ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies, apparently trying to avoid acknowledging an elaborate secret detention system, have quietly set free nearly 100 men suspected of links to terrorism, human rights groups and lawyers say.
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The issue of the missing had become one of the most contentious between Musharraf and the Supreme Court under its former chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.
One should not forget that Cardinal Ratzinger (before becoming pope) said: Turkey should find its identity in the Islamic world and not in Christian Europe.
I had the privilege to visit Istanbul recently, and I would advise anyone to please go visit Turkey, and particular Istanbul, to understand this critical issue at this point in history:
1. Istanbul sits in Europe (on the old Greek province of Thrace). The Ottoman Sultans' seat of government was here.
2. The Ottoman sultan was also 'sultan-i-room' - King of Rome - the Byzantine Empire (the Russian Orthodox became independent due to the conquest of Byzantium by Muslims).
While travelling the other day, I observed the lady next to me reading an American evangelical magazine with page after page of anti-Islam stuff stated in the most childishly hateful manner. More than offended, I was amused and wondered what was the desired goal of this synergy between Zionists, evangelical Christians and some militant governments of the West. Governments that keep warning, almost subliminally, 'they want to change our way of life, let history judge us'.
I don't know how the media missed the angle that the current Pope, Benedict XVI, made comments that Turkey did not belong in the European Union and it should look for its identity in the Islamic world. These remarks were made just before he became Pope. It has also been widely known that the Pope wants to take on Islamic fundamentalists on an intellectual level.
The war on terror as initially envisioned by the US is lost – today Bush effectively declared the CIA 'torture' program illegal, upheld the Geneva conventions, promised to eventually close down Guantanamo and try the captured 9/11 terrorist leaders in military tribunals with defence attorneys provided. Now it is just an intelligence and police problem, what it should have been all along. Also in today's speech, George W. Bush was petulantly bitter about the decision of the US Supreme Court in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld
The Hizbullah-Lebanon war has permanently tipped the delicate balance. Israel's aura was defeated, and together with it – the last vestiges of American moral and military credibility.
Re: Outspoken Liberal MP exits foreign critic post - Aug. 24.
The recent flap over a Liberal MP's suggestion that Canada should be encouraging a dialogue with Hezbollah is very unfortunate.
The rationale that one should never talk to a militant group is flawed and part of the verbal arsenal of the neo-con assault on common sense.
No one can dispute that Hezbollah is part and parcel of the 1.4 million Lebanese in southern Lebanon and its formation is the direct result of the political aspirations of the Lebanese Shia.
Do Canadian Muslims have leaders who represent the aspirations and political leanings of the growing and divergent Muslim community, or are they seduced by short-term opportunism? Let us take a look.
Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis resigned from Joe Volpe's Liberal leadership campaign due to Volpe's unabashed support for Israel in the current Middle East conflict. Liberal MP Wajid Khan, and a well-known Muslim politician, is hanging on as the Ontario chair for Volpe's campaign.
Then Wajid Khan went one step further and courted the Conservatives, and Prime Minister Harper brought him on board as an advisor for Middle East and South Asian affairs. Tom Axworthy, former principal secretary to prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University, called this move “I haven't heard of anything like this before.†Many members of the Liberal caucus have asked that Khan be excluded from the caucus as Conservative policies will be misunderstood as having a Liberal origin. Mr. Khan is also an ardent supporter of the increasingly unpopular Canadian troop presence in Afghanistan – which is an aggressive military campaign, and not just peacekeeping. Mr. Khan is on record as having said, “my year as a prisoner of war in India taught me how fruitless war is.â€
The king of Saudi Arabia threatened that regional war would take the place of the 'peace processes' of the past.
Being stranded on the wrong foot for the past two weeks, this is brilliant strategy to counter the three problems the Saudis have: the opinion on the street, militants (al-Qaida) and Iran and the rise of Shi'ite power.
"Saudi Arabia warns everybody that if the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no other option but war," state-owned media quoted the king as saying. . . .
Often in human history, there comes a time when a generation must heed the call to quell a threat to civilization. Not every generation is faced with this call and those that do are remembered for their sacrifice by the others that are not.
"Russia's big and so is China", the US president made this remark while the microphone was on. The rest of the overheard conversation showed how pitifully foolish and out of touch Bush is. It also shows, sadly, that the US has no clout left.
Well, you are going to read it here first: the US is not intervening in the Israel-Lebanon war because it cannot. As simple as that. Iran has skillfully played its hand and the Arabs, the Americans and the Israelis are not happy that Iran is now the 'other power' in the Middle East.
@MuslimID
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