On The Third Hand

A Bark From The Den……..

This is no longer dragging their heels. This is no longer even digging in their heels. The
too-tightly-twisted-turban-crowd™ has now switched over to aggression. Iran no longer cares what the world thinks; they only know they will proceed on their course to obtain nuclear armaments by any means they can. The ‘be nice to the mullahs and ayatollahs’ stance of the ‘weaklings and nice guys’ of Old €urope have brought us to the brink of nuclear disaster.

Regime change must come immediately, if not sooner!

Via Iran va Jahan

Iran’s Summer Persecution

In recent years, summer in Iran has been marked by uprisings, strikes, public protests and the government’s harsh crackdown against them. There are signs this summer will be no different.

As the anniversary of the anti-government uprising of July 1999 approaches, widespread arrests of students and women are taking place. Some students are nabbed from their dormitories by plainclothes Revolutionary Guard agents, while many others are served arrest warrants. The US International Bureau of Broadcasting’s Radio Farda reported on May 29 that, “the persistent summoning and detention of students all over the country has caused fear and insecurity in universities.”

Tehran’s Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi has ordered a crackdown on “social corruption,” saying that, “a serious fight has started to tackle the spread of social corruption in society, especially the improper dress code.” Youth, particularly women, are the main targets of such campaigns.

These repressive actions are in line with a series of preventive measures taken by the Iranian regime to neutralize Iran’s democracy movement and to subdue an increasingly restive population.

Why is it that I find stories like this only in right-wing newspapers? (Jerusalem Post is also carrying it.) Why? Did a tyrannical theocracy suddenly become good guys only because Bush called them evil?

Al Qaeda May Have Delayed 9/11 Attack

The independent commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has found evidence suggesting the attacks were intended to be carried out in May or June of that year, but were postponed by al Qaeda leaders because lead hijacker Mohamed Atta was not ready, according to sources privy to the panel’s findings.

New evidence gathered by the commission, including information obtained from U.S.-held detainees, indicates that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the attacks, persuaded al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to postpone the attacks by several months because of the organizational problems, according to the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the commission’s investigation.

You mean they declined to be identified because they are leaking classified material? Why dont’ you just say that. Not that I think this particular leak is important, except to underscore the fact that these terrorists are both determined and adaptable.

U.N. Staff Outrage

Many U.N. employees fear reprisals from their bosses if they step forward with information on the Iraq oil-for-food scandal or report other allegations of corruption, according to a shocking internal survey released yesterday.

A recent poll of 6,086 employees and managers released on the U.N. Web site revealed that the staff has little faith in the world body leadership’s commitment to ethics and integrity and that most believe that when allegations of wrongdoing surface, they are not properly handled.

The survey, conducted by an outside consulting firm for the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight, also revealed that a large plurality of the staffers feel unprotected from reprisals for reporting violations because the United Nations does not have strong enough whistleblower protection and is run by an “old-boys network.”

The report said 45.2 percent of the staff gave “unfavorable” responses to questions about whether they are protected from reprisals if they report wrongdoing while only 7.4 percent gave “favorable” responses.

“Most of the infrastructure to support ethics and integrity is in place, accountability is not. There are perceived weaknesses” such as protection from reprisal for identifying those who violate the guidelines, the report said in summary of staffers’ perceptions.

“More importantly, the staff seems to wonder: Who can or should be held accountable if leaders and supervisors are not? Who can care much about ethics and integrity if leaders, supervisors and staff appear not to care?” the report added.

Isn’t that a surprise. In an organization where tyrants are respected as legitimate rulers, and given seats on ‘human rights’ commissions, there seems to be a certain lack of ethics.

[update] Heh. I usually don’t like getting trackbacks that don’t link me but check out this take on the story. Nicely done.

A Snarl From The Den……..

The report handed to the IAEA today contained more than enough information to warrant the immediate forwarding of a demand to place Iran under every available sanction and punishment from the Security Council, but it doesn’t look as though they have the intestinal fortitude to do what is needed. The money quote from the WSJ puts it quite succinctly.

Or to put that all in context, inspectors had found multiple traces of 36% enriched uranium, which has no civilian use. Iran has not offered a satisfactory explanation. Iran had also lied about having a sophisticated P-2 uranium enrichment program of the kind peddled by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. It turns out the Iranians have sought magnets for thousands of such centrifuges. Iran has not been able to explain experiments with polonium-210, a radioactive element primarily useful as a bomb trigger. Most incriminating of all, the Iranians barred access to sites for a month while they almost certainly sanitized them.

Couple that with comments from those who would know that the too-tightly-twisted-turban-crowd™ and their minions have denied the existence of places found by intelligence sources that prove military involvement in their research efforts, and what have you got: a lying, conniving, belligerent theocracy spitting in the face of the world. They will not stop because of pathetic pleadings from the “nice people of the world". The only thing they will ever understand is a force greater than that which they command. Letting them achieve nuclear armaments will doom all the rest of us, for they have no conscience about blackmail or destruction.

Via Iran va Jahan

Powell: Terrorism Report a ‘Big Mistake’

A State Department report that incorrectly showed a decline last year in terrorism worldwide was a “big mistake,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. “Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong,” the secretary told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Sigh.

Mutilations and Muslim law

“A recent fatwa posted on a popular Islamic website in Saudi Arabia,” reports Neil McFarquhar in The New York Times, “explains when a Muslim may mutilate the corpse of an infidel.”

The ruling by Sheik Omar Abdullah Hassan al-Shehabi specifies two circumstances in which the desecration of an infidel – i.e., a non-Muslim – is permitted. One is retaliation – “when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses or when it otherwise serves the Islamic nation.” The other is when mutilation will “terrorize the enemy” or “gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior.”

With conditions like those, it is hard to imagine any situation in which an Islamist militant couldn’t justify the mutilation of a victim’s body.

“That a cleric can post such an argument in an open forum,” comments McFarquhar, “goes a long way toward explaining how the most radical interpretations of religious texts flourish in Saudi Arabia.”

But it isn’t only in Saudi Arabia that they flourish.

Indeed. Read it all; Jacoby’s got it right. Here’s his conclusion:

Our enemies make no secret of their intentions: We will bow to their totalitarian idea of Islam, or we will be killed. And not only killed, but mangled, mutilated, and subjected to the most hideous indignities they can devise.

The terrorists and their followers burn and batter corpses for the same reason the Taliban smashed magnificent statues – for the same reason Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf": to openly proclaim their contempt for the moral principles of the civilized world.

Ultimately it is up to the world’s moderate, modern Muslims to rise up against the barbarians in their midst. Until that day comes, there is nothing the West can do to ameliorate or appease this enemy. We can only destroy it – or be destroyed.

The problem is that the moderate Muslims are in the same position as the west. The barbarians are giving them the same choice.

Ireland votes to end birth right

With tallying completed in all 34 counting centres, 79.17% of voters wanted to end the automatic citizenship right for all babies born in Ireland.

The government said change was needed because foreign women were travelling to Ireland to give birth in order to get an EU passport for their babies.

It’s about time for the US to take the same vote.

Extremists Using Web to Spread Terror

Web sites featuring videos of the beheading of Americans or captives pleading for their lives have become part of an electronic war of incitement, humiliation and terrorist outreach, experts say, providing a window into the minds of militant Muslims who hate the West.

…

Experts say Islamic groups were among the first in the Arab world to realize the importance of staying connected. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood uses dozens of Web sites to post literature banned by the government. Lebanon’s Hezbollah is known for the sophistication of the propaganda on its Web site.

Until the site was taken over by an American hacker, one site appeared to be the place where al-Qaida reported on developments in fighting in Afghanistan, and, some law enforcement officials believe, posted low-priority information for its to fighters. Some top al-Qaida operatives were trained as cyber specialists.

The mushrooming of the sites and forums is an indication of the growing number of people who sympathize with militants who argue Islam is under attack in by the West, said Rashwan.

“People who sympathize with militants"… I love the euphemisms of these people who attempt to write about terrorists without using the word ‘terrorist’. And while some of them may believe that Islam is under attack by the west, every last one of them believes the west should be under attack by (their version of) Islam.

A Bellow From The Den……..

Two articles found via Iran va Jahan, one from AP, the other from The Ecnomist, indicate that Iran is now setting out its intent to be a nuclear arms power, regardless of what any group, committee, or organzation says. They are pushing the world to the brink of destruction all by themselves. That too-tightly-twisted-turban-crowd™ apparently cares not about its own safety, never mind the rest of the world.

THEY MUST BE STOPPED !!

If you noticed something different, it’s the new design. If you noticed something extremely different, I sincerely hope that you are on IE6 and my text has stopped disappearing! Please let me know if you have any problems with this design. Thanks much to all who responded to my ‘test request’ yesterday.

UN’s ’shameful silence’ over the evils of Saddam

During his years at the United Nations, monitoring sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf war, critics called Michael Soussan a baby killer. One said the oil-for-food programme administered by the UN amounted to “overseeing genocide".

To Mr Soussan’s dismay, the most vocal critics worked alongside him at the UN. The genocide charge was levelled by an assistant secretary general in charge of humanitarian work in Iraq.

His colleagues blamed the Security Council - especially the United States and Britain - for the suffering of Iraqis, ignoring evidence that Saddam was stealing food from his own people’s mouths.

They could hardly ignore the wickedness of Saddam’s regime. Foreign UN staff could sense the terror in Iraqis they met, and saw for themselves the gilded excesses of the Ba’athist elite.

But somehow that wickedness was taken as a given, then promptly smothered in a warm soup of moral relativism.

“We have a notion of sovereignty at the UN that doesn’t distinguish between governments that deserve sovereignty and those that do not. And that really skews our moral compass,” Mr Soussan told The Telegraph.

Indeed. Recommended reading.

Scrap metal could be link to WMD

Twenty engines from banned Iraqi missiles were found in a Jordanian scrap yard along with other equipment that could be used for weapons of mass destruction, a U.N. official said, raising new security questions about Iraq’s scrap metal sales since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Acting chief United Nations inspector Demetrius Perricos revealed the discoveries to the U.N. Security Council in a closed-door briefing Wednesday. A text of his briefing was obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.N. team that found the 20 engines was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrap yard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check in Turkey, which has also received scrap metal from Iraq.

Perricos suggested that the interim Iraqi government, which will assume sovereignty when the U.S. and British occupation of the country ends on June 30, may want to reconsider policies for exporting scrap metal that apparently began in mid-2003. The sales are regulated by the U.S.-led coalition.

“The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks … thereby also rendering the task of the disarmament of Iraq and its eventual confirmation, more difficult,” Perricos said.

…

In its quarterly report to the council on Monday, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which Perricos heads, said a number of sites in Iraq known to have contained equipment and material that could be used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been cleaned out or destroyed.

So the sites were known to have all this stuff but there was no danger of Iraq producing WMDs? Or what?

My present front page has been suffering from the IE6 peekaboo bug. I’ve set up a different design (totally different) in test, on my writings site. If anyone using IE6, on any system (XP, Win2000, ME, 98… whatever) could go to this link, click around a bit on permalinks and popups, and let me know in that test post or e-mail to 3rdhand at this site (site-essential.com) if anything blows up, disappears or otherwise acts weird, I’d greatly appreciate it.

You are also welcome to harass me about the colors, design, etc.

FBI Warns of Eco-Terrorism Threat

The FBI warned law enforcement agencies of the potential for criminal activity in response to a call for action in support of a convicted eco-terrorist, according to the weekly bulletin issued by the agency and obtained by Fox News.

“Supporters of anarchist and convicted arsonist Jeff Luers (search) have designated Saturday, June 12, 2004 an ‘International Day of Action and Solidarity with Jeff ‘Free’ Luers,’ alternatively entitled ‘J12,’” the FBI said in the bulletin.

“J12 events are planned in Eugene, Oregon; Olympia, Washington; San Francisco and Modesto, California; Lawrence, Kansas; Morgantown, West Virginia; Worcester, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; and Lake Worth, Florida.”

It’s too bad I don’t live closer to Lake Worth. I’d go hunting.