I mean, they are actually saying that is what it means, so maybe you better go and educate them! Oh those silly Muslim terrorist guys don't even know what jihad means!

Somalia Islamic militants call for jihad

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press WriterSat Dec 23, 8:55 AM ET

Somalia's Islamic militants Saturday called on foreign Muslim fighters to join their holy war against Ethiopian troops after days of fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to engulf this volatile region.

Muslims are brothers and help each other, Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde, national security chairman for the Council of Islamic Courts, said in the capital, Mogadishu. We have a right to call our brothers and sisters to help us in this holy war, he said.

The Islamic forces have declared they want to bring the country under Quranic rule and vowed to drive out troops from neighboring Ethiopia, a largely Christian nation that is providing military support to Somalia's U.N.-backed government. Ethiopia denies its forces are fighting, saying it has sent only military trainers.

The clashes could mean a major conflict in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, which has one of the largest armies in the region, and its bitter rival, Eritrea, could use Somalia as the ground for a proxy war. While Ethiopia backs the internationally recognized government, Eritrea backs the Islamic movement.

In Kismayo, a strategic seaport captured from the government by Islamic militia in September, residents saw several foreign Arab fighters disembarking from ships this week.

Hundreds of people have been killed since fighting broke out Tuesday. Sporadic gunfire and shelling could be heard Friday around Baidoa, the government's only stronghold, although fighting appeared to taper off. But four Ethiopian attack helicopters and about 20 tanks were seen headed for battle, witnesses and a government official said.

Thousands of Somalis have fled their homes as troops loyal to the two-year-old interim administration fought Islamic fighters who had advanced on Baidoa, about 140 miles northwest of Mogadishu. Islamic militiamen control Mogadishu along with most of southern Somalia.

Special forces who are highly trained in guerrilla warfare are now ready to attack Ethiopians, wherever they are in Somalia, Sheik Ibrahim Shukri Abuu-Zeynab, a spokesman for the Islamic movement, told The Associated Press.

He also said the Islamists late Friday peacefully captured the Ethiopian border town of Tiyeglow, which is believed to be a main entry point for troops from the neighboring nation.

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi vowed Saturday that his government will defend the people it is responsible for and Somali sovereignty. He called on the Islamic fighters to return to negotiations.

They will be responsible for any consequences that may result from rejecting our call, he said.

Government officials said more than 600 Islamic fighters had been killed during four days of clashes. Islamic militiamen said they had killed around 400 Ethiopians and government fighters. Neither claim could be independently confirmed.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on both sides to cease the hostilities immediately and to resume the peace talks, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement released late Friday.

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, plunging the country into chaos.

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I just wanted to point that out. I just don't think in these times that they mean it any other way, no matter what the other definitions are.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

by: Robert Parry, Consortium News

Is Obama's honeymoon over? (Photo: Getty Images)

    Only a few weeks into Barack Obama's presidency, a threatening political and media dynamic has rushed to the fore cutting short a very brief honeymoon.

    The Republicans and their right-wing media allies are doing whatever they can to strangle the Obama phenomenon in its cradle; the mainstream media pundits are stressing the negative so they don't get called "in the tank for Obama"; and the Democrats are shying away from holding the Bush-Cheney administration accountable for its crimes.

    None of these developments is particularly surprising. Indeed, they track closely to the political-media pattern that took shape the last time a young Democrat won the White House, when Bill Clinton became President in 1993.

    Then, the dispirited Republicans got a lift from the loud voice of a younger Rush Limbaugh who used his popular three-hour radio show to pillory Bill and Hillary Clinton. That, in turn, encouraged the congressional Republicans to vote as a bloc against President Clinton's budget and economic plan.

    Mainstream journalists also used the early Clinton years to disprove the Right's old canard about the "liberal press." As one senior news executive told me, "we're going to show that we can be tougher on a Democrat than any Republican."

    And the Democrats of 1993 also didn't want to investigate abuses by the Republicans who had just lost power. Despite evidence that the Reagan-Bush-41 administrations had obstructed investigations into Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and other national security scandals, Clinton and Democratic congressional leaders feared partisan warfare if those cases were pursued.

    Everyone in that 1993 mix seemed to be operating out of a logical self-interest - the Republicans viewed Clinton as an interloper at their White House; the right-wing media desired larger market share and greater political influence; the mainstream media wanted to shake off the "liberal" tag; and the Democrats hoped to focus on the nation's deepening economic and social needs rather than on complex historical disputes.

    However, the result for the country from that intersection of self-interests proved disastrous.

    The Republican determination to destroy Clinton infected the political system with an ugly virus of hyper-partisanship; the right-wing media ramped up its hate talk; mainstream journalism lost its way, wandering into a strange landscape of garish sensationalism and shallow news reporting; and the Democrats failed to counteract the threat posed by the neoconservatives who surfaced during the national security scandals of the Reagan-Bush-41 years.

    In short, the dynamic that took shape in 1993-94 carried the United States into the catastrophic presidency of George W. Bush just eight years later. [For details on how this happened, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

    Little Change

    Now, at the other end of the Bush-43 experience, what may be most unsettling is that so little has changed, so few lessons have been learned.

    Even some of the key players are the same, with Rush Limbaugh hoping to reprise his role as the bombastic voice that lifts the Republicans out of their post-election funk. And the new GOP players in Congress seem to be following the hand-me-down playbook from that earlier era.

    So, House Republicans hailed their unanimous bloc vote against President Obama's $819 billion stimulus package as their first substantive step back. That was followed by key Republicans - Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Lindsey Graham - refusing to join in any serious negotiations with Democrats in the Senate.

    With the Republican Senate leaders vowing to filibuster the stimulus bill - thus forcing the Democrats to round up 60 votes - the Republicans were almost gleeful in their insurrection. The Washington Post quoted key Republicans expressing this exhilaration in a front-page story entitled "GOP Sees Positives in Negative Stand."

    "We're so far ahead of where we thought we'd be at this time," said Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, a backbencher eager to take a leadership role. "It's not a sign that we're back to where we need to be, but it's a sign that we're beginning to find our voice."

    "What transpired," said Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking House Republican, "and will give us a shot in the arm going forward is that we are standing up on principle and just saying no." [Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2009]

    One excited Republican congressman - Pete Sessions of Texas - went even further, comparing the GOP insurrectionist tactics to those of the Taliban, the radical Islamic group that is battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan and has been allied with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group.

    "Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting with editors of the National Journal's Hotline. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes."

    Sessions caught himself slightly, adding:

    "I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying [that] we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

    Tight Vote

    In the Senate, only three Republicans - Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter - crossed the aisle to support a compromise stimulus bill that gained their support by increasing the proportion of tax cuts and by reducing spending on schools and aid to hard-pressed state governments.

    Their votes became crucial for the bill to gain a 60-vote super-majority to cut off debate. After clearing the Senate, 61-37, on Tuesday, the stimulus bill goes to a conference with the House to iron out differences.

    Besides the reemerging behavioral patterns of the Republicans, many Democrats also are acting like it's 1993 all over again. Despite blunt admissions by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that they ordered waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques, the Democrats have shied away from any legal confrontation over whether to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for criminal violations.

    Instead, there's been talk about, maybe, a "truth and reconciliation commission" that won't seek to embarrass anyone and - through grants of immunity - may make any criminal prosecutions impossible. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Leahy Calls for Truth Commission."]

    Another reflection from the historical mirror of 1993 is the asymmetry of media power. Then, like now, there was a scarcity of well-organized independent or progressive media, only a handful of under-funded magazines and some small FM radio stations up against a fast-growing right-wing media machine.

    Over the past 16 years, independent and progressive outlets have gained a toehold in the national debate - mostly through the Internet and a few cable TV shows - but the balance remains heavily tilted toward the right-wing side, which invests vastly more money in virtually every media sector, from books, magazines and newspapers to radio, TV and the Internet.

    This imbalance enabled the Republicans to throw the Obama administration onto the defensive by cherry-picking a few questionable items in the stimulus bill and making them the center of the national debate for several days. The independent/progressive media side proved woefully inadequate in countering that initial thrust.

    So far, however, the key difference-maker in the economic debate has been the President himself. Despite all the TV jibber-jabber about Obama's stumbles, he demonstrated his ability to reach past the Washington chatter and connect with an American public that, according to polls, wishes him well and desperately wants him to succeed.

    Obama's town-hall meetings in the hard-hit communities of Elkhart, Indiana, on Monday and Fort Myers, Florida, on Tuesday - as well as his strong performance in a televised news conference on Monday night - left millions of Americans delighted to have a President who could both speak in paragraphs and cite down-home examples of how his stimulus package would help common folk.

    People in the audiences nodded at his explanations about money to winterize homes or to modernize schools or to build a first-class infrastructure. A refrain also kept popping up in questions, references to "for the first time in eight years," an implicit contrast to Bush's inarticulate oratory.

    Obama's speaking skill and personal charm may go a long way toward blunting Republican hopes for a repeat of the nasty partisan fights of 1993-94 - which ended up with the GOP winning both chambers of Congress, Rush Limbaugh becoming an honorary member of the new House majority, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich launching his "Republican Revolution."

    But except for Obama's prodigious abilities -- and an American public that may have lost its patience for some of the Washington gamesmanship -- there are eerie parallels to the start of the last Democratic presidency 16 years ago.

Cos I can't say the other word after holy on this board. Watch the video clip. Before I watched it I thought Ayers? So what, he's just disgruntled. Wright? Who cares, but after watching this video clip I have never been so truly utterly disgusted and nauseated ever that I can remember. I want to shout at the top of my voice if I could like Rev. James David Manning....what is wrong with people! Why can't they see it. Anyway..here is the video.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=cH7kT4xwddg&eurl=http://larrysinclair-0926.blogspot.com/

Your attempt to characterize and our concerns as being against all Muslims is typical but wrong. In the instance that the radical Islamics use jihad, it most certainly means Holy war. Can we focus on that certain faction of Islamics instead of broadening the scope of things to a realm we are not addressing?

Al Queda says. Sheesh. Are you friggin kidding me? Who isn't to say they are just saying this to scare people into ushering in Obama because they like him. Besides, as for McCain following Bush's failed war.....we are winning....the surge was successful....get a clue.

Do you honestly think that if AL Queda does something to us that Obama will just sit back and not do anything? Obama has said he will not take military action off of the table. So this whole.....Obama will stop the war crap.......you can't count on that because you don't know what those freaky psychotic terrorists have up their sleeves. It all sounds good as another failed promise though huh....I will stop the war. Just like he won't raise taxes on middle class even though raising taxes on businesses will trickle down to us and they will jack up prices of their products and we will pay for the tax hike that way....not to include the fact that all of Obama's plans cannot be covered by taxing the rich alone and he will have to raise taxes on the rest of us folks as well.....WAKE UP AMERICA!

Good grief, how things morph. I will answer a couple of things I read down the long, very very long thread that evolved from this post. First, I put liberals only, not as an invitation to read as someone suggested but as a heads up that if you are not liberal you will not like this. The writer, I believe, spiced this piece up with humor...ergo, the feral eyes making her look like all 4 of the Horsemen..come on, that was funny, and my most favorite line in the whole thing was that our Christian nation upholds the death penalty (I am paraphrasing I know) without an ounce of cognitive dissonance. Now that was good. I personally have heard Coulter say she is Christian on a couple of occasions. As I have said, I don't watch her if I can help it, but the few times I have seen her, she has brought up the fact that she is a Christian. I agree with the writer; I think I may want to find a new moniker for what it is I believe because if Coulter is Christian then evidently I am something else because I thankfully and gratefully am not 1 scintilla predisposed as she is.

And Ward Churchill...he is a quite accomplished writer and educator I have 2 books of his that deal with the American Indian and the boarding school debacle. They were very well written and researched. When I first heard what he had said I wasn't sure what he even meant. It sounded pretty off the wall to me and I still think so and I still think he owes an apology to the victims' families. I have an idea of where he was coming from, being a half breed myself, but nonetheless, he should not have said it or found a much different way of saying what he meant. Aho. Soft Winds.

As far as your imagined knowledge of where I get my information, I refer you back to your very own post above:

You infer that you know how and where I get my information. If you're so freaking clairvoyant then what are you doing here? The elitism just oozes from you.

You made a fine point in your other post: Those in glass houses best not throw stones.

I don't know if you took the time to actually read the article I posted. Nowhere in my post did I negatively pass judgment on you, as you have me. Everywhere in my post, I discussed how and why I feel the way I do and I stuck to the issues.

What made me suspicious that the White House was behind the Israeli-Lebanon war was simply the sense of deja vu all over again, as if I were viewing the summer rerun of the Iraqi war because it was all carried out Bush style:

2. The feeling that the Israelis could easily win against Hezbollah when in fact Israeli troops also encountered fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas, who took a page from the Iraqi insurgents by using explosive booby traps and ambushes to inflict heavier than expected casualties on the Israelis.

5. Other soldiers found equipment to be either inferior or inappropriate for battlefield conditions.

6. And once again, animals proved they are smarter than humans: One Israeli plan to use llamas to deliver supplies in the rugged terrain of south Lebanon turned into an embarrassment when the animals simply sat down.

The only element that was missing was the mythical claim that they would be greeted as liberators but who knows? Maybe all those roses just couldn't be delivered because the roads in Lebanon had been destroyed.

I totally agree that there are radical Muslims who want to kill us. What I totally disagree with is Bush's belief that everything can be solved with bombs. The United States is quickly becoming the most hated country in the world because of Bush's total lack of diplomacy, and I'm afraid that he is only provoking more terror attacks as a result.

The world doesn't like to be bullied by a country with a president that clearly wants to dominate the world. Ask the Soviet Union. Whoops. Sorry. The Soviet Union doesn't exist any more, do they? At least for the time being. I personally predict that even though Bush claims to know Putin's heart, we're soon going to discover that you can't take the KGB out of the Russian, and maybe, just maybe they're finding pure greedy capitalism isn't all it's hyped up to be. I believe Putin is going to prove to be a very dangerous and painful thorn in America's side, only proving once again that Bush's judgment is very poor.

I'd be glad to debate you further, but if you're going to continue to make it personal, pretending to know who I am, what I feel and where I get my news, then I'm not interested in communicating with you any further and once again refer you to your very own quote to another poster: You infer that you know how and where I get my information. If you're so freaking clairvoyant then what are you doing here? The elitism just oozes from you.

I can't even imagine knowing that I was alive only because the abortion my mom tried to have failed. I know my mom was given the option of abortion with me because she was older and they were afraid it would put too big of a strain on her kidneys. Thankfully, my mom refused.

What I have NEVER understood is how abortion is not considered murder and you can legally have an abortion. However, if a pregnant woman is shot in the abdomen and her unborn child is killed, the gunman can be put on trial for murder or if the unborn child and mother both die it is considered a double murder. Why is it murder in one instance and not another. It is still taking the life of an unborn child. Just because one is wanted by its parent and the other isn't....so I guess that makes abortion okay since the parents don't want it....just kill it.

I'm sorry....I know you guys are tired of abortion debates. This is just my opinion. You all are welcome to your own opinion in this matter. So don't bash. If you don't agree....fine.

He's pointing out the distinction between the two instead of labeling all Muslims as terrorists and pi$$ing off the whole middle east like the Bush admin did, and like you just did with your post.

A moderate muslim is a muslim who is willing to coexist peacefully with people of other faiths and who are comfortable with the democracy of the U.S. So you see, they don't need to be "won over." To the fundamentalist muslim, a moderate muslim is a sell out who has watered down their faith.

Basically what Obama is doing is elevating himself to the benevolent peacemaker, declaring he is going to choose is words wisely and have us all believe that he alone can win over the "moderate muslims" when in fact it means absolutely nothing. This just more Obama posturing for the media. The funamentalist muslims (the ones that need to be won over) will never be won over because in their own mindsent they are holding true to their Islam teachings.

Recipe for Holy War: Add two nut jobs and stir
All right. I'm now officially scared.

Having just read Seymour Hersh's article about Bush's Iran plan, it appears that we no longer have a case of the good guys versus the bad guys.

What we have here is the bad guy versus the bad guy - two madmen playing an international game of chicken, ratcheting up the rhetoric to appeal to their fundamentalist followers.

There's no doubt that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is mad in the head. In fact, it might help you remember his name if you pronounce it Ah'm mad in ee head.

He's got a uranium enrichment program going on so he can build nuclear power plants. But since he's crazy, there's a lot of worldwide concern that he's going to build a nuclear bomb while he's at it.

The U.N. atomic watchdog agency, which paid him a little visit last week, says there's no evidence that he's working on weapons. Even so, the world is feeling a little squirmy about letting Ah'm Mad In Ee Head carry on with his nuclear program. Everyone keeps asking him to quit it, but he's dug in his heels.

The other one - our very own nut job in the White House - is licking his chops over what he perceives as a stubborn challenge from Iran's president.

In last week's New Yorker magazine, Hersh provided a detailed look at Bush's response to Ah'm Mad In Ee Head. According to Hersh's sources, Bush wants Ah'm Mad In Ee Head to defy U.N. demands to quit playing with uranium.

You know why? Because our own madman wants to trot out one of our own nukes and bomb Iran's madman out of business - along with a few hundred thousand other Iranians, of course.

As one congressman told Hersh, The most worrisome thing is that Bush has a messianic vision. Bush is waging a holy war. He's on a crusade. And so is Ah'm Mad In Ee Head.

One nut-job fundamentalist Christian plus one nut-job fundamentalist Muslim equals one nut-job Holy War.

The administration's talking heads deny this, of course. They say Hersh is in fantasyland. That's funny. It's exactly what they said about Hersh when he broke the story about U.S. soldiers torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

And so the rest of the world's people are as scared of George Bush as they are of Ah'm Mad In Ee Head. This unelected president of ours has systematically been dehumanizing Arabs. He's imprisoned them without charges. He's tortured them. He's killed them. And now he wants to nuke them.

He's like a child with a serious case of ADHD. He's lost interest in Iraq and is looking for a new toy to break. Iraq, after all, has turned out badly, so he's doing what he always does when he makes a mess of something - he's turning his attention elsewhere and starting a whole new mess.

If Bush attacks Iran, he will unleash Hezbollah - Iran's strong, well organized terrorist organization. And who do you think Hezbollah's first target will be? The sitting ducks right next door in Iraq - American troops. Then Europe and Israel will go up in flames.

So now I'm officially scared. On their own, Bush and Ah'm Mad In Ee Head are frightening enough. Working together, these two could create the Perfect Storm.

There are 1,009 days 'til Inauguration 2009 - if we live that long. That means we'll break 1,000 next week. Let's drink a toast to Day 999 on Friday. At 7 p.m. on April 28 I'll be in the downstairs bar at Catherine's Restaurant, 153 West Main St., Goshen. If you plan to stop in, let me know so I can tell Steve at the restaurant what kind of crowd to expect.

Beth's column appears on Monday. Talk to her at 346-3147 or at bquinn@th-record.com.

I typed out several paragraphs and one swear word and the cussing police is on me like stink on sh1t. Waaaaaaah! Boo hoo!

Seriously say something of substance to prove me wrong as I honestly don't believe I signed up for this swearing lecture. Have a great day!

Uh, really???? Cuz these Muslims seem to think jihad means Holy War. SM

Somalia Islamic militants call for jihad