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CAIRO (Reuters) – The head of Egypt's prestigious seat of Sunni Muslim learning, al-Azhar, condemned U.S. troops' disposal of the body of Osama bin Laden at sea Monday as an affront to religious and human values.Muslims set great store by interment in permanent graves on land and accept burial at sea only in cases where the body cannot be preserved intact aboard ship until it reaches shore.
"The Grand Imam, Dr Ahmed El-Tayeb, the sheikh of Al-Azhar condemned the reports, if true, of the throwing of the body of Osama bin Laden into the sea," according to a statement released by al-Azhar, which is respected around the world by many Sunni Muslims as a seat of religious learning.
The procedure "contradicts all the religious values and human norms," it said: "The Grand Imam asserted that it is forbidden in Islam to deform the dead, regardless of their beliefs. One honors the dead by burying them."
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said bin Laden's body was dropped into the sea from the deck of an aircraft carrier after troops killed the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan. One said this was done to prevent his grave becoming a shrine. Another said Islamic customs had been respected.
A prominent Egyptian Islamist lawyer also condemned the U.S. move and said bin Laden should have been buried in his native Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally and home to Islam's holiest sites.
"Isn't it enough that they killed him and displayed their joy to the world?" Montasser al-Zayat told Al Jazeera television. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a moral obligation to demand that it bury Osama on its land."
Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as "leading from behind."
— Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker, May 2 issue
Do you want to live in a country that is "leading from behind?"
...an Obama advisor describes the President's approach to foreign policy as "leading from behind," a "doctrine" that "comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world."
As a member of Congress and as an American, the notion that America is an exceptional place has given me a sense of optimism about our future that has guided me throughout my career and my life... To have a President who expresses the opposite, a pessimism about America's place in the world paired with an acceptance to let the world abuse us and pass us by, is unprecedented in the history of our nation...
...While the President tries to mask this with verbal gymnastics, the American people know that "leading from behind" is not leading at all--it is following and it is weak.
The America that we love is the giant that defeated the Soviet Union and liberated Europe, the inventor of the Internet and motorized transportation, and a great and giving people whose Navy accurately proclaims herself as "the global force for good." Whether we continue this legacy of greatness is not up to China, nor does it rely on the opinion of the international community. Our capacity to be great is far more personal, determined by the capacity for boldness possessed by each of us and by those who we trust to lead us--this is the core principle of the American spirit. Presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy to Reagan did not just believe this notion, they shouted it from the mountaintops yet, contrastingly, for a President who made "Yes We Can" a household saying, this new "Obama doctrine" is better summarized by "No, We Can't." Americans know that we can do better.
Police say a passerby on the southbound side of Highway 77 noticed what looked like a grenade near the FM 1732 overpass and alerted authorities around 5 p.m. Sunday.
The improvised explosive device or I-E-D was disarmed by a bomb squad using a robot...
No one was hurt...
...Parts of Highway 77 were closed for several hours.
Police are continuing to investigate.

A complete family of ammo is planned, including armor-piercing, anti-personnel, airburst and point-impact non-lethal rounds.
The HEAB round is a 25mm cartridge with fore and aft explosive warheads, and a mid-body airburst fuse... An operational firing scenario would involve the following: by viewing through the fire control display, the combat user puts the red-dot aim-point on the target, pushes the "Lase" button, realigns the aim-point on the target, and fires...
The range is automatically communicated upon firing to the chambered 25mm round -- and stored in the fuse logic.
Upon muzzle exit, the intelligent fuse, using a turns-counting approach, determines the distance traveled and bursts precisely over the engaged target at the programmed range.
...It leaves the enemy no place to hide.
The 1967 “borders” the PLO claims it wants the “international community” to recognize now is another way of saying the “borders” the Arabs flatly rejected in 1948, 63 years from today.
That makes this rockin’ anthem the perfect choice for their new imaginary state.
You have to hand it to the Brits when it comes to golf. This notice was posted in war-torn Britain in 1940 in a north-country golf club.
German aircraft from Norway would fly on missions to northern England; because of the icy weather conditions, the barrels of their guns had a small dab of wax to protect them. As they crossed the coast, they would clear their guns by firing a few rounds at the golf courses. Golfers were urged to take cover.
This story is notable only because Reuters and most other Western media set such a low standard for honesty in their reporting of news about Israel and the Middle East. One sentence in particular stands out:
Hamas, whose diehard hostility to Israel has deepened the isolation and poverty of Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
Strange, but that is where they normally slug in the boilerplate:
Israeli hostility has deepened the isolation and poverty of Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
The story also hints at the disquieting possibility of an even more radical group than Hamas gaining strength in Gaza. Left to our imagination, though, is how that development means yet another nail in the coffin of the "peace process."
Anyhow, I suggest you read this story now, before Reuter’s London editors realize their mistakes and get back on message.Al Qaeda Sympathizers Kill Abducted Italian Activist
GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas found the body on Friday of a pro-Palestinian Italian activist who was killed by al Qaeda sympathizers in the Gaza Strip, raising questions about the Islamist group's control over the beleaguered enclave.
...A Jihadist Salafi group in Gaza aligned with al Qaeda had threatened on Thursday to execute Arrigoni unless their leader, detained by Hamas last month, was freed... It was an unprecedented challenge for Hamas, whose diehard hostility to Israel has deepened the isolation and poverty of Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
..."Gaza is safe and I want to assure all visitors to Gaza that they are safe and secure," Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, told a French journalist... But the Salafi group has already threatened more violence.
...[Some] fear that radicals who want Gaza to be an Islamic theocracy are bold enough to challenge Hamas over what they consider its lack of religious fervour.
... "The forces moved quickly and wisely to the place but found that the abducted man was killed hours earlier in an ugly manner," Ghssain said. [Ed: “ugly manner” = they cut his head off in the usual way.]
The suicide bombing in a mosque at a police station in West Java province killed the alleged bomber and injured 29 people, police said Friday.
Six of the wounded were in serious conditions, including the Cirebon district police chief, provincial police chief Suparni Parto told reporters here... National Police chief Timor Pradopo said security at other police stations and crowded areas in the province would be strengthened so as to prevent similar attacks.
...While standing in the second line of prayers in the mosque, the alleged bomber blew himself up with a bomb that was packed with nails and other metal objects.
"When I tried to move to the second line of the prayers, someone moved there before me, and then the bomb exploded," said 50-year-old Singgih who survived the attack.
He suffered from multiple wounds in the front of his body because the bomber was standing right before him... "Many people at the first line were hurt at their back," said Singgih at a local hospital.
Arab League Chief Amr Moussa said the organisation will ask the UN to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza, which Israel has pounded with air strikes in response to rocket fire... "the Arab bloc in the United Nations has been directed to ask for the convention of the Security Council to stop the Israeli aggression on Gaza and impose a no-fly zone."
Israeli and Palestinian officials were on Sunday floating a ceasefire to end fighting in the coastal strip where Israeli air strikes have killed at least 18 people since Thursday.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of an even stronger response if more rockets are fired from the Palestinian territory controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.
The flare-up came after an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hit an Israeli school bus on Thursday, wounding two people, one of them critically.
The Kornet missile used by Hamas in the attack has a warhead capable of penetrating the armor of a modern tank. A school bus stood no chance against this advanced weapon. Though it hit the rear of the bus, it injured the driver and young passenger in the front. It was a miracle that the dozens of other children who had disembarked only minutes before were not killed, in what could have been the worst large-scale massacre of Israeli schoolchildren in years.
The targeting of the school bus constitutes a war crime, one that should be condemned by the international community. The attack on a civilian target was undoubtedly a deliberate act. In contrast to the usual mortar and rockets, which are low-tech weapons, an advanced and accurate Kornet missile was deployed. This laser-guided anti-tank missile always hits the specific objective chosen by its operator.
I have a busier damn schedule on the weekends -- and I'm a nobody!Amid desperate budget negotiations and a looming government shutdown, President Barack Obama came to New York City last night to speak at the twentieth-anniversary party for Al Sharpton's National Action Network. At the gala, Obama focused on the issue of education inequality, but only after palling around with Sharpton, teasing him for getting skinny ("But he hasn't lost his style.") and giving him "a rousing slap on the back," according to the New York Post. Then Obama got serious, speaking about his student loan reform. "Only a few years ago I was still paying off my student loans," said Obama. "It's true, I don't pump gas now, but I remember what it was like pumping gas. I remember!"
Later, Obama said he remembers "the end of the month. I remember that." He added, "We appreciate you all buying the book, Michelle and I. That's the college fund right there. That was not a given." His humility tends to be convincing, but he did make over $5 million in 2009...
The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 1363, making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, and for other purposes. As the President stated on April 5, 2011, if negotiations are making significant progress, the Administration would support a short-term, clean Continuing Resolution to allow for enactment of a final bill.
"The South African jurist delivered his mea culpa in a Washington Post op-ed that is astonishing for its self-justifying apologetics.”
-WSJ
“Goldstone opinion piece changes nothing at UN”
-Jerusalem Post
“Despite Richard Goldstone's thirteenth hour confession, his diabolical legacy demonizing the state of Israel lives on at the United Nations.”
-Eye on the U.N.
"By his own admission, the man stands revealed as at best an abject idiot and at worst a moral and judicial bankrupt.”
-Melanie Phillips
“Goldstone backed away from his report? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
- NY Times subscriber
“Retraction? We don’t need your stinking retraction, shmuck!”
-Dan From New York
Goldstone asserts, “We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding commission.” Poppycock! As Goldstone’s numerous critics pointed out as soon as the report was issued, its many vulnerabilities were known at that very moment....As Goldstone admits underhandedly, saying that his critics were correct,
Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.
...there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. ...In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise.
No kidding. It seems it has just occurred to the judge that a terrorist organization committed to destroying Israel cannot, unlike democratic Israel, have any stake in investigating its own human rights violations. Did the judge really not comprehend this in 2009?
[But] whatever Judge Goldstone’s current obfuscations, and his intent to pass off his report’s failures as the fault of Israel’s non-cooperation rather than his own weaknesses and lack of impartiality, his current re-evaluation is more than welcome... So I, for one, thank Judge Richard Goldstone for his going public to help minimize the damage to Israel that he and his report have already produced.
Indonesian Muslim protesters hold a banner during a protest against the military attack on Libya by the United States in Jakarta, Indonesia, Friday, April 1, 2011. (OC Register)
Malik Zulu Shabazz, National Chairman of the New Black Panther, personal friend and admirer of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, unleashed his vitriol toward Obama, whom he lashes out at for representing “the ideology of the white man... policies of the white man..."
..."represents the CIA set-up sabotage lie on an African leader and bomb [sic] that man like he’s George Bush ... And his wife should leave the n***er tonight. She should walk out, and his beautiful daughters should walk out on this bamboozling, buck-dancing Tom...
...Oh yeah, I said it. We’ve held back on this Negro for a long time... he caved in like a punk... You should have listened to Louis Farrakhan a long time ago when you were at his table.
...But you wanted to follow the white man and the white man's time is up! ...We pray that our Gaddafi survives... we see the same thing with the white man comin' after us all the time... [Obama] wanted to be the white man's n***er...
A furious mob in one of Afghanistan's most peaceful cities killed at least 12 UN workers and wounded many more as the anger rose as the reports of an American man in Florida burning the Quran spreads across the country.
It's some kook in Florida, not an Imam preaching genocide in his sermon, who is to blame here.Richard M. Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office (which is responsible for “auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively”), told the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday that the federal government can actually prevent or stop illegal entries into the United States along only 129 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.
That leaves 1,825 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border where the Border Patrol cannot prevent or stop an illegal entry.
A new law enforcement bulletin warns that members of drug cartels have been overheard plotting to kill federal agents and Texas Rangers who guard the border, officials in Washington reported Thursday.The bulletin, which was issued in March, said cartel members planned to use AK-47 assault rifles to shoot agents and Rangers from across the border.
Sources tell CBS News several gun shops wanted to stop the questionable sales, but ATF encouraged them to continue...Jaime Avila was one of the suspicious buyers. ATF put him in its suspect database in January of 2010. For the next year, ATF watched as Avila and other suspects bought huge quantities of weapons supposedly for "personal use." They included 575 AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles.
ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Insiders say it's a dangerous tactic called letting the guns, "walk."
One agent called the strategy "insane." Another said: "We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they could be used to kill."
On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn't want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF's watchful eye. "The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That's how many guns were sold - including some 50-calibers they let walk."
50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: "Negative. Stand down."
CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. "It got ugly..." said one. There was "screaming and yelling" says another. A third warned: "this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed."
..."We’ve been conveying a message to the rebels that we will be compelled to defend civilians, whether pro-Qaddafi or pro-opposition,” said a senior Obama administration official. “We are working very hard behind the scenes with the rebels so we don’t confront a situation where we face a decision to strike the rebels to defend civilians.”The warnings, and intense consultations within the NATO-led coalition over its rules for attacking anyone who endangers innocent civilians, come at a time when the civil war in Libya is becoming ever more chaotic, and the battle lines ever less distinct. They raise a fundamental question that the military is now grappling with: Who in Libya is a civilian?
Air strikes haven’t forced Moammar Gaddafi to flee Libya, she told Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC yesterday, but you know what would work? A warrant for his arrest, courtesy of the International Criminal Court. All we need to do is to, er, “go in and arrest him”.