Photo of Gul courtesy of the BBC
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has warned that moderate Turks are becoming anti-American and anti-EU.Mark Alexander
Mr Gul said many Turks were embittered by the US' support for Israel's actions in Lebanon and by Turkey's problems in joining the EU. Turkish anti-West mood 'rising'
Photo of Ms Louise Arbour courtesy of the BBC
War crimes could have been committed in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza, a senior UN official has said.Mark Alexander
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said international law stressed the need to protect civilians.
There is an obligation on all parties to respect the "principle of proportionality", she said. UN warning on Mid-East war crimes
With illegal attacks across Israel’s internationally recognized borders, hostage taking of soldiers and a relentlessly raining of rockets and missiles upon Israel’s major cities, the Israeli Defense Forces have finally sprung into action. This is after months of “restraint” that world leaders are now calling upon them to use. The time for “restraint” has long passed, as I will demonstrate.Mark Alexander
It is because of Israel’s compromise, appeasement and restraint that Hamas, Hizbollah and their true masters, Iran and Syria, have come to believe that “now” is the time to attack and destroy Israel.
Every time Israel unilaterally gave “land for peace”, as in Southern Lebanon and Gaza, the terrorist claimed it as their victory. Hamas used this claim to get elected by popular vote in the West Bank and Gaza. Hezbollah has used the same claim to move in a massive force that is now more powerful than the Lebanon’s army.
Every compromise that Israel has made to make peace with the Palestinians and the surrounding Muslim nations has been rewarded with more terrorism. The Myth of ''Measured Response''
Israel is continuing its Lebanon military offensive, with war planes bombing more than 40 targets, mainly in southern parts of Beirut, on Friday.Mark Alexander
Troops are also fighting Hezbollah inside southern Lebanon, and Israel has told people to leave the area, warning of a possible large-scale incursion. Israel tightens grip on Lebanon
In a true, totalitarian society such as the old Soviet Union, crime rates are usually low because of the crushing state control of all its citizens. Supposedly, street crime in Moscow in the USSR was rare, probably because the state itself was the biggest criminal. In contrast, in the European Union of today, which is not a totalitarian society, at least not yet, crime rates are booming in major cities. At the same time, authorities are stepping up censorship efforts, openly talking about media “speech codes” and aggressively slapping labels such as “racism” or “xenophobia” on anybody daring to criticize the immigration policies or pointing out the inadequate response to Muslim gang violence.Mark Alexander
There is obviously a connection here: The less control the authorities have with Muslims, the more control they want to exercise over non-Muslims. As problems in Europe get worse, which they will, the EU will move in an increasingly repressive direction until it either becomes a true, totalitarian entity or falls apart. This strange mix of powerful censorship of public debate, yet little control over public law and order, has by some been labelled anarcho-tyranny. In Praise of the First and Second Amendments
More than 60 people, most of them Lebanese civilians, were killed yesterday on the bloodiest day of the Middle East conflict so far.Mark Alexander
As the violence continued the United Nations raised the possibility that civilian deaths could lead to war crimes charges. Lebanon said 300 people had been killed in eight days of Israeli air strikes and artillery barrages. 500,000 Lebanese flee the carnage by Tim Butcher
REUTERS - BEIRUT, 19 July (IRIN) - Lebanon's dream of 2006 as a record year for economic growth has in the space of a week turned into a nightmare. Israeli air strikes have brought its fast-growing economy to an almost complete standstill. With thousands of nationals and foreign workers evacuating, and more than 500,000 internally displaced people, a bleak scenario confronts the country's workforce.Mark Alexander
"The direct losses are estimated to be nearly half a billion US dollars," said Jihad Azoor, Lebanon's Finance Minister. "But we have to read this number carefully because we have no way of assessing the situation fully to get an accurate estimate. And more losses occur by the hour." LEBANON: Workforce morale at an all-time low
NEWSMAX.COM - World War III has begun, and the nation’s leadership is failing to deal with this reality, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich concludes. Gingrich Says World War III Has BegunMark Alexander
Photo courtesy of The Telegraph
It is an axiom of Israeli military operation that its armed forces must hurry to achieve victory before international pressure forces them to stop.Mark Alexander
Yet after bombarding Lebanon for five days, and causing pain to ordinary civilians unseen since the civil war ended 15 years ago, the international outcry is surprisingly muted. If anything, as the conflict has intensified and the regional stakes have risen, Israel has found a degree of international sympathy, or at least understanding.
Lebanon has become the battleground between pro-western and radical Islamic forces. Few governments, even Arab states, want to see Hizbollah win the contest. Israel fights West's cause against radical Islam by Anton La Guardia
Iran plans to dominate the Middle East by Dore Gold
Photo courtesy of the BBC
It was perhaps the most elegant exodus in history. Thousands of wealthy, well-dressed Arabs snarled the mountain roads leading to Syria with their Range Rovers and Porsches as they fled Lebanon yesterday.Mark Alexander
There were women with expensive coiffures, husbands wearing designer sunglasses and teenagers playing the latest hand-held video games as Lebanon morphed from Arab world summer playground to ghostland.
But behind the tinted windscreens, the faces of the fleeing were haggard with worry. Crawling Porsches and the prayerful join Lebanon's opulent exodus by Tim Butcher
If Hamas, Hizbullah win war they have declared, Zionist project is nearing end of its daysMark Alexander
This is no competition of false machismo. This is a fateful decision: Even if these two radical Islamic movements gain symbolic propaganda victories – it could free other enemies around the Middle East. The need to win this war is absolute. There can be no debate about it. A war Israel must win Opinion by Sever Plocker
As so often in the Middle East, text and sub-text are inextricably bound up.Mark Alexander
Thus a crisis that at first sight pits Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah, inevitably reaches out to involve Syria and Iran, both strong supporters of the Lebanese-based Shia movement.
This is what makes this crisis so difficult to resolve. But it also underlines how dangerous its ramifications could be unless the fighting is halted.
Inevitably then, events in the Middle East have pushed themselves onto the G8 summit agenda here in St Petersburg. Hostility envelops wider region by Jonathan Marcus
At a recent conference in Switzerland, student representatives asked: how could the Muslim population gain traction so quickly in Western Europe? It is a simple and direct question that could easily be addressed with reference to the disparity between Christian and Muslim birthrates and immigration patterns.Mark Alexander
But numbers do not tell the whole story, nor do these numbers reveal very much about European attitudes. There are philosophical underpinnings that reveal more than any statistical analysis can provide.
The first of these is multiculturalism, an attitude which suggests each culture should be treated on its own terms without regard to universal considerations. For example, female deformation in the form of clitoridectomy is not wrong; it is simply the manifestation of a different culture.
The second, and arguably the view that represents the most significant shift in European attitudes, is secular humanism, a turning away from the spiritual to the temporal. European churches are now ostensibly museums, not places of worship. The moral teachings of Christianity have been largely interred and replaced by relativism or “new age” phenomenology, such as pantheistic environmentalism.
The third shift in attitude might be characterized as extreme liberalism. In this case, the virtues of liberalism such as tolerance have been perverted into an unwillingness to discriminate. Right and wrong are seen as archaic concepts belonging to the ash heap of history. What counts is openness, a strange form of egalitarianism in which all opinions have equal value if rendered earnestly.
The fourth attitudinal consideration is transnationalism. A project to reduce or eliminate the national heritage of European states through Continental harmonization has had the unintended effect of making citizens rudderless, of losing an identity and deracinating patriotism. Do the bureaucrats in Brussels represent the will of the European people? And can a Continental parliament rely on consent of the governed or even care about those governed? Answers beg the questions.
Last is the loss of confidence. The retreat of apostolic teaching has resulted in an absence of authority. Catholicism is in retreat, not only as a religion but as a voice of moral conviction. London: To defeat radical Islam Europe must re-Christianize by Herbert London
Out-of-the-mainstream beliefs about gay marriage and supposedly sexist doctrines are gutting old-line faiths.Mark Alexander
The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn't simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.
Embraced by the leadership of all the mainline Protestant denominations, as well as large segments of American Catholicism, liberal Christianity has been hailed by its boosters for 40 years as the future of the Christian church.
Instead, as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating. Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins by Charlotte Allen
Radical Islamism is more than a response to western actions: it is an ideology that provides a battle cry and a battle order.Mark Alexander
The competing explanations for a resort to terrorism are many, but you can more or less group them round two poles.
One of these was vividly expressed in the Guardian last Saturday by Karen Armstrong. Tony Blair had been wrong, she said, to call for moderate Muslims to act and speak out more decisively against radical Islamists. He had missed the point: all Muslims, moderate or radical, were deeply stirred by the sufferings of their co-religionists in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Palestine, and the "strong emphasis placed by Islam on justice and community solidarity" made this a religious issue.
"It is disingenuous of Tony Blair," she wrote, "to separate the rising tide of 'Islamism' from his unpopular foreign policy, particularly when Palestinians are being subjected to new dangers in Gaza."
This pole is defined, roughly, by the belief that it is the west's, or America's, fault that radical Islamists are violent. While violence may be wrong - Armstrong certainly believes that - it takes its root and justifies itself in its own eyes in the empathy with the victims of, and anger with, the West's actions.
The other pole has been evoked, at least as vividly, by an ex-Muslim, now a non-believer: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian-born Dutch MP whose apostasy (as many of her former co-religionists saw it) and outspoken criticisms of Islam earned her death threats and police protection. Further, a campaign against her in the Netherlands mounted by some elements in the left saw her temporarily stripped of her citizenship, a move that was the main cause of the collapse of the country's centre-right coalition last month. To the death by John Lloyd
Photo courtesy of the BBC
At least 100 people have been killed by seven near-simultaneous bombs on the train network in the Indian financial capital Mumbai (Bombay), police say.Mark Alexander
The first explosion went off at about 1830 local time (1300 GMT), during the peak of the evening rush hour in the suburbs on the busy Western Railway.
Correspondents spoke of scenes of pandemonium, with people jumping from trains and bodies flung onto tracks. Scores dead in Mumbai train bombs
SYDNEY — The Australian government has banned two books that encourage young Muslims to become suicide bombers in Afghanistan.Mark Alexander
The federal Classification Review Board ruled Monday that the books — “Defence of the Muslim Lands” and “Join the Caravan” — violate Australian laws by promoting, inciting or instructing in matters of violence or crime and can no longer be sold or imported to Australia. Australia bans two books encouraging suicide bombers
A Pompano Beach clergyman's comments about Islam has cost him a post on Broward's Judicial Nominating Commission.Mark Alexander
Following some controversial remarks on radio about Muslims, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier, a Gov. Jeb Bush appointee, resigned from a panel responsible for nominating judges in Broward County.
Dozier said Monday he was asked to step down from the nine-member Judicial Nominating Commission after he characterized Islam as a ''cult'' on a radio show.
Dozier, pastor of the World Wide Christian Center Church in Pompano Beach, also called Islam ''a dangerous religion'' Friday on the The Steve Kane Radio Show. Islam remark costs pastor by Darran Simon
Im Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten herrscht Pessimismus - aus unerwarteten GründenMark Alexander
Politiker in den USA warnen vor unzähligen Gefahren für die Sicherheit der Nation. Doch die Amerikaner sorgen sich derzeit eher um gewöhnlichere Dinge wie Benzinpreise oder die illegale Einwanderung.
Pünktlich zum Nationalfeiertag am 4. Juli lanciert, haben Nordkoreas Raketen ihre Wirkung auf die politische Klasse der USA nicht verfehlt. Richard Haass, Chefstratege unter dem früheren Aussenminister Powell und Präsident des Think-Tanks Council on Foreign Relations, erklärte, nie zuvor in ihrer modernen Geschichte seien die USA mit einer derartigen Häufung von Problemen konfrontiert gewesen. Amerikas sorgenvoller Sommer
The forecast for the new fashion season is as somber as it is certain. It is going to be a long dark winter.Mark Alexander
After a decade of free-fall hipster pants, bared midriffs, bras on show under sheer dresses and naked legs, fashion has started on its great coverup. Forget girlie frills and celebrities flashing flesh on the red carpet. The typical outfit in the current international fashion collections is in any color as long as it is black with a silhouette long, lean and layered.
The mood is now for a chaste sobriety, with sturdy fabrics, thick leggings and even ankle-length hemlines.
The world's leading designers have no doubts as to where fashion is headed as they talk about "restraint" and "sobriety."
"I think 'modesty' is a beautiful word today - and a beautiful attitude," says Lanvin's Alber Elbaz, who has built his career on designing dresses with a respectful attitude to women.
Marc Jacobs, founding father of the girl-woman aesthetic, shocked the audience at his New York show last month with hefty knits, leg warmers and thick layers of clothes shrouding the body. The new sobriety: Covering up the body
KABUL (Reuters) - Models strode down a catwalk in the Afghan capital Kabul for the first time in decades this weekend as two designers showed off their clothes behind the guarded walls of a luxury hotel.
An audience of expatriates and well-heeled Afghan watched the show in hotel garden, under a clear midsummer night's sky, to the strains of traditional Afghan music.
All of the models showing the conservatively cut clothes that included designer burqas were expatriate women, to the disappointment of some in the audience.
The organisers said they did not want to court controversy in what is a deeply conservative Muslim country by having Afghan models.
"We invited a lot of Afghan women to attend the show but not to be models," said Italian designer Gabriella Ghidoni, who organised the show with an Afghan partner.
The Taliban forced women to wear the all-enveloping burqa but nearly five years after the hard-line Islamists were ousted, many women still choose to wear burqas when they are out. Afghanistan gets first fashion show in decadesPhoto courtesy of The Scotsman
