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,” that is, beheading foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and that there will be films by Al-Qa’ida, the Tawhid and Jihad organization, and the Brigades of the Two Holy Places in the Arabian Peninsula, and that there will also be a film on the most recent operations in Chechnya. He added that one of the speeches, by Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, known to be Al-Qa’ida’s military commander in Iraq, will be translated.

Another lecture, he said, would be dedicated to the memory of three Al-Qa’ida commanders: Abd Al-‘Aziz Al-Muqren (Abu Hajer), killed in June 2004 by Saudi security forces; his predecessor Yousef Al-Ayyiri, killed in June 2003 in a clash with Saudi security forces, and Abu Hafs Al-Masri, a top Al-Qa’ida military officer, killed in the U.S. attack on Kandahar in late 2001.

According to Bakri, the anticipated criticism of Al-Muhajiroun for the organization’s insistence on memorializing 9/11 will be “a simple sacrifice in comparison with what we must actually do – that is, support the Jihad led by bin Laden.”

Bakri gave an interview yesterday to the Sunday Telegraph to promote the conference:

Omar Bakri Mohammed, the spiritual leader of the extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, said that holding women and children hostage would be a reasonable course of action for a Muslim who has suffered under British rule.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Mohammed said: “If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.

“As long as the Iraqi did not deliberately kill women and children, and they were killed in the crossfire, that would be okay.”

Mr Mohammed, 44, who lives in Edmonton, north London, but is originally from Syria, also claimed that the Chechen rebels were not responsible for the deaths of more than 350 people – at least half of them children – who are so far known to have died in Beslan.

“The Mujahideen [Chechen rebels] would not have wanted to kill those people, because it is strictly forbidden as a Muslim to deliberately kill women and children. It is the fault of the Russians,” he said.

ot paying enough attention. And it’s the fault of the government. Everyone is to blame.’

Hmm, so we should sit down with Osama, see if we can work something out. Maybe return of the caliphate if we can keep Andalucia. After, that is, we’ve sorted out the Israeli-Palestine problem and found alternative sources of energy. It’s all so obvious when someone with Auster’s clear-eyed vision points it out.

And Richard Ford:

Ford watched Bush’s response to the first hostilities on American soil since the war of independence with frank dismay. Ford is a maverick, an instinctive independent who rides a Harley Davidson, loves to shoot and fish, and to roam at will. But to Ford, Bush is essentially a pawn. ‘If you asked him, “What is this that you’re doing?” he wouldn’t know. Maybe the people who pull his strings know it very well. But it’s a totally unsatisfactory policy. It won’t work. It’s wrong in conservative terms. It’s wrong in humanistic terms. [He has] an impulse that always makes him on the side of rich landowners and petroleum interests.’ Ford believes that the Republican gang in charge of the White House is wrecking his country and all it stands for.

Standing by the ocean in front of his summer house in Maine, Ford reflects that ‘this is the most important election that’s occurred in my life, including the election of JFK. It’s a much more significant election for the future of this republic than any other election we’ve ever had.’ Like Auster, Ford cannot forgive Bush for making political capital out of the War on Terror. For Ford, it’s a failure of leadership. ‘A better leader would sit down in front of the American people and not go on waving the bloody shirt of 9/11. He’d say: “We have to look at ourselves. We have to ask, Why do these people hate us?” But Bush will not admit a mistake. Will not admit doubt. Disastrous. Disastrous.’ Shaking his head, he says sadly, ‘I cannot stop thinking about all those young lives. Those kid soldiers. And all for what?’

Personally I don’t think phrases like “maverick” and “instinctive independent” should go anywhere near “rides a Harley Davidson”.

Now let’s hear from Wallace Shawn (who has “wrestled with a liberal conscience in a succession of avant-garde dramas”):

Shawn described to me how, having offered an article about 9/11 to several East Coast publications, his opinions were so comprehensively rejected at home that he was obliged to publish in Britain, in The Guardian. ‘It’s brainwashing,’ he says. ‘The fact is that a certain percentage of Americans completely buys the [Republican] brainwashing.’ Unsurprisingly, Shawn believes what many Democrats accept as an article of faith: ‘Of course there has been a right-wing conspiracy – the extreme right has acted in a very disciplined and ruthless and successful manner for 25 years.’ Shawn says he has found it difficult to write about Bush’s America: ‘Part of the problem presented by Bush and his gang is that they are so crude … When you are confronted with things that are so crudely brutal, the writer’s task of elucidating what lies beneath the surface is redundant. These people believe in cruelty, vengeance and brutality. I think Shakespeare would have done very well with these characters.’

These people believe in cruelty, vengeance and brutality. Well so do I. It exists. We saw it on 9/11, and we’ve just seen it again in Beslan. But perhaps that’s not what Shawn means.

Finally, Safran Foer sums up the case for the anti-Bushies:

‘I actually don’t think,’ he remarked, ‘that Bush is pure evil, but he responded [to 9/11] in the worst way, [and has] surrounded himself with such vile people that in a way it doesn’t matter.’ Safran Foer also concedes that he’s a metropolitan, a natural Democrat, but speaking for his generation, he says: ‘I don’t know anybody who supports the war. I don’t know anybody who voted for Bush [in 2000], and I certainly don’t know any one who’s going to vote for him this time.’

Great news for the young folk in Iran:

Iran’s Islamic Propagation Organization has decided the music of Cat Stevens, the British singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, has been given regime approval and will soon go on sale in the Islamic Republic.

“We have chosen to put on the market a selection of songs from Cat Stevens, to show to the Iranian youth that not everything in the West is bad,” the organization’s music director Reza Mahdavi told AFP.

Immortal songs like “Moonshadow” and “Morning Has Broken” will soon be on the lips of every hip young Iranian. But it gets odder:

Last month another Iranian state body, the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry, said that Queen had become the first rock band to be given the official seal of approval in Iran with the release of an album of their greatest hits.

This decision was taken because of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s Iranian roots and despite the fact he was an outlandish gay icon. Homosexuality is strictly banned in Iran.

Western music is strictly censored in Iran and those selling foreign music need special permits, although millions of pirated banned CDs and cassettes are sold on the black market throughout the country.

Other Western acts to have had albums of selected songs released on the official Iranian market are Elton John, Julio Iglesias and The Gypsy Kings.

There are also books containing original and translated lyrics by many western singers such as Leonard Cohen, Celine Dion and even white rap artist Eminem, published to respond to the ever-increasing demands of a nation where 70 percent of the population is under 30.

er points which stretch from Halabja in the north to Elam in the south where Al-Zarqawi and more than 20 Ansar Al-Islam commanders can enter Iran whenever they want.”

The source said Brig. Gen. Sullaimani, who oversees the activities of the revolutionary guards intelligence units and Al-Quds corps operating in Iraq, answered questions from students about why Iran supports a person who is anti-Shia, like Al-Zarqawi, who previously was accused of his involvement in the killing of Ayet Allah Mohammed Baqir Al-Hakim, president of the high council of Islamic revolution in Iraq.

Despite the accusation coming from close circles to the Iranian regime leader Ali Kham’ani, Sullaimani considers Al-Zarqawi’s involvement in Al-Hakim’s killing unconfirmed. Instead, he said Al-Zarqawi’s activities now serve the high interests of the Islamic Republic. The establishment of a secular Iraq that cooperates with the United States is more dangerous than the former Baath regime. The new regime will form – according to Al-Sullaimani – a real threat to the pure revolutionary Mohamedi Islam and the scholars’ state – according to the source.

i and putting the American occupation in danger of failure.

“We asked them, is it terrorism or is it resistance,” he said. “A very large proportion, almost 100 percent, said terrorism. They did not like it.”

In the time of Mr. Hussein, Iraqi stations other than the official state station were forbidden. Even so, dedicated listeners like Mr. Ameen secretly tuned in to the Voice of America and the BBC. Those days are still fresh for Mr. Salim, who was a host at a station called Youth Radio run by one of Mr. Hussein’s sons. Callers were prerecorded, and content was censored.

“Now I’m free to say anything I want,” Mr. Salim said.

>Russia may remain Mr Bush’s global partner in the war against terror – at least at the rhetorical level – but in reality the US-Russia relationship has largely stagnated in the wake of the Afghan war.

If Mr Bush’s chief foreign policy goals are the fight against terrorism, countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the promotion of democracy, then experts say that on at least two of these counts, Russia could do a good deal more.

By now it’s perhaps no longer possible to separate the nationalist Chechnyan movement from its Islamist element, but it’s obviously true that there are fundamental differences here from the situation that the US and its allies finds themselves in, and that our sympathies may be pulled in different directions. That said, the actual tactics of taking young schoolchildren as hostages is particularly repellent: it’s a situation where it’s hard to see any outcome but tragedy, and what the parents are going through doesn’t bear thinking about.

Here‘s an interview with the U.S. defector to North Korea Charles Jenkins, currently in hospital in Tokyo and facing a court martial by the US army (via NKZone):

In Jenkins’ first interview since taking flight from the North Korean regime in July, the alleged defector tells the REVIEW why he intends to turn himself over to the U.S. Army even though he expects to face a court martial. Jenkins reveals how he sought asylum at the Soviet embassy in 1966, endured repeated beatings at the hands of another American defector, and was pressured by North Korean authorities to reject a personal invitation by the Japanese prime minister to leave the country with him. And he describes how his difficult life in North Korea was lifted from misery by a love affair with a Japanese nurse who shared his hatred of the communist regime and eventually helped him and their two daughters escape.

ng late leader Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994 that looks to strengthen the regime of Kim Jong-il and regards the military as the leading force of the revolution.

Ahead of this, the Rodong Sinmun ran five pieces on hemp cultivation on Aug. 24, describing the atmosphere by saying, “These days, the whole nation is talking about hemp.” It also described hemp as “The General (Kim Jong-il)’s sky-like love and essence of his benevolent affection.”

Sky-like love and essence of his benevolent affection? He smokes dope?? It’s all a bit extreme, but I guess that’s what happens when you get a dictator (despot? No, never mind) worried about his stash running out.

can find another way to advertise himself.”

However, the Iraq delegation accused journalists of deliberately provoking an angry response from their players.

“Our purpose is not to politicise the football team in any way,” said Mark Clark, a consultant for the Iraqi Olympic Committee.

“It seems the story was engineered.”

The flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear in the Bush commercial ahead of the Republican convention later this month. Bush is seeking re-election in November.

A narrator says: “At this Olympics there will be two more free nations – and two fewer terrorist regimes.”

Asked to comment, another Iraqi player asked: “How will (Bush) meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes.”

But Clark insisted journalists were wrong to take advantage of the athletes.

“It is a little naughty,” he said. “The players are not very sophisticated politically, they are a little naive. Whoever posed these questions knew that the reaction would be negative.

“It is possible something was lost in translation. It’s a free, new Iraq and the players are entitled to their opinions but we are disappointed.”

Western racism and its crimes. The Journalists Association denounces the all-out campaign on the part of the Jewish organizations and the criminals, and demands to respond to it and to the blackmailing of the Muslim world in the name of the Holocaust.”

As is the Freedoms Committee of the [Arab] Journalists Union:

“The Committee demands of the senior Egyptian officials not to give in to the blackmail of the American Jewish lobby and to the pressures [which it applies] on the Egyptian press, and it insists on opposition to this aggression against the freedom of the press in Egypt; acquiescence to them will invite additional pressures which will be directed against our press and journalists. Additionally, the Freedoms Committee announces its support of [our] colleague Dr. Rif’at Sayyed Ahmad in his just cause of [fighting] against the political and media blackmail by the Zionist lobby in Washington and its exploitation of its contacts with the authorities and American embassies in the region.”