Turkey celebrated the 81st anniversary of its foundation, but the festivities were marred by an embargo that President Ahmet Necdet Sezer slapped on women with Islamic headscarves at a reception in his palace.Headscarf row mars Turkey's 81st birthday
Most MPs from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) boycotted the reception, the top event on Ankara`s social calendar, after the staunchly secularist Sezer refused to invite wives who cover their heads.
Out of the 368 AKP parliament members, only about 20 -- including four ministers -- turned up at the presidential palace, NTV news channel reported.
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Women wearing the headscarf are banned from attending universities and working in public offices in Turkey.
Erdogan`s government has vocally criticized the ban as a breach of religious freedoms.
But wary of attracting the ire of the army-backed secularist establishment, it has so far refrained from any moves to ease or scrap the restrictions.
In retrospect, it was inevitable that we would hear from Osama bin Laden on the eve of our presidential elections. He could have sent our way squads of homicidal "martyrs" -- or, as he has done, a reminder that he was still around, that he had outwitted and survived the pledges of our leaders to kill or capture him. This man of terror has always been a creature of the modern media: his "return" was a perfect piece of choreography. The timing, and the somber tone, coming together to assert once again the place of the man in this great standoff between radical Islamism and American power
While some counties in states across the nation remain dry, the vast majority of communities have willingly embraced the intent if not the words of Benjamin Franklin, who wrote, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."Alcohol sales a frothy issue in dry town
Not Westerville, where the cause of alcohol--for and against--has been a continual struggle.
3. That my most trusted advisors and fellow terrorists still on my payroll at that time, who have declared their willingness to become shaheeds for the cause of Palestinian independence, be called together by the executor of my estate, who will dutifully and without delay or mercy, execute them to help them achieve their lifetime goal.FOUND! Arafat's Last Will and Testament
4. That my wife Suha Arafat be given the keys to the safety deposit boxes I hold in various banks throughout Switzerland, France and Germany, which contains my lifetime accumulated "contributions to the cause of Palestinian independence" acquired from the beneficent generosity of naïve and well-intentioned western democratic countries, and which I have held in "trust" for the moment of declaration of independence of the state of Palestine. Unfortunately, since said independence has not yet taken place, Suha will continue to hold these monies "in trust" until Independence takes place or the money runs out, whichever comes first.
5. That my funeral be arranged by my good friend and lifetime colleague-in-arms, Fidel Castro, or, if he is not available, my equally good colleagues-in-arms-sales, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder. All of my fellow dictators are to be assembled in the front row. Leaders of western democracies who donated money to my "trust" fund are to be seated in the second row. Everyone else will be charged $US 100,000 for the privilege of attending my funeral, with proceeds going to Suha's Mourning Fund.
One can fault the neocons for many things, but they, and Bush with them, are right that if Iraq is turned into a pluralistic system, given its centrality and potential political and economic power, it can become a commanding model for the Middle East and present a liberal alternative to the stifling ways of its autocratic brethren. Much as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser turned Egypt into a fount for Arab nationalism in the 1950's and 1960's, though Egypt's history did not preordain it to such a fate, Iraq has the potential to offer Arabs and Iranians a substitute to militant Islam as a means of removing corrupt regimes. That would create the best antidote to terrorism. Moreover, once it becomes a truly independent Arab democracy, Iraq could help kick off an indigenous drive for Arab change, at a time when Middle Eastern liberals are utterly powerless to open up their systems.With the Cretin, Not the Shyster
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Sure, if Bush wins nothing guarantees the president's attention span will allow him to stick to a democratic game plan in the Middle East. But Bush is stubborn, and though he's been taken to task for that of late, stubbornness is precisely what is needed to win in Iraq, though it must be accompanied by far more sensible policies than the ones pursued in the past 18 months. Indeed, success in Iraq is important enough to the Middle East and the U.S. that even the mere possibility that Bush might follow his liberal instincts is preferable to opening the door to Kerry's vacuity in that regard.
So, it's Bush for me, but damn his eyes if he discards the one thing that would make his term in office remarkable: the beginning of the liberation of a part of the world whose lack of freedom can yet kill many Arabs, and Americans
A group of Arab intellectuals wants prominent Muslim clerics known for inflammatory views tried by an international court on charges of encouraging terrorism, the intellectuals' U.S.-based spokesman said Monday, arguing that the clerics' governments haven't acted strongly enough against them.Arab Intellectuals Seek to Try Clerics
The call appears largely symbolic, but likely will stir debate about inflammatory statements made by radical Muslim clerics in their fatwas, or religious edicts, and through the media and on the Internet. There is neither a venue nor any realistic possibility that clerics would be handed over for such prosecution.
Shaker al-Nabulsi, a U.S.-based Jordanian university professor, said about 3,000 Arab and Muslim intellectuals have signed the petition thus far calling for international trials. Iraqis, Jordanians, Libyans, Syrians, Tunisians and Persian Gulf intellectuals were among those who signed, al-Nabulsi said.
"The Arab regimes cannot put an end to these fatwas of terrorism; the international community can," al-Nabulsi told The Associated Press in Cairo in a telephone interview from his Denver home.
Among those the intellectuals want to see tried are Qatar-based Egyptian Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi, who has condoned attacks on American civilians in Iraq (news - web sites) and sanctioned kidnapping in wartime. Two prominent Saudi clerics, Sheik Ali Bin Khudeir al-Khudeir and Sheik Safar al-Hawali, also are mentioned.
"Fatwas issued by these sheiks play a key role in releasing the sadism of terrorists and their desire for death beyond any moral bounds and feelings of guilt," the group said in a statement to be delivered to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week.
U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.
The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."
The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.
About 380 tons of RDX and HMX, used in making such arms, were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility, though the Pentagon and an embedded NBC News correspondent said the facility appeared to have been emptied by the time U.S. forces got there.
The photographs bolster the claims of Pentagon official John A. Shaw, who told The Washington Times on Wednesday that recent intelligence reports indicate Russian special forces units took part in a sophisticated dispersal operation from January 2003 to March 2003 to move key weapons out of Iraq.
In Moscow, the Russian government denied that its forces were involved in removing weapons from Iraq, dismissing the claims as "far-fetched and ridiculous."
"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structural divisions could not have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because Russian servicemen were not in Iraq long before the beginning of the American-British operation in that country," Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Vyacheslav Sedov told Interfax news agency.
Bush administration officials reacted cautiously to information provided by Mr. Shaw, who said details of the Russian "spetsnaz" forces' involvement in a program of document-shredding and weapons dispersal came from two European intelligence services.
According to my informant, the prominent Roman journalist, Anselma Dell’Olio, last week, Shai Cohen, an Israeli diplomat, was invited to give a talk to students at the University of Pisa, a venerable institution which was founded in 1343 . Cohen was to speak on "Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. " Professor Maurizio Vernassa invited students from the History Department and from the Afro-Asian institutes. The invitation was no secret. Cohen entered through the main entrance of the Aula Magna of the Political Science Department.Terrorism on the Western Campus
According to Dell’Olio, "Cohen was greeted by a group of about 20 students wearing the Palestinian keffiah around their necks, shouting "Sharon assassino! Israel is a death dealer! Zionism is a crime against humanity!" Cohen was called a fascist murderer and other personal and far worse insults. The left-wing group then proceeded to shout him out of the University , literally and loudly threatened to pass from verbal to physical violence if he did not leave. Other students tried to calm things down and defended Cohen's right to speak, but they were unsuccessful, and the left-wing thugs shouted that no Israeli would be allowed to speak, that Israel has no right to exist and so on ."
The point: No national scandal ensued, except in Guiliano Ferrara's influential newspaper, Il Foglio, which has been publishing pieces about what happened in Pisa. The Dean of the University sent a tepid, delayed apology to Cohen. More important: The invitation to Cohen has not been re-scheduled. According to Dell’Olio, "A press release proudly bragging about "Pisa antagonista" successfully casting out the Israel heathen from the university and preventing the conference, appeared in Indymedia.
War, which is the assertion of one group's supremacy over another through mass bloodshed and material loss, is the most serious business known to man. It's as old as two small bands vying for the scant resources of prey, water, mates, and vegetation out on the savannah. With the advent of agriculture and the subsequent phenomenon of the city-state, and later the nation-state, the stakes were raised. Now it's about the world.To read the rest-and there's much much more chewy tasty stuff-you're gonna have to follow that jump.
Ami akta mayr shongay ghurchee jar shob athyo shojhon Bangla kotha bole, ar amee Bangla bujheena. That’s Bengali for, “I’m dating an Indian girl whose entire family speaks a language I can’t understand.?Love is adorable, and it's always wonderful when things turn out well, which they do in this article. So go read it, ja?
I recently made my way to New York City for the highly anticipated, and incredibly nerve-wracking, first introduction to my girlfriends’ parents. Normally, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but when a fairly traditional Indian girl introduces her parents to her tall, skinny, Dutch-Canadian boyfriend, things can get interesting.