When a Palestinain takes an Israeli hostage it is "kidnapping". When Israelis take a Palestenian hostage it is an "arrest".

Come on get off it .. this is both terrorism.

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Hamas leaders arrested; Israeli executed

Israeli forces rounded up dozens of Palestinian Cabinet ministers and lawmakers from Hamas, increasing pressure on the Islamic militants to release a captured Israeli soldier, and witnesses said tanks moved into northern Gaza, widening Israel's largest military operation in the year since Israel pulled out of the seaside territory.

Adding to the tension, a Palestinian militant group said it executed an 18-year-old Jewish settler kidnapped in the West Bank. Israeli security officials said the body of Eliahu Asheri was found buried near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Hamas officials said more than 30 lawmakers have been arrested in the West Bank.

Palestinian security officials said Israeli forces detained the Palestinian deputy prime minister, Nasser Shaer, and three other Cabinet ministers, as well as four lawmakers in Ramallah. Several others were arrested in the town of Jenin, they said.

Israeli media reported a roundup of Hamas lawmakers in Jerusalem and other locations. Also, the Hamas mayor of the West Bank town of Qalqiliya and his deputy were detained, security officials said.

Army Radio said the Hamas leaders might be used to trade for the captured soldier.

The military refused to comment. Israel blames Hamas for the attack Sunday in which two soldiers were killed and a third captured when militants tunneled under the border and attacked an army post, setting off the invasion.

Before daybreak Thursday, witnesses said Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved into northern Gaza, stopping about 200 yards inside Palestinian territory across from the Jebaliya refugee camp. No clashes were reported. However, the military denied its forces had moved into northern Gaza.

Despite the size of the Israeli operation, with large troop movements, artillery barrages and many airstrikes over two days, no one was hurt.

Israel held the Palestinian government headed by the Islamic Hamas responsible for the fate of the soldier, also blaming the Hamas leadership in exile in Syria.

An Israeli Cabinet minister said the Syria-based Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, was a target for assassination. In a bold warning to the country that shelters him, Israeli warplanes buzzed the seaside home of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the port of Latakia.

Syria confirmed Israeli warplanes entered its airspace, but claimed its air defenses forced the Israeli aircraft to flee.

Israel's concern goes beyond the rescue of the soldier and the negative precedent abducting soldiers would set. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government is alarmed by the firing of homemade rockets at Israeli communities around Gaza and support for Hamas in the Arab world, especially from Syria.

One hopes that next time the US-UK-Australia "rougue states" alliance bomb villages in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever their terror machine goes, they will not talk about collateral damage. Hope they will also understand that it hurts the feelings of poor villagers whose children and women have been killed by these bombs. They also go through the same emotions like the relatives of the Bali bombing.
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Thursday June 15, 10:29 PM

Bashir issue threatens rift with Jakarta

Australia is on another diplomatic collision course with Indonesia after its vice president said Abu Bakar Bashir could not be arrested merely for spreading his message of hatred against westerners.

The two countries have only just got relations back on track after Indonesia took offence at Australia's decision to grant protection visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers.

After Indonesia withdrew its ambassador - who has since returned - Australia was prompted to propose changes to its immigration laws so that all unauthorised boat arrivals were processed offshore.

The laws have created ructions within the Coalition and the government is trying to deflect claims they were designed to appease Indonesia.

Prime Minister John Howard has now written to his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to leave him in no doubt about Australia's "hostility and disgust" about Bashir's release from a Jakarta jail on Wednesday.

The 68-year-old cleric was freed after serving just 25 months for giving his blessing to the 2002 Bali bombings - which killed 202 people including 88 Australians.

Mr Howard is due to meet Dr Yudhoyono later this month - the first face to face meeting since the Papuan stoush - and will be under pressure to make a strong stand over Bashir.

Australia also launched a diplomatic protest with the United Nations' World Food Program over its use of a group co-founded by Bashir, the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), to distribute 95,000 tonnes of food to survivors of last month's Java earthquake.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer described the move as "completely unacceptable" and the UN group said it had cancelled its contract with the MMI.

Bashir added to Australian indignation on Thursday by refusing to condemn the militants who set off deadly bombs in Bali and saying the victims were destined to die by God.

Returning to the city of Solo in central Java on Thursday, Bashir said the families of the dead should understand that it was "God's will".

Comments by Indonesia's vice president that Bashir is free to express his hardline opinions is set to add more fuel to Australian anger.

In Jakarta, Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla said authorities could not arrest Bashir for "his thinking and opinions", the Associated Press reported.

However they would act if he broke the law.

Mr Howard said that Indonesia had to understand Australia took the issue very seriously.

"It's an important issue currently in the relationship and the Indonesians must understand how deeply offended Australians are, particularly the relatives and friends of those who died in the Bali attack," he told reporters.

In his letter to Dr Yudhoyono, Mr Howard said he was writing to convey his "very deep personal concerns and the distress of the Australian people" at Bashir's release.

He described inflammatory comments by Bashir as an "affront" to all Australians and reminded Indonesia of its duty to keep a close watch on the cleric and to freeze his assets, and restrict his travel and access to weapons.

"His inflammatory statements on release were affronting to the families of victims and all Australians," Mr Howard said.

"This is one of the fundamental human rights: that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected"
- Papal candidate Cardinal Francis Arinze from Nigeria.

When the Danish published that infamous cartoon about Prophet Mohamad and the Muslims protested for showing disrespect to their religion, not very long ago, didn't the Christian (Western) world argue that people's "freedom of expression" should be protected from the fanatical Muslims?

Looks like the Vatican has "seen the light" with the Mullahs!

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Cardinal urges legal action against Da Vinci Code

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - In the latest Vatican broadside against "The Da Vinci Code," a leading cardinal says Christians should respond to the book and film with legal action because both offend Christ and the Church he founded.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian who was considered a candidate for pope last year, made his strong comments in a documentary called "The Da Vinci Code-A Masterful Deception."

Arinze's appeal came some 10 days after another Vatican cardinal called for a boycott of the film. Both cardinals asserted that other religions would never stand for offences against their beliefs and that Christians should get tough.

"Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and to forget," Arinze said in the documentary made by Rome film maker Mario Biasetti for Rome Reports, a Catholic film agency specializing in religious affairs.

"Sometimes it is our duty to do something practical. So it is not I who will tell all Christians what to do but some know legal means which can be taken in order to get the other person to respect the rights of others," Arinze said.

"This is one of the fundamental human rights: that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected," he said, without elaborating on what legal means he had in mind.

Donal Rumsfeld's war strategy - Destroy It So We Protect property from looters!

This is what one of his subordinates said: "If it wasn't for our presence," he told the BBC, "what would the state of those archeological ruins be?" - a repeat of the US claim that had its forces not occupied ancient Babylon, the site would have been laid waste by looters.

Above is a quote taken from the article below.

What jokers have we got running the US today! We call them a supper power? ...

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US colonel offers Iraq an apology of sorts for devastation of Babylon
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 15 April 2006

In an act of at least partial contrition, an officer in charge of the US military occupation of Babylon in 2003 and 2004 has offered to make a formal apology for the destruction his troops wrought on the ancient site.
Colonel John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, said yesterday that if the head of the Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, "if it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one".
For more than a millennium, Babylon was one of the great cities of antiquity. It reached its greatest glory in the early 6th century BC, as the capital of Nebuchadnezzar II, builder of the celebrated Hanging Gardens.
Babylon declined and fell into ruin after it was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus the Great in around 538BC. But no devastation seems to have matched that inflicted by US troops and their Polish allies after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Saddam himself had not helped. He had much of the ancient site rebuilt and developed as a tourist site as part of efforts to portray himself as Nebuchadnezzar's modern successor and turn Mesopotamia once more into a regional superpower. He built a contemporary ziggurat-shaped palace nearby and carved out an underground car park among archeological deposits.
But after entering Babylon in April 2003, coalition forces turned the site into a base camp, flattening and compressing tracts of ruins as they built a helicopter pad and fuel stations. The soldiers filled sandbags with archeological fragments and dug trenches through unexcavated areas, while tanks crushed slabs of original 2,600-year-old paving.
"All of these things have combined to do a lot of damage to what is one of the most important, sensitive archeological sites in the whole world," John Curtis, curator of the British Museum's Near East department, said last year.
Col Coleman's repentance was qualified. "If it wasn't for our presence," he told the BBC, "what would the state of those archeological ruins be?" - a repeat of the US claim that had its forces not occupied ancient Babylon, the site would have been laid waste by looters.
"Is there a price for the presence? Sure there is," he declared. "I'll just say that the price, had the presence not been there, would have been far greater."
After US and Polish troops left in 2004, the first restoration plans for Babylon were drawn up. Last November Unesco, the United Nations' cultural and scientific organisation, said it would be carrying out some initial repair work, and setting up a photographic registry of the site.
The work, in which France, Britain, Poland, the US, Iraq, Japan, Italy and the Netherlands are also involved, is being co-ordinated by the German Archaeological Institute, under the direction of the Iraqi authorities and Unesco.
But Babylon is not the only point of archaeological controversy in a country with an estimated 10,000 sites. In a separate complaint, the Iraqi Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities has demanded that US troops pull out of the city of Kish, which dates back 5,000 years, accusing American forces of damaging the precious archaeological site.
It accused the soldiers of preventing anyone from entering the city to assess damage. There has been no comment from the US military.
* At least six Iraqi policeman died and up to 39 others were missing yesterday after insurgents ambushed a police convoy near a US base, officials said. Separately, a suicide car bomber outside Basra wounded four British soldiers at the Shuaiba military base, and killed at least one civilian.
Archaeological cost of invasion
* US Marines from the First Expeditionary Force first set up camp in Babylon in April 2003
* Soldiers filled protective sandbags with sand containing ancient artefacts
* 2,600-year-old pavements were crushed by heavy military vehicles
* Landing helicopters caused structural damage to some of the city's ancient buildings and sandblasted fragile bricks in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar
* Archaeologists say gravel brought in to build car parks and helipads has contaminated key sites
* US troops have also been accused of causing damage to the 5,000-year-old city of Kish by the Iraqi Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities
In an act of at least partial contrition, an officer in charge of the US military occupation of Babylon in 2003 and 2004 has offered to make a formal apology for the destruction his troops wrought on the ancient site.
Colonel John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, said yesterday that if the head of the Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, "if it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one".
For more than a millennium, Babylon was one of the great cities of antiquity. It reached its greatest glory in the early 6th century BC, as the capital of Nebuchadnezzar II, builder of the celebrated Hanging Gardens.
Babylon declined and fell into ruin after it was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus the Great in around 538BC. But no devastation seems to have matched that inflicted by US troops and their Polish allies after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Saddam himself had not helped. He had much of the ancient site rebuilt and developed as a tourist site as part of efforts to portray himself as Nebuchadnezzar's modern successor and turn Mesopotamia once more into a regional superpower. He built a contemporary ziggurat-shaped palace nearby and carved out an underground car park among archeological deposits.
But after entering Babylon in April 2003, coalition forces turned the site into a base camp, flattening and compressing tracts of ruins as they built a helicopter pad and fuel stations. The soldiers filled sandbags with archeological fragments and dug trenches through unexcavated areas, while tanks crushed slabs of original 2,600-year-old paving.
"All of these things have combined to do a lot of damage to what is one of the most important, sensitive archeological sites in the whole world," John Curtis, curator of the British Museum's Near East department, said last year.
Col Coleman's repentance was qualified. "If it wasn't for our presence," he told the BBC, "what would the state of those archeological ruins be?" - a repeat of the US claim that had its forces not occupied ancient Babylon, the site would have been laid waste by looters.
"Is there a price for the presence? Sure there is," he declared. "I'll just say that the price, had the presence not been there, would have been far greater."

What hypocrisy this is?



When will US call on Israel to come clean on their nuclear weapons?

And of course the other day they rewarded India for not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act and making the bomb. At least this time they have not been racist. ie: supporting a non-white nuclear power.
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AKARTA (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for the UN Security Council to send Iran a "very strong" message when its nuclear programme is debated this week.
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Rice, in Indonesia for an official visit, hoped for a tough statement telling Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and return to negotiations.

"I am quite certain that when everyone has a chance to think about the importance of sending Iran a very strong message -- that it is time for Iran to hear the call of that resolution which was voted on February 4th calling on Iran to suspend its activities, telling Iran to go back to negotiations -- that we'll find the appropriate vehicle for doing so," she said.

"The Iranians have done nothing to demonstrate to the world that they should not be in the Security Council and so I am quite certain we will find the appropriate vehicle for expressing the international community's solidarity."