The Australian Government's latest White Paper on Counter-Terrorism was released on Tuesday 23rd February 2010. It highlights that the threat of terrorism has become a ‘permanent and persistent' feature of Australia's security environment. It notes that on top of the previous threat from the ‘global violent jihadist movement', Australia now also faces an increased threat from those born or raised in Australia and influenced by the ‘violent jihadist' message.

Titles: 

• Sweden insults Islam
• Saudi awards Turkey's Erdogan for 'service to Islam'
• Whitehouse offers warm condolences for Tantawi
• 'Grim' prospects for crippling UN Iran sanctions: Israel
• U.S. Security fiasco makes, Pakistanis lawmakers into heroes

News Detailes:

 Sweden insults Islam

At least three Swedish newspapers republished a disrespectful cartoon after the alleged plot to murder the Swedish caricaturist was unveiled in Ireland.  The drawing was published Wednesday in Stockholm papers Dagens Nyheter and Expressen and the Malmo daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet.  Sydsvenska Dagbladet says it printed the controversial drawing as part of its news coverage of the alleged plot to kill its creator, Lars Vilks. The Aftonbladet tabloid, which published the drawing in 2007, refrained from republishing it Wednesday, with Chief Editor Jan Hellin insisting "the picture has no news value today." "Publishing the same picture now would ... only increase the level of conflict and provocation in a situation that requires enlightenment, discussion," he wrote.  Sweden once a peaceful nation that prided itself on tolerance and freedoms has become a harbinger of bigotry against Islam.

Saudi awards Turkey's Erdogan for 'service to Islam'

Saudi King Abdullah presented Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with one of the country's most prestigious prizes on Tuesday for his 'service to Islam'. Erdogan earned the King Faisal International Prize for having "rendered outstanding service to Islam by defending the causes of the Islamic nation, particularly the Palestinian cause and the just rights of the Palestinian people," said Abd Allah al-Uthaimin of the prize-awarding group. "At the international level, he was a leading Muslim founder of the call for rapport between civilisation and a passionate advocate of constructive dialogue, openess, and principles of international understanding and cooperation." The reality is that Erdogen is being rewarded for his efforts to reform Islam similar to Christianity. Two years ago his government embarked on a project to revise thousands of hadith under the supervision of a Roman Catholic priest Felix Koerner.

Whitehouse offers warm condolences for Tantawi

The White House on Wednesday offered its condolences following the death of Sunni Islam's top cleric, who last year hosted President Barack Obama's landmark speech to the Muslim world. Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, 81, died of a heart attack earlier Wednesday in Saudi Arabia. "We express our deepest condolences on the passing of Egyptian cleric Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in a statement. "As the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar University, he was a voice for faith and tolerance who was widely respected in Muslim communities in Egypt and around the globe, and by many who seek to build a world grounded in mutual respect. "Sheikh Tantawi graciously hosted President Obama last June in Cairo, and we remember well his hospitality. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who mourn him on this day." Amongst the edicts that made Tantawi popular amongst Western governments was his ruling permitting banks to pay interest ,his support for France to outlaw the wearing of headscarves and his and supported the building of an underground barrier to deprive Gaza of vital supplies.

'Grim' prospects for crippling UN Iran sanctions: Israel                   

 Israel's UN ambassador on Tuesday said prospects for crippling UN sanctions against Iran were "grim" because Russia and China want to use diplomacy to convince Iran to scale back its nuclear ambitions. "The chances now seem grim regarding sanctions that will be crippling," Ambassador Gabriela Shalev told reporters here. She said Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, "are still looking to the diplomatic track" and appear reluctant to back a new round of tough sanctions proposed by Washington and its Western allies. "The Chinese and the Russians still hope that diplomacy will work. They do not want to inflict any harm on the Iranian people," she added. Shalev said that if the 15-member council was unable to agree on crippling sanctions, then Israel "will look to the countries themselves" to slap additional bilateral sanctions. On Monday, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom called on the Security Council to impose "crippling" sanctions on Iran over its nuclear defiance. "The time has come to impose crippling sanctions on the Iranians and I asked to put the 300 leaders of the Revolutionary Guards that are controlling Iran these days on the (UN sanctions) blacklist," he told reporters after meeting with UN chief Ban Ki-moon

U.S. Security fiasco makes, Pakistanis lawmakers into heroes

A tour of the United States arranged by the State Department to improve ties to Pakistani legislators ended in a public relations fiasco when the members of the group refused to submit to extra airport screening in Washington, and they are now being hailed as heroes on their return home. "People should be thankful, you made them so proud," said Hamid Mir, the host of a popular national talk show, during an interview in his studio on Tuesday with four of the six politicians, who railed against the security precautions at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Meetings with the Obama administration's top policy makers on Pakistan, including the president's special representative, Richard C. Holbrooke, and visits to the Pentagon and the National Security Council, did not allay the anger the politicians said they felt at being asked to submit to a secondary screening on Sunday before boarding a flight to New Orleans. They declined to be screened and did not board the flight.  Pakistan is one of 14 mostly Muslim countries whose citizens must go through increased checks before they fly into the United States, a procedure mandated by the Obama administration. One of the parliamentarians Akhunzada Chitan, told Mr. Mir on his "Capital Talk" program, "Going through a body scan makes you naked, and in making you naked, they make the whole country naked." Time and time again the US has humiliated Pakistanis to the point that even Pakistani parliamentarians are not safe. With the whole country against America, why is it that Zardari and Kiyani continue to extend all forms of support to the American crusader.

Hizb ut-Tahrir strongly condemns the car bomb blast at the office of a secret agency in model town Lahore that killed more than 10 and injured over 70 Muslims. The blast was so powerful that water erupted from the ground and the major part of the building collapsed. By attacking the military barracks, offices of the intelligence agencies and police stations

 Titles

• UK: Muslim women who refused to take  full-body scan are barred from flying
•  Dutch anti-Islam leader is major winner in polls
•  U.S. Wages Food War Against Somalia
•  Astonishing number of birth defects reported in  Fallujah
•  That was a war council in Damascus
•  Ensure Pakistan does not use military aid against us: India

News Detailes:

UK: Muslim women who refused to take  full-body scan are barred from flying

Two Muslim women have become the first passengers to refuse to subject themselves to controversial 'naked' full body airport scans. The pair - who security officials insist were selected at random - opted to miss their flight to Pakistan and forfeit tickets worth £400 each rather than be screened. One of the women refused to go through the full-body scanner at Manchester Airport on religious grounds while her companion also declined for 'medical reasons'. The women were travelling together to Islamabad when they were selected to pass through the controversial security screen after checking-in at Terminal Two at the airport. An estimated 15,000 people have already passed through the scanners, with the pair the first passengers to refuse a scan.

Dutch anti-Islam leader is major winner in polls

Dutch anti-Islamist leader Geert Wilders scored major gains in local authority polls Thursday, making him a serious challenger for power in a June national election, preliminary results showed. In the first test of public opinion since the collapse of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's coalition government last month, Wilders's Freedom Party (PVV) led in the city of Almere and was second in The Hague. The results came on top of an opinion poll showing that the PVV, which campaigns against Muslim immigration as its main platform, would win the most seats -- 27 in the 150-member Dutch parliament -- in the June 9 election. The popularity of Wilders, who compares Islam to fascism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf," has dented the image of the Netherlands as a country that has often portrayed itself in the past as a bastion of tolerance. The PVV has been pitching its policies to a nation of 16 million that is turning increasingly inward as the economy struggles and social tensions rise. There are nearly 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands. "The leftist elite still believes in multi-culturalism, coddling criminals, a European super-state and high taxes," Wilders told cheering supporters at a rally in Almere after polling ended Wednesday. "But the rest of the Netherlands thinks differently. That silent majority now has a voice," he said.

U.S. Wages Food War Against Somalia

While nearly half the population of Somalia teeters at the edge of starvation, the U.S. is preventing the United Nations from delivering desperately needed food. According to documents obtained by the New York Times, the Americans demand that aid agencies guarantee that no fees are paid "at roadblocks, ports, warehouses, airfields or other transit points" controlled by Shabab resistance fighters. Since the Shabab and other militias control more than half of the area in conflict, United Nations compliance with U.S. conditions would mean starvation for about three million people.Indeed, if international aid were restricted to areas controlled by the U.S.-backed puppet regime, only a few neighborhoods in Mogadishu, the capital, would be fed. As the Americans' Somali puppets' position becomes more untenable, the U.S. squeezes the UN's food delivery system, in effect punishing the entire Somali people. U.S. food relief to the UN's Somali operations in 2009 was only half that of 2008. In 2007, United Nations officials declared Somalia the "worst humanitarian crisis in Africa...worse than Darfur," as a result of the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in late 2006. Thus, the United States has been waging continuous war against the people of Somalia, directly or by proxy, for over three years under the guise of the "war on terror."

Astonishing number of birth defects reported in  Fallujah

Doctors are investigating reports of a very high rate of birth defects in a city of Iraq that was often the scene of heavy fighting involving U.S. troops. The BBC reported the residents of Fallujah are seeing birth defects, including heart problems, at a rate of 95 in every 1,000 births. The report said that represented 13 times the number of similar birth defects in Europe. A doctor told the BBC she is seeing two or three cases every day of birth defects, including paralysis, brain damage and cardiac problems. Data indicate prior to 2003, doctors would have seen perhaps one such case every two months. Local officials have advised woman in Fallujah not to have children, the BBC said. Residents link the timing of the surge in defects with about a year after a U.S. military-led offensive in Fallujah in 2004 and suggest armaments used in the fight may be to blame for their children's problems. Military officials told the BBC they had received no official reports of an increase in birth defects in the area but that exploded ordnance is a "recognized hazard." One researcher said she had seen "footage of babies with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead."

That was a war council in Damascus

The three-party meeting that took place in Damascus on Friday gathering the Syrian president Bashar al Assad, the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was a war council to devise counterattack plans and assign tasks in the event of an Israeli offensive on one or all parties, wrote Abdelbari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. "The timing of the meeting, the way it was undertaken and the ensuing press conference that was held at its conclusion, all point to a strategic coalition being reinforced. This is the build-up of a new front that will spearhead the confrontation with the US-Israeli alliance and whichever Arab countries that may, expressly or implicitly, be affiliated with it."The Iranian president said he expects war to break out somewhere between spring and summer of this year.

Ensure Pakistan does not use military aid against us: India

Raising concern over the reported decision of the United States to supply sophisticated arms to Pakistan, New Delhi on Thursday said Washington should ensure that the military aid was not used against India. Defence Minister A.K. Antony expressed concern over the move to supply a whole array of sophisticated laser guided bomb kits, surveillance drones and latest-model F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. In a statement here, Mr. Antony said: "Given our bitter past experience of how Islamabad used such aid against India, Washington should ensure that the latest tranche of military aid is used only for the purpose of countering al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists and not against India." Pentagon also decided to refurbish and expand the F-16 fighter jets Pakistan has been using since the 1980s. It also has got Cobra attack helicopters and C 130 transport aircraft from the U.S. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration was expanding weapon sales to India and Pakistan "in a bid to forge closer ties with each country, while creating new opportunities for American defence firms." It said that while India paid for its own weapons, Islamabad used American grants to fund most of its arms purchases. During the visit of U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates to Pakistan, there were reports of Pentagon willing to offer surveillance drones to Islamabad, now used in the frontier areas. The U.S. annual military aid to Pakistan is now around $3 billion.