I have been owned by the oncall pager, but here’s some reading for y’all.<\/p>\n
‘This is our Belgian kamikaze’<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Belgians were trying to come to terms Thursday with the news that a working class woman from an industrial southern city had turned from a “nice” shop assistant into a suicide bomber who blew herself up in Iraq.<\/p>\n “This is our Belgian kamikaze killed in Iraq,” headlined the newspaper La Derniere Heure on Thursday over a picture of a thoroughly normal-looking, smiling girl looking into the camera.<\/p>\n When her mother, Liliane Degauque, saw police coming to her doorstep on Wednesday, she immediately knew what it was about. The evening before, she had heard the reports there had been a terrorist attack on Nov. 9 by a Belgian woman.<\/p>\n “When I saw the first pictures, I said to myself, ‘it is my girl.’ For three weeks already I tried to contact her by telephone but I got the answering machine,” she told the RTBF network on Thursday.<\/p>\n Authorities on Thursday formally arrested 5 of the 14 suspects they detained in dawn raids the day before and charged them with involvement in a terrorist network that sent volunteers to Iraq, including Degauque’s daughter Muriel, who died at 38.<\/p>\n Nine were released. Those placed under arrest were a Tunisian and four Belgians, three of whom had foreign roots.<\/p>\n “This action shows how international terrorism tries to set up networks in western European nations, recruit for terror attacks in conflict areas and look for funds to finance terrorism,” said Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.<\/p>\n In her younger years, Muriel lived a conventional life in the Charleroi area. Media reports said she finished high school before taking on several jobs, including selling bread in a bakery. “She was so nice,” said her mother. The picture in the paper dated from that time.<\/p>\n She told media, however, that her daughter could easily be influenced.<\/p>\n Muriel changed first when she married an Algerian man and later one with Moroccan roots. She was increasingly drawn into fundamentalist religion.<\/p>\n “It is the first time that we see that a Western woman, a Belgian, marries a radical Muslim, and is converted up to the point of becoming a jihad fighter,” said federal police director Glenn Audenaert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Belgium. France. The Netherlands. All have been served notice of the Islamist danger in their midst. None yet have taken their individual national wake-up calls seriously enough yet. This is not just a condemnation of these three countries but also of all around them. After all, to paraphrase Otto von Bismarck, any fool can learn from his own mistakes, but it is preferable to learn from the mistakes of others, as well.<\/p>\n Ramadi Insurgents Flaunt Threat<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Armed fighters claiming allegiance to Abu Musab Zarqawi took to the streets of a western Iraqi provincial capital Thursday in a fleeting show aimed at intimidating Iraqi Sunni Arab leaders taking part in dialogue with U.S. Marines in a stronghold of the insurgency, provincial officials, residents and other witnesses said.<\/p>\n The scene — lean figures, many in masks and dark tracksuits lugging shoulder-mounted rocket launchers or wielding AK-47 assault rifles — reinforced what the U.S. military has acknowledged is the strong insurgent presence in the Euphrates River cities and towns of Anbar province, an overwhelmingly Sunni area near the Syrian border. The appearance of the fighters dismayed many of the residents of Ramadi, the war-blighted provincial capital.<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n The armed fighters on the streets left statements in the name of Zarqawi’s group, saying their show of force was in response to negotiations between the “Sunni midgets and the stooges of the occupation forces.” The statements contained pledges to kill each Sunni leader participating.<\/p>\n The U.S. military, which maintains Marine bases and thousands of troops on the outskirts of Ramadi, denied the accounts of unrest, saying that the city was largely calm Thursday and that insurgents were manipulating the news media. “Today I witnessed inaccurate reporting, use of unreliable sources, media using other media as sources, an active insurgent propaganda machine, and the pack journalism at its worse,” Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman for the 2nd Marine Division, said in an e-mail to news organizations.<\/p>\n Witnesses in Ramadi said they saw some of the armed fighters instruct a journalist for an Arabic-language news outlet to report that Zarqawi’s group, al Qaeda in Iraq, had taken over the entire city. The Arabic outlet by late Thursday was reporting only that the fighters had held some streets of the city center — a description of events in line with the eyewitness accounts and reports from other news organizations. News directors for the organization did not respond to requests for comment. The news organization is not being identified for security reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is about as clear evidence as you can have that there are two wars being conducted — on the battlefield and in the media. The terrorists know this and, unfortunately for them, showed themselves to be truly crippled if little stunts like their assaulting and briefly holding a couple of city blocks comprise their current hope to pull of a Tet offensive-type<\/a> media success.<\/p>\n Germany: No ransom for Iraq kidnappers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n German leaders said Thursday they still have had no contact with the kidnappers of a German woman seized in Iraq and Chancellor Angela Merkel said considering paying a ransom was “not up for discussion” at this time.<\/p>\n Susanne Osthoff and her Iraqi driver were taken last Friday, and were pictured in a videotape blindfolded on a floor, with militants – one armed with a rocket propelled grenade – standing beside them.<\/p>\n The militants are reportedly demanding that Germany cease its dealings with Iraq’s government or they will kill the hostages. Germany was an ardent opponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has refused to send troops there, but has been training Iraqi soldiers and police outside the country.<\/p>\n Merkel indicated in a speech Wednesday that Germany will not change its Iraq policy, stressing that the country “will not let ourselves be blackmailed” over Osthoff’s abduction.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Merkel told reporters that the government was “doing all its can to save her life and that of her companion.”<\/p>\n Asked if Germany would consider paying a ransom, Merkel said that was “not up for discussion at all now.”<\/p>\n “At the moment it is about very elementary questions … First of all, we are interested in finding out how to make contact” with the kidnappers, Merkel said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, that’s not actually a very strong stance. Hopefully, Merkel will prove to have more of a spine than to cave in to terror and help finance future bloodshed for short-term political gain. You know, like the Philippines<\/a>. Or allegedly the Italians<\/a> and French<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finally, two blog must-reads:<\/p>\n