A British man has been killed after youths allegedly rammed a car into a group of friends who were cycling in Saudi Arabia.
John Currie, who worked for BAE Systems – formerly British Aerospace – is believed to have been one four cyclists who started being "cut up" by local youths in two cars on a main road on the outskirts of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Initially, it is understood that one of the cars clipped a cyclist causing him to fall off his bike. Then, however, one of the drivers is alleged to have turned around and deliberately ploughed his car into the cyclists.
Mr Currie, 54, a human resources worker, is said to have been smashed against the vehicle's windscreen in the incident on Thursday, and later died from his serious injuries. His widow, Pauline, was returning to Britain this weekend.
The couple, from Chester, Cheshire, are believed to have two grown-up children. Mr Currie's body will be flown home for a funeral service.
In the past 15 years, there have been a number of terrorist attacks on British and other western nationals in Saudi Arabia by Muslim extremists. Several westerners have been killed – and even more injured – in a series of bombs and gun attacks. Radicals are angry that US and British oil companies and their staff are operating on Saudi soil.
In one incident, Simon Cumbers, 36, an Irish freelance cameraman, was shot dead and Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent, was critically injured by apparent al-Qaeda sympathisers as they filmed in Riyadh in 2004.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) confirmed the death on Saturday. A spokesman said: "A British national, John Currie, died in a road traffic accident on Feb 25 and we were informed. We have offered consular assistance to the family." Sources at the FCO said it would be for the Saudi authorities to determine if there was a "guilty party" involved in the incident.
BAE has also confirmed Mr Currie's death. The company employs 4,500 staff in Saudi Arabia, including around 2,000 Britons.
A company spokesman said: "We can confirm that John Currie was a BAE Systems employee who worked for the HR team in Saudi Arabia and was involved in a road accident last week. Our thoughts and feelings are with his family and friends. The Saudi authorities are now investigating the case and it would be inappropriate for BAE Systems to comment any further."
Company sources say that the arrest of an individual in such circumstances would not necessarily mean that criminal charges will follow. "Under Sharia law – the Muslim law – the driver is arrested even if it is an accident," said one source. "Under Sharia law too, he may have to pay a certain amount [to the family of the victim] depending on whose fault it was."
The “red line” is located 213 meters below sea level. In recent years, the government added a “black line,” at 215 meters below sea level, beyond which water absolutely should not be drawn.
In 2009, the water level in the Kinneret sunk to 214.37 meters below sea level following five years of drought and was dangerously close to the black line at the end of last summer. However, the reservoir still lacks 13 feet of water before dams would have to opened to prevent local flooding.
Water Authority officials said Sunday that the Kinneret had risen by more than nine centimeters since Thursday. The heavy rains that began falling late last week caused flooding in the Arava region, and left most northern areas and the northern and central Negev with an annual accumulated rainfall more than 100 percent of the average for the entire season. Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva and Tel Aviv have received nearly 100 percent of their average accumulated rainfall this year.
Forecasters predict that scattered showers will continue Monday, followed by warmer and drier weather the rest of the week, with the exception of the possibility of light rain in the north on Wednesday.
As Europe considers voting in favor of new sanctions against Iran, Iran is threatening to freeze Europe if the sanctions pass. Brigadier-General Hossein Salami of Iran's Revolutionary Guard warned Sunday that Iran has the power to cut Europe's energy supply. The warning was issued as European leaders prepared to debate sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
"Iran sits on 50 percent of the world's energy, and if it wants, Europe will spend the winter in the cold,” Salami told Iranian troops in the city of Kerman. His speech was published by the Iranian Fars news agency.
...
Salami also mentioned Iran's missiles. The country has recently tested long-range missiles, and announced just weeks ago that it had launched a satellite-capable rocket.
"Our missiles are now able to target any spot which the conspirators are in,” he said.
The site is such an outlier that an American archeologist who stumbled on it in the 1960s simply walked away, unable to interpret what he saw. On a hunch, Schmidt followed the American's notes to the hilltop 15 years ago, a day he still recalls with a huge grin. He saw carved flint everywhere, and recognized a Neolithic quarry on an adjacent hill, with unfinished slabs of limestone hinting at some monument buried nearby. "In one minute—in one second—it was clear," the bearded, sun-browned archeologist recalls. He too considered walking away, he says, knowing that if he stayed, he would have to spend the rest of his life digging on the hill.
The human mind is even more complex than its past.
Philip Klein weighs in with evidence of yet another Hamas and Hezbullah supporter who was defended by Tom Campbell. Let's take the example of another supporter, Abdurahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, whose views in support of Hamas and Hezbollah were well known -- and captured on videotape back in 2000. Yet Campbell was still defending him even as other politicians were running for cover.
Here is a video (originally from the Investigative Project on Terrorism) of Alamoudi rallying a crowd at Lafayette Park in Washington, DC on October 28, 2000, declaring, "We are all supporters of Hamas" and "I am also a supporter of Hezbollah."
... a week after the rally, Campbell publicly claimed that Alamoudi "had never supported violence nor encouraged anybody to engage in it."
...
Now, some may be inclined to praise Campbell for his tolerance toward Muslims, but clearly Alamoudi is another example of Campbell using the wrong person to make his stand. In 2004, as reported by the Washington Post, "A federal judge yesterday sentenced Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi to the maximum 23-year prison term for illegal dealings with Libya that included his involvement in a complex plot to kill the Saudi ruler."
Laura Rozen has an interesting account of Defense Minister Ehud Barak's appearance at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy on Friday. Noting the slew of recent high level U.S. officials visiting Israel – CIA director Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and NSC Iran strategic Dennis Ross, Deputy Secretaries of State Jim Steinberg and Jack Lew just in the past month, as well as the upcoming visit of Vice President Joseph Biden – Satloff asked Barak about how well he thought the U.S. and Israel were coordinating on the Iran issue.
Barak listened to Satloff’s question and then said, "Let’s take a few more questions and I will answer them" in a bunch. And Satloff, the event host and moderator, laughed and said, "Well, answer that opening question and then I can call on members of the audience and take several questions" in a bunch. And Barak smiled, acknowledging the laughter, and then said, again, "Let’s take a few more questions." Until it became quite clear that Barak did not want to answer Satloff’s question about the state of U.S.-Israel relations on Iran, and this was not based on a cultural misunderstanding of the format procedure. Barak would not budge, and stood at the podium waiting for Satloff to take more questions.
So, checked, Satloff took questions from a few more members of the audience, including from the Institute’s David Makovsky, a co-author with the NSC’s Ross on a recent book on Mideast peace making, before Barak began to answer several questions.
Asked by a Middle Eastern correspondent, why Israel couldn’t live with a nuclear Iran, Barak said Israel welcomed U.S. leadership in seeking international sanctions on Iran. But he added, that with all the instability the U.S. is currently managing including a nuclear Pakistan and North Korea, Afghanistan, draw down in Iraq, etc., as well as an overloaded domestic agenda, it was his impression that Washington believes that while it’s highly undesirable, at the end of the day the U.S. could live with a nuclear Iran. While for Israel, Barak said, it would be a “tipping point” in the strategic equation in the region. It would lead to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other countries seeking nuclear weapons, Barak said, the effective end of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and the threat that a nuclear terrorist attack from an unclear address would be more likely.
Hillary Clinton explained to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that the Obama administration has spent the last 13 months 'reaching out' to Iran, so that when 'reaching out' failed, the US would have a broad-based coalition to support it on sanctions. Barry Rubin challenges that statement, saying that not one country has decided to support sanctions as a result of Obama's policies. China and Russia are still opposed altogether, while much of Europe will only go along with sanctions if they pass the Security Council - which will not happen without China and Russia's approval.Then she added one of those little sentences that passes unnoticed but is quite important in its implications (that’s why you read this blog to see things like this that everyone else is missing): “What we're trying to do is to get international opinion that will force the Iranian regime to change its calculations."
International opinion? I can understand why President Barack Obama thinks the United States should not be the world’s policeman but he seems to believe that instead it should be the world’s community organizer.
Contemplate this. You're leader of Iran’s regime. You believe the divine being fully supports everything you do. You've effectively defeated the opposition. You're doing well with international Muslim opinion, which is all you care about. You're making rapid strides toward nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. You have allies like Syria, Hizballah, Hamas, and the Iraqi insurgents. Turkey is moving in your direction. You continue trading profitably with Europe, Russia, and China. Things are going pretty well.
And you're going to be scared by “international opinion?”
Of course, Clinton’s arguments about persuading people by going slow and chatting up Iran--which give the appearance that this avoids conflict and problems--are intended for an American domestic audience, not Iran. It is legitimate and inevitable that governments focus a lot on looking good at home. But that should never inhibit at the same time having a good policy that actually deals with the international issues at stake.
Well, if they can use Christmas lights in the Succa (which lots of Israelis do without knowing what they are), why not? 
President Obama's 'engagement' with Syria is not going well. On Friday, the State Department called in the Syrian ambassador to ask that Syria 'immediately' stop supplying arms to Hezbullah after that was all Ehud Barak could talk about in Washington. It seems unlikely that request will be fulfilled.Haaretz has learned that Burns' visit to Damascus ended unsatisfactorily for the U.S. administration. During Burns' meeting with Assad, the Syrian leader denied all American claims that his regime was providing military aid to terrorists in Iraq, or to Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups.
Assad essentially told Burns that he had no idea what the American was talking about.
The Israeli Air Force is training to refuel its jets on the runway with the engines running to conserve fuel and allow planes to depart more quickly for bombing runs to Iran. In preparation for long-range missions and possible conflict with Iran, the Israel Air Force has expanded its training programs to include rapid refueling operations on runways.
It’s a dangerous practice since the aircraft’s engines are running while the fuel nozzle is still connected to the jets. The training is for both pilots and ground crews and it is being done to enable the aircraft to carry as much fuel as possible for long-range missions.
Fuel nozzles are traditionally disconnected from fighter aircraft while they are still parked in hangers and before they are rolled out to the runway, where they usually wait for several minutes before takeoff and while burning fuel. The new protocol includes keeping fuel trucks on the runway, having ground personnel reattach the nozzle and fuel the aircraft to the maximum fullness, disconnecting seconds before takeoff.
“We understand that many of our threats and challenges require us to develop a long-range capability,” one senior IAF officer explained. “Part of our preparation includes knowing how to fuel our aircraft so they can have as much fuel as possible.”
A Tel Aviv University professor is set to open this year’s “Israel Apartheid Week” taking place at three London university campuses.
Adi Ophir, an associate professor at TAU’s Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, will open the event on Monday. “Israel Apartheid Week” takes place at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of Economics and University College London.
In a talk titled “Anatomy of rule in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Ophir, who is author of the book The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, will share a platform with Sari Hanafi, an associate professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut…
Ending the week of events will be Israel-born filmmaker Eyal Sivan, who will answer questions following the screening of his film Yizkor: Slaves of Memory.
The event program describes the film as “a portrait of the Israeli society that has never been shown before” that looks “in depth at this imperative that is imposed on the children of Israel.”
I haven't yet figured out the Mossad connection, but you just know that they are behind this somehow. |
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