The United Nations' terrorist lists and the way they are compiled are not infallible. Mistakes can be made. But what happens when somebody's name is wrongly added to such a list? After the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the fight against Islamic terrorists started in earnest. Lists of suspects, like those championed by the US and the United Nations, led the way in tracking down potential threats. Terror lists contain data on persons and organizations suspected of supporting, financing or even being terrorists. But not all the information the lists contain can be trusted as accurate and sometimes the wrong information finds its way onto the list. This is what happened to Nabil Sayadi. Sayadi lives in the quiet Belgian town of Putte, south of Antwerp. He describes the rural idyll with its apple blossoms and content chickens as his private island. Away from the pleasant surroundings of Putte, Sayadi faces the distrustful looks and probing questions of friends and colleagues. This has been his life outside Putte ever since the United Nations put his and the name of his wife on its list of terrorist suspects. For five years, the Muslim couple have been suspected of being al Qaeda sympathizers, helping to finance the organization's jihad behind the facade of a charitable organization, Secours Mondial.
After the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the fight against Islamic terrorists started in earnest. Lists of suspects, like those championed by the US and the United Nations, led the way in tracking down potential threats.
Terror lists contain data on persons and organizations suspected of supporting, financing or even being terrorists. But not all the information the lists contain can be trusted as accurate and sometimes the wrong information finds its way onto the list.
This is what happened to Nabil Sayadi. Sayadi lives in the quiet Belgian town of Putte, south of Antwerp. He describes the rural idyll with its apple blossoms and content chickens as his private island. Away from the pleasant surroundings of Putte, Sayadi faces the distrustful looks and probing questions of friends and colleagues.
This has been his life outside Putte ever since the United Nations put his and the name of his wife on its list of terrorist suspects. For five years, the Muslim couple have been suspected of being al Qaeda sympathizers, helping to finance the organization's jihad behind the facade of a charitable organization, Secours Mondial.
JERUSALEM: The Jewish people are marking the 60th anniversary of their national rebirth, the founding of Israel, on Thursday with the usual military flyovers, flag buntings and televised reminiscences of aging pioneers. But there is another form of celebration planned, and its sponsors believe it says something about the national character: a three-day conference of some of the best minds from around the world on some of the biggest challenges facing humankind -- and especially the Jews -- in the coming decades. "The brain enriches the pocket, not the other way around," Shimon Peres, Israel's president and the patron of the conference, said in an interview. "We are a small land and a small people, but we can become a daring world laboratory, and that is our desire and plan." Nearly 700 guests are expected to take part next week in 35 discussion groups. They include statesmen like Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel, Tony Blair and Joschka Fischer, but also Sergey Brin of Google, Terry Semel of Yahoo and Rupert Murdoch, along with seven Jewish Nobel laureates and President George W. Bush.
JERUSALEM: The Jewish people are marking the 60th anniversary of their national rebirth, the founding of Israel, on Thursday with the usual military flyovers, flag buntings and televised reminiscences of aging pioneers.
But there is another form of celebration planned, and its sponsors believe it says something about the national character: a three-day conference of some of the best minds from around the world on some of the biggest challenges facing humankind -- and especially the Jews -- in the coming decades.
"The brain enriches the pocket, not the other way around," Shimon Peres, Israel's president and the patron of the conference, said in an interview. "We are a small land and a small people, but we can become a daring world laboratory, and that is our desire and plan."
Nearly 700 guests are expected to take part next week in 35 discussion groups. They include statesmen like Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel, Tony Blair and Joschka Fischer, but also Sergey Brin of Google, Terry Semel of Yahoo and Rupert Murdoch, along with seven Jewish Nobel laureates and President George W. Bush.
It was created from the ashes of the Holocaust, and grew into one of the most confident (and controversial) nations in history. Today, as Israel turns 60, its people's hopes for a peaceful future are as delicately poised as ever You get the clearest sense of it in Tel Aviv. Swinging in on the Ayalon highway past the 50-floor Azrieli towers, joining the entrepreneurs in their open-necked shirts and jeans tapping at their laptops at a café off the Rothschild Boulevard, lunching among the families and fashionistas at the beachside Manta Ray, or wandering through the elegantly renovated lanes of Neve Tzedek, where Jews in the 1880s first started spreading north along the coast from Jaffa, the still-mixed neighbouring Arab port town that secular, hedonistic, Tel Aviv grew out of, you quickly begin to see how much Israel has achieved in the last 60 years. And certainly there will be much for the country to celebrate on Independence Day today, the holiday that begins a week of high-profile anniversary events, reaching their climax with President George W Bush's traffic-stopping, TV network clogging, second visit of the year next Tuesday. It was here, on a Friday afternoon in mid-May in the main hall of the Tel Aviv Museum, that David Ben-Gurion, with the other signatories, to the accompaniment of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, put their names to the Declaration of Independence which marked the end of the British mandate and the beginning of the state of Israel. Since then, it has built a formidably strong economy, world-class science and medicine, some of the world's most advanced agriculture - making, in the words of the old Zionist mantra "the desert bloom" - and revived, to an astonishing extent admired even by the state's most strident critics, the Hebrew language. It absorbed with remarkable success one million Russian-speaking immigrants after the fall of the Soviet Union; it has a vibrant cultural scene, a vigorous and often highly critical press, and, with all its faults, a viable parliamentary democracy.
You get the clearest sense of it in Tel Aviv. Swinging in on the Ayalon highway past the 50-floor Azrieli towers, joining the entrepreneurs in their open-necked shirts and jeans tapping at their laptops at a café off the Rothschild Boulevard, lunching among the families and fashionistas at the beachside Manta Ray, or wandering through the elegantly renovated lanes of Neve Tzedek, where Jews in the 1880s first started spreading north along the coast from Jaffa, the still-mixed neighbouring Arab port town that secular, hedonistic, Tel Aviv grew out of, you quickly begin to see how much Israel has achieved in the last 60 years.
And certainly there will be much for the country to celebrate on Independence Day today, the holiday that begins a week of high-profile anniversary events, reaching their climax with President George W Bush's traffic-stopping, TV network clogging, second visit of the year next Tuesday. It was here, on a Friday afternoon in mid-May in the main hall of the Tel Aviv Museum, that David Ben-Gurion, with the other signatories, to the accompaniment of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, put their names to the Declaration of Independence which marked the end of the British mandate and the beginning of the state of Israel. Since then, it has built a formidably strong economy, world-class science and medicine, some of the world's most advanced agriculture - making, in the words of the old Zionist mantra "the desert bloom" - and revived, to an astonishing extent admired even by the state's most strident critics, the Hebrew language. It absorbed with remarkable success one million Russian-speaking immigrants after the fall of the Soviet Union; it has a vibrant cultural scene, a vigorous and often highly critical press, and, with all its faults, a viable parliamentary democracy.
Fears were growing last night that as many as 100,000 people may have died in the catastrophic cyclone in Burma, even as the military junta continued to restrict access to aid workers waiting to enter the country.The top United States diplomat in Burma's largest city, Rangoon, confirmed the figure and said as many as 95% of all buildings in the affected area may have been demolished. Shari Villarosa, the charge d'affaires of the US embassy in Burma, said there was a very real risk of disease outbreaks as the crisis continues. "There may be over 100,000 deaths in the Irrawaddy delta area," she told reporters.The new toll came as UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called on the junta to open its borders to aid workers and the US urged Asian countries such as China, Thailand and India to put pressure on the military regime. International frustration is mounting as disaster management experts fail to get the necessary visas to enter the country. Satellite pictures yesterday showed the bulk of the Irrawaddy delta - where most died - still under water. Planeloads of stockpiled supplies are on standby awaiting delivery to desperate victims, who have been living in water for five days. Delays in getting help to the survivors could spark a second humanitarian crisis, with an outbreak of waterborne disease in the tropical climate."Time is of the essence," said Ann Veneman, executive director of UN children's fund Unicef. "Children are highly vulnerable to disease and hunger and they need immediate help to survive."
Fears were growing last night that as many as 100,000 people may have died in the catastrophic cyclone in Burma, even as the military junta continued to restrict access to aid workers waiting to enter the country.
The top United States diplomat in Burma's largest city, Rangoon, confirmed the figure and said as many as 95% of all buildings in the affected area may have been demolished. Shari Villarosa, the charge d'affaires of the US embassy in Burma, said there was a very real risk of disease outbreaks as the crisis continues. "There may be over 100,000 deaths in the Irrawaddy delta area," she told reporters.
The new toll came as UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called on the junta to open its borders to aid workers and the US urged Asian countries such as China, Thailand and India to put pressure on the military regime. International frustration is mounting as disaster management experts fail to get the necessary visas to enter the country. Satellite pictures yesterday showed the bulk of the Irrawaddy delta - where most died - still under water. Planeloads of stockpiled supplies are on standby awaiting delivery to desperate victims, who have been living in water for five days. Delays in getting help to the survivors could spark a second humanitarian crisis, with an outbreak of waterborne disease in the tropical climate.
"Time is of the essence," said Ann Veneman, executive director of UN children's fund Unicef. "Children are highly vulnerable to disease and hunger and they need immediate help to survive."
Frustrated by years of on-and-off peace talks with Israel, Palestinians are losing hope for an independent homeland, and some are proposing a radically different cause: equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in a shared state. A "two-state solution" has been the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for nearly 15 years and remains the declared aim of both groups' highest elected leaders and the Bush administration. But its advocates are increasingly on the defensive, and not just against militant Islamists and Jewish settlers who have long opposed partitioning the land. Majorities on both sides dismiss the current U.S.-backed peace talks as futile. And a small but growing number of moderate Palestinians contend that Israel's terms for independence offer less than they could gain in a single democratic state combining Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As a result, the 60th anniversary this month of Israel's birth is a time of insecurity and flux. Conventional wisdom about the long-standing formula for peace is being turned on its head. No Israeli leader accepts the idea of sharing power with Palestinians; nor has such a plan been offered to the Israeli government. But a collapse of the two-state effort would leave Israel in de facto control of a region where by the next generation, Jews will probably be in a minority.
A "two-state solution" has been the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for nearly 15 years and remains the declared aim of both groups' highest elected leaders and the Bush administration. But its advocates are increasingly on the defensive, and not just against militant Islamists and Jewish settlers who have long opposed partitioning the land.
Majorities on both sides dismiss the current U.S.-backed peace talks as futile. And a small but growing number of moderate Palestinians contend that Israel's terms for independence offer less than they could gain in a single democratic state combining Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
As a result, the 60th anniversary this month of Israel's birth is a time of insecurity and flux. Conventional wisdom about the long-standing formula for peace is being turned on its head.
No Israeli leader accepts the idea of sharing power with Palestinians; nor has such a plan been offered to the Israeli government. But a collapse of the two-state effort would leave Israel in de facto control of a region where by the next generation, Jews will probably be in a minority.
...equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in a shared state.
What? Has someone gone native? Equal rights for Palestinians? That is certainly not what the peace process is aiming for, is it? My God, those people are brown!!!! They don't pray to our Lord either...well, neither do the Jews, but they will get a chance during the LastDays®. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
The man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago. Posada, 80, has mostly kept a low profile since his release from a Texas prison a year ago and a federal judge's dismissal of the only U.S. charges against him -- making false statements to immigration officials... Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism... The U.S. government has never given Venezuela a formal answer to its 3-year-old request for extradition of Posada, despite a treaty providing for such cooperation that has been in effect since 1922, the ambassador said. Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is alleged to have masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 on which all 73 on board were killed, including a youth fencing team returning from a tournament in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. He is also suspected of plotting a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the late 1990s, one of which killed an Italian tourist. He has boasted of his many attempts to kill Castro and has allegedly been involved in, according to court documents, "some of the most infamous events of 20th century Central American politics." Posada was serving time in a Panama prison for a 2000 assassination attempt on Castro when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him and three accomplices in August 2004 in what some observers saw as a favor to President Bush to rally the Cuban-dominated Florida vote for his reelection.
Posada, 80, has mostly kept a low profile since his release from a Texas prison a year ago and a federal judge's dismissal of the only U.S. charges against him -- making false statements to immigration officials...
Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism...
The U.S. government has never given Venezuela a formal answer to its 3-year-old request for extradition of Posada, despite a treaty providing for such cooperation that has been in effect since 1922, the ambassador said.
Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is alleged to have masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 on which all 73 on board were killed, including a youth fencing team returning from a tournament in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. He is also suspected of plotting a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the late 1990s, one of which killed an Italian tourist.
He has boasted of his many attempts to kill Castro and has allegedly been involved in, according to court documents, "some of the most infamous events of 20th century Central American politics."
Posada was serving time in a Panama prison for a 2000 assassination attempt on Castro when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned him and three accomplices in August 2004 in what some observers saw as a favor to President Bush to rally the Cuban-dominated Florida vote for his reelection.
The hubris of anointing a mass murderer, ignoring international treaties, doing despicable favors for votes, talking hypocrisy from both sides of the mouth every orifice ...
These people are getting their ultimate wish. They are getting simple and slow people like me, who would rather stay innocents, to spend time thinking of debasing things to do like digging up the corpses of Reagan and Nixon so that they can be pissed upon and buried even deeper....and now I have to think of even worse things to do with Cheney and Bush for their war crimes and separate crimes against humanity.
They need us to be as debased as they to indemnify their actions, for if we are as evil as them then, their theories say, they the can act with impunity. Well, I won't do it. I refuse to think anymore of new television shows that get viewers and ad revenue by graphically showing the stripping of the skin from the war criminal backs on a weekly basis. Perhaps people can vote for the torture of the week. Of course, it isn't torture if it is done for the public good.
Nope. No more of those thoughts. I'll think of more pleasant things. From now on. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
