differences over the amendments. The sources said Sher Afgan Niazi, the parliamentary affairs minister, Aftab Sherpao, the interior minister, and Dr GG Jamal, the culture minister, had argued at the cabinet meeting that this amendment would cause trouble in rural and tribal areas where girls are traditionally married off at a young age. The ministers argued that in Islam, a woman becomes an adult when she reaches puberty.

The sources said the six-member ministerial committee had now communicated to some cabinet members that it had decided to remove this condition. The other amendment that ministers objected to was one that would give equal weight to the testimonies of adult male and female witnesses in rape cases.

They had also voiced concern at the timing of the bill, but the prime minister had rejected this concern, the sources said. The bill was to be tabled in the National Assembly on Monday, but was delayed on account of the ministers’ objections. It is now expected to be tabled on Wednesday, after a parliamentary party meeting of the ruling coalition on Tuesday endorses the bill.