Brights News Feed

Around 700,000 Turkish secularists rallied in the streets of Istanbul yesterday, campaigning against Islamist presidential candidate Abdullah Gul. Gul is the presidential candidate of the ruling party, has deeply Islamist political roots, and the protestors to not believe the pro-Western “makeover” that he has undergone, nor his assertions that if elected he would stand by the country’s secular constituion. The opposition are challenging the constitutional legitimacy of the presidential election process, which sees parliament electing the president, rather than a peoples’ vote. The secular protesters are making the same demand, as well as coming out against the army. The army have already hinted (or threatend) the possibility of a military coup if Gul is elected by parliament, a move which has not generally been to the protesters’ liking and has caused Turkish stocks to plummet.

(See The Guardian UK)

Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced yesterday (release) that — following a decade long debate and a lawsuit — the Department of Veterans Affairs had finally settled with them. Americans United said: “The litigation charged that denying a pentacle to deceased Wiccan service personnel, while granting religious symbols to those of other traditions, violated the U.S. Constitution.” The Veterans Affairs department has agreed to add the neo-pagan pentacle to the list of 38 other symbols which it already approves for engraving on the memorial markers of deceased service members.

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“I have received a report from the American side chronicling the targets and list of damage,” said Somali presidential chief of staff, Abdirizak Hassan, today. “One of the items they were claiming was that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is dead.”

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was the chief suspect in the planning of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 225 people, and a number of other terrorist activities.

In a series of air strikes undertaken since Sunday, and ongoing (Retuers), the Somali transitional government claims the US forces have eliminated numerous Islamic Courts fighters, on the run from government and Ethiopian ground troops. A successful strike against Fazul Abdullah Mohammed represents closure on two fronts for the US military, as the air strikes are the first overt US military action in Somalia since the devastating failed mission in 1993 that was immortalised in the book and film Black Hawk Down.

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The Sunday Times (UK) this morning, cited “several Israeli military sources” as revealing that Israel has been training two airforce squadrons for specific nuclear missions. (Sunday Times: “Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran“.) The missions would target three out of four “critical” Iranian sites south of Tehran, all associated with the country’s nuclear program; in Natanz, near Isfahan, and at Arak. In the first attack:

conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

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“We have been defeated. I have removed my uniform. Most of my comrades have also changed into civilian clothes. Most of our leaders have fled.”

So said one former combatant of the Union of Islamic Courts after the secular, UN-backed Somali transitional government, with the support of Ethiopian troops, re-took Mogadishu, today.

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After days of increased hostility — including exchange of rockets and artillery fire which claimed dozens of lives and injured hundreds — between Islamist militias and forces loyal to the transitional Somali government, tanks from majority-Christian Ethiopia yesterday rolled into Somalia’s Baidoa region, according to witnesses. (Ethiopia has so far denied this, possibly because they have previously promised to publicize any decision to officially go to war with the Islamists.) Their mission would be to defend the fragile seat of the internationally-recognised, UN-backed, secular Somali government, which holds sway only over a relatively small area around the city of Baidoa, against redoubled threat from the Union of Islamic Courts and their militia.

Somali forces defending the UN-backed government

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) control Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and most of the south of the country. Yesterday they issued threats that the militias were preparing to take Baidoa (Toronoto Star), desipte earlier claiming that they were at war with Ethiopia and not the transitional government (Al Jazeera). Ethiopian reinforcements pose a formidable block to the ambition of the Islamist militias, but a UN report states that arms in support of the UIC are continuing to roll in from Eritrea and Yemen, who back the Islamic Courts, and may yet send their own forces to officially stand alongside the militia. This would reignite war across the Horn of Africa, especially between old enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea. Meanwhile the UN has called for calm, but while the fighting continues, aid is still failing to reach thousands of people whose lives are threatened by flood and famine (News24.com).

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A new study by the US Air Force has proposed giant ring of superconducting magnets as an alternative to the traditional rocket-from-a-launch-pad method of reaching space. The payload, such as communication satellites and supplies for space station crews, would be encased in a conical heat shield, and gradually accelerated around the circuit on a special “sled”, before being flung into orbit off a 30 degree ramp at over 23 times the speed of sound.

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