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Polticians from outgoing coalition say Likud chief's agreement to put Avi Maoz in charge of Israel's Jewish identity is a 'slap in the face,' could 'plunge Israel into the abyss' The prospect of a hardline, ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic, homophobic nationalist being appointed as the next government's head of "Jewish identity" was met with staunch rebuke from politicians from the outgoing coalition on Sunday, with lawmakers slamming the move by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu as "insanity," "racist" and "unreal". Avi Moaz, the single lawmaker of the fringe Noam party, is one of the Knesset's most far-right politicians, holding non-pluralist Jewish views and...

In a shocking speech in front of the National Governors Association, Secretary Mike Pompeo revealed that he is in possession of a list of American governors who have been listed as "friendly" by Chinese Communist infiltrators. Pompeo said he received an invitation from a former governor to attend a networking event that promised great "deal-making" opportunities with the Chinese government. This networking event was run by "The Chinese People's Association for Friendship in Foreign Countries," said Pompeo. But what the participants might not have known is that "the group is the public face of the Chinese Communist party's official foreign...

Early election results from Iran indicate that the country elected on Friday another crop of hardline officials, including those who have expressed hatred for the United States and Israel and who stand accused of planning the murder of political opponents, according to information provided by organizations that observed the elections. As the names of those officials who won a seat on Iran’s Assembly of Experts and other governing bodies begins to emerge, experts say it is becoming clear that hardline extremists will continue to control the Iranian government. While some western media outlets have claimed that reformists made inroads in...

VIENNA (AP) — Iran took a hard line Thursday on two of the biggest demands of world powers in a final nuclear accord, rejecting any extraordinary inspection rules and threatening to ramp up enrichment of bomb-making material if the United States and other countries re-impose sanctions after the deal is in place. Speaking to reporters in Vienna, where diplomats are trying to clinch a comprehensive nuclear pact, a senior Iranian negotiator said the U.N. nuclear agency's standard rules governing access to government information, sites of interest and scientists should be sufficient to ensure that Iran's program is solely for peaceful...

At least two people have been killed, one of whom was a soldier, in clashes between antimilitary protesters and soldiers in Cairo following skirmishes outside the defence ministry, according to hospital officials. Almost 300 people were also hurt in the clashes, which took place three weeks ahead of presidential elections, according to the official MENA news agency. The Egyptian army also arrested 170 people. On the day Egypt's ousted leader Hosni Mubarak turned 84, hardline Islamists were in the forefront of street fighting with the troops for the first time, a shift for groups that previously had largely stayed out...

JULY 24, 2009 The President Takes a Hard Line on Israel Yet he doesn’t want to be seen as ‘meddling’ in Iran. By MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS In foreign policy, President Barack Obama has demonstrated a disturbing propensity to curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends. The Czechs and Poles are rightly concerned that they will be sacrificed on the altar of better U.S. relations with Russia. And the Israelis fear that the Obama administration’s desired opening to the Muslim world will be achieved at their expense. Mr. Obama’s attempted bullying of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...

(LEAD) N. Korea's pointman on inter-Korean relations executed: sources (ATTN: ADDS background, expert's quote) SEOUL, May 18 (Yonhap) -- North Korea executed its pointman on South Korea last year, holding him responsible for wrong predictions about Seoul's new conservative government that has ditched a decade of engagement policy toward Pyongyang, sources said Monday. Choe Sung-chol, who as vice chairman of the North's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee had pushed for bold reconciliation with Seoul's previous liberal governments, disappeared from public sight early last year amid reports that he was fired. Rumors spread in January that he was forced to work at a...

Gov’t report shows the military gaining influence in the North 51 of 302 top Pyongyang officials appointed since 2007 February 13, 2009 North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, right, accompanied by his new military commanders, watches an artillery unit complete a firing drill. Newly appointed minister of the People’s Armed Forces, Kim Yong-chun, stands to Kim’s left. The North’s Korean Central News Agency released the photo yesterday, but did not say when Kim’s inspection took place. [YONHAP] A recent increase of post?Korean War generation hard-line military officials in the North Korean leadership may be behind escalated tensions on the peninsula, South...

N. Korea's Kim rapped China, Russia, called them unreliable: sources NEW YORK, Aug. 26 KYODO      North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has criticized the North's traditionally close allies China and Russia as unreliable and said Pyongyang must surmount the current difficulties it faces concerning its nuclear development program on its own, according to diplomatic sources.     Kim's skepticism toward China and Russia was expressed at an ambassadorial meeting in Pyongyang, which took place July 18-22 soon after the July 15 unanimous passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the North's test-firing of missiles, the sources told Kyodo News.     Kim's open criticism of the...

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert briefed opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu on recent developments in the operations in Lebanon in an 80-minute meeting at the prime minister's official residence in Jerusalem on Friday. A spokesman for Netanyahu said that no political matters were discussed at the meeting but that Olmert thanked Netanyahu for his recent appearances defending Israel on American and European television networks. He said Olmert told Netanyahu that he was Israel's "best spokesman in the foreign press" - a compliment that could potentially cause a dispute between Olmert and his vice premier, Shimon Peres. Netanyahu condemned a Foreign Ministry official...

Hardline cleric takes charge of Somali militiamen By Mike Pflanz, East Africa Correspondent (Filed: 26/06/2006) Islamic militia in control of much of southern Somalia yesterday appointed a hardline cleric on Washington's most wanted list as its supreme leader. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys was named as the head of the Islamic Courts Union's "consultation committee", replacing the more moderate Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. Mr Ahmed, a former teacher who led the alliance in taking control of Mogadishu earlier this month, is being given a lesser role. Mr Aweys's elevation raises doubts about a deal negotiated last week with the interim government, based...

FOR years, Massoud Dehnamaki was known widely as the feared enforcer of conservative rules that restricted freedom for women and society. In recent years, however, he has emerged as Iran's Michael Moore, having directed a documentary on the taboo issue of prostitution and another forthcoming film on soccer as a metaphor of political struggle. Reformists and conservatives alike harshly criticized Mr. Dehnamaki for making the first movie, "Poverty and Prostitution." Conservatives were furious that one of their own had not only highlighted an un-Islamic social pathology but seemed to sympathize with the prostitutes. Reformists believed he deliberately exaggerated the problem...

US adopts tough stand ahead of nuclear talks with North KoreaFri Sep 9, 7:22 PM ET The United States adopted a tough stand ahead of talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, saying it would not compromise on the hardline communist state's request to maintain peaceful atomic activities. "Our opposition has been very clear on this. What North Korea has to do is get out of the nuclear business," said Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator to the six-party talks due to resume in Beijing on Tuesday. "Nuclear weapons, nuclear programs are not something that one should leave...

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran, at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear ambitions, has put tension to one side and lent a treasure trove of artefacts from Ancient Persia to a new exhibition at the British Museum. Organisers were concerned the exhibition may not happen at all after hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected the Islamic state's president in June. "We certainly were worried for a time that we wouldn't receive any objects," said curator John Curtis. "But happily that wasn't the case, and everybody decided to go ahead with the exhibition." "Forgotten Empire: the world of Ancient Persia," which opens...

The best way to confront the US and EU3 dictatorship is to "impose an embargo on oil sales to those countries, said an English-language paper here Sunday commenting on last Thursday "unfair" resolution of the UN nuclear watchdog against Iran. The 'Tehran Times' suggested in its editorial that the world oil-rich states should form a united front in order to confront "Western neocolonialist countries." Criticizing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution against Iran, the paper said that it was ratified "to meet the objectives of the Zionist regime and the United States." It added that the resolution, issued under...

When American bombs were raining down on what is left of Afghanistan, fellow Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic republic of Iran took out to the Streets. Contrary to our expectations in the West, they did not rally to denounce the 'Great Satan' - the name given to America by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, ordinary Iranians, in one of the most extraordinary shifts in the geopolitical landscape since September 11, challenged their own hard-line Islamic clerics who swept Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power in 1979. Tens of thousands of men and women also demonstrated, in several cities, after World...

If the problem of Islamic-inspired terrorism wasn't painfully obvious before, the London bombings have driven home the point yet again. In the West our contact with murderous acts of terrorism supposedly in the name of Islam has been relatively limited but dramatic nonetheless. In all of the furor, the constant stream of reports--from London, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq--of dead, injured, kidnapped, terrorized and brutalized populations, it is easy to be overcome by the horror, easy to forget that the fight against Islamo-fascism is a necessary, even mandatory struggle. As pleasant, as liberating, as it might seem to be able...

THE hottest book in Iran these days is Bill Clinton's "My Life." There are three unauthorized translations on the market and at least two more on the way, Iranian newspapers report. By all accounts, a George W. Bush memoir might do just as well. And that is only the most recent indication of the overwhelmingly favorable disposition of the Iranian population toward the United States. The same newspapers that reported the Clinton book sales last weekend also covered, with much fanfare, President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiant attitude toward the United States at his first press conference, on Sunday. Mr. Ahmadinejad stepped...

I hesitate to weigh in on this subject with so many interesting and insightful contributions already posted. However, since I've been doing a series of interviews, I have had to develop opinions on all aspects of the Iranian elections. Since everyone else is doing it, here are my own questions, comments and evolving views. Ahmadinejad seems to have been the beneficiary of a populist revolt (in addition to a little polling station assistance from his friends in the Revolutionary Guards and Basij). A friend of mine compares this to the election of Communist mayors in Italy during the Cold War...

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