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10 May, 2004 PAKISTAN Forced conversion to Islam fatal for Christian boy New incident reveals frightening trend Lahore (AsiaNews/Ucan) - Outrage at the death of a Catholic boy forced to convert to Islam at the hands of torturous abductors has prompted the Pakistan Catholic Bishop's Commission of Justice and Peace, to take up the legal case. The Christian youth died of injuries inflicted by a teacher and students at an Islamic school. The National Commission for Justice and Peace declared May 4th that the incident reflects a worrying trend of forced conversions. Javed Anjum, an 18-year-old commerce student was seized...

UN-Eritrea row sinks to new low UN peacekeepers have been accused of severe crimes The UN has delivered an ultimatum to Eritrea after relations between the two sunk to a new low. The UN said Eritrea must cooperate with its peacekeeping force patrolling the border with Ethiopia, or else ask the UN to leave. The UN says its staff have been illegally detained, while Eritrea accuses the peacekeepers of serious crimes including paedophilia. Eritrea also claims the UN is destabilising the region. The UN Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) patrols a 1,000km (620 mile) border between the two Horn...

In an online registry of the world's nations, organizers of the Olympic Games in Greece have omitted listing Israel's capital. Instead of Jerusalem, the entry for "capital" has an asterisk that corresponds to a footnote reading: "Please visit the official United Nations website for further information regarding the capital of Israel." A few months ago, the website listed Jerusalem as the capital of "Palestine," while leaving the entry for Israel's capital blank, the Jerusalem Post reported. That prompted a protest from Israel, resulting in a compromise in which both the Israeli and Palestinian capitals would be omitted from the register....

Abusing the most emotive of Jewish symbols is deeply offensive, writes David Bernstein. The decision to remove the offensive anti-Israel art display in Flinders Street has, inevitably, rekindled the freedom of speech and art debate that erupted over Andres Serrano's equally offensive Piss Christ a few years ago. There was never any doubt that the exhibit - which superimposed a series of outrageously distorted "facts" about Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians on a huge Star of David - was going to enrage the local Jewish community. For obvious and understandable reasons. In the first place, the use of the Star...

Scott Ritter, formerly the top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, has long argued that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes were massively exaggerated. His public campaign against the US-led invasion of Iraq made him a hated figure of the American right, which still demonises him as an apologist for the ousted Baghdad regime. Now, at the very moment when the absence of weapons of mass destruction in post-Saddam Iraq should make Mr Ritter feel vindicated, he faces new questions about his relationship with Baghdad after he quit his UN job in 1998. Mr Ritter...

Give this to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. What Spain's prime minister-elect lacks in diplomatic tact and a general willingness to offend terrorist sensibilities, he more than makes up for with his impeccable sense of timing. Last Thursday, for example, just as Mr. Zapatero was slandering the American liberation of Iraq, which he called "a failure," and demanding a stronger U.N. presence, which he claimed was the only thing that could save Iraq, polls were showing that Iraqis were happier than ever. News from a beleaguered region, meanwhile, confirmed that the U.N. was as hapless as always. According to a survey...

An Antiwar Activist Known for Being Committed Yet ErraticBy JAMES DAO Published: March 12, 2004 TAKOMA PARK, Md., March 11 — Susan P. Lindauer wore her liberal politics on her sleeve, as well as on her aging Mazda, where bumper stickers proclaimed her unabashed opposition to the Iraq conflict. "Peace in Iraq through change at home," one said. "War is not the answer," another said. To her neighbors — who described her as gentle if somewhat lonely — Ms. Lindauer was typical of this left-leaning enclave on the northern doorstep of Washington, a place fondly known by its residents as...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095652/posts Accused spy for Iraq worked for California congresswoman (Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose)Sac Bee ^ | 3/11/04 | AP- Washington Lockerbie Trial Document: Susan Lindauer Susan Lindauer Revolving Doors   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095691/posts Saddam Spy Suspect Lindauer: 'I'm an Anti-war Activist'NewsMax ^ | 3/11/04 | Limbacher     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095762/posts American charged in Iraqi conspiracy [Andy Card's distant cousin]CNN ^ | March 11, 2004     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095744/posts How Susan Lindauer Was Caught NRO ^ | 11 March 2004 | Byron York"discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support [resistance] groups operating within Iraq." Lindauer is a former journalist for U.S. News...

Today: March 11, 2004 at 16:15:43 PST Accused Spy Is Cousin of Bush Staffer By MATTHEW DALYASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - The woman charged with working for the Iraqi spy agency is a distant cousin of President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, and has held a variety of jobs in journalism and on Capitol Hill. Susan Lindauer, 41, worked in the press offices of four Democratic members of Congress. She also worked for Fortune magazine, U.S. News & World Report, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Fox News. Her father, John Lindauer, was the Republican nominee for governor in Alaska in...

NEW YORK -- An American citizen was arrested Thursday on charges she acted as an Iraqi spy, prosecutors said. Susan Lindauer, 41, was arrested in her hometown of Takoma Park, Md., and was to appear in court later in the day in Baltimore, authorities in New York said.

While the Democrats continue their temper tantrums over our failure to enlist the U.N in our war on Saddam, our success in that war is exposing extraordinary depths of corruption. The high-minded UN diplomats, actors and journalists who prattled on endlessly about the horrors of "Bush's war" turn out to have been in the pocket of Saddam....

Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program By SUSAN SACHS AGHDAD, Iraq — In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions. Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised...

AGHDAD, Iraq — In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions. Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation. The officials' accounts were enhanced by a...

SHOW: CNN CROSSFIRE 19:30 pm ET November 12, 1997; Wednesday 7:30 pm Eastern Time Transcript # 97111200V20 JOHN SUNUNU, CROSSFIRE: Senator Kerry, in fact, in spite of the administration claiming it has restored unanimity, that has not occurred. All the strength of this resolution had to be pulled out of it get any votes at all other than our own. Isn't this exercise actually counterproductive in sending a signal to Iraq that the coalition still remains frayed? SEN. JOHN KERRY, (D), MASSACHUSETTS, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Well, John, you're correct that this resolution is less than we would have liked. I...

A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal. Senior UN diplomats from Mexico and Chile provided new evidence last week that their missions were spied on, in direct contravention of international law. The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work. Aguilar Zinser claimed that the...

Colonel Muammar Gadafy of Libya has been buying complete sets of uranium enrichment centrifuges on the international black market as the central element in his secret nuclear bomb programme, according to United Nations nuclear inspectors. The ease with which the complex bomb-making equipment was acquired has stunned experienced international inspectors. The scale and the sophistication of the networks supplying so-called rogue states seeking nuclear weapons are considerably more extensive than previously believed. The purchase of full centrifuges, either assembled or in parts, marks a radical departure in what is on offer on the black market, sources said. While it is...

Israel's security fence came under harsh criticism at the United Nations, where an annual conference meant to bolster Palestinian civil society instead spent its energies denouncing Israeli self-defense policies. Postcards of a Palestinian child dwarfed by the Israeli fence, slide shows of Palestinian humanitarian crises allegedly caused by the fence's construction, informational leaflets printed by the anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox group Neturei Karta, and maps of "Palestine" from the river to the sea from 1920, minus the caveat that Palestine was never a state, were all on display yesterday at UN headquarters in New York, where delegates from across the globe gathered...

Did anyone see the ad on FNC this a.m.? It said Ritter to "come clean" on the Factor tonight. However there's no mention of it on his or fox's web-sites. Should be quite bogus if true!

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Terrorism is an evil that must be defeated, but when one country decides to wage the battle alone, it weakens the international organizations formed to avoid war and promote peace, Pope John Paul II said. War is not the answer to terrorism, the pope said May 15 in a message to the new Vatican ambassador from Syria, one of 12 ambassadors he welcomed at the Vatican in a joint ceremony. "The blind unleashing of terrorist violence, seen on Sept. 11, 2001, led all leaders to an attentive examination of the state of the world and to...

<!-- all.clsMenuItemNS{font: small Trebuchet MS; color: white; text-decoration: none;} .clsMenuItemIE{text-decoration: none; font: x-small Trebuchet MS; color: white; cursor: black;} A:hover {color: #0000CC} -->   SEARCH | FREE SUBSCRIPTION | ABOUT US | HOME       >Gold >Down Under >Mining Finance >Junior Mining >Platinum >Base Metals >Classic Mining >Special Reports >Diamonds >Trader's Notes >London Beat >Stock Picks >UN purges Iraq documents with $15-bn in question By: Tim Wood Posted: 2003/04/28 Mon 11:00 EDT  | © Mineweb 1997-2003 NEW YORK -- Increasing attention has been focused on the United Nations administered oil-for-food programme that was intended to provide the people of Iraq...