January 28, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

Anti-government protests continued in Antananarivo on 28 January 2009. Approximately 40,000 demonstrators reportedly gathered in May 13 Plaza, the capital’s main square, to protest President Marc Ravalomanana’s alleged misuse of public funds and undemocratic policies. Anti-riot police officers were deployed to the rally as a precaution, but no violence was reported. The peaceful rally comes one day after Antananarivo Mayor Andry Rajoelina and the capital’s security forces instituted a daily 2100-0400 curfew in an effort to prevent additional violence.

At least 35 people have been confirmed dead since the anti-government riots began on 25 January. Authorities believe that most of the dead were looters who became trapped in burning buildings when they collapsed. African Union (AU) diplomat Jean Ping has voiced the organization’s deep concern over the island’s current unrest, which he stated could risk destabilizing the country. Ping and the French government — which governed Madagascar until 1960 — have both urged the parties to engage in dialogue, but Rajoelina continues to refuse to negotiate with Ravalomanana under the current conditions.

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January 28, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

On 28 January 2009 Israeli aircraft conducted several bombings targeting smuggling tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip-Egypt border near the border town of Rafah. The air strikes were in response to an incident on 27 January in which an Israeli soldier was killed and several others were injured by a roadside bomb near the Kissufim border crossing on the Gaza Strip-Israel border. Also on 28 January, a Qassam rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel, landing in an open area of the Negev.

The incidents and other violations to Israel and Hamas’ unilateral ceasefires are straining the truce and are increasing the potential for large-scale clashes to resume. International efforts to implement a longer-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continue, and the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, was due to meet with Israeli leaders in Israel sometime on 28 January; Mitchell is also expected to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

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January 26, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

U.S. and Iraqi officials are making preparations to ensure security as the upcoming 31 January 2009 provincial elections near. Authorities have announced that transport bans and overnight curfews will be implemented on 30 January until 1 February; curfews will be in effect from 2200-0500 local time in Baghdad and other provincial capitals. Additionally, civilians will be prohibited from carrying guns during this time even if they have a permit. Authorities have also announced that Iraq’s borders will be sealed as a precaution (airport operations will also reportedly be halted on 31 January).

The upcoming elections will be a crucial test for Iraq and the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to prove that the security improvements over the past year-18 months can be sustained. The potential for election-related violence is high, as the elections are an opportunity for Sunnis to make political gains and shift the balance of power after boycotting the last elections in 2005. Elections will take place in 14 of the country’s 18 provinces; the three Kurdish provinces and Kirkuk will be excluded. More than 14,000 candidates are competing for 444 seats on the ruling councils; national elections are expected to be held later in the year, though no date has been set.

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January 23, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

A Saudi man who was released from Guantanamo after spending six years inside the U.S. prison camp has joined Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen and is now the terror group’s No. 2 in the country, according to a purported Internet statement from Al Qaeda.

The announcement, made this week on a Web site commonly used by militants, came as President Barack Obama ordered the detention facility closed within a year.

The Yemen branch — known as “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” — said the man, identified as Said Ali al-Shihri, returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from Guantanamo about a year ago and from there went to Yemen. The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group’s second-in-command in Yemen and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372.

“He managed to leave the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia) and join his brothers in Al Qaeda,” the statement said.

Documents released by the U.S. Defense Department show that al-Shihri was released from the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in November 2007 and transferred to his homeland. The documents confirmed his prisoner number was 372.

“The lesson here is, whoever receives former Guantánamo detainees needs to keep a close eye on them,” an American official told the New York Times.

Saudi Arabian authorities would not immediately comment on the statement. A Yemeni counterterrorism official would only say that Saudi Arabia had asked Yemen to turn over a number of wanted Saudi suspects who fled the kingdom last year for Yemen, and a man with the same name was among those wanted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press and would not provide more details.

Al-Shihri was stopped at a Pakistani border crossing in December 2001 with injuries from an airstrike and recuperated at a hospital in Quetta for a month and a half, according to the Defense Department. Within days of his release, he became one of the first detainees sent to Guantanamo.

A congresswoman says the reports should not slow the Obama administration’s determination to quickly close the Guantanamo facility.

Rep. Jane Harman, a Democrat from California, said that President Obama has to “proceed extremely carefully” in closing the prison.

Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained at an urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul, according to a summary of the evidence against him from U.S. military review panels at Guantanamo Bay.

An alleged travel coordinator for Al Qaeda, he was also accused of meeting extremists in Mashad, Iran and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan, according to the Defense Department documents.

Al-Shihri, however, said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets for his store in Riyadh. He said he felt Osama bin Laden had no business representing Islam, denied any links to terrorism and expressed interest in rejoining his family in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481849,00.html

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January 23, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

Anne Wortham is Black, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University ’s Hoover Institution.  She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.  She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.  In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer’s television series, “A World of Ideas.”  The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.  Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.  She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.  Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness.  Shortly after an interview in 2004 she was awarded tenure.

This article by her is another point of view……

No He Can’t
by Anne Wortham

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South.  I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president.  Most importantly, I am not race conscious.  I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living.  I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America .

So you have made history, Americans.  You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world.  The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won.  Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men.  Jimmie Carter, too.  And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like.  The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person.  So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians.  Toast yourselves, Black America .  Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley.  You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something!  You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.  But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine, – what little there is left, – for the chance to feel good.  There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

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January 23, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

Rwandan troops arrested the Tutsi National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) rebel leader Laurent Nkunda on 22 January 2009. Nkunda was arrested in the rebel stronghold of Bunagana at approximately 2230 local time after attempting to resist a joint Rwandan-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) military operation to apprehend him. The rebels who were with Nkunda were also encouraged to disarm. The DRC issued an international arrest warrant for Nkunda following accusations that his forces were committing atrocities against civilians during their offensives. However, it is unclear if Rwanda will agree to extradite Nkunda to the DRC.ASI Comment: Nkunda’s arrest indicates that the rebel leader has lost critical support from both his senior rebel leaders and his former Rwandan ally. The Rwandan government previously supported Nkunda’s efforts to fight Hutu militias in the DRC. However, when Nkunda refused to support Rwandan efforts to ally with the Congolese government to begin a joint military effort to eradicate the Hutu groups, Rwanda stopped backing his forces. A recent fracturing in the CNDP, followed by the splinter group’s ceasefire with the Congolese government, also signaled that Nkunda no longer enjoyed unified support from his senior command.

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January 21, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

God help us now!

http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/structure/gc_1157655281546.shtm

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January 21, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

The Wall Street Journal received more than a dozen envelopes containing an unknown white powder, and New York City police and hazardous materials crews are investigating the matter, a spokesman said.

The mail was addressed to several New York-based executives at the newspaper published by News Corp.’s Dow Jones & Co. At least 10 of the envelopes are being held in the mailroom of the Journal’s Lower Manhattan headquarters, while at least three others have been distributed throughout the building, the spokesman said.

The floor shared by newspaper executives and editorial-page employees has been evacuated.

The suspicious envelopes, addressed by hand in pen, arrived with different return addresses but the same Tennessee-based postmark. One envelope, addressed to Robert Thomson, the Journal’s managing editor, was opened by one of his assistants, a spokesman confirmed.

A Dow Jones executive sent New York City-based Journal employees an email cautioning them not to open any mail. ”While we don’t think there is cause for alarm at this time, we are asking everyone not to open any mail while we investigate,” Dow Jones vice president of communications Howard Hoffman said in the email.

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123255608023802845.html?mod=

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January 21, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

Two floors of The Wall Street Journal’s lower Manhattan headquarters were evacuated Wednesday after the discovery of at least 13 suspicious envelopes containing white powder.

At least four envelopes were opened and others were left unopened in the mailroom Wednesday, police said. The Journal said it had received more than a dozen envelopes containing the substance.

The mail was addressed to several New York-based executives at the newspaper. At least 10 of the envelopes were being held in the mailroom of the Journal’s Lower Manhattan headquarters. The evacuated floor is shared by newspaper executives and editorial page employees. The return address was Knoxville, Tenn.

The powder is being tested, and those who came into contact with it have been isolated, police said. Journal employees were warned via e-mail not to open their mail, the paper reported.

The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp., the parent company of FOX News.

 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481187,00.html

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January 15, 2009 by Tim McDowell.

A senior Israeli official is meeting with Egyptian officials in Cairo on 15 January 2009 regarding a proposed ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Reports emerged on 14 January that Hamas has accepted in principle the Egyptian-proposed plan; however, despite some signs of progress, both sides have issues with certain aspects of the proposed truce, reducing the likelihood that it will be implemented immediately. Few details regarding the ceasefire proposal have been made public, but it reportedly calls for an immediate short-term truce that will be followed by a longer-term ceasefire; additionally, the plan’s implementation could be divided into several phases. In other related developments, the Arab League announced on 14 January that it had not garnered a quorum to convene a summit in Qatar on 16 January to discuss Israel’s operations in Gaza. Saudi Arabia is hosting an emergency meeting on 15 January regarding the situation, and many Arab states are expected to discuss the situation at the upcoming Arab Economic Summit in Kuwait, which is scheduled to take place on 19-20 January.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Operation Cast Lead continues in the Gaza Strip, where on 15 January the U.N. headquarters was reportedly bombed. Thus far, more than 1,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, while approximately 13 Israelis have died. Rocket attacks on southern Israel continue as well; at least 21 rockets were fired on 15 January, while about 15 rockets were launched on 14 January. Locations such as Ashdod, Sderot, Ashkelon, Gedera, Beersheba and other communities located close to the Gaza Strip border continue to be affected. In northern Israel, the border with Lebanon remains tense but calm since three rockets were launched from southern Lebanon on 14 January; later in the day, Lebanese officials announced that Lebanese troops found and dismantled three other rockets that were aimed at Israel and ready to be fired. The potential remains for militants in Lebanon to fire additional rockets into Israel.

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