This Jew-hating, terrorist-excusing conspiracy theorist was actually the elected leader of Malaysia - and spoke at a Muslim gathering where he expected his views to win support:
Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamad said on Wednesday there was “strong evidence” the US faked the September 11 terror attacks as an excuse to go to war against Muslims.
“There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,’ Mahathir told the Conference for the Support of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), as quoted by local media.
The former premier also blamed Jews for hindering progress in US foreign policy. Voicing his disappointment that Barack Obama had not yet ended the war in Afghanistan or closed the US terror detention center at Guantanamo, he explained that “there are forces in the United States which prevent the president from doing some things. One of the forces is the Jewish lobby.”
“Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world.”
Here’s the frightening question: For how many Muslims does Mahathir speak?
And perhaps we should for once ask to what extent this man’s disgraceful bigotry and victimology is driven by Islam rather than seek again to blame ourselves for his vileness, as in this recent effort, reported in The Age:
In 1969 Dr Mahathir, a first-term politician and a rising political star, was invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to Australia as a guest of the Foreign Ministry in Canberra. But he lost his seat in an election that year and a few days before he was due to depart the Australians asked him to postpone the trip....
Two years later Dr Mahathir accepted an Australian Government offer to visit Canberra after attending a seminar at his own expense at Monash University, only to find the hospitality in the capital as bleak as the weather. In his book, Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, Wain maintains Dr Mahathir never forgot how he was treated all those years ago.
So does cold hospitality in Canberra also explain why Mahathir believes Jews “had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred”?
Or has some faith or ideology pushed him to that conclusion?
THE army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a deadly shooting spree at a Texan military base has been moved out of intensive care.
Nidal Hasan, who was shot in the chest by a police officer during the November 5 rampage at the sprawling Fort Hood military base in Texas, will likely never walk again and has no control over basic bodily functions.
It will likely be some time before he is ready to face trial, said John Galligan, Hasan's civilian attorney.
"He's permanently paralysed from the upper chest area down,'' Galligan told AFP.
"He still has significant collateral issues... he's an invalid.''
Galligan has asked the army to move Hasan to a hospital closer to his office near Fort Hood so that he can more easily meet with his client.
Hasan remains under guard at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, about 190 kilometres away from where the massacre took place.
"My position is until he is sufficiently rehabilitated in the medical arena and we can have unfettered access to him to work on the defense, I don't think there should be any talk about a sanity (review) board or an article 32'' preliminary hearing, Galligan said.
The Pentagon has launched an elaborate investigation into the shootings to determine whether warning signs were missed and to prevent such an assault from happening again.
Hasan is being investigated for links to Islamic extremism, including his contacts with a radical cleric who blessed the killing spree.
He faces 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.
Twelve soldiers and one civilian were killed in the attack. Another 42 people were wounded.
Galligan said he was worried that his client would not be given a fair trial at Fort Hood given the publicity surrounding the case and the way prosecutors are "rushing things.''
"My job is to make sure that Major Hasan gets a fair, free day in court. That's what our service members fight for,'' Galligan said.
"When I defend Major Hasan, I feel like I'm defending every soldier in uniform. Too many Americans, from high level politicians on down to some people in my local community have forgotten the significance of that.''
Galligan said he was not given the opportunity to be present when investigators interviewed Hasan at the hospital or when he was formally charged and cannot get the company commander to return his phone calls.
Hasan is also facing unusually heavy restrictions in hospital, Galligan said. He is being monitored by a video camera, he has been told that all communication must be in English, his correspondence is being monitored and copied, his visitors are strictly limited and Galligan cannot be present at the same time as Hasan's family.
"I love the military justice system,'' Galligan said.
"If it's done right you can get a better trial, sometimes a fairer trial than you can in state court or federal court. If it gets derailed there is nothing worse than having the army coming against you.''
An armed group in the southern Philippines is holding at least 57 civilians hostage, government officials have said.
The hostages, including several schoolchildren and their teachers, were among a group of 75 kidnapped in the small village San Martin in the province of Agusan del Sur on Mindanao island early on Thursday.
Eighteen people were released following several hours of negotiations, Chief Supt. Lino Calingasan of the Philippine National Police told local media, but dozens of others remained held hostage.
Military officials have said they believe the kidnappers are members of a civilian paramilitary force known as the "Perez group".
Police were reportedly pursuing the gunmen, who appeared to be using the hostages as human shields to escape after a clash with authorities in a nearby village on Wednesday.
Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Manila, said it was unclear what the group wanted although police say there is no political or religious motive for the kidnapping.
She said the group was known to local police having been armed by the Philippines government a decade ago to fight against communist insurgents in the area.
The group is similar to the force suspected by authorities of carrying out last month's massacre of 57 political activists and journalists in a nearby province, also on the island of Mindanao.
Jaime Milla, a local police official, told the Associated Press the gunmen believed to be behind Thursday's kidnappings were former militiamen who had been dismissed and turned to banditry and extortion.
He said the gang was known to have previously targeted mining and logging companies in Agusan del Sur and nearby provinces.
Our correspondent said that last month's massacre and now Thursday's kidnappings had many Filipinos questioning whether it was a good idea to arm these groups in the first place, when the army should have been fighting the insurgents.
"People are saying this was a monster the government had created, and it's now come back to bite them," she said.
Prosecutors in the Philippines have formally filed 25 murder charges against a man accused of leading a election-related massacre on the southern island of Mindanao that outraged the nation.
The charges against Andal Ampatuan Jr, the son of the governor of Maguindanao province, were filed in a court in the southern city of Cotabato, which has jurisdiction over the site of the massacre.
According to prosecutors, at least 10 witnesses have said Ampatuan Jr led the gang of gunmen that carried out the killings of political campaigners and journalists.
Ampatuan Jr has denied the charges.
Prosecutors allege armed followers of the Ampatuan clan murdered 57 people including the wife and two sisters of their political rival, Esmael Mangudadatu.
Also among those killed were journalists, lawyers and other civilians.
Edilberto Jamora, the prosecutor in the case, said Ampatuan Jr was only being charged with 25 murders so far because authorities had only processed 25 death certificates.
Ampatuan Jr is accused of leading the killings to prevent Mangudadatu from challenging him in the May 2010 race for governor of the province.
Ampatuan's father, together with six other clan members, have been summoned to submit affidavits in the investigation into the massacre in Maguindanao province.
They are also suspects in the investigation, but have not been charged.
The Ampatuans control many local positions in the southern province of Maguindanao and have hundreds of armed followers there.
Prosecutors said the killings were carefully planned and that more charges will follow.
Jovencito Zuno, the chief state prosecutor, said at least one witness alleged that the Ampatuan clan had gathered in the patriarch's mansion in the provincial capital of Shariff Aguak days before to plan the killings.
The graves were dug in advance and a backhoe positioned to bury the bodies, prosecutors said.
Police said earlier they took into custody six officers, including the Maguindanao provincial police chief and his deputy.
Two inspectors among them were allegedly seen during the massacre with Ampatuan Jr, said Erickson Velasquez, head of the criminal investigation division.
The massacre has also embarrassed Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippine president, who has longstanding ties with the Ampatuans.
Arroyo has declared a state of emergency in Maguindanao and a neighbouring province, ordering troops and police to confiscate unlicensed weapons and restore order.
But few think the measures will go far enough in the region which is notorious for its political warlords who have been outside the central government's control for generations.
The lead suspect accused of organising the massacre of at least 57 people in the Philippines has turned himself in to police, officials have said.
Andal Ampatuan Jr is a local mayor and member of a powerful political clan in Maguindanao province on the southern island of Mindanao.
He has denied any responsibility for the killings.
Ampatuan Jr gave himself up to Jesus Dureza, a presidential adviser, in the provincial capital on Thursday and was expected to be flown to Manila for formal questioning, officials said.
"The family voluntarily surrendered him and they agreed that he will be investigated," Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, a military commander, said.
"The family voluntarily surrendered him and they agreed that he will be investigated," military commander Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer said. Ampatuan Jr has been named as the lead suspect in what is believed to be the Philippines' worst ever politically-linked killings.
His father, Andal Ampatuan Sr, is the provincial governor who has been grooming his son to succeed him in elections due next year.
The family also has close political ties to the Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo, although on Thursday officials in Arroyo's party said Ampatuan Jr, his father and a brother had been expelled following an emergency meeting of the party leadership.
Following his surrender, Ampatuan Jr was taken into military custody and flown out of the provincial capital in an army helicopter.
PHILIPPINE security forces have secured the territory of a powerful clan linked to the political massacre of 57 people and started disarming its militiamen, officials said.
An AFP photographer witnessed armoured personnel carriers patrolling highways in the southern province of Maguindanao and television footage showed police commandos surrounded buildings in major towns controlled by the clan.
National police chief Director General Jesus Verzosa said security forces had arrested some of the gunmen linked to Monday's massacre while the army said it was hunting for many other suspects.
"Most of the armed group that perpetrated this crime have run away towards the mountainous area of Maguindanao," military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner said on ABS-CBN television.
"That is where we are conducting our pursuit operations."
He said the army has also disbanded the provincial Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit, militiamen under the control of the family of the alleged massacre mastermind, Andal Ampatuan Jnr.
Militiamen are regularly used by the government to augment police and army forces in remote areas plagued by Muslim and communist insurgents.
National police spokesman Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina said the entire police force which had been providing security at Ampatuan Jnr's office had been relieved.
Ampatuan Jnr is the mayor of a town in Maguindanao while his father of the same name is the provincial governor.
Police said about 100 Ampatuan gunmen allegedly abducted a convoy of aides and relatives of a rival politician, Esmael Mangudadatu, plus a group of journalists, on Monday.
The victims were snatched as they were travelling in a six-vehicle convoy to nominate Mangudadatu as the opposition candidate for provincial governor in next year's elections.
They were shot at close range, some with their hands tied behind their backs, and dumped or buried in shallow graves on a remote farming road close to a town bearing the Ampatuan name.
Fifty-seven bodies have been recovered so far, and police are still searching for more possible victims.
WASHINGTON - A massacre at a Texas army base that left 13 people dead is increasingly looking like part of a terror conspiracy rather than an act of a lone gunman.
The growing suspicious are related, among other things, to shooter Nidal Malik Hasan's connection to September 11 terrorists, the funds he is suspected of transferring to Pakistan, and his ties with radical Yemenite cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, associated with al-Qaeda.
By now, officials estimate that these ties were not confined to Hasan's participation in prayer sessions at Al-Awlaki's Virginia mosque and "spiritual advice". While emails exchanges between the two initially focused on religious matters, they later shifted to discussion of financial transfers for operational aims, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
The paper based its report on FBI sources who estimate that the email exchanges point to a terror conspiracy. According to the sources, the ties between Hasan and Awlaki grew closer in recent months and involved discussions regarding the secret transfer of money and other means in order to translate plans into actions.
According to the report, Hasan asked for deliveries of less than $10,000, so he would not be obligated to report them to the army.
The massacre at the Fort Hood base increasingly looks like a terror attack, Senator Carl Levin, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Friday.
"There are some who are reluctant to call it terrorism but there is significant evidence that is. I'm not at all uneasy saying it sure looks like that," he said.
Nov. 16 - Beginning at approximately 11:00 AM, about 300 Kurd students gathered at Tehran University to protest the severe suppression of Kurd activists and especially against the execution of Ehsan Fatahian and the impending execution of Shirkoo Moarefi.
They carried placards in Farsi and chanted slogans in Farsi. The gathering ended at 12:30 with the singing of Kurdish anthems.
Nov. 15 - The mullahocracy has admitted that Iranians strongly prefer the television broadcasts of Simaye Azadi (The Face of Freedom). Simaye Azadi is the channel broadcast by the PMOI and has been viewed in most Iranian homes.
Simaye Azadi is received via satellite. It is illegal in Iran for most people to have access to satellite broadcasts yet about 40 percent of Iranians have satellite antennas. This makes it almost impossible for the regime to control information.
Nov. 16 - In an escalation of the schism within the ranks of the senior clerics, the Fars News Agency has clearly admitted that the Iranian Government was responsible for the massacre that occurred at the Grand Mosque of Mecca during the 1987 Hajj.
In an article titled “Moshen Mirdamadi was responsible for the massacre of Iranian pilgrims in Saudi Arabia in 1987″ Fars wrote, ” Those who went on pilgrimage in 1987 witnessed the massacre of about 500 Iranians by the military and disciplinary forces of Saudi Arabia.
I, the writer of the article, was an eyewitness there and so far I hadn’t disclosed anything because of national security and some other reasons. Some radical students including Mr. Moshen Mirdamadi and his friend were amongst the group.
They intended to get a hold of one of the loudspeakers of the mosque after the march that was from one of Mecca’s squares towards Haram. They wanted to speak anti US words and other stuff from there but the Saudi Arabian police discovered their plan.
Informed people say that was the reason for the harsh acts of the police then. We expect that Tehran’s prosecutor’s office forms an investigation group to see into the behind the curtain issues of the event of 1987. This must be clear how some people who talk about reform now laid the ground for such massacre in 1987 by their radical acts.”
Nov. 15 - The regime has hanged two prisoners in Hamadan.
Analysis. I remember when the events happened at the Grand Mosque. It was a glorious mess and caught the Saudis totally by surprise. They were not happy and, most of all, not prepared to handle such an event.
The rumor at the time was that the Saudi government brought in the French anti-terrorist group to handle the situation. Had this become known at the time, there would have been big problems for the Saudis throughout the Islamic World.
Non-muslims are not allowed in the City of Mecca much less the Grand Mosque.
This admission that the Iranian government was behind this event will not sit well with the Saudis and probably not with the rest of the countries in the Middle East.. But it is another button pushed.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Radovan Karadzic orchestrated the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys and his only regret was "that some Muslim men got away," a U.N. prosecutor said Monday at the former Bosnian Serb leader's war crimes trial.
Karadzic again boycotted his own trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal on Monday, but pledged in a letter to judges that he would attend a procedural hearing Tuesday on his defense case.
Prosecutor Alan Tieger focused on Europe's worst atrocity since World War II as he wound up his opening statement Monday for the tribunal's judges. Tieger called the July 1995 slaying in Srebrenica "one of humanity's dark chapters" and laid the blame squarely at Karadzic's feet.
"The murder of these men and the expulsion of the women, children and elderly did not arise from nowhere," Tieger said. "These crimes were the culmination of the accused's determination to cleanse eastern Bosnia to ensure the Serb state he envisioned."
Karadzic is charged with two counts of genocide and nine other crimes against humanity and war crimes linked to atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
He has refused to enter pleas, but insists he is innocent. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Karadzic's boycott of the trial last week frustrated dozens of war survivors — many of them widows from Srebrenica — who had traveled hundreds of miles (kilometers) by bus to see him face justice after 13 years on the run.
In an earlier article entitled "Stop Yemen´s Hidden Darfur – Recognize the Yemenite Republic of Saada!" I republished the first parts (the Contents, the Summary and the Methodology) of a Report issued by HRW (under the title "Invisible Civilians") with respect to the undeservedly and incomparably tyrannized Yemenite North, and more specifically the Governorate of Saada. There, a Shia revolution, supported by the entire local population, became the target of the Yemenite tyrant Ali Abdallah Saleh´s ferocity and monstrosity. In this article, I republish chapter 3 of the HRW Report which presents the historical background of the conflict.
The appalling terrorist regime of the sergeant Ali Abdallah Saleh applies incredibly brutal, totalitarian policies throughout the country, which turned out to be an immense jail and a desolate realm run by traitors and anti-patriotic elements ready to behave as serfs to the Yemen-unfriendly, barbaric regime of the Saudi Wahhabis. Read more ...
I am going to take a little time out from the trials and tribulations of our little Island for a moment because four years ago to the day the slaughter that was Beslan happened, this easily forgotten atrocity happened in a small town in the Caucasus a long way from our lives.
Over 300 children were slaughtered by the followers of the religion of peace, before they died these children were subjected to abject terror and humiliation.
Today a remembrance service will be carried out in Beslan, we should remember as well and give thanks that it was not our children who were so viciously taken from this world.
Nadav Eliyahu Samuels has not had a chance to read the 28th issue of the Excalibur, York University's student newspaper. As of late, the 14-year old Canadian boy has not had the opportunity to do much of anything. With multiple bullet wounds scattered across his body and numerous broken bones, Nadav is fighting for his young life in the intensive care unit at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem.
The time was 8:36pm and it was a regular Thursday evening for Nadav and his classmates at Mercaz HaRav. Crowding into their school's library, Nadav and about a dozen of his more studious friends wanted to get in some extra study time before they went to sleep. Alaa Abu Dhein, in the meantime, had decided that this was his day to become a martyr for Allah. Read more ...
JAFFA – Online networking giant Facebook is hosting an Arabic-language group celebrating as a "hero" the terrorist who gunned down eight yeshiva students studying in a Jerusalem seminary last week.
Fifty-seven Facebook users are currently registered on the invitation-only group, which is entitled, "R.I.P. Abu Ala'a Dheim."
Dheim is the 25-year old eastern Jerusalem resident who has been identified as the terrorist gunman who infiltrated the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, located near the entrance to Jerusalem. He fired hundreds of rounds of bullets at students studying in the building's main library. Read more ...
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This Jew-hating, terrorist-excusing conspiracy theorist was actually the elected leader of Malaysia - and spoke at a Muslim gathering where he expected his views to win support: 
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