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28. januar 2007
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If true, this is good news:
Death Squad leaders have fled Baghdad to evade capture or killing by American and Iraqi forces before the start of the troop “surge” and security crackdown in the capital.
A former senior Iraqi minister said most of the leaders loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric, had gone into hiding in Iran.
Among those said to have fled is Abu Deraa, the Shi’ite militia leader whose appetite for sectarian savagery has been compared to that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed last year.
The former minister, who did not want to be named for security reasons, backed Sunni MPs’ claims that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had encouraged their flight. He alleged that weapons belonging to Sadr’s Mahdi Army had been hidden inside the Iraqi interior ministry to prevent confiscation.
Maliki said last week: “I know that senior criminals have left Baghdad, others have left the country. This is good — this shows that our message is being taken seriously.”
They probably get a heroes welcome in Tehran. Unfortunately, they may well intend to come back later.
10:56:27 PM 
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I have earlier written on the opposition to vaccinations from certain Islamic leaders in Africa. Now Islamic anti-vaccination nuttery comes to Britain.
A leading Islamic doctor is urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella because they contain substances making them unlawful for Muslims to take.
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic "haram" derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens' immune systems develop on their own.
Dr Katme, an NHS psychiatrist, said: "If you breastfeed your child for two years - as the Koran says - and you eat Koranic food like olives and black seed, and you do ablution each time you pray, then you will have a strong defence system."
It would be amusing if it wasn't at the same time tragic, but this Islamic doctor is using the same arguments the Jehovah's Witnesses preached many years ago in its (later revoked) ban on vaccinations.
Dr Katme's anti-vaccine message puts not only Muslims at risk, but since vaccinations depend on herd protection, he endangers everybody in the society, especially elderly and children. Professional malpractice, I think we'll call it.
9:25:29 PM
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I bet you can't take the grins of the faces of police officers at Thorpe Wood police station these days.
Police were called in after a cat tried to pull a mouse out of a jam jar and got its head stuck.
Officers said the incident was reminiscent of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, reports the Peterborough Evening Telegraph.
The cat eventually solved the problem by smashing the jar against the police station floor. The mouse is still at large, now somewhere inside the police station.
But be warned: The whole story is just another Jewish plot.
8:44:30 PM
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The Observer's Peter Beaumont:
Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.
Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.
Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.
The disclosures come as Iran has told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], that it plans to install a new 'cascade' of 3,000 high-speed centrifuges at its controversial underground facility at Natanz in central Iran next month.
The centrifuges were supposed to have been installed almost a year ago and many experts are extremely doubtful that Iran has yet mastered the skills to install and run it. Instead, they argue, the 'installation' will more probably be about propaganda than reality.
This may well be true. Iran's argument that it needs nuclear power despite being an oil exporting country is that its oil infrastructure is outdated and plagued by corruption and incompetence. It is generally considered easier to build a functional oil pipeline than nuclear technology, though, so if the Iranians can't make its oil industry work, what chances do they have to master nuclear enrichment?
Then again, it may be not so true, in which case we'd have mad mullahs with nukes...
2:15:50 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.2007; 06:24:34.
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