Tuesday, July 26, 2005

From England to Egypt to Iraq Constitution

England and Egypt are now inexorbantly linked through terrorism. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but anyone notice that Al Nashar has disappeared from all airways? You know the chemist that rented out his apartment to Germaine Lindsay, one of the 7/7 train bombers who went to Egypt two weeks prior to the operation, arrested by Egyptian authorities who subsequently cleared him of any attachment to Al Qaida or the bombings? Two weeks later, degraded explosives failed to blow up trains and buses again then a day later, Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.

I wonder what is happening with Al Nashar? I'm not sure if he was involved in the Egyptian activity, but I am going to re-iterate concerns about al Nashar being in the US at the same time as Lindsay in 2000, that they both end up in Leeds and Nashar rents an apartment to him before he subsequently blows up a train with some other fellows from Leeds. Coincidence? Don't think so.

In the mean time, the Egyptian Blogger anti-terrorist protest made it's way into the Guardian. Sandmonkey is excited.

MSNBC covers it a little too, via Glenn Reynolds.

Back to England, Harry has Tony Blair's press conference up, more than what Fox is even showing this morning.

"Not one inch should we give to these people.

"And I want to say this to you - I may offend people when I say this, but I am going to say it nonetheless - September 11 for me was a wake-up call.

"Do you know what I think the problem is? A lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again.[snip]

The prime minister slammed the "obscenity" of people saying it was "concern for Iraq" that drives them to terrorism.

"If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them?" he asked.

"What is happening in Iraq is that ordinary decent Iraqis are being butchered by these people with the same terrorist ideology that is killing people in different parts of the world."


Speaking of Iraq, the brothers at Iraq the Model have information up on the draft of the Constitution and women discussing secular vs. religious political participation of women and women in society.

On a quick review of the constitution, I'd say that it has too many contradictions still. It talks about non-discrimination based on sex, creed, ethnicity, etc but later gives the body of laws as deriving from Sharia which is inherently discriminating in its treatment of women and people of other religioins.

It also says that people have a right to free practice of their religion as long as it does not run contrary to law, law which is based on Sharia.

It's as if a secular person wrote one paragraph and a religious party member wrote the next.

Then there is the inclusion as a constitutional right that a person can choose to have their trials in front of a civil court, a tribal court or a sharia religious court. That is far to open and gives people the opportunity to go to three different courts to get three different opinions. Which one takes precedence?

These are just a few of the contradictions.

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