Tomorrow will be a big news day. Hurricane Gustav will hit New Orleans, chaos will ensue, and the Republicans will be blamed. We probably won’t be blogging it, but I will make an easy prediction: the government, at both the federal and state levels, will botch the response. It’s inevitable; they simply can’t do a job like this right. Only localized, decentralized, distributed networks of people can be effective in a mass crisis.And now for the real news…
Thanks to Abu Elvis, Barry Rubin, GD, TB, The Observer, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Details are below the fold.
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Man Shot Dead in Gothenburg
A 44-year-old man was found shot dead in the Gothenburg suburb of Kortedala on Sunday morning. Police have classified the crime as murder with an alternative charge of manslaughter.
The shooting occurred at 5am on Årstids square in the suburb of Kortedala in Gothenburg. Despite the early hour police were able to take 14 people in for questioning.
“There were several people at the scene and several more arrived,” said Pia Goksöyr at Gothenburg police.
The 14 were interviewed by police on Sunday morning but by lunchtime no suspect had been identified and arrested for the offence.
Several incidents have occurred in the suburb of Kortedala in recent weeks, many involving firearms, and thought to have connections with an ongoing gang war in the city.
A man was shot in the leg and a bomb was placed on a car in two incidents occurring in the vicinity of Årstids square. Police believe that the cases could have links to the gang war.
The man that was shot on Sunday morning is not however thought to have any links to organized criminal gangs.
“He is not previously known to us and the incident is probably not gang related,” said Goksöyr.
A rumour was circulating on Sunday that the man had in fact shot himself.
“We can’t rule it out,” said Goksöyr.
By Sunday lunchtime the type of firearm used in the shooting had not been clarified.
News agency TT spoke to a man living in the vicinity of Årstidtorget. He was angry at the news.
“There are two illicit clubs here on the square. People are scared to walk here in the evenings. It feels horrible to have to walk past the gangs here. I have several acquaintances who have had enough,” he said and explained that he and his wife had plans to move from the area in the near future.
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Preachers of Separatism at Work Inside Britain’s Mosques
Britain’s leading Muslim bodies say they are fighting extremism. In one of our most respected mosques, Sara Hassan came face to face with hardline female preachers of separatism. Here, she reports on the shocking results of her investigation.
In a large balcony above the beautiful main hall at Regent’s Park Mosque in London — widely considered the most important mosque in Britain — I am filming undercover as the woman preacher gives her talk.
What should be done to a Muslim who converts to another faith? “We kill him,” she says, “kill him, kill, kill…You have to kill him, you understand?”
Adulterers, she says, are to be stoned to death — and as for homosexuals, and women who “make themselves like a man, a woman like a man … the punishment is kill, kill them, throw them from the highest place”…
| — Hat tip: GD | [Return to headlines] |
Youths Brawl at Norwegian Asylum Center
Brawl over bus seats [translated by The Observer]
They were going to watch a football match, but instead they ended up having a fist fight over who was going to be allowed on board the bus. A worried boy called the police in Asker og Bærum and informed them about the brawl, which took place at Hvalstad asylum centre for young asylum seekers.
“At lot of kids were involved in the brawl, and there simply weren’t enough staff to calm things down,” according to the first report.
The police dispatched two units, who managed to break up the fight. Some of the youths suffered nosebleeds, but no one was seriously injured.
“We hardly ever arrest individuals whose papers say they are under the age of 18 for being involved in scuffles like this,” says leader of operations Jørgen Jakobsen of Asker og Bærum police department to Aftenposten.no.”
Sent to their rooms
The trip to the football match was cancelled, and the youths involved in the brawl were given marching orders back to their rooms, while those kids who didn’t take part in the fighting were allowed to play volleyball.
“This is not a big deal. It was only three kids fighting a little bit. Nothing serious happened,” says Ahmed Bozgil, chairman of Hero Norway, the company operating the centre.
The residents at this asylum centre have been under a lot of stress after a 16 year old boy was shot and nearly killed while sleeping in his room by a lawyer from Asker. It is not clear yet if this incident had anything to do with the brawl.
| — Hat tip: The Observer | [Return to headlines] |
Forward to the Past
Jonathan Spyer
In recent weeks, a number of prominent Fatah figures have suggested that their movement might abandon its commitment to a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and return to the pre-1988 demand for Israel’s replacement by a single state in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
They claim that Israeli policy in the West Bank is forcing them to reconsider their commitment to partition. In fact, though, what used to be known as the “democratic, secular state,” and is now called the “one-state solution,” has been the end-goal of modern Palestinian nationalism for the greater part of its history. Its reemergence into prominence should come as no surprise. It is the natural product of Palestinian nationalism’s characterization of the conflict.
The one-state solution is depicted by its adherents as a non-ethnic, non-nationalist alternative to the ethnic nationalism represented by Israel. Israel, according to Virginia Tilly, a prominent Western supporter of the one-state idea, rests “on the discredited idea, on which political Zionism stakes all its moral authority, that any ethnic group can legitimately claim permanent formal dominion over a territorial state.”
This formulation is dishonest. Ahmed Qurei and Sari Nusseibeh, two of the prominent Palestinians with apparently growing sympathy for the one-state idea, are also members of an overtly nationalist movement emerging from a distinctive Arab and Muslim cultural context.
The Palestinian Authority in its constitution describes the Palestinian people in ethnic and religious terms, as “part of the Arab and Islamic nations.” This document declares Islam as the official religion of the Palestinian state, and cites Islamic sharia law as a “major source for legislation.” Thus, whatever argument the one-staters have with Israel, it isn’t based on a principled objection to ethnic nationalism. But then, why is this claim of the “non-national,” civil rights nature of the one-state demand being made?…
| — Hat tip: Barry Rubin | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Firm Produces T-Shirt Insulting Prophet (S)
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM- In their continued aim to insult Islam and the Prophet Mohammed (s), an Israeli textile firm recently produced a T-shirt with a sentence insulting the Prophet Mohammed (s). The t-shirt was done for the Intelligence Department in the Israeli occupation army.
“If Mohammed does not come to the mountain, it is acceptable”, says the t-shirt on the front in Hebrew. The sentence is meant to relate to the Hebrew proverb saying “If Mohammed (the Prophet) does not come to the mountain; the mountain will come to him”.
A picture of an Arab Sheikh carrying a rifle, signifying that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists, also appears on the T-shirt.
The Islamic Movement in the 1948 Palestinian Occupied Lands asked the company to stop producing such T-shirts. It has also called for respect to be accorded to the feelings and beliefs of the Muslims.
They said that, “Muslims should intensify efforts to defend the Prophet (s) and confront this Zionist campaign which is aiming to infuriate Muslims and Arabs.”
| — Hat tip: TB | [Return to headlines] |
Palestinians Can’t Give the Time of Day
The split between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip took a new twist over the weekend as Hamas and Fatah announced different dates for the beginning of winter time.
This year, for the first time ever, winter time in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will begin on different dates.
And for the first time ever, the time in the two areas will be different by one hour for two or three days.
In the past, the Palestinians — in a sign of political independence — used to change their clocks at different times from Israel.
The Hamas government announced that it was moving the clock back an hour earlier at midnight on Thursday, heralding the beginning of winter time in Gaza.
The Ramallah-based government of Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, on the other hand, announced that clocks will be switched back only at midnight Sunday, signifying the beginning of Ramadan.
In Israel, the time change is expected to take place on October 5.
In a related development, hundreds of physicians working in the public sector began a four-day strike Saturday in protest against the dismissal of scores of their colleagues by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.
In response, the Hamas security forces arrested Dr. Duhni al-Wahidi, head of the Physicians Syndicate in the Gaza Strip.
The strike disrupted medical services in several hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the area.
Hamas officials accused the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah of instigating the physicians’ strike in a bid to undermine the Hamas government.
They claimed that the strike was part of an attempt to drive the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to revolt against the Hamas government.
School teachers in the Gaza Strip have also threatened to go on strike on the first day of the academic year this week. They too are protesting against the dismissal of hundreds of their colleagues by the Hamas government for “political reasons.”
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
Russian Police Kill Critical Web Site Owner, Deputy Says
The owner of an independent Web site critical of authorities was shot and killed Sunday by police in a volatile province in southern Russia, his colleague said.
Police arrested Ingushetiya.ru owner Magomed Yevloyev on Sunday, taking him off a plane that had just landed in Ingushetia province near Chechnya, said the site’s deputy editor, Ruslan Khautiyev.
Police whisked Yevloyev away in a car and later dumped him on the road with a gunshot wound in the head, Khautiyev said. He said Yevloyev died in a hospital shortly afterward.
In Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement that Yevloyev was detained by police and died in an “incident” while being taken to police headquarters for an interrogation. Markin did not elaborate, saying that a check to clarify the circumstances of Yevloyev’s death had begun. The committee is under the Prosecutor General’s office.
| — Hat tip: Abu Elvis | [Return to headlines] |
3 comments:
Baron,
"Only localized, decentralized, distributed networks of people can be effective in a mass crisis."
I do not agree. Of course, we have different views on State, America has 300 million people and more than 900'000 thousand square kilometers. My tiny Nation has a mere 92 Km2 and 10 million people.
But I do think that a "centralised" government could do a good job over this. I'm not refering to the U.S. of A. but maybe Louisiana (or the State where New Orleans is located) could. (Probabily if it had more power).
Bring the essay, we'll see what will happen.
Maybe Bush will send his sips to murder blacks again? ;)
"The owner of an independent Web site critical of authorities was shot and killed Sunday by police in a volatile province in southern Russia"
By "volatile province" it means non-Russian, non-European, non-Christian Russian "province", which, by the way, is not a "province" but a Republic, with great amounts of autonomy.
Curiouser and curiouser.It is revealed that the man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings was an informant who had the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad. Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a miner with access to explosives, as well as an associate named Rafa Zouhier both regularly informed for the Spanish police, telling them about drug shipments. Trashorras began working as an informant after being arrested for drug trafficking in July 2001, while Zouhier became an informant after being released from prison early in February 2002. Shortly after the Madrid bombings, investigators discover that Trashorras’ wife Carmen Toro has a piece of paper with the telephone number of Juan Jesus Sanchez Manzano, head of Tedax, the Civil Guard bomb squad. She and her brother Antonio Toro are also informants.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a061804bombsquad
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