LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِNovember 04/2010

Bible Of The Day
Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians/Marriage & Celibacy
7:1 Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman. 7:2 But, because of sexual immoralities, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. 7:3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection owed her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 7:4 The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband. Likewise also the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife. 7:5 Don’t deprive one another, unless it is by consent for a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and may be together again, that Satan doesn’t tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 7:6 But this I say by way of concession, not of commandment. 7:7 Yet I wish that all men were like me. However each man has his own gift from God, one of this kind, and another of that kind. 7:8 But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain even as I am. 7:9 But if they don’t have self-control, let them marry. For it’s better to marry than to burn. 7:10 But to the married I command—not I, but the Lord—that the wife not leave her husband 7:11 (but if she departs, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband not leave his wife. 7:12 But to the rest I—not the Lord—say, if any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she is content to live with him, let him not leave her. 7:13 The woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he is content to live with her, let her not leave her husband. 7:14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. 7:15 Yet if the unbeliever departs, let there be separation. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us in peace. 7:16 For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? 7:17 Only, as the Lord has distributed to each man, as God has called each, so let him walk. So I command in all the assemblies.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters, Interviews & Special Reports
U.S. Government "Threatens" Syria: Promote Terrorism, Take Over Lebanon, Block Peace, and We Won't Let You Make Apple iPads!/By Barry Rubin/03/11/10
Canada vs. Radical Islam: Harper's Mixed Record/By: by Kathy Shaidle/November 03/10
It is up to Lebanese to sound the alarm bell/Daily Star
Canada Deplores Reports of Imminent Execution in Iran/November 03/10
New phone application reveals personal info/Sarah Lynch/November 03/10
What is Israel really doing about Iran?/By Amos/Haaretz/November 03/10
A late awakening to sovereignty/By: Elias Harfoush/November 03/10
Protect Iraq’s Christians/By Tariq Alhomayed/November 03/10
From Yemen to the Church/By Ali Ibrahim/November 03/10

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for November 03/10
Qaida Declares Christians 'Legitimate Targets' as Egypt Church Deadline Expires/Naharnet
Maronite Bishops Urge Lebanese Leaders to Quit 'Challenging Methods'/Naharnet
Hizbullah, Syria Refuse to Respond to Feltman/Naharnet
Hariri “100-percent” behind STL/Now Lebanon
British envoy says Security Council members hesitant to meet over Lebanon/Naharnet
Feltman Demands Syria to Pressure Iran and Hizbullah to Curb their Activity in Lebanon/Naharnet
STL denies indictment before December/Lebanon Now
Lebanon sources: Hezbollah planning coup if charged in Hariri murder/Haaretz
Lebanon PM backs UN tribunal on Hariri murder/AFP
Ahmadinejad slams Russia for US 'sell out' over missiles/Now Lebanon
Iranian woman to be hanged Wednesday: rights group/Reuters
Lebanon's Cabinet postpones debate on 'false witnesses'/Daily Star
Can the Judicial Council solve 'false witnesses'?/Daily Star
UK throws weight behind Tribunal as Hariri asks for military assistance/Daily Star
Lebanon budget committee fails to end debate/Daily Star
Qassem: Accusing Hizbullah Members Would be Beginning of Possible Unrest and Danger in Lebanon/Naharnet
Syrian, Saudi, Iranian Ambassadors Meet over Lunch to Discuss Lebanese Situation/Naharnet
Feltman Demands Syria to Pressure Iran and Hizbullah to Curb their Activity in Lebanon/Naharnet
Tight Security around Police HQ in Anticipation of Opposition Attack/Naharnet
Hariri: I Don't Think Assad Had Anything to Do with My Father's Murder/Naharnet
Aoun: We Can't Live According to STL Mood, Hariri Has Become a Dictator/Naharnet
Aoun: No national dialogue for me/Now Lebanon

Canada Deplores Reports of Imminent Execution in Iran/November 03/10
http://www.international.gc.ca/media/aff/news-communiques/2010/351.aspx
(No. 351 – November 2, 2010 – 9 p.m. ET) The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today responded to reports that the International Committee against Execution has received information that Iranian authorities have authorized the execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
“Canada is deeply concerned by reports that Ms. Ashtiani may be sentenced to death by hanging on Wednesday, November 3, 2010,” said Minister Cannon. “We are also concerned by Ms. Ashtiani’s ongoing detention, harassment by judicial authorities and denial of due process, as well as by the use of false or coerced confessions in her trial. Ms. Ashtiani has been in jail since 2006 and has received 99 lashes.”
Ms. Ashtiani was initially convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. This charge was later changed to murder, and she was condemned to death by hanging. The international community strongly condemned the death by stoning sentence and continues to follow Ms. Ashtiani’s case closely.
“We once again urge the Government of Iran to reverse the trend of the deterioration of its human rights situation and to meet its legal obligations,” said Minister Cannon. “These include ensuring due process for all those that have been detained.”
- 30 -
For further information, media representatives may contact:
Jacques Labrie
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs
613-995-1851
Foreign Affairs Media Relations Office
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
613-995-1874

Baghdad Church Siege Survivors Speak of Taunts, Killings and Explosions
11-3-2010
http://www.aina.org/news/20101102214908.htm
At sunset yesterday, Raghada al-Wafi walked excitedly to mass with news for the priest who married her a month ago. Tonight, exactly 24 hours later, she returned to the Our Lady of Salvation church -- this time carried by her family in a coffin that also contained her unborn child.
Today the priest who blessed her marriage and pregnancy minutes before he was killed will also be buried, as will several dozen other members of his congregation -- all of them slain by terrorists in an attack that has drawn condemnation from around the world and left the fate of Iraq's beleaguered Christian community evermore uncertain .
Fifty-eight people, most of them worshippers from the Chaldean Catholic community, are confirmed to have been killed in the massacre, which was carried out by al-Qaida-aligned gunmen, some of whom claimed to be avenging a foiled move by a small-town US pastor to burn the Qur'an.
Survivors spoke of religious taunts, random killings and then a gunman slaughtering hostages en masse as the Iraqi army stormed the church to end the four-hour siege.
Ghassan Salah, 17, had just arrived for the Sunday night service with his mother, Nadine, and brother, Ghaswan, when the gunmen burst through the cathedral's huge wooden doors. "All of you are infidels," they screamed at the congregation. "We are here to avenge the burning of the Qur'ans and the jailing of Muslim women in Egypt."
Then the killing began. Ghassan and seven other survivors described to the Guardian a series of events that have broken new ground in a country that has become partly conditioned to violence throughout eight years of war. Thar Abdallah, the priest who married al-Wafi was first to be killed -- shot dead where he stood. Gunmen then sprayed the church with bullets as another priest ushered up to 60 people to a small room in the back.
Mona Abdullah Hadad, 62, was in church with her family when the gunmen started shooting. "They said, 'We will go to paradise if we kill you and you will go to hell'," she said. "We stood beside the wall and they started shooting at the young people. I asked them to kill me and let my grandson live, but they shot him dead and they shot me in the back."
Hadad was recovering in a Baghdad hospital along with 67 other people, many of them seriously wounded. Part of her kidney was removed yesterday and she remains heavily traumatised.
Survivors claimed that the terrorists holding them accounted for most, if not all, of the casualties. There were growing fears in Baghdad that the military raid may also have led to the deaths of hostages.
"I saw at least 30 bodies," said Madeline Hannah, 33, who was seriously wounded by gunshots. Many appeared to have been blown apart by explosions detonated by the hostage-takers, she added.
"They said it was 'halal' to kill us," said Hannah, whose 10-year-old son was shot in the back. "They hated us and said we were all going to die."
Witnesses interviewed consistently said that some of the gunmen spoke Arabic in a non-Iraqi dialect, supporting a government claim that the operation was foreign-backed. It was carried out in the name of an umbrella group for global jihad causes, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, which has previously targeted Christians and churches, but on a much smaller scale.
An audio message posted on a jihadist website specifically called for the release of two Egyptian Christian women who are married to Coptic priests and are believed by some Muslim groups to have converted to Islam and to be held against their will.
The scene of their massacre, one of Baghdad's most well-known landmarks, was today a rank mess of blood stains, flesh and shell casings. Pews were scattered throughout the cavernous church, which was pocked with hundreds of bullet holes and damage that testified to the horrendous events that had taken place there.
The Iraqi army assault was heralded with a sustained, fearsome burst of gunfire that lasted at least two minutes. It was interrupted by two large explosions that are believed to have been caused by gunmen detonating suicide vests they were wearing.
"I saw them put the explosive belts on their body," said Ghaswan Salah, 16. "It was the last thing they did before the army came in."
The Vatican today led global condemnation of the latest violence against Iraq's Christian community of 550,000, which has almost halved since the 2003 invasion.
The leader of Iraq's Christian Endowment Fund, Abdullah Nowfali, said: "They want us to leave the country. Now very few of us will dare to attend prayers."
A return to church was far from the mind of most survivors contacted by the Guardian, such as Ban Abdullah Georges, whose daughter, Marina Bresh, was shot in the thigh.
"All through the terrible past I had said to my husband we should stay, and we will stay," she said. "This is my home. But it's not anymore. There is nothing for us now. Nothing." Historic community
Iraq is home to one of the Middle East's oldest Christian communities; the majority are Catholics belonging to the Chaldean, or Assyrian, churches.The Assyrians are thought to be the oldest Christian community, dating back to the first century. Armenian Christians moved to Iraq too, fleeing massacres in Turkey early last century.
There have been other violent campaigns against Iraq's Christians, such as a sustained attack by the Iraqi army in the 1930s, but the last 50 years had been largely benign for the various communities, which were thought to have numbered around 800,000 before the US invasion of 2003.
During the 35 years of Ba'athist rule, Iraq's Christians were treated relatively well, especially compared with Shias and Kurds. Saddam Hussein made a Chaldean Christian, Tariq Aziz, into a powerful and trusted deputy and by and large left the Christian hamlets of Baghdad, Irbil and Mosul alone.
Things changed during the security vacuum that followed the fall of Baghdad. Christians in Mosul have been targeted by Sunni insurgents who align with the jihadi world view. Mass migrations have followed the attacks, with the number of Christians in Iraq now thought to be as low as 500,000. Those who remain see themselves as an increasingly threatened minority.
**By Martin Chulov
www.guardian.co.uk
© 2010, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

Qaeda Says Christians Are 'Targets' As Church Deadline Expires
http://www.aina.org/news/20101103020800.htm
11-3-2010
An al Qaeda group in Iraq declared Christians "legitimate targets" after the end of a deadline for Egypt's Coptic church to "release" women who converted to Islam, SITE monitors said on Wednesday. The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq said in an Internet statement its action was justified by the church's refusal to indicate the status of the women allegedly held captive in monasteries, the US-based monitoring group said. "All Christian Centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen (holy warriors) wherever they can reach them," said the statement.
www.hindustantimes.com
© 2010, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

Assyrian Organizations Condemn Church Massacre
11-3-2010
http://www.aina.org/news/20101102220556.htm
(AINA) -- Assyrian organizations around the world have condemned that attack on Our Lady of Deliverance Syriac Catholic church on Sunday, which killed 58 parishioners and wounded 75 (AINA 11-2-2010).
The Assyria Council of Europe issued the following statement:
A Catholic church in central Baghdad was attacked yesterday by Islamist militants believed not to be from Iraq. Iraqi forces stormed the church and a gunfight ensued with the militants, who raided the church and took its parishioners hostage. Reports suggest at least 58 people are believed to be dead, including a priest, with 75 people more wounded.
Worshippers were attending their Sunday mass when gunmen wearing suicide vests detonated bombs outside and then entered Our Lady of Salvation church and started killing indiscriminately. Once the attention of the Iraqi security forces was gained, they proceeded to make demands calling for the release of Al Qaeda militants who had been caught and detained. Survivors have spoken of religious taunts and killing at random. The militants started shooting hostages by saying "We will go to paradise when we kill you, and you will go to hell". Iraqi commandos along with American helicopters arrived on the scene shortly after. Questions must be raised about the methods employed during the rescue as many lives were lost in the process.
Violence towards the Assyrian Christian community is a persistent and endemic problem in Iraq. The Assyrians have endured a terrible time since and before Saddam Hussein's removal. Current security is highly inadequate as seen here with a large number of Assyrians being murdered by apparent foreign nationals with criminal intentions.
The Assyria Council of Europe's view is that "Assyrian Christians are once again the victim of a horrendous attack on their culture, their religion, and most importantly, their position within their homeland. This will prompt even more Assyrians to leave in search of safety. It is vital that Assyrian Christians are afforded with the same rights as other ethnic groups in Iraq.
These include being granted a province, in accordance with federal law, which provides a secure geographically defined region where all minority groups, including Assyrian Christians, are given administrative responsibility and the authority to locally derive their security forces. More than 1 million Assyrian Christians have left Iraq post-Saddam, and this cannot be allowed to continue."
The Assyrian Universal Alliance issued the following statement:
The Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) condemns the barbaric attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad.The attack happened during worship services on October 31, 2010 and claimed the lives of numerous innocent Assyrian parishioners, priests, and Iraqi security forces.
These criminal acts are targeted against the Assyrian people in an attempt to force them to flee their homeland. We are confident that these criminals will not achieve their goals and that the indigenous people of Iraq will remain in their homeland. The Assyrian nation has over 7,000 years of history rooted in Iraq, and while the nation is shaken, it will pull itself out of the ashes and carry on with its mission of bringing peace and harmony amongst all citizens of Iraq.
The Assyrian Universal Alliance extends its deepest sympathy to the families who have lost their loved ones in this attack, and wishes a speedy recovery to all those who were injured. Bearing in mind both past and present heinous and unrestrained atrocities leveled against our people, we urge our collective national institutions to unilaterally and unequivocally demand justice for Assyrians in Iraq.
We call upon the Iraqi government to take swift and definitive action to stop the vicious attacks against our people, instituting immediate measures to address the humanitarian crisis threatening our future in our homeland. As Iraq's indigenous people, the Assyrian nation demands the establishment of an Assyrian autonomous region on our ancestral lands as an integral part of the Federal Republic of Iraq and administrated by Assyrians under the jurisdiction of Iraq's central government, in which we will provide the security forces necessary to safeguard our people.
We appeal to all democratic governments and human rights organizations around the world to take action against what is happening to the Assyrians of Iraq. By fulfilling the Assyrian demand for the aforementioned autonomous region, the government of Iraq will be protecting a peace-loving people and establishing a country in which Iraqis of all religions can live together in harmony.
The Assyrian Democratic Organization issued the following statement:
مساء الأحد 31/10/2010 أقدمت مجموعة إرهابية ظلامية، تنتمي لدولة العراق الإسلامية المرتبطة بتنظيم القاعدة، على اقتحام كنيسة سيدة النجاة للسريان الكاثوليك في بغداد، واقترفت مجزرة في منتهى الهمجية والبربرية، عندما أمطرت برصاص الحقد والغدر،المصلين الذين توافدوا لحضور القداس الإلهي والصلاة من أجل السلام والمحبة. وأدى ذلك لسقوط العشرات من أبناء شعبنا الكلداني السرياني الآشوري بين شهيد وجريح بينهم عدد من النساء والأطفال والكهنة الأبرياء. كما استشهد جراء ذلك، عدد من رجال الأمن العراقي ممّن تدخلوا للإفراج عن الرهائن.
جاءت هذه الجريمة المنظمة والمخططة، بعد أيام من اختتام أعمال السينودس الخاص بمسيحيي الشرق الأوسط، لتوجه رسالة طافحة بالحقد والعنصرية، ولتشير بوضوح لا لبس فيه، إلى عزم الإرهابيين على المضي في مخططاتهم الشريرة في استهداف المسيحيين، وإجبارهم على الهجرة ومغادرة وطنهم، والقضاء كليا على كل أشكال التنوع القومي والديني والثقافي في العراق. ويأتي ذلك في ظل فراغ سياسي مخيف، وعجز كامل للحكومة العراقية وأجهزتها الأمنية في فرض الأمن والاستقرار، وتوفير الحماية الكافية لشعبنا من أعمال القتل والإبادة التي يتعرض لها.
إننا في الوقت الذي ندين فيه وبشدة هذه الجريمة النكراء، فإننا نهيب بأحزاب ومؤسسات وكنائس شعبنا بتوحيد جهودها، من أجل الضغط على الحكومة العراقية، ودفعها للقيام بمسؤولياتها السياسية والقانونية لاتخاذ التدابير اللازمة لتوفير الحماية لأبناء شعبنا وكنائسنا. والتوجه معا نحو المجتمع الدولي، ومطالبته بإقامة منطقة آمنة لشعبنا في سهل نينوى، تحظى بضمانات دستورية ودولية، وتكفل له الحكم الذاتي ضمن إطار الدولة العراقية، كسبيل لا بد منه لتوفير الأمن والاستقرار لأبناء شعبنا الكلداني السرياني الآشوري، وضمان العودة الآمنة والكريمة للمهجرين واللاجئين من أبنائه، باعتباره الخيار الأمثل لاستمرار الوجود القومي والديني والإنساني لشعبنا في وطنه العراق، وذلك على قاعدة التفاهم والعيش المشترك مع كافة شركائه في الوطن.
المجد والخلود لشهداء كنيسة سيدة النجاة، والشفاء العاجل للجرحى.. والخزي والعار لقوى الإرهاب والإجرام من أعداء الإنسانية
© 2010, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

The End of Christianity in the Middle East?
GMT 11-3-2010 7:9:13
Assyrian International News Agency
http://www.aina.org/news/20101102215259.htm
Screaming "kill, kill, kill," suicide bombers belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant organization connected to al Qaeda in Iraq, stormed a Chaldean church in Baghdad on Sunday. A spokesman for the group subsequently claimed they did so "to light the fuse of a campaign against Iraqi Christians." The assailants' more immediate grievance seems related to a demand that two Muslim women, allegedly held against their will in Egyptian Coptic monasteries, be released. When Iraqi government forces attempted to free approximately 120 parishioners who had been taken hostage, the terrorists -- who had already shot dead some of the churchgoers -- detonated their suicide vests and grenades, slaughtering at least half the congregation.
But the massacre in Baghdad is only the most spectacular example of mounting discrimination and persecution of the native Christian communities of Iraq and Iran, which are now in the middle of a massive exodus unprecedented in modern times as they confront a rising tide of Islamic militancy and religious chauvinism sweeping the region.
Christians are the largest non-Muslim religious minority in both Iraq and Iran, with roots in the Middle East that date back to the earliest days of the faith. Some follow the Apostolic Orthodox Armenian Church. Others subscribe to the 2,000-year-old Syriac tradition represented mainly by the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq and by Aramaic speakers widely known as Assyrians in both Iraq and Iran.
Iraqi and Iranian Muslim leaders claim that religious minorities in their countries are protected. In September, former Iranian president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani reassured the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East that religious minorities are respected and safeguarded in Iran. Yet members of Iran's Christian denominations, like their Jewish, Zoroastrian, Mandean, and Baha'i counterparts, don't feel safe. A member of the National Council of Churches in Iran, Firouz Khandjani, lamented in August, "We are facing the worst persecution" in many decades, including loss of employment, homes, liberties, and lives, he said, "We fear losing everything."
In Iraq, Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities have witnessed increasing violence by militant Muslims against their neighborhoods, children, and religious sites since the U.S. invasion. Even pastors are not safe -- two died in the recent Baghdad bombing; many have been killed by Sunni and Shiite Iraqis since 2003. In Iran, other clergymen, including members of the Armenian, Protestant, and Catholic churches, have been arrested, kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, or even summarily executed, over the past three decades.
"Many Christians from Mosul have been systematically targeted and are no longer safe there," said Laurens Jolles, a UNHCR representative, in 2008, after Chaldean women were raped while their men, including Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, were tortured and killed in warnings to Christians to abandon their homes and livelihoods. In Iran, Christian clerics have been targeted -- Tateos Mikaelian, senior pastor of St. John's Armenian Evangelical Church in Tehran was assassinated in 1994, as was Bishop Haik Hovsepian Mehr, who headed the evangelical Assemblies of God Church.
Why Christians? Of the many justifications offered by al Qaeda and other fanatical groups in Iraq, and by hard-line mullahs in Iran, one is repeated most often: These indigenous Christians are surrogates for Western "crusaders." As early as 1970, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa accusing Christians in Iran of "working with American imperialists and oppressive rulers to distort the truths of Islam, lead Muslims astray, and convert our children." Fearing a backlash against their institutions and lives, Christians have often made efforts to prove their loyalty, as when Iranian Assyrians wrote to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in September denouncing American Christians who wished to burn Qurans as "enemies of God."
But the roots of Christian decline in the Middle East actually date back centuries. In Iran, intolerance toward all non-Muslim minorities took a sharply negative turn from the 16th century onward with the forced Shiification of Iran by the Safavid dynasty. The early 20th century saw pogroms against Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire and northwestern Iran. Under the Pahlavi shahs, Assyrians, Armenians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Baha'is regained some of their rights and came to represent the modernizing elements of 20th century society. But the Islamic Revolution of 1979 undercut all those advances. Prejudice and oppression now occurs with impunity.
The numbers speak for themselves: The population of non-Muslims in Iran has dropped by two-thirds or more since 1979. From Iran, these groups flee to Turkey and India -- often at risk to life and limb through the violence-ridden border regions of Iraq and Pakistan. The number of Assyrian Christians in Iran has dwindled from about 100,000 in the mid-1970s to approximately 15,000 today, even as the overall population of the country has swelled from 38 million to 72 million people over the same period. In Iraq, Christians are fleeing in droves. U.N. statistics indicate that 15 percent of all Iraqi refugees in Syria are of Christian background, although they represented only 3 percent of the population when U.S. troops entered in 2003. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that between 300,000 to 400,000 Christians have been forced out of Iraq since 2003. And Christians have left because the message from Sunni militants and Shiite ayatollahs is crystal clear: You have no future here.
There is now an alarming possibility that there will be no significant Christian communities in Iraq or Iran by century's end. Christian schools, communal halls, historical sites, and churches are being appropriated by national and provincial governments, government-sponsored Muslim organizations, and radical Islamist groups. Economic and personal incentives are offered to those who adopt Islam. Last month, the Vatican convened a major summit to find ways of mitigating this crisis, noting that "Christians deserve to be recognized for their invaluable contributions ... their human rights should always be respected, including freedom of worship and freedom of religion."
There is a faint glimmer of hope. On Aug. 5, the U.S. Senate adopted Resolution 322 expressing concern for religious minorities in Iraq. The quick, though unsuccessful, attempt by the Iraqi government this weekend to rescue the Christian hostages appears to have been in response to such American pressure -- no official Iraqi interventions had occurred in previous attacks.
In Iran, however, the persecution of Christians continues unabated. Two Protestant pastors, arrested in post-presidential election crackdowns, face the death penalty. An Assyrian pastor was arrested and tortured in February 2010 and faces trial too.
The Senate resolution noted that "threats against the smallest religious minorities … jeopardize … a diverse, pluralistic, and free society," words applicable in full measure to Iran as well. Will Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government heed this call? It's doubtful. But one thing's for certain: If the world doesn't champion religious freedom openly and vigorously, he won't have to.
**By Eden Naby and Jamsheed K. Choksy
www.foreignpolicy.com
Eden Naby is a cultural historian of the Middle East. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. Her book on Assyrian Christians will be published in 2011.
**Jamsheed K. Choksy is professor of Iranian and international studies at Indiana University and a member of the National Council on the Humanities.

 Hizbullah, Syria Refuse to Respond to Feltman
Naharnet/Hizbullah and Syria have refused to respond to remarks made by U.S. assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffery Feltman, pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat said Wednesday. Feltman said Syria should pressure Iran and Hizbullah to curb their activity in Lebanon if it wanted to rebuild its relations with Washington.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat said several Hizbullah officials contacted by the newspaper refused to comment on Feltman's remarks.
It said Syria, too, declined to issue an official response. Well-informed Syrian sources, however, told Asharq al-Awsat that Damascus prefers not to respond so that "things would not go too far." Beirut, 03 Nov 10, 10:29

Iranian Ambassador Rules Out Coup in Lebanon
Naharnet/Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Ghadanfar Roken Abadi ruled out a coup in Lebanon. A coup is "unlikely and impossible," he said in remarks published Wednesday by the daily Al-Liwaa. He stressed that stability and calm continues to prevail and that Iran is "very comfortable" with the presence of Saad Hariri as prime minister. Hariri is "playing a positive role at all levels and with all the parties, " he said. Beirut, 03 Nov 10, 08:19

Maronite Bishops Urge Lebanese Leaders to Quit 'Challenging Methods'
Naharnet/The Council of Maronite Bishops on Wednesday called on the various Lebanese political leaders to quit the "challenging methods" and "put an end to doubting each other."
A statement at the end of their monthly meeting also called on Lebanese leaders to "find political, economic and social solutions" to soothe the pain of the people.
The bishops condemned the "massacre" in which 52 worshipers were killed in a Catholic church in Baghdad. Beirut, 03 Nov 10, 13:01

Qaida Declares Christians 'Legitimate Targets' as Egypt Church Deadline Expires
Naharnet/An al-Qaida group in Iraq has declared Christians "legitimate targets" as a deadline expired for Egypt's Coptic church to free women allegedly held after converting to Islam, SITE monitors said Wednesday. The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) said in an Internet statement its threat was justified by the church's refusal to indicate the status of the women it said were being held captive in monasteries, the US-based monitoring group said.
"All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen (holy warriors) wherever they can reach them," said the statement.
The group which claimed the capturing of Christians in a Baghdad church that ended Sunday with the killing of 46 worshippers in a rescue drama, had said that the attack was to seek the release of the alleged converts in Egypt.
"Let these idolaters, and at their forefront, the hallucinating tyrant of the Vatican, know that the killing sword will not be lifted from the necks of their followers until they declare their innocence from what the dog of the Egyptian Church is doing," the ISI said in its latest statement.
It also demanded that the Christians "show to the mujahedeen their seriousness to pressure this belligerent church to release the captive women from the prisons of their monasteries."
The women, Camilia Shehata and Wafa Constantine, are the wives of Coptic priests whom Islamists have said were forcibly detained by the Coptic Church after they had willingly converted to Islam. Shehata disappeared for a few days in July, setting off Coptic protests. Police found her and escorted her back home, triggering protests by Islamists who said the church was detaining her after she converted to Islam. Footage of a woman claiming to be Shehata after converting to Islam surfaced on the Internet, firing up the protests. The Coptic Church says she was not the woman in the footage. Wafa Constantine also went missing, in 2004, reportedly after her husband refused to give her a divorce. She was temporarily sequestered at a convent as reports of her conversion were circulated. The two cases threatened the fragile sectarian balance of the country, where Copts make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 80-million population and have been the target of sectarian attacks. Sunday's bloodbath began when gunmen stormed the Sayidat al-Nejat Syriac Christian cathedral in central Baghdad during evening mass, witnesses said. The attackers immediately shot dead a priest and took worshippers hostage. The standoff ended when Iraqi forces backed by US troops stormed the building. Officials later announced that 46 Christians had died, including two priests, and around 60 had been wounded. Seven security members also died, as well as five attackers. Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi hailed the rescue drama as a "quick and successful operation." Before the US-led invasion of 2003, around 800,000 Christians lived in Iraq but that number has since shrunk to 550,000 in the face of repeated attacks against the community and its places of worship. Nationwide, violence has abated in Iraq since its peak in 2006-2007, but attacks are still frequent in the capital Baghdad and the main northern city Mosul. On Tuesday evening, 11 coordinated car bombs rocked Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods, killing at least 63 people and wounding 285.(AFP) Beirut, 03 Nov 10, 09:06

STL denies indictment before December
November 3, 2010 /The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) Outreach Office denied on Wednesday reports that the STL will hand down its indictment for the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri before December. “The reports are unfounded,” a spokesperson from the STL office told NOW Lebanon.
Earlier on Wednesday, media outlets reported that STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare informed the court’s president, Antonio Cassese, that the indictment will be issued before next month.
Tension is high in Lebanon after unconfirmed reports indicated that the court would soon issue its indictment for the Rafik Hariri murder. There are fears that, should the court indict Hezbollah members, it could lead to clashes similar to those of the 2008 May Events – when gunmen led by Hezbollah took over half of Beirut.
-NOW Lebanon

British envoy says Security Council members hesitant to meet over Lebanon
November 3, 2010 /British Ambassador to the UN Mark Lyall Grant said that some UN Security Council member-states are reluctant to hold a council meeting on Lebanon because they are concerned it will further increase tension in the country. In an interview with As-Safir newspaper published on Wednesday, Grant said that the Security Council is committed to the STL.
“The council did not receive any information that the Lebanese government wants to abolish the tribunal.” Media outlets reported that a UN Security Council meeting on current Lebanese developments might be held this week. Last week, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called on all Lebanese to boycott the STL and to end all cooperation with its investigators. Tension is high in Lebanon after unconfirmed reports said that the court would soon issue its indictment for the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. There are fears that, should the court indict Hezbollah members, it could lead to clashes similar to those of the 2008 May Events.
-NOW Lebanon

Hariri “100-percent” behind STL
November 3, 2010
Prime Minister Saad Hariri has renewed his backing for a UN-backed investigation into the murder of his father, despite warnings by Hezbollah the probe could plunge the country into crisis. "The work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is ongoing and there are many investigators in Lebanon, and they are doing their own work," Hariri told the BBC in an interview late Tuesday during an official visit to Britain. Asked whether he gave 100-percent backing to the tribunal set up after former PM Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005, Hariri replied: "Yes." Hariri confirmed he would not cut links with investigators despite demands from Hezbollah to disengage. He insisted dialogue was the best way out of the current standoff with Hezbollah and downplayed the risk of unrest. "I think what is dangerous is not to [hold] dialogue about the issues that are really difficult in the country, and I think this is one of the difficult issues in Lebanon," the PM said. Tensions have been rising in Beirut amid unconfirmed reports the STL is set to indict members of Hezbollah in connection with Hariri's murder.
The Iranian-and Syrian-backed movement has made clear it would not accept such an outcome. Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem warned this week that any charges against Hezbollah members would be "equivalent to lighting the fuse, igniting the wick for an explosion."-AFP/NOW Lebanon

Aoun: No national dialogue for me
November 3, 2010
FPM leader MP Michel Aoun says he will not attend Thursday’s national dialogue session if Wednesday’s cabinet session was postponed. (NOW Lebanon)
Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun rejected holding the national dialogue session Thursday if Wednesday’s cabinet meeting was postponed.
“I will not sit at the [national dialogue table] with anyone who protects a false witness,” he said during a press conference following the meeting of his Change and Reform bloc.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri keeps traveling while “we want to set a day for the cabinet session,” Aoun added. He also said that change is coming and added that Hariri is serving as a dictator controlling all institutions. The “false witnesses” issue topped the agenda of the cabinet session previously set for Wednesday. However, NOW Lebanon’s correspondent reported Tuesday that a change in Saad Hariri’s itinerary in the UK has delayed his return to Lebanon and led to a postponement of the cabinet session.
March 8 politicians have called for the Justice Council to investigate the issue of witnesses who gave unreliable testimonies to the international probe into Rafik Hariri’s 2005 assassination.
However, March 14 figures have said that the regular judiciary should handle the matter. Meanwhile, PM Saad Hariri met with his British counterpart, David Cameron, at Number 10 Downing Street on Tuesday to discuss current affairs and bilateral relations, according to a statement from Hariri’s office. During the meeting, Cameron said his country “completely supports the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) process and wants to see it achieved in the correct way.” The tribunal must be allowed to finish its work, he added. The British PM also expressed appreciation for Hariri’s leadership and said that the UK wants to do all it can to strengthen Lebanon’s stability. After the meeting, Hariri told reporters that the talks had been “very good” and covered problems between Lebanon and Israel as well as British-Lebanese economic cooperation. Hariri said that his request for more UK military aid for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Internal Security Forces (ISF) had received a good response.-NOW Lebanon

Ahmadinejad slams Russia for US 'sell out' over missiles
November 3, 2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at Russia on Wednesday, saying it had "sold out" Iran to arch-foe the United States by cancelling a deal to supply S-300 ground-to-air missiles. "Some people who are under the influence of Satan [the United States] thought that if they can unilaterally and illegally cancel some defense agreements that they have with us, it will hurt the Iranian nation," Ahmadinejad said in reference to the missile deal between Moscow and Tehran.
"They went and sold us out to our enemies by unilaterally cancelling the agreement for which they have been paid," he said at a public rally in the northeastern city of Bojnourd which was broadcast live on state television. "I want to tell them on your behalf that we consider the deal to still be valid. They should execute it. If they don't, the Iranian nation will seek its rights, the losses and the fines on it," he said to a cheering crowd. The remarks were Ahmadinejad's first direct reaction to Moscow's decision to cancel the delivery of the S-300 missiles.
In September, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree banning supplies of S-300 missiles and other arms to the Islamic republic.-AFP/NOW Lebanon

From Yemen to the Church
03/11/2010
By Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Al-Awsat's Deputy Editor-in-Chief, based in London
Let us put forth a hypothetical question: How long would it take to cleanse this region of extremist ideas, violence, and terrorism, if the right policies were in place, alongside the will and financial means? The answer would be definitely not a year or two, but rather a decade or two, if not more. Just as this virus needed time to infiltrate the body of the region, and become a dangerous phenomenon, it will take time to eradicate it.
The issue here is not the handful of individuals, who conspire to place a bomb here or there, detonate a car bomb, or carry out a suicide attack. Regardless of the scale of destruction and harm that they cause, they are just a handful of sick minds that do not represent the mainstream trend. The issue here is the environment which produced this phenomenon, and created a school of thought that finds justification and theories to support such atrocities, when there is in fact no justification for these crimes, indiscriminate killings, and the targeting of particular sects or specific sectors of society.
During the past week there have been 3 terrorist incidents, one of which drew worldwide attention. Thanks to the warnings of Saudi Arabia, a global disaster was averted when a parcel bomb was sent from Yemen. Apparently, the bombs were designed to explode on board the aircraft carrying them. The sick minds behind this plot see nothing wrong in masterminding an intercontinental transfer of explosives, for their aim is to kill, and nothing else.
The second incident was far deadlier, but attracted less global attention. Many Iraqi hostages were held captive in a church in Baghdad, and the incident ended in a bloodbath, and the deaths of dozens of victims, after one of the insurgents detonated a bomb during the rescue operation. The third incident was the suicide attack in the heart of Istanbul, which may have been carried out for other motives [other than radical Islamism]. Nevertheless, the objective was the same in the end, and that was murder.
The Yemeni parcel bombs and church attack in Baghdad share a similar thread and ideological basis. They were performed by similar groups, feeding off each other, even providing each other with personnel. In Istanbul, the terrorists resorted to bloody methods of violence, like the previous two groups, although their targets were local.
In Yemen, a group has taken advantage of the [government’s] difficulty to control some areas, in order to establish itself a base for waging a global war, albeit with vague objectives. In Iraq, a religious sect was despicably targeted, and many reports indicate that large numbers of this group are now migrating abroad, in search of safety from this unhealthy sectarian atmosphere.
These ideologies, which manipulate and brainwash the youth of society, are the product of turbulent environments marked by frustration, instability, and economic and political challenges. Instead of encouraging young minds to work hard to find creative solutions to these challenges, and advance their societies, these ideologies provide recipes for violence and destruction. The only result of which is the demise of their own societies.
A terrorist group may achieve success here or there, as has happened on previous occasions, and create the media uproar it desires, through destruction and murder. However, in the end, the most affected, and the biggest loser, is the community where these groups operate. The lifeblood of the community is drained, and the atmosphere becomes tense. Let us observe and see if violence has succeeded in the development of society anywhere. Wherever extremists groups are present, there is a lack of stability. Furthermore, violence in these areas is escalating from one degree to the next, and the majority of victims are always the local residents. Somalia and Afghanistan are clear examples of this.
The question I would like to ask those who try to justify such terrorist acts, and those who offer conspiracy theories, or see these groups and ideologies as useful instruments for political maneuvers, is this: Do you want your societies to follow the same path as Somalia or Afghanistan? Do you want them to be consumed by armed conflicts, sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing, and reap nothing but ruin and destruction?

Protect Iraq’s Christians
02/11/2010
By Tariq Alhomayed/Al Sharq AlAwsat
Fearing that our readers might think I only want to fill column space, I would have re-published my article “We Must Protect Iraq's Christians”, first published on October 12th 2008.
In that article I said that “it is the duty of all Iraqis, not just the government in Baghdad, to protect Iraqi Christians from murder and displacement, and all types of repression against them, especially because they have never been part of alliances against Iraq. They did not come with [L. Paul] Bremer, and others. Iraqi Christians also suffer the worst conditions of any Christians in the region”.
This came against the backdrop of an appeal from the Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk, Luis Saca, informing the Iraqi government of the need to protect Iraq’s Christians, when he said that “The Christians in Iraq do not have militias or clans to defend them”. He added “I feel pain and injustice, because innocent people are being killed and we do not know why”.
At the time, we faced condemnation and media campaigns by people affiliated with the Iraqi government, but here we are today witnessing a massacre, along with other atrocities against Christians in Iraq. The massacre did not happen at a checkpoint, or as the result of an assassination of a Christian figure at his home, or on a random road. Instead, it was an organized, armed attack on the Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady, in the Karrada district of Baghdad. Reports suggest 52 people were killed, nearly two years after the call of Bishop Luis Saca, urging the Iraqi government to protect Christians.
It was striking when Father Youssef Thomas Mirkis, head of the Dominican sect in Iraq, said after yesterday’s massacre that “the plot had been in preparation for a long time, considering the weapons and ammunition found in the cathedral…these take a long time to stockpile”. The words of the vicar of Iraq’s Syriac Catholic Church, Pius Kasha, were deeply saddening, when he said “what is clear now is that they [Christians] will all leave Iraq”.
Thus, the question today is: What has been done since 2008, rather than 2003, by the Iraqi government to protect an Iraqi component from repression and organized violence? Unfortunately, the answer is nothing! It is easy to accuse al-Qaeda, an organization which never hesitates to commit massacres and atrocities. However, Iraqi Christians remain targets in public, and are outspoken in their demand for government protection, so what has Nuri al-Maliki’s government done for them?
One of the hostages in yesterday’s terrorist attack said “Men wearing military uniforms broke into the church carrying their weapons, and killed a priest on the spot”. It is well known that since 2008, Iraq’s Christians, nearly half of whom have left the country, are now turning to the churches [instead of the government] in search of protection from violence. Interestingly, the targeted church was under the protection of security personnel, so how did the terrorists get in?
We can only return to what we said in 2008; that the targeting of minorities, including Iraqi Christians, means the disintegration of Iraq, and is an infringement upon its cultural and political composition. We must ensure that minorities are not excluded on sectarian or ethnic grounds, for this will open the gates of hell. Some are able to incite such a possibility, but so far no one can ensure this will not happen. We must also ensure that tomorrow, the same events do not occur but with Lebanon’s Christians, God forbid. Therefore we say: protect the Christians in our region, in order to protect the virtue of co-existence.

Cabinet postpones debate on 'false witnesses'
By Elias Sakr
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
BEIRUT: A Cabinet session to discuss the issue of “false witnesses” Wednesday was postponed after Prime Minister Saad Hariri delayed his return from an official visit to London.
The postponement of the Cabinet session cast a shadow of doubt on whether the meeting of the National Dialogue committee scheduled for Thursday would take place.
While Hizbullah escalated its position, warning of an “explosive situation” if the UN-backed Tribunal indicts some of its members, Hariri’s Future Movement parliamentary bloc also stepped up its stances, describing the court as the sole authorized party to identify “so-called false witnesses.” Last month, the Future Movement and its allies agreed to the investigation of “false witnesses” by the Lebanese judiciary but March 8 parties still insist the issue should be referred to the Judicial Council, which March 14 groups say lacks jurisdiction to investigate the issue. Hizbullah’s number two Sheikh Naim Qassem refused to disclose steps his party would take if the STL indictment accuses Hizbullah members in the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri “since the possibilities are numerous.” Qassem upped the ante further during a televised interview with the BBC Arabic service, highlighting that such an indictment would be an “alarming, explosive and dangerous spark” in Lebanon that might lead to negative repercussions. But a statement released following the Future Movement bloc meeting said attempts to obstruct justice and hinder the STL’s work were not acceptable and threatened Lebanon’s stability and future.
In a sharper tone, March 14 MP and Labor Minister Butros Harb called for the withdrawal of the issue of “false witnesses” from ministerial discussions since no law suit has been filed before the Lebanese judiciary against any individuals for giving false testimonies. But prior to the decision to postpone the government meeting, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun threatened to boycott the National Dialogue Committee session if the issue of “false witnesses” is not discussed Wednesday. In reference to Hizbullah’s statements, Harb said provoking civil strife would not serve in defending the resistance. “Those who are committed to justice are not agents for Israel or against the resistance,” he said.
Following an incident between STL investigators and women at a medical clinic in Beirut’s southern suburbs last week, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called on Lebanese to boycott STL investigators, warning that cooperation was akin to an attack against the resistance. US Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told The Washington Post that Syria needs to pressure Iran and Hizbullah to restrain their activities in Lebanon if Damascus wants to rebuild ties with the US. In a bid to ease tensions between Hariri’s coalition and Hizbullah, the Syrian, Saudi and Iranian ambassadors held talks at the Syrian embassy. “Preserving Lebanon’s unity is of the utmost importance and that has always been the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iranian Ambassador Ghazanfar Rokanabadi told LBC television. “We felt that Syria and Saudi Arabia held the same position,” Roknabadi said

Can the Judicial Council solve 'false witnesses'?
moves to have the body investigate the issue are aimed at slowing the Special Tribunal – source
Compiled by Daily Star staff /Wednesday, November 03, 2010
The Judicial Council, a body that came into prominence during a string of trials involving lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea during the 1990s, is the place where ministers from Hizbullah and its allies say “false witnesses” in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri should be dealt with.
Until now, there has not been an explicit link made between the issue of those who allegedly misled the UN-led investigation into Hariri’s 2005 assassination and the actual competence of the Judicial Council. By law, giving false testimony falls under the purview of a penal one-judge court, since it is considered a misdemeanor that carries a punishment of between one month and three years in prison. However, the Parliamentary minority argues that the “false witnesses” case is a spin-off of the Hariri case, which was transferred to the Judicial Council in the first place, before being transferred to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). The Judicial Council is tasked with investigating crimes that target the state’s domestic and external security, such as the assassination of top leaders, political and religious figures, and ambassadors, in addition to the killing of foreign nationals, the incitement of civil and sectarian strife through acts such as terrorist bombings, and attempting to overthrow the regime by force.
Leading the fight to get the witnesses issue into the Judicial Council is the March 8 alliance, which believes the Judicial Council should try these individuals before investigations by STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare are allowed to continue.
Critics of the STL believe that if the trials of misleading witnesses took place, and individuals are found guilty, the information could lead to discovering who, if anyone, financed the individuals and led them to make their misleading statements. In turn, it is thought that this might lead to the discovery of who was behind the Hariri assassination.
According to a Lebanese judicial source, this argument “and this insistence on such a course of action do not mean that this group intends to reveal the ‘false witnesses’ and try them, as much as it is an attempt to take the Hariri case out of the hands of the STL and return it to the Lebanese judiciary.”
“Accepting the prosecution of ‘false witnesses’ before the Judicial Council, in return for freezing the STL’s work, means, simply, burying the assassination of Hariri and his comrades in the [judicial] bureaucracy, and forgetting it,” the source added.
The source argued that handing the witnesses’ file to the Judicial Council would prove to be as cumbersome a process as setting up the STL and watching it investigate the Hariri case.
“The measures to try, before the Judicial Council, any crime for which there are material elements and evidence of a crime, and with people detained for them, take at least three to four years,” the source said, questioning the time needed to try a case connected to the “false witnesses,” where there is no evidence, or detained individuals, or suspects.
There are judges who believe that transferring the case to the Judicial Council, based on the individuals named by former head of General Security Jamil al-Sayyed in his lawsuit with the Syrian judiciary, “will mean trying senior judges and security officials who took part in the initial, Lebanese investigation into the Hariri assassination and turning them into the accused,” the source said.
“It will be a blow to the credibility of all of the achievements in terms of the Lebanese investigation or in terms of aiding the STL, which is concluding its investigations,” the source said.
Any investigation connected to the Judicial Council requires providing it with the statements, documents and accompanying materials from the Tribunal’s investigation committee.
However, this body, headed by magistrate Daniel Bellemare, categorically rejects revealing this information, since it is extremely confidential – handing the material over to another party will hamstring the investigations and reveal important and basic documents, from which those involved in the crime might benefit, and use to flee. It will also endanger the lives of witnesses who have given testimony.
If the Judicial Council waits for these documents, and international investigators prefer to retain them, the case will be stalled for years, the source argued, adding: “This is the real goal of transferring the case to the Judicial Council.”
The source said the investigation undertaken in Lebanon by Lebanese judicial officials had only two people who could be considered to have given false information.
One was Ibrahim Jarjoura, who was detained for three years for misleading the investigation, the maximum penalty for giving false testimony or misleading a penal investigation.
The other was Akram Mrad, who was imprisoned for the same period of time, for the same offense. He remains in prison, for a separate drug-trafficking offense.
Syrians Zuheir Siddiq and Husam Hussam have already been charged by the Lebanese judiciary, and warrants for their arrest were issued as suspects of involvement in the Hariri assassination. They are both at large, Husam in Syria and Siddiq in France.
“This is the entirety of what’s available with regard to false testimony, or the so-called ‘false witnesses’ issue in Lebanon,” the source said.
The Judicial Council has never examined a case of false witnesses; the most prominent cases in which it has delivered verdicts are the following:
l The 1990 assassination of Dany Chamoun and his family, for which Geagea received life in prison.
l The killing of two jewelers from the Antonios family in Baabda, 1991. Two Syrian soldiers, Abdel-Karim Jaj and Mohammad Zaatar, were executed for the crime.
l Geagea’s life imprisonment for attempting to overthrow the regime by force, after finding him innocent of the 1994 Zouk Mikael church bombing.
l The 1987 assassination of Prime Minister Rashid Karami, for which Samir Geagea received life in prison. l The 1995 assassination of Sheikh Nizar Halabi, the head of the Association for Islamic Philanthropic Projects (Al-Ahbash); four members of the Islamist group Isbat al-Ansar were executed for the crime. l The attempted assassination of the former Mufti of Tripoli, Sheikh Taha Sabounji, in 1998 which resulted in prison terms of two years to life for those found guilty. l The Dinnieh clashes of New Year 2000, which pitted the Lebanese Army against Islamist fundamentalists. l The killings of eight employees at a Teachers Pension Fund office in Beirut in 2002 by Ahmad Mansour. l Currently, a string of 2007 incidents, the Ain Alaq bus bombing near Bikfaya, two explosions that targeted the Lebanese Army in Tripoli, and the killings of Ziad Ghandour and Ziad Qabalan in Beirut.

UK throws weight behind Tribunal as Hariri asks for military assistance
By Patrick Galey /Daily Star staff
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron Tuesday became the latest world leader to lend his country’s support for the UN-backed probe into former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s murder as he met with counterpart Saad Hariri at the end of his official two-day visit to the UK. Sources close to Hariri said Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, in which the premier previously confirmed the issue of the “false witnesses” was due to be discussed, will be postponed due to an “urgent change” to scheduled meetings in London. Hariri had been due to return to Beirut Wednesday morning. Cameron told Hariri the UK wished to develop ties with Lebanon. “We want to do everything we can to support the stability and security of Lebanon. We think that this is absolutely vital,” Cameron told Hariri during talks at 10 Downing Street. “We fully support the Special Tribunal [for Lebanon] (STL) process. We want to see that properly completed and we want to do everything we can to help you with the work you are doing in your country. “I admire your leadership and I want to strengthen the relationship between Britain and Lebanon. We have a very strong relationship but we can make that relationship stronger still,” he added. Hariri said the talks have been positive and touched on the situation in the Middle East and Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty.
“We spoke about ways to strengthen cooperation and the prime minister stressed the support from the UK for the STL,” Hariri told reporters after the meeting. “I also asked for military help for the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces. There was good responsiveness from the UK regarding this.
“We also spoke about the peace process which is witnessing regression and we asked for a stronger British role in order to activate the peace process,” the prime minister said.
The show of support for the beleaguered UN-backed court will encourage Hariri and those who support the probe into his father’s assassination. The prime minister faces a Cabinet divided over the legitimacy of the STL and last week saw international investigators attacked by a crowd of women at a gynecology clinic in south Beirut. Hizbullah has warned of the consequences should anticipated tribunal indictments against party members materialize.
Mohammad Chattah, the prime minister’s adviser on foreign affairs, said that meetings with senior British officials had been constructive. “We are encouraged. We have a lot in common with the British government on a lot of critical issues including the peace process, which has been high on meetings’ agendas,” Chattah told The Daily Star.“Lebanon is intimately involved in this and has been for the prospects of Lebanon and as a country and as an economy.” Regarding the STL, Chattah said Britain’s support was both welcome and expected. “As a member of the Security Council, which established the Tribunal, we expect [Britain’s] support. That is particularly important during this period [when] the tribunal is under attack,” he said.
Hariri also held meetings with a host of London-based Arab ambassadors and a delegation of bankers; part of the aim of the prime minister’s first official UK visit was to promote economic partnership between Beirut and London. Talks between Hariri and British Commonwealth Minister Lord Howell of Guilford discussed regional developments, the prime minister’s office said. Hariri addressed students at the London School of Economics Tuesday evening, receiving a warm welcome from the crowd. He will return to the domestic STL maelstrom later this week in the knowledge that another key player on the international scene has backed the court.
Chattah dismissed the idea that the STL could cease to function, but warned that intimidation and threats against the court needed to stop. “Of course we have a problem. There are those in Lebanon who are calling against cooperation in the STL and that’s a problem given that state institutions continue to reaffirm their readiness to cooperate,” he said. “The STL has continuity and the fact is that the Tribunal can go on without [Lebanese] cooperation. Pressure will not stop it; it may make it harder for it. It’s important to stop intimidation and it is difficult to imagine the international community withdrawing its support.”

Lebanon budget committee fails to end debate
By The Daily Star /Wednesday, November 03, 2010
BEIRUT: The Finance and Budget Parliamentary Committee failed again to wrap up its discussion on the 2010 and 2011 draft budgets Tuesday. The meeting, briefly attended by the head of the Change and Reform Parliamentary bloc MP Michel Aoun, hammered Finance Minister Raya Haffar Hassan with questions on the previous year’s unfinished accounts and asked the minister about what they termed “irregular” practices at her ministry. Hassan has been pressing the committee to wrap up debate on the draft budgets quickly in order to allocate urgent funds to several ministries. The minister argues that any further delay in the budget means electricity, water and infrastructure projects will be put on hold indefinitely. “The meeting today was dedicated to the breakdown of accounts and allocated accounts. We raised some questions about the statement of the Accounting Council on the ministry of finance performance. We asked Hassan to clarify few things on the budget and some documents,” committee head Ibrahim Kanaan told reporters. March 8 cited serious accounting breaches at the Finance Ministry since 1993 and claimed that some of the ministers have been deliberately involved in irregular practices and even falsified documents. However, the Future bloc vehemently rejected these accusations and said some March 8 figures were trying to discredit the reputation of late former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Kanaan noticed certain differences between Hassan and the Accounting Council on some technical matters. “It is our right as a committee and monitoring body to ask about the malpractices at the finance ministry since 1993.”He denied allegations some members of the committee are undermining the work of Minister Hassan for political motives. Kanaan insisted that the committee will continue to question Hassan and all officials at the ministry until all questions have been answered. According to the budgets several key ministries will receive over $1.5 billion for crucial projects. – The Daily Star

It is up to Lebanese to sound the alarm bell
Daily Star/Wednesday, November 03, 2010
The somber news this week of the killing of dozens of Iraqi Christians gathered in a Baghdad church at the hands of Al-Qaeda militants has put the hardships endured by this religious minority under the spotlight once more. The fate of the Christians of the Middle East has been a paradoxically cruel one. Christianity was born in this very land and its followers have hugely contributed to the communities in which they have lived. Yet, over the last century, Christians have often been treated as outsiders and – as in this last episode – even violently targeted.
Christians are certainly not the only group in the Middle East – religious or other – to have endured intolerance. But its consequences have undoubtedly unfolded on a much wider scale than in other cases. The continuous, mass exodus of Christian populations, whose tens of thousands of members year after year vanish from their homes in search of one less hostile to their beliefs and identity is without comparison. While the “Christian drain,” as it could be called, has not gone unnoticed in Lebanon and elsewhere, one must recognize that with the paranoia of survival running deep in all of the country’s religious communities, most inhabitants of this region have seldom bothered to seriously address the issue, preferring to leave this responsibility to the few individuals directly affected by it. The single-handed efforts deployed by the Catholic Church to bring attention to the issue of the Christians’ emigration during a Synod held last month in Vatican City is a case in point. Lebanon’s common incapacity to gather sufficient political impetus to find a bona fide solution to this problem is, arguably, symptomatic of a larger truth that should speak to Lebanese on an individual level. Namely, that the Lebanese people have been, thus far, incapable of fully appreciating the extent to which harmony precariously hinges on keeping each of their communities safe. Yet, violent attacks by militants against the Lebanese Christian community could potentially tip Lebanon’s precarious sectarian balance, and unleash the violence that has usually been associated with such instability. Worse even, if Lebanon were to seriously spin out of control, the risks that it become one more Al-Qaeda safe-haven in the region are not to be neglected. And so, as Al-Qaeda is multiplying threats to repeat its bloody exploits in other parts of the region – addressing them Monday to the 8 million-odd Christian population of Egypt, and perhaps tomorrow to that of Lebanon – it is up to each Lebanese, regardless of his or her confession, to sound the alarm bell.
With a single conflagration on Lebanon’s powder-keg, it is the entire country which runs the risk of blowing up.

U.S. Government "Threatens" Syria: Promote Terrorism, Take Over Lebanon, Block Peace, and We Won't Let You Make Apple iPads!
By Barry Rubin
November 2, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/11/us-government-threatens-syria
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If you think I'm exaggerating about the current administration's cluelessness toward the Middle East just read the State Department daily press conference transcripts. Even journalists covering these events are often shocked by what they hear.
Today's topic is Syria, but it's just an example and many others could be found. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley begins by referring to a speech by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice in which she says:
"We continue to have deep concerns about Hezbollah's destructive and destabilizing influence in the region, as well as attempts by other foreign players, including Syria and Iran, to undermine Lebanon's independence and endanger its stability."
In saying this, Rice is praising a UN report about what's going on in Lebanon which reveals, though nobody makes this point, the total failure of the organization and the United States to keep the promises made in 2006 in order to end the Israel-Hizballah war.
So given this situation one would think U.S. policy is now prepared to do something about Lebanon's becoming an Iran-Syria puppet, Syria's continued support for anti-American terrorists in Iraq and sabotage of any peace process, and the obviously failed U.S. effort at engaging Syria.
Nope. Not a chance.
A reporter asks: "With these strong statements...it looks like the meetings the Secretary [of State] had with the Syrian foreign minister and the visit by his deputy here to Washington didn't lead to any improvements in relations with Syria. Do you agree on this?"
No, Crowley won't agree since if he does the United States will have to do something. He just wants to let everyone knows that the United States told Syria it is very very naughty:
"We were very clear about our expectation that Syria would play a more constructive role in the region. We expressed during that meeting our deep concern for Syrian interference with Lebanon's sovereignty. We also expressed in that meeting hope that Syria would make progress in its thread of the Middle East peace process."
No, Syria won't "play a more constructive role," so why the expectation? Yes, Syria will continue to undermine Lebanon's sovereignty so what are you going to do with that "deep concern?" No, Syria won't "make progress" toward peace with Israel so why the "hope"?
Jumping Jupiter! You've been watching all of this continuously for nineteen months, isn't it time to get the point?
Understandably, a reporter asks: "Do you see any evidence that [the Syrians] have actually taken that message on board?....It doesn't seem like they're listening if they're still doing things that you have to complain about as publicly as Ambassador Rice did."
Precisely. So what does Crowley say? I'm not kidding: that's why we have to talk to them even more and offer them goodies:
"Well, but it's one of the reasons why we have offered to engage Syria....[The U.S. wants] to offer the hope that...we can improve our relationship bilaterally and Syria can play a more constructive role in the region."
So let me get this straight: Syria ignores you and your answer is to try harder to engage them, to offer them more. Crowley continues:
"There's a choice here for Syria. If it wants to have a better relationship with the United States, then it has to be a more constructive player in the region. [Regarding] Lebanon, we remain very concerned about Syria's ...ongoing support of Hezbollah, its attempted intimidation of a Lebanese Government, the ongoing provision of arms to Hezbollah in violation of Lebanon's sovereignty....We would expect Syria to respect Lebanon's sovereignty."
Why do you expect they would respect Lebanon's sovereignty? And hasn't Syria already made a choice: No! No! No! Or, more accurately, they have made a choice based on your behavior along the following lines:
We can support Hizballah, intimidate Lebanon's government, and do just about whatever we want, and the United States won't do anything to us? Mu-ha-ha-ha!
So of course, a reporter asks--and remember this is October 2010 so they haven't heard any answer in the last twenty months: "You've laid out the carrots that are offered to the Syrians, i.e., potential of better or improved U.S. relationships if they do these things you want them to do. What's the consequences if they continue not to listen to you?"
Does Crowley hurl lightning bolts? Does he threaten and hint and warn? No, he does not: In fact, he seems rather surprised by the question. His answer is so amazing [in incoherence as well as content] I just have to quote it in full. [Note: If you wish I give you permission to skip the next paragraph]:
"Well, I mean, there are sanctions against Syria. It still is listed on the terrorism list by the United States, and those have an impact. But if Syria wants the potential-a change in the relation with the United States, a change in opportunities that come with normal relations, then it has to improve its performance. Give you an example: Earlier this summer, technology leaders under the auspices of the State Department had a delegation that visited Damascus, and our message to the leaders...is very clear. You want leading technology companies from the United States and other areas of the world to invest in Damascus, then you've got to create the appropriate climate to encourage them to do that. You've got to have a climate where-change the relationship between the government and the people. So if this is, in fact, the ambition by the Syrian leadership, then it has to change its policies and its practices."
So that's it! If you take over Lebanon, send terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans, back Hamas, arm Hizballah, and move so close to Iran that a hydrogen atom cannot pass between you, the United States will take a terrible vengeance: It won't let American technology companies invest in you!
So here's the real choice offered Syria: Either you have Iran providing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and low-cost oil; paying for your weapons, subsidizing your joint clients like Hamas and Hizballah, and giving you a nuclear umbrella, while being part of an alliance that believes it is going to gain hegemony in the Middle East OR alternatively you could throw all this away in exchange for some U.S. investments.
The horror. The horror.
After reading this nonsense an expert on these issues remarked: ''Really pathetic. The administration is just begging Syria. Our dialogue has been reduced to Washington pleading and Syria saying "no." No wonder everyone is siding with Iran these days."
Amen.

Oh, and here's David Schenker explaining to you what's really going on in U.S.-Syria issues, with optional audio.
Media Coverage of U.S.-Israel-Palestinians: Who Gets It, Who Doesn't
By Barry Rubin
November 2, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/11/media-coverage-us-israel-palestinians-who-gets-it
Gets it. The Washington Post:
"Egypt's backsliding is not Mr. Obama's fault. But Mr. Mubarak's actions reflect a common calculation across the Middle East: that this U.S. president, unlike his predecessor, is not particularly interested in democratic change. Mr. Obama has exhibited passion on the subject of Israel's West Bank settlements; he and his top aides have publicly pressured, and sometimes castigated, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. If the president is similarly troubled by Mr. Mubarak's defiance, he has yet to show it."
Doesn't get it. The New York Times:
"We think the burden is on Mr. Netanyahu to get things moving again. The settlements are illegal under international law, and resuming the moratorium, which expired on Sept. 26, will in no way harm Israel's national interest. But Mr. Abbas also has to recognize that the issue has become a distraction from the main goal of a broader peace deal. The two leaders must not squander this chance."
Right [sarcasm]. Israel should make still another unilateral concessions because you've forgotten all the unilateral concessions it has made in the past at your insistence, when it got shafted, and then you began the cycle over again.
And there's also the usual phony bilateralism: Both sides are wrong, the argument runs, but Israel has to do something material and the Palestinians don't.
But why is there a "burden" on Israel's prime minister when supposedly it is the other side that is suffering so greatly and is so unhappy with the status quo. Isn't it up to the side that most (supposedly) wants and needs change to do something to bring it about?
Are you really so stupid to think that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is just foolishly falling for a distraction? Or maybe getting "a broader peace deal" is not his "main goal." Did that ever occur to you? Will it ever occur to you?
Of course they will "squander" this chance. Maybe you, and a lot of other conventional wisdom viewpoints on the Middle East, should start thinking about why you are always wrong. It shows how blindly foolish the New York Times is that the headline for this misguided editorials is: "Enough Game-Playing." Who's playing games with other people's lives?
* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org. You can read and subscribe to his blog at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

Canada vs. Radical Islam: Harper's Mixed Record
by Kathy Shaidle/Pajamas Media
October 31, 2010
http://www.meforum.org/2771/canada-vs-radical-islam
A warning to those who believe that electing a "conservative" government automatically will inspire tougher measures to fight radical Islam: Canadians know from experience that this formula does not always work as planned.
When Canadian voters again rejected the nation's "natural ruling party" — the Liberals — and handed the Conservatives their second minority government in the fall of 2008, Islamist Watch asked some prominent Canadians how Prime Minister Stephen Harper would tackle creeping Shari'a and other manifestations of homegrown radical Islam.
Two years later, it is time to revisit those questions.
In 2008, Ezra Levant, a lifelong Conservative Party supporter, had just emerged as the country's premier critic of Islamist lawfare, having been hauled before a government tribunal for publishing the infamous "Muhammad cartoons." Back then, Levant said that he was optimistic about the government's commitment to battling domestic Muslim belligerence.
Today, he admits that "progress is slower" than he had hoped, but Levant remains encouraged by what he has seen. For example, he lauds the Conservatives' refusal to bow to international progressive pressure to somehow rescue "child soldier" and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who currently is being held at Guantanamo and just pleaded guilty to murdering an American medic during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.
On the home front, Levant reports that through sharp criticism and even funding cuts, "the government continues to marginalize the worst groups out there, such as the Canadian Islamic Congress" (CIC) — the Islamist body that unsuccessfully attempted to silence Mark Steyn — "and the Canadian Arab Federation," a peddler of anti-Semitism and 9/11 conspiracy theories.
However, the ruling government faces a continuous uphill battle when instituting even moderate reforms such as those, due in large part to Canada's particular parliamentary structure.
"The main problem for deep reform remains the minority government," Levant explains. "For example, a few months ago when there was evidence of niqab-clad women boarding a plane without revealing their faces, the Conservatives called for the matter to be discussed at a parliamentary committee. The [left-leaning] opposition parties, which together have a majority on all committees, blocked that discussion."
Salim Mansur agrees that any analysis of the Harper government's successes and failures must take mundane political realities into account. However, the author of Islam's Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim is not willing to excuse the Conservatives for failing to embrace necessary reforms.
Mansur accuses Harper of holding back on reforms because the prime minister fears alienating Muslim and centrist voters. Yet Mansur is convinced that if the Conservatives were bolder in their opposition to radical Islam, they would gain more overall votes than they would lose.
"It looks to me," says Mansur, that Harper "wants to win the majority without in any way rousing any controversy over the subject of Islamist jihad that he fears will make him lose centrist votes, hand the opposition a political stick to beat him up with, allow the mainstream media to paint him as a redneck, and drive him out of leadership if he cannot win the next election with a majority. So Harper is playing safe politically and he is betting that this subject will not turn into the make-or-break issue in the next election."
One of the issues that Mansur says Harper is trying to avoid is immigration reform. It has not escaped the average Canadian's notice that Omar Khadr's parents were immigrants, as were members of the Toronto 18 terrorist group and leaders of the lawfare campaigns targeting Levant and Steyn. Stories about Toronto's "welfare harems" and Quebec's proposed burqa ban also have been widely reported.
Yet bizarrely, just as voters and even the media have begun openly discussing this "third rail" of Canadian politics, the Conservative Party seems determined to ignore immigration reform. One exception did come late last year, when the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration unveiled a new guidebook for immigrants. At least in theory, all newcomers are required to read Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, which advises them that "Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, 'honor killings,' female genital mutilation, or other gender-based violence." However, the ministry took some heat for appearing to tone down references to gay rights in the guide, presumably to avoid offending the same constituency being warned about honor killings.
David Harris, the director of the International and Terrorist Intelligence Program for INSIGNIS Strategic Research, seconded the need for immigration reform back in 2008, insisting that "immigration must be brought under immediate control. … Bringing over a quarter of a million people a year into Canada is unconscionable in this threat environment, and it should be no surprise that our few thousand security officials are overworked."
It seems that Harris' warnings have gone largely unheeded by the Conservative Party. He now observes, "Unfortunately, events of the last year or two point to a shifting of the Conservative government in favor of the promiscuous immigration approaches that place vote banks first, and safety and security a distant second."
Harris notes the mixed messages being sent by the Harper government. On the one hand, it has declared that it is distancing itself from groups like the Canadian Islamic Congress. Yet, at the same time, Harris points out, "the executive director of the CIC was a featured speaker at a Department of Foreign Affairs event put together by the Muslim Communities Working Group in 2008. The Working Group is a clearinghouse for all things Muslim, has no equivalent relating to any other religion or ideology, and came into existence early in the Harper government's tenure."
When the executive director of the CIC was scheduled to speak at an event in October 2010 — a celebration of "Islamic History Month" at the Department of National Defence (DND) — the outcome was markedly different. Canadian bloggers learned of it and asked why the head of the CIC, Zijad Delic, had been accorded such an honor and why a powerful state agency was granting one religion special recognition. As public pressure mounted, the DND canceled Delic's speech, but the rest of the Islamic history event went on as scheduled.
More mixed messages were sent, notes Harris, when Immigration Minister Jason Kenney addressed a breakfast meeting of the Islamic Society of North America Canada (ISNA Canada) in November 2008. Continues Harris, "ISNA Canada is apparently the Canadian arm of the American Islamist organization that was designated an unindicted co-conspirator by the United States Justice Department for the purposes of the Holy Land Foundation trial, a successful U.S. terror-funding prosecution."
Further, Harris had called on the new Conservative government in 2008 to ensure that radical Muslim groups "are never engaged in 'outreach' activity by police and security organizations." Yet even today, nine years after September 11, says Harris, institutions like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) remain clueless about the groups and individuals that they embrace.
"Earlier in its outreach program," Harris explains, "the RCMP set up a flurry of roundtables — for adults and youth — and their periodic get-togethers under this rubric have, according to some participants, come to be dominated by Muslim members and concerns. The tendency seems to have been to accept almost anyone as participants, a situation that lends itself to those wishing to gain the imprimatur of a prestige law enforcement organization."
Harris points out that the RCMP has regularly cited "notoriously inaccurate CAIR-CAN [Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations] studies" for "scare statistics" in their public briefings, which spread the myth that "Islamophobic" hate crimes are on the rise.
"This police blunder was the natural result of welcoming CAIR-CAN operatives into outreach activity," Harris says. "Not only has little discernibly been done about the situation, but the Conservative government appears to be allowing things to deteriorate."
Hence, the Young Muslims Canada website boasts of graduating from the Mounties' "Citizen's Academy" on one page, then showcases an essay by Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, on another.
When considering this environment of either inexcusable ignorance or cynical pandering by Canada's elites — even under the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harper — it is no wonder that Salim Mansur is pessimistic about the future of his adopted country.
"So you see I am fearful of where we are headed," he explains, "and how badly we need courageous political leadership that can speak to the people without fear about Islamism and the need to push them back now and not when it might be too late. We don't have that leadership in the West — and we don't have it in Canada."
**Kathy Shaidle blogs at Five Feet of Fury. This article was sponsored by Islamist Watch.

Iranian woman to be hanged Wednesday: rights group
Tue Nov 2, 11/BERLIN (Reuters) - An Iranian woman whose sentence of execution by stoning for adultery provoked a worldwide outcry will instead be hanged for murder on Wednesday, a human rights group said. "The authorities in Tehran have given the go-ahead to Tabriz prison for the execution of Iran stoning case Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani," the International Committee against Stoning, a German-based campaign group, said on its website. "It has been reported that she is to be executed this Wednesday, 3 November."
Officials in Iran were not available to confirm or deny the report. Ashtiani's stoning sentence was suspended after prominent political and religious figures called it "medieval," "barbaric" and "brutal." Brazil, a close ally of Iran's, offered to give the 43-year-old mother of two asylum. A government spokesman said in September Ashtiani's adultery conviction was under review but the charge of being complicit in the murder of her husband was still pending. Under the Islamic law in force in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, murder is punishable by hanging, adultery by stoning. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fended off questions about the case from reporters when he attended the U.N. General Assembly in September, saying it had been fabricated by hostile Western media and called the United States hypocritical for its record on executions. The case has worsened relations between Iran and the West, which are locked in a dispute over Tehran's nuclear program, and was further complicated last month when two Germans were arrested in Iran while conducting an interview with Ashtiani's son.
The men entered Iran with tourist visas and were not authorized to act as journalists, judicial officials said. The German government is trying to secure their release.In August, Iranian television aired an interview with a woman it said was Ashtiani admitting a relationship with a man who then murdered her husband. The International Committee Against Stoning, called the TV show "toxic propaganda." The United States has imposed sanctions on eight senior Iranian officials, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards and several cabinet ministers, for human rights abuses. That is in addition to the sanctions over Iran's nuclear activities which it fears is aimed at making an atomic bomb, something Tehran denies.
According to Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in the number of executions it carries out. It put to death at least 346 people in 2008.
(editing by Andrew Dobbie)

Aoun: We Can't Live According to STL Mood, Hariri Has Become a Dictator
Naharnet/Today, Premier Saad Hariri has become a dictator, because all state authorities are under his control, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun charged Tuesday.
"The energy and water ministry had submitted a project on gas-powered vehicles eight months ago. Why hasn't the government endorsed it yet? We say that Lebanon is a looted country," Aoun told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform bloc's weekly meeting. Asked about FPM's campaign regarding alleged violations in the finance ministry, Aoun said: "Some politicians have been saying that we are putting ex-PM Rafik Hariri on trial. The truth is that we're trying to retrieve the stolen money."
"Those who have been indulged in wrongdoing since 20 years won't be able to correct things today; the approach of the past has fallen and change and reform are coming."
Tackling the issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Aoun said: "Since 2005 up till now, we've been living in the shadow of the tribunal and trials, and it (STL) aims to cripple the country … we can't live according to the tribunal's mood." Furthermore, Aoun announced that he will boycott Thursday's national dialogue session "if the false witnesses issue was not settled" during Wednesday's cabinet session On the other hand, he hoped Tuesday's meeting of the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran on Tuesday would yield "positive results."
Aoun condemned Sunday's Baghdad church attack and held "the U.S. tutelage authority responsible for what has happened in Iraq" so far.  Earlier Tuesday, Aoun said ex-PM Rafik Hariri "is not responsible for the ongoing wrongdoing, but rather those who had succeeded him in power.""The country is living in financial chaos," he added. Beirut, 02 Nov 10, 19:40

Hariri: I Don't Think Assad Had Anything to Do with My Father's Murder
Naharnet/I do not think that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had anything to do with my father's murder, Prime Minister Saad Hariri has told the British daily The Times.Asked by The Times who he now believed killed his father, Hariri said: "I'm the Prime Minister. I do not have the luxury of speculating these days." "I believe a relationship with a country is simply bound to the interests of two countries and not by personal issues," he added.  "The relationship (with Syria) is geographically and historically important, and I should act as a prime minister, not as Saad Hariri." The premier said he does not believe that the blood of his slain father, ex-PM Rafik Hariri, "will or should cause strife in the country."
On Tuesday, Hariri held talks with his British counterpart David Cameron. Talks were attended by Lebanese Ambassador to London Inaam Osseiran, Hariri's chief of staff Nader Hariri and advisors Mohammed Shatah and Hani Hammoud, and, from the British side, by British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy, National Security Advisor of the British Government Sir Peter Ricketts, Cameron's foreign affairs advisor Tom Fletcher and his advisor Richard Freer.Upon receiving Hariri, Cameron said: "We have a very strong relationship, but I think we can make it stronger still. We want to do everything we can to support the stability and security of Lebanon. We think that this is absolutely vital."
"We fully support the Special Tribunal (for Lebanon) process and we want to see that properly completed and we want to do everything we can to help you with the work you are doing in your country. You are very welcome here today," Cameron told Hariri. After the meeting, Hariri spoke to the press.
"We discussed the issues of the region and the challenges that Lebanon is facing, and especially the Israeli threats and our problems with Israel. We also spoke about ways to improve the economic relations between the two countries," said Hariri. "PM Cameron also underlined Britain's support for the Special Tribunal. We also asked for military assistance for the military and security forces in Lebanon, and there was a large receptivity from Britain regarding this issue," added Hariri. Asked about Cameron's position regarding the STL, Hariri said: "You have heard his declaration regarding the tribunal. PM Cameron stressed that Britain fully supports the Tribunal, which was formed by a U.N. resolution, and that Britain will not retract on this issue." Asked if Cameron had expressed any fears regarding the repercussions of the indictment of the STL, Hariri answered: "We did not tackle this issue." Beirut, 02 Nov 10, 22:34

Qassem: Accusing Hizbullah Members Would be Beginning of Possible Unrest and Danger in Lebanon
Naharnet/Hizbullah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem repeated on Tuesday the party's position that it is not concerned with the international investigation in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He told BBC Arabic: "We have nothing to say over what we will do if the indictment were to accuse Hizbullah members because there are several possibilities. All we know is that such a decision is the beginning of possible unrest and danger in Lebanon." "Hizbullah has refused since Ramadan the list of members that Special Tribunal for Lebanon wants to investigate with," he added. He also reiterated Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's statements that Prime Minister Saad Hariri had informed him that the indictment will accuse party members. Furthermore, Qassem denied that a Nasrallah-Hariri meeting will take place soon, saying: "There is currently no need to hold such a meeting, but we don't mind holding one at the other side's request." The Hizbullah official added that at the moment the party will not propose a governmental change or amendment.
Beirut, 02 Nov 10, 16:32

New phone application reveals personal info
Sarah Lynch, November 2, 2010
If you hit the bars in Gemmayze this weekend and manage to get the number of that guy or girl you’ve been chatting up, you’ll also be able to find out where he or she lives. Just punch their digits into a new iPhone application. It’s called Lebanon Directory, and by typing in a person’s 9-digit phone number, anyone using the application can find out the name of the person who owns the number and their home address. The program is available on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and it's one of two new applications causing concern about privacy protection.
Sabine Abi Farah discovered the application last Monday when a colleague came to her bursting with excitement over the new technology. “We punched in all the people we know and all of their information came up,” Abi Farah said. She was using both Lebanon Directory and the Lebanese Car Plate Directory, an application that provides information about vehicle owners. “Enter any car plate number and select its proper symbol to get its information,” the application’s instructions read. Abi Farah plugged in her license plate number and got the following: Her home address, her marital status, her husband’s name and her car’s make, model and year.
If the owner of a license plate number has a loan on his or her car, that too will be listed, along with the name of the bank from which is was taken. “Honestly, I feel raped. It’s like raping someone,” Abi Farah said. “I could be going home and maybe a guy behind me who would like to see where I live could find out by typing my license plate number into his phone. It’s really outrageous,” she said. Lebanese Car Plate Directory and Lebanon Directory can both be purchased for $6.99 on iTunes.Mobile content company Double U, which developed the applications, declined to comment or provide any information about their products. But a Beirut-based website developer said a program like this is easy to develop. “If the information was available and in a computerized format, and they collected it and simply turned it into an RSS feed, it would take only a few weeks to develop, if that,” he said, requesting NOW Lebanon not publish his name for privacy reasons.
Still, the question remains as to how Double U got the information of Lebanese car owners and cell phone users. The Ministry of Interior exclusively controls data regarding license plate numbers, while the Ministry of Telecommunications is responsible for data regarding phone numbers. The release of these databases to a third party is against the law, said Dr. Toni Issa, lawyer and president of the IT Committee for the Beirut Bar Association.
The only way for a third party to legally obtain information regarding phone numbers is if the cell phone subscriber expresses written consent allowing their mobile operator to make their personal information public, he said.
When a person buys a SIM card, or unique mobile number, neither the mobile company nor the distributor asks permission to distribute a user’s information. They do, however, ask for a name and address, and a request a copy of the buyer’s Lebanese ID or passport. That information is kept in a database, and is given to the Ministry of Telecommunications upon request, according to an MTC Touch customer service representative who spoke to NOW Lebanon.
“There is no way to obtain this information, especially that of the car plate directory, unless if someone from inside this administration copied the database containing the information,” Issa said. Copying or stealing databases is a direct violation of the Lebanese Penal Code. The only people who can legally solicit this information are the police or judicial authorities. “Therefore, any kind of usage of this information…is strictly illegal,” Issa said. Moreover, Issa says the use of the information violates intellectual property and consumer protection laws.
Despite the legal violations the programs pose, some believe they can be advantageous.
“I can use this when guys mess with me,” said one Lebanese girl. While stuck in traffic, a man in the car next to her had asked her for directions, then made crude remarks. “I could’ve used this to find his address, and sent someone over to deal with him.”

What is Israel really doing about Iran?
Most of Israel's intelligence activity remains a deep secret, including its efforts to stop Tehran's nuclear program and the smuggling of arms to Gaza and Lebanon.
By Amos Harel/Haaretz
Published 02:19 03.
In his final briefing to the Knesset as head of Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin summed up the security situation on Tuesday, at the end of his five-year term, by saying the security front is unusually quiet and that Israel's intelligence coverage of its enemies has improved - but that the next war, if and when it erupts, will be worse than its predecessors, especially for the home front.
Yadlin, who is retiring after 40 years in the Israel Defense Forces, warned Knesset members "not to be misled" by the current calm.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives at Beirut International Airport on Oct. 13, 2010.
He gave them new details about the anti-aircraft missiles Syria is acquiring and Iran's plans to build two new uranium enrichment facilities. And he warned that if another war breaks out, it is likely to be a much wider conflict than the last two, and said the casualties will almost certainly be much higher.
During Yadlin's tenure, Military Intelligence obtained a bigger budget, and broadened and deepened its intelligence activities. It also set up a new unit to improve the operational aspects of MI's work, one of the lessons it learned from the Second Lebanon War. And despite occasional crises, Yadlin maintained close cooperation with the other intelligence agencies.
But most of Israel's intelligence activity remains a deep secret. What is Israel really doing to delay Iran's nuclear program or thwart arms smuggling to Lebanon and Gaza? We don't know.
What operations is it conducting in other countries? We don't know that either - though we do know an MI officer was decorated by the chief of staff this week for an unspecified secret operation. Did Lebanon really succeed in breaking up an Israeli spy ring? That, too, is unknown.
And here's something else we don't know: Was this really Yadlin's final briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee? That is far from certain.
Yadlin has been well-regarded by his political and military superiors - both the last Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and the current one, both the last government and the current one - and is considered a leading candidate to replace Meir Dagan as head of the Mossad either this year or next (depending on whether Dagan's term, which is scheduled to end in December, is extended for another few months ). Yadlin may not be eager for the job, but one can assume he would accept it if the prime minister and defense minister offer it to him.
The key factor in determining whether such an offer is made is likely to be his view of an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Yadlin, the last of the pilots who carried out the 1981 attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor who is still in active service, has never expressed an opinion on this matter in public; indeed, he has given few interviews and made few public appearances in general.
Dagan and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi have repeatedly been described over the last year as leading advocates of a moderate approach to Iran. But both of them will soon leave office. Their successors' views on this issue will presumably to have a major impact on all senior defense appointments in the coming months.

Lebanon sources: Hezbollah planning coup if charged in Hariri murder
Latest update 10:12 02.11.10
Haaretz/Hezbollah chief last week urged Lebanon to halt its cooperation with the inquiry into the 2005 assassination and accused investigators of sending information to Israel.
Hezbollah is planning to seize control of the Lebanese government if charged by International Court of Justice over the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, security sources in Lebanon said on Tuesday. Israel Radio quoted sources who told the A-Sharq al-Awsat daily that Hezbollah, the Amal faction and other pro-Syrian elements were coordinating a coup of Beirut and southern Lebanon, which they planned to split amongst themselves. Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last week urged Lebanon to halt its cooperation with the inquiry into the 2005 assassination and accused its investigators of sending information to Israel, the latest escalation in a war of words over the inquiry which threatens to plunge the country into more turmoil. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, stepped up its campaign against the tribunal after reports emerged in recent months that the court's prosecutor may indict members of the group sometime in the next few months. "Any call to boycott the tribunal is an attempt to obstruct justice," a representative of the tribunal said. "The Special Tribunal for Lebanon will continue to rely on the full cooperation of the Lebanese government and the international community, according to its statute."
Nasrallah's remarks came after two international investigators were forced by a crowd of women to leave a doctor's clinic in southern Beirut, a bastion of Hezbollah, where they had made an appointment to review files. The tribunal condemned what it called an "attack on its staff" and said it would not be deterred from its investigation.

A late awakening to… sovereignty
!Wednesday, 03 November 2010
Elias Harfoush /Al Hayat
The international investigation into the assassination of former Premier Rafiq Hariri and subsequent crimes certainly violates Lebanese sovereignty, there is no doubt of that. This is not just in terms of the investigators’ violation of “morals” in the neighborhood of Ouzai and of people’s sanctity. It is a foregone conclusion, and a natural result of how the tasks of these investigators are carried out, in implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1757, which is related to the work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the Lebanese cooperation that is required under this resolution, at all levels.
The work of UN peacekeepers in the south also violates many aspects of Lebanese sovereignty, in the recognized sense of the sovereignty of states over their territory, where the legitimate forces of any state are the only party that should be present and implement the laws on the land of a given state. However, the commitment to UNSCR 1701 allows international troops in Lebanon to carry out the missions entrusted to them, in cooperation with the Lebanese army, which in turn cannot prevent it from carrying out its missions even if it wanted to. Instead, it must help UNIFIL, according to this resolution. The proof of this lies in the uprising by the so-called “families” of south Lebanon, to protest maneuvers that UNIFIL troops were carrying out. The result was that the “people” returned home after their guardians read the text of the resolution and the prerogatives that it grants. UNIFIL troops continued to carry out the tasks entrusted to them, after receiving assurances from the Lebanese authorities and the army leadership that they wished to facilitate UNIFIL’s work in the south. This will guarantee the security of residents in this region, in the first place, in the face of Israeli aspirations and aggressions.
Things saw a repeat with the Adaisseh tree incident, which almost sparked a regional, and perhaps a world war. This was after all of the “pro-sovereignty” forces were massed from near-by; the grace of God permitted the tree to be uprooted on the same day. Happy ever after!
The recent incident at the gynecological clinic might have even wider repercussions that the tree in Adaisseh. It is an occasion to remind those who are very late in becoming concerned with morals, and with sovereignty, about why all of these external security and judicial forces are being summoned. They are the ones we accuse of spying on our women and our villages, and on “our army, our people and our resistance.” Doesn’t the matter deserve a pondering of these reasons? Wasn’t it the July War of 2006 that summoned the expansion of UNIFIL’s work in the south, after the parties harmed by an Israeli aggression made efforts with the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to see the Lebanese government receive international approval for the deployment of these forces and their receiving much wider latitude to operate? Aren’t the conditions in which the war erupted, which led to the deployment of UNIFIL, interesting in terms of the questions they raise? They prompted Hezbollah’s secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to acknowledge himself that he would not have given the order to capture the Israeli soldiers, if he had known the way things would go, the martyrs who would be lost, and the wide-scale destruction incurred by the country.
Once again… what about the reasons why international investigators are present in Lebanon, and their enjoying wide prerogatives to investigate, about which we complain today? Isn’t the major reason for this that the assassination of Hariri and the many who followed? And after that, the blocking of legislative, judicial and government institutions, to prevent them from playing their authorized role in the investigation of these assassinations and the capture prosecution of those involved. Also, there were conditions that led to resorting to the Security Council to pass a resolution taking over this task, after Lebanon was unable to do so.
These are only examples, so that we can see that the acts we commit have international repercussions that should be taken into account. As for waking up late to the notion of sovereignty, this will not help, especially if the “pro-sovereignty” groups define the term according to their own standards, in order to serve their interests.
These are only examples, so that we can say we hope what is coming will not be worse. Recently, we have heard about overcoming international law and being hostile to those who carry it out. Our country will become one of those in which the laws should be applied by force, because they are in revolt against the world’s laws and resolutions.
*Published in the London-based AL-HAYAT on Nov. 2, 2010.