Thursday, November 8, 2007

Pakistani Politics, Iranian Nukes, Iranian Dress Code: And it's Only Wednesday!

It's been a busy week, and it's only half over.

Pakistan's ruling President / General has suspended that country's constitution, and, instead of locking up Pakistanis who support the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pervez Musharraf is having his police round up people who don't agree with him, and have said so publicly.

One-time Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, defied a ban on protests of Musharraf's 'emergency rule. She and her supporters are planning a rally in Rawalpindi, and then marching the 186 miles from Rawalpindi to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, early next week.

Bhutto said, "I request my brothers and sisters to reach Rawalpindi at all costs," preparing for a confrontation with authorities. There's a ban on rallys, and the mayor of Rawalpindi says police would keep everyone away from the park where Bhutto intends to address supporters Friday.

Meanwhile, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran has 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium, all presumably in good working order. That's enough, and more, to make nuclear weapons for Iran. Ahmadinejad says Iran's nuclear program is peaceful.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei encouraged Iranian police to maintain a crackdown on "social vice," which seems to include "un-Islamic dress."

Iranian police started the crackdown on "thugs" in April this year. They're arresting the "thugs," raiding underground parties, and seizing satellite dishes. And, of course, making street checks of improperly dressed individuals.

To keep Iran safe from unislamic clothing, thousands of women have been warned because they wore tight, short coats and skimpy headscarves. They're violating Iran's leaders' notion of the Islamic dress code, where every post-pubescent women must cover hair and body contours.

Back in America, the FBI has made a report, "Terrorism 2002-2005," 68 pages of information and trends in what America could be looking forward to.

No surprise: apparently the terrorists are more likely to go for attacks on civilians that kill a lot of people, and attract a lot of attention.

And, since the international organization of Al Qaeda isn't what it used to be, the report says that there's been a "dispersal of its multi-national trainees to pursue their own regional agendas."

Finally, it looks like ricin and anthrax are front-runners for weapons we're likely to see in the next big attack. This isn't idle speculation. There's been a series of arrests involving ricin in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Well, it could be worse. At least quite a few people in decision-making positions in America and other nations seem to be twigging to the uncomfortable fact that Islamic terrorists aren't safe to have around.

1 comment:

Ottavio (Otto) Marasco said...

re: point you made in the last paragraph. Thanks Christ for that!

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.