The Marty Heiser Show

Saddam Hussein remembered at hometown one year after execution
By Ali Salih, Ahmad Jamal

BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- A year after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was executed, his influence is still strongly palpable at his hometown as the country remain polarized in sectarian hatred.

Abdullah Jbara, governor of Salahudin province in northern Iraq, told Xinhua that the role Saddam had played should be viewed in an impartial manner just like any other political figures in the history.

"The man had good acts as well as bad ones. So we need to look at his good deeds and make use of them, and at the same time we need to fix the wrongdoing he had committed," said Jabara, who gained reputation and respect in the province for insisting that Saddam should be buried at his birth place instead of a secret location.

The governor, however, wondered why Saddam was hanged one year ago. "Was it the law or the sectarian and political motives?"

The building, in which Saddam is buried, was constructed during his regime at his birthplace -- Awja village. Its hall is usually used for condolence gatherings.

Its walls are decorated with pictures representing different periods of Saddam's life, as well as with wreaths of roses presented by his supporters. Dozens of families visited his tomb on Dec. 19, the first day of Sunni Muslims' key festival of Eid al-Adha holidays.

Sheik Abdul Hameed al-Dowri, a leading tribe man in Saddam's hometown Tikrit, said the city where Saddam spent his poor childhood before he joined the Baath Party still considers the manas "the best-ever Iraqi leader."

UN envoy to Haiti addresses sex abuse

By Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press Writer / December 26, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Every unit in the U.N.'s 7,800-strong Haitian peacekeeping force has been warned against misconduct after a sex-abuse scandal erupted last month, the top U.N. official in Haiti said Wednesday.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, chief envoy Hedi Annabi said officials are keeping a close eye on peacekeepers after 108 Sri Lankan soldiers were recalled last month when investigators found they had paid for sex with Haitians, some of whom were underage.

"The force commander has visited all of the units one by one to warn them against any possible misconduct," said Annabi, who took charge of the peacekeeping mission in September. "We are here to serve our Haitian friends and not create problems."

Almost a tenth of Sri Lanka's battalion in Haiti has been recalled and now faces legal proceedings and courts-martial at home, Annabi said. Three officers were withdrawn for failure of leadership and the unit's commander was replaced.

The alleged sexual exploitation angered many across Haiti, whose 8.7 million people already have an uneasy relationship with the U.N. force, which was sent in 2004 to end the chaos that followed the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Haiti Immigrants Angry With Boat Sinking

By STEVENSON JACOBS
The Associated Press
Friday, May 11, 2007; 9:51 PM

SOUTH DOCK, Turks and Caicos Islands -- Haitian immigrants were simmering with anger Friday over allegations that a Turks and Caicos patrol boat may have caused a packed vessel to capsize last week, killing at least 61 of their countrymen.

The Turks and Caicos Islands government has opened an investigation into the May 4 disaster, the worst to hit Haitian migrants in years. Survivors said the coast guard crew rammed their rickety sailboat as it approached the shore, then towed it into shark-filled waters, causing it to capsize, and abandoned them.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the government recorded an "intelligence intercept," in which militant leader Baitullah Mehsud "congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act."

Cheema described Mehsud as an "al-Qaida leader," and blamed him for the Karachi bomb blast that targeted Bhutto in October and killed more than 140 people.

Mehsud is regarded as the commander of pro-Taliban forces in the lawless Pakistani tribal region South Waziristan, where al-Qaida fighters are also active.

The extremists were annoyed with Bhutto for her unqualified support to the US 'war on terror' and her willingness to play ball with the Bush administration.

This is a policy that Musharraf has found to his chagrin remains hugely unpopular in Pakistan but, which was seen by her party as a politically correct course in order to win back power.

Bhutto's apparent grandstanding in offering to give the International Atomic Energy Agency access to disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to probe his role in nuclear proliferation, and allow American troops to enter the Pakistani hinterland to take out al-Qaeda, sparked outrage even in the intelligentsia.

Bhutto's return was the public symbol of the government's new, get tough attitude. "I know who these people are, I know the forces behind them," Bhutto explained to the New York Times.

Left unsaid, and unquestioned, was why Bhutto is so familiar with "these people," most of whom are hiding out in the NWFP: The governments she led during the late 1980s and mid 1990s were, in conjunction with Pakistan's notorious intelligence services(ISI), among the most important sponsors of the Taliban.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is being called upon to save the country from the Taliban, when her government did perhaps the most to build up the Taliban.

The Jewish state has absorbed over the past two decades some 300,000 halachically non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Yet the vast majority of these new Israeli citizens don't see themselves as "non-Jews": Either they await conversion through a process that is painfully and unnecessarily slow, or they assert their Jewishness through a civic Israeli identity that will increasingly challenge the mainstream Orthodox monopoly on official religious functions here.

Outside Israel, the high rate of intermarriage among the non-Orthodox majority of Diaspora Jews, especially in North America, has turned out not only to have had the effect of depleting through assimilation the ranks of Reform and Conservative communities; it has also blurred the essence of a Jewishness once defined even by the non-Orthodox streams as something as definite as membership in a synagogue, into a desire by those who enter into mixed marriages to still be counted in some manner among the Jewish People, albeit on terms they wish to proscribe.

It is crucial to understand the difference between worldsourcing and outsourcing.

Outsourcing is about lowering costs by shifting non-essential operations to a contractor in order to cut costs.

Worldsourcing is about increasing value and quality, not just lowering costs.

All parts of a global enterprise are worldsourced to where the best resources, talent, ideas and efficiencies exist.

At 84, Hafner has been living in Spain for over half a century. He boasts about his health, his lifestyle, his routine, but most of all about the glory days, referring several times to Hitler as "the greatest figure in history." He can only dream of living to see a Fourth Reich.

After WWII, Hafner found asylum in Franco's Spain, protected from allegations and surrounded by like-minded individuals. This is why Spain is "paradise on earth" for the man. It's a place that allows him to continue to nurture his fanaticism, and yet protects him from the scrutiny of international justice. Between his banal conversations with Schwaiger about pig farming and yogurt-making, he insists that the Jews were sent to Auschwitz for their "own protection." It was a "10-star hotel," he says, compared to life in German cities where civilians lived under the constant threat of Allied bombs.

Anti-poverty campaigners have criticised the deals for failing to provide protection for Africa's poor farmers and its fragile industry.

Amy Barry, Oxfam trade spokeswoman, said: "Europe must desist from this madness and commit to do all they can to ensure countries are not made poorer by ill-thought out trade deals.

"They must stop pressuring the remaining countries to sign."