Why does the AP bother to publish this garbage?
A British-based Islamic news agency[Now that has credibility written all over it]
said Thursday it has a new audio recording of Osama bin Laden in which he predicts he will die as "a martyr" this year in an attack against his enemies.Yeah, and I have a bin Laden tape too. Elvis Presley dropped it off at my house this evening.The Al-Ansaar news agency said that the 53-minute tape was allegedly recorded this month and acquired from a seller who advertised over the Internet.
Shitty Little Country Watch A Belgian court has ruled that Ariel Sharon can be tried for genocide (the Sabra and Shatila massacre) after he leaves office. The "case" against Sharon is not that he ordered the massacres, but that he somehow failed to anticipate or take action against the Lebanese Christian Arabs who actually committed the atrocities. For some reason, the plaintiffs' objective is not to prosecute the Arab culprits but to find an excuse to persecute the uninvolved Israelis. The other thing that is remarkable here is this. Even in the unlikely event that Belgium would want to prosecute any Arab leader (such as Saddam Hussein) for their various mass murders, they wouldn't have much of a chance. Hardly any Arab leaders leave office alive, unless by force. And Belgium has made it clear that they're going to stand in the way of removing Saddam.
Imshin explains why Iraqis and Israelis have more in common than you might expect.
Put him in the comfy chair: UN Set to Take N.Korea Crisis to Security Council
The governing body of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog is expected to adopt a toughly worded resolution on North Korea on Wednesday that would take the standoff with Pyongyang before the U.N. Security Council.Yeah, now that the Security Council has decided to get tough, it should buy Kim Jong Il at least a dozen more years to really ramp up his nuclear weapons program.
Ze'ev Schiff reveals the silver lining in the Axis of Weasels' self-immolation and isolation on Mideast security matters: The end of the unhelpful and meddlesome "Quartet Road Map", and the EU's loss of influence on Israeli-Palestinian matters.
For Israel, the crisis over Iraq is proof that European and European Union thinking is tendentious, based on irrelevant considerations that can complicate problems rather than solve them.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 12, 2003 12:49 PM
You will be glad to know that actually the court ruled just the opposite. See here:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030212_1269.html
Reuters misstated the results to aid their fellow terrorists. (via den Beste)
Posted by: John Weidner on February 12, 2003 02:19 PMIsrael should set up its own War crimes Court and try the Dutch Govenment for Srebrenica. They KNEW and did nothing. The most Sharon has been accused of is that he SHOULD have known.
Posted by: Dave on February 12, 2003 03:02 PMJohn,
ABC seemed to whitewash the most important nuance, which Ha'aretz reported [though I see the link above is not terribly visible, see http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/262346.html ]. The court can't try Sharon now because he is still in office and has immunity. But they can try the other (less well known) defendant who is not an officeholder, and they can try Sharon when he leaves office.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on February 12, 2003 03:18 PM