Foxnews

A top Iranian cleric said Friday that some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial, and he accused Britain of a role in instigating widespread protests that erupted over the country’s disputed presidential election.

The announcement by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati came a day after the European Union demanded Iran release the staffers, who were detained on June 27. Britain is pressing EU countries to pull their ambassadors out of Tehran in protest.

Jannati, a powerful hard-liner who is close to Iran’s supreme leader, told worshippers during a Friday prayer sermon in Tehran that the detained staffers “made confessions.”

“In these events, their embassy had a presence,” he said, referring to the post-election turmoil. “Some people were arrested. Well, inevitably, they will be put on trial.”

He did not say how many staffers will be tried or on what charges. Earlier Iranian officials said all but one of the nine embassy personnel originally arrested had been released, but European Union officials said they believed more than one was still being held.

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I think Obama thinks that Iran is a “tiny country” and they’re not “really a threat” like he said during the campaign.

Haaretz

The United States is opposed to enacting a new set of financial sanctions against Iran that are due to be discussed in the G8 summit next week, diplomatic officials in New York reported Friday.

According to officials, sanctions against Iran are expected to top the G8’s agenda. Sources are also predicting a pointed debate between the heads of the industrialized nations over an appropriate response to Iranian authorities’ suppression of reformist demonstrations in Iran led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and other Iranian opposition leaders.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hinted in a newspaper interview earlier in the week that the G8 is due to decide on new financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Berlusconi disclosed that he had spoken with the heads of the G8 nations and has discussed such steps with them.

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One American Marine has been killed as U.S. and Afghan forces on Friday continued their massive offensive deeper into Helmand River valley. The assault, the first major Afghan operation by the Obama administration, is part of an overall effort to secure militant strongholds ahead of Afghanistan’s national elections next month.

Nearly 4,000 Marines and about 600 Afghan soldiers are expanding their sweep of southern Afghanistan, securing the Garmsir, Nawa, and Rig districts.

One Marine has died in action and several others wounded in the offensive. No civilian casualties have been reported, according to the Pentagon, and U.S. and Afghan forces have refrained from using artillery and other indirect fire weapons. No air strikes were conducted, but the 82nd Airborne Division Combat Brigade provided aviation support.

Called Operation Khanjar or Strike of the Sword, the operation was launched on Thursday, two days after American forces withdrew from the cities of Iraq, and less than two months before Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 presidential elections.

Similar NATO operations are underway in other parts of Helmand and Kandahar, such as the British led Operation Panchai Palang launched last week.

Over 90 percent of Afghanistan’s opium is harvested in Helmand, where militants support their activities from one of the world’s largest poppy fields. Most of the crop is made into black tar opium and then smuggled out of the country to be processed into heroin. The province’s opium economy constitute half of miltant funding, according to the Pentagon.

“Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces,” Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commanding general of Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, said in a statement. “The Taliban offer no future, no hope, and we will work to provide immediate security gains to the local citizens of the Helmand River Valley.”

httip: MichelleMalkin

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Also, this is the first American soldier captured in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

*Updated info below..scroll down.

KABUL (AP) — US military spokeswoman says insurgents have captured an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan.

Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier has been missing since Tuesday. She said she could not provide further information.

Mathias said the military was using “all our resources to find him and provide for his safe return.”

The soldier was not taking part in the major military operation launched in the southern Taliban stronghold of Helmand early Thursday.

*update* Taliban speaks

CBS report:

(CBS) A Taliban commander told CBS News’ Sami Yousafzai Thursday that militants had captured one U.S. soldier and three Afghan nationals in Paktika province, near the Pakistani border.
<…>
The Taliban commander, who spoke to Yousafzai via satellite telephone from the region, said a group of militants cornered the American soldier and his Afghan counterparts near a U.S. military base and took them hostage.

He said the captives’ fate would be decided by Taliban leaders, but that the Islamic extremist group “would not mind an exchange of prisoners in this case.”

*Update*

The captured soldier was apparently “sold” to a local terrorist group.  A video is said to be coming soon.

NY Daily News

An American soldier who went missing from a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan was “sold” to a local militant group - which claims it will soon release a video of the captive and a list of demands, a U.S. military official said.

“Our leaders have not decided on the fate of this soldier,” said a commander with the Taliban’s hard-line Haqqani faction, according to Agence-France Press. “They will decide on his fate and soon we will present video tapes of the coalition soldier and our demand to media.”

The identity of the captured soldier has not been released in order to protect his safety while U.S. troops desperately comb the area for him.

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Video: Dem Congressman Moran: Iran Won The Iraq War

Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), founder of the Out of Iraq caucus, criticized Dick Cheney and the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Rep. Moran wouldn’t declare the US the winner in Iraq, but said that Iran won the war.

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Persecution.org

07/01/09 Pakistan (International Christian Concern) - This morning 100 Christian houses and churches were set on fire by local Muslims in the city of Kasur South, east of Lahore, Pakistan. The riots were incited by broadcasts from local mosques. This incident is similar to a February 1997 attack when thousands of Christian houses and churches were burned and hundreds of Christians were injured.

ICC partners received the news this morning and went immediately to the scene to help injured Christians transferred to Lahore, renting two mini vans for this purpose. So far 9 burned women and 4 children have been transferred to Lahore for further medical treatment. All of them have been injured by throwing acid on them. Local police have arrived on the scene but the situation is out of control as thousands of Muslims have gathered for this purpose.

More details to follow. Please call the Pakistani embassy in your country to ask them to protect the Christians in Kasur South.

Pakistan Embassies:

USA:   (202) 243-6500
Canada:  (613) 238-7881
UK:   0870-005-6967

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Pastor Rick Warren to address American Muslims [Linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood]

Robert has all the details…

Interfaith dhimmitude. Does Rick Warren know or care that in 2007, ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terror funding case? The Holy Land Foundation, once the nation’s largest Islamic charity, was ultimately found guilty of funneling millions of dollars in charitable contributions to the jihad terror group Hamas.

Read the rest

Look, I’m all for reaching out to decent Muslims in America, but for God’s sake, pay attention who you’re “reaching out” to! He should be speaking to Muslim groups like this one

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(IsraelNN.com)- Former Jordanian prime minister Abd Al-Raouf Al-Rawabdeh delivered a speech recently in which he called Israel “a cancer that must be eradicated.” His comment were aired on Al-Jazeera TV on June 27 and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “Israel is a cancerous body. This is agreed upon,” he stated.

“Usually, you confront a cancerous body in one of two ways: If you have the power, you use it to eradicate the cancer. But if you don’t have the power, you try to contain the danger, until you obtain the power you need in order to eradicate it,”said Al-Rawabdeh.

hattip Zip who adds: “Fun fact: Obama just gave the Jordanians a roughly 50% pay raise, from $363 million to $513 million per year in US taxpayer funds….”

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Bahrain Offers Women No Protection from Spousal Rape

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Turks increasingly turn to Islamic extremism

Al Qaeda’s reliance on Arabs is altering as recruits from Turkey and Turkic-speaking areas of Central Asia form a recent wave of trainees, experts say.

Reporting from London — In an audio message from a hide-out in South Asia this month, an Al Qaeda chief did something new: He sang the praises of an ethnic group that once barely registered in the network.

“We consider the Muslims in Turkey our brothers,” said Mustafa Abu Yazid, the network’s operations chief. Lauding Turkish suicide bombers killed in recent attacks near the Afghan-Pakistani border, he declared, “This is a pride and honor to the nation of Islam in Turkey, and we ask Allah to accept them amongst the martyrs.”

The message is the latest sign of the changing composition of Islamic extremism, anti-terrorism officials and experts say. The number of Turks in Al Qaeda, long dominated by Arabs, has increased notably, officials say. And militant groups dominated by Turks and Central Asians, many of whom share Turkic culture and speak a Turkic language, have emerged as allies of and alternatives to Al Qaeda in northwestern Pakistan.

“We are aware of an increasing number of Turks going to train in Pakistan,” said a senior European anti-terrorism official who asked to remain anonymous because the subject is sensitive. “This increase has taken place in the past couple of years.”

Turkey’s secular tradition and official monitoring of religious practice for years helped restrain extremism at home and in the diaspora. But the newer movements churn out Internet propaganda in Turkish as well as German, an effort to recruit among a Turkish immigrant population in Germany that numbers close to 3 million.

“We are seeing almost as much propaganda material from these Turkic groups as we are from Al Qaeda,” said Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. private consultant who works with anti-terrorism agencies around the world. “Turks were perceived as moderate with few connections to Al Qaeda central. Now Germany is dealing with this threat in a community that could be a sleeping giant.”

Germany is especially vulnerable because it has troops in Afghanistan. The threat could also intensify in other countries with Turkish populations, such as France, Belgium and the Netherlands, whose anti-terrorism agencies focus on entrenched extremism in large North African communities.

And the implications are serious for Turkey, a Muslim ally of the West and a longtime gateway to battlegrounds in the Middle East and Asia.

As Al Qaeda’s multiethnic ranks burgeoned in the 1990s, Turks trained in Afghanistan and fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Russian republic of Chechnya. In 2003, Al Qaeda suicide bombers killed 70 people in attacks on synagogues and British targets in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city.

Despite Turkey’s population of more than 70 million, however, Turks were once among the smallest contingents in the network.

Read the entire article.

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