WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) – A Jewish assemblyman said Friday that an exhibit of Palestinian art and crafts, scheduled for display in a public building, should be canceled because it is anti-Israel and “promotes terrorism and violence.”

Items to be shown include an Arab headdress trapped in a Star of David made of barbed wire, and a piece paying homage to “Palestinian martyrs in the anti-Israel uprising that began in 2000.”

The curator of the exhibit said that while some of the art deals with Israel’s military presence in the Palestinian territories and “the apartheid-type life that Palestinians are forced to live under … what comes through is the desire for a peaceful life.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

CBS News has axed a news producer who cut into prime-time programming Wednesday night to report the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The staffer, a female senior producer for CBS’s overnight newscast Up to the Minute, broke in to CSI: N.Y. shortly before 11 p.m. with the report, outraging viewers who missed the end of the crime drama.

CBS apologized for the interruption Thursday, saying an “overly aggressive” staffer “jumped the gun on a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news.”  

As for the producer’s dismissal, a CBS spokesperson said Friday, “We do not comment on personnel issues.” CBS planned to repeat the CSI: N.Y. episode Friday night to placate viewers.

An executive at a rival broadcast network said the whole situation left them puzzled. “I think people here were scratching their heads over the decision to break in, and then scratching it even harder over the apology for breaking in,” the exec says. “And now we’re wondering what kind of process they have in place to take the network to a special report.”
Full Article: broadcastingcable.com

People with US bombs raining down on their heads or US bulldozers razing their houses or US helicopters blasting their children don’t have the luxury of tuning the world ouit.

Osama bin Laden now has religious approval to use a nuclear device against Americans, says the former head of the CIA unit charged with tracking down the Saudi terrorist. The former agent, Michael Scheuer, speaks to Steve Kroft in his first television interview without disguise to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 14 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Scheuer was until recently known as the “anonymous” author of two books critical of the West’s response to bin Laden and al Qaeda, the most recent of which is titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. No one in the West knows more about the Qaeda leader than Scheuer, who has tracked him since the mid-1980s. The CIA allowed him to write the books provided he remain anonymous, but now is allowing him to reveal himself for the first time on Sunday’s broadcast; he formally leaves the Agency today (12).

Even if bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably wouldn’t have used it for a lack of proper religious authority – authority he has now. “[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik…a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans,” says Scheuer. “[The treatise] found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans,” Scheuer tells Kroft.
Full Article: drudgereport.com

WASHINGTON – Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush’s decisions on America’s obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.

In his first remarks since his resignation was announced Tuesday, Ashcroft forcefully denounced what he called “a profoundly disturbing trend” among some judges to interfere in the president’s constitutional authority to make decisions during war.

“The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war,” Ashcroft said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers’ group.
Full Article:tucsoncitizen.com

Yeah, shame on those judges for doing their duty as upholders of the Constitution of the United States.

CAIRO, Nov 11 (AFP) – The personal physician of Yasser Arafat called for an inquiry into the cause of the veteran Palestinian leader’s death on Thursday.

“I demand an official inquiry and an autopsy … so the Palestinian people can learn in all transparency what caused the death” of their leader, Dr Ashraf al-Kurdi said on Al-Jazeera television only hours before Arafat was due to be buried.

He said his suspicions were aroused by the absence of any information about Arafat’s health since he was admitted to hospital in Paris on October 29 and that Arafat was conscious when he left his Ramallah compound.

Amid the doubt, rumours have surfaced that Arafat was poisoned but doctors in Paris and Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath rejected that speculation.

Kurdi, who was Arafat’s personal physician for more than 20 years, said he had been surprised by the actions of some members of the veteran leader’s office.

He said they took too long to contact him even though Arafat’s health was in rapid decline.

Kurdi, who did not travel to Paris his patient, said he could not draw any conclusions about the death despite his suspicions.
turkishpress.com

MIAMI (AFP) – Former US President Jimmy Carter called Yasser Arafat (news – web sites) “a powerful human symbol and forceful advocate” who united Palestinians in their pursuit of a homeland.

“Yasser Arafat’s death marks the end of an era and will no doubt be painfully felt by Palestinians throughout the Middle East and elsewhere in the world,” Carter said.

“He was the father of the modern Palestinian nationalist movement. A powerful human symbol and forceful advocate, Palestinians united behind him in their pursuit of a homeland,” he said in a statement distributed by his Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center.

He said that while Arafat provided “indispensable leadership to a revolutionary movement” and played a key role in forging a peace agreement with Israel in 1993, he was excluded from negotiations in recent years.

“My hope is that an emerging Palestinian leadership can benefit from Arafat’s experiences, be welcomed to the peace process by (Israeli) Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon and (US) President (George W.) Bush, and be successful in helping to forge a Palestinian state living in harmony with their Israeli neighbors,” Carter said.

Both Carter and Arafat are Nobel peace prize laureates.

Arafat, who died at a Paris hospital early Thursday, was to be buried at his West Bank headquarters after a military funeral ceremony in Cairo Friday.
news.yahoo.com

Well at least someone gets it.

CBS NEWS interrupted the final minutes of Wednesday night’s episode of CSI: NEW YORK  in order to air a special report about the death of Yasser Arafat.    CBS has apologized and says it will rebroadcast the episode, in its entirety FRIDAY at 9PM CENTRAL TIME.

“An overly aggressive CBS News producer jumped the gun with a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news. We sincerely regret the error. The episode of CSI: NEW YORK will be rebroadcast Friday, Nov. 12.”
ksla.com

JERUSALEM (CNN) — Seven months after he was released from prison after an 18-year sentence for treason and espionage, Israeli police arrested nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Thursday morning in Jerusalem on suspicion of passing on confidential information to unauthorized individuals, police said.

Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli jail for leaking details of Israel’s nuclear program in 1986, court officials said.

He is restricted from leaving the country and from talking to the international media. Israeli officials fear Vanunu might reveal additional Israeli secrets.

Israelis view Vanunu as either a traitor or a hero after he exposed Israel’s nuclear secrets to London’s The Sunday Times 18 years ago, leading analysts to conclude Israel had made as many as 200 nuclear bombs.

Israel does not comment on whether it has nuclear weapons.
Full Article: cnn.com

Israel is allowed ‘no comment’ about its nuclear weapons while the Isrealis threaten to attack Iran over their potential ones. It is hypocrisies such as this that threaten the safety of the US and others. Israel is allowed total impunity, Arafat’s legacy is distorted by the press, Fallujah is being ripped to shreds, the car bombs are going off in Baghdad, and Bush has the gall to say that Arafat’s death raises new ‘hope for peace.’ Peace, or ‘democracy,’ are the last things these villains are hoping for.

Prime Minister John Howard says Yasser Arafat will be remembered as a leader who failed to grasp an opportunity for peace in the Middle East.

…”I think history will judge him very harshly for not having seized the opportunity in the year 2000 to embrace the offer that was very courageously made by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barack, which involved the Israelis agreeing to 90 per cent of what the Palestinians had wanted,” he said.
abc.net.au

Whose history? The history that claims the 2000 deal represents “90% of what the Palestinians had wanted?” Any fair history, which is quaintly referred to as ‘revisionist’ these days, will judge most harshly the aggression of Bush and his buddies, Howard included.

by Craig S. Smith
Anger toward the Netherlands’ Muslim community percolated among the crowd that gathered outside the funeral for the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed by an Islamic extremist a week ago.

The public debate over how conservative Islam fits into Europe’s most tolerant, liberal society had already become a no-holds-barred affair before the killing of van Gogh, who had publicly and repeatedly used epithets against Muslims. But his killing has now polarized the country, giving the rest of Europe a disturbing glimpse of what may be in store if relations with the continent’s growing immigrant communities are not managed more adeptly.

The anger is such that for the second time in two days an Islamic elementary school was attacked Tuesday, this time in Uden, part of what Dutch authorities fear are reprisals after van Gogh’s killing. The authorities said that Muslim sites had been the targets of a half-dozen attacks in the past week.

In apparent retaliation, arsonists attempted to burn down Protestant churches in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amersfoort, the police said.

The attacks have scratched the patina of tolerance on which the Dutch have long prided themselves, particularly here in their principal city, where the scent of hashish trails in the air, prostitutes beckon from storefront brothels and Hell’s Angels live side by side with Hare Krishnas. But many Dutch now say that for years that tradition of tolerance suppressed an open debate about the challenges of integrating conservative Muslims.
Full Article:iht.com

So interesting the useful fictions Europeans indulge in. What about Royal Dutch Shell despoiling West Africa? Or the nasty legacy of the Dutch Afrikaaners? Progressive and tolerant societies for white Europeans, yes. I am not defending Islamic fundamentalists, but it is not possible to separate the realities of Europe today with its history. These ‘liberal’ states of Europe were built off the backs of millions of black Africans. In that light, ‘enlightened immigration policies’ just do not cut it.