Saddam Hussein is DEAD

Saddam Hussein was executed, in accordance with Iraqi law, at around 6 A.M. Baghdad time (10 P.M. Eastern U.S. time)

Soaring...

Eyrie

An eyrie or aerie is the lofty nest of a bird of prey such as a hawk or eagle.

Zarqawi is DEAD.

Zarqawi died when US planes dropped two 500lb (230kg) bombs on a site near the city of Baquba. He was identified by fingerprints, tattoos and scars.

The US struck after receiving specific tip-offs from within Zarqawi's organisation, officials said. -- BBC

Within minutes of the announcement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki named three key security ministers — military and political breakthroughs in rapid succession that marked the biggest potential turnaround in Iraq in months. -- AP on Yahoo

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, is a "severe blow" to global terrorism.

Mr Karzai said Zarqawi had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. -- BBC

BAGHDAD — Ordinary Iraqis greeted the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with relief and elation, but most said it would do little to slow the pace of insurgent violence and sectarian killings.

The news brought joy in Shiite areas of the capital. Iraqi police in the Shiite slum of Sadr City fired weapons in the air and chanted.

Ali Mustafa, a 31-year-old Shiite, said Zarqawi's death filled him with "extreme happiness." -- USA Today

Complete Coverage of Zarqawi's Death

Al-Zarqawi's Biography

Iraqi soldiers hold up their weapons as they celebrate the death of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Najaf, June 8, 2006.

Iraqi soldiers celebrate the death of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Kerbala, June 8, 2006.


June 8: Iraqi soldiers celebrate the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead.


June 8: Iraqi police officers, elderly woman fire guns in the air to celebrate the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi death.

MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday of national reverence which is observed on the last Monday of May. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who died in military service for their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it expanded to include those who died in any war or military action.

Happy Easter!

Concerning Palestine...

What happened during the Arab riots of 1920-1921?

What happened during the Arab riots of 1929?

What happened during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39?



Resolution for the establishment of an independent Jewish State in Palestine

Declaration of Israel's Independence 1948

Events Surrounding the Independence of the State of Israel (1947-1949)



Arab-Israeli Wars




What happened during the period of the fedayeen attacks on Israel in the 1950s?




Question of Palestine at the United Nations

The Question of Palestine & the United Nations



Country profile: Israel and Palestinian territories

Documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict



Victims of Palestinian Violence and Terrorism since September 2000

Palestinians celebrating 9-11 attacks.



When the Palestinians say "End of occupation", what do they mean?

The Second Draft: "Pallywood" and "Birth of an Icon"

Pallywood, "According to Palestinian Sources..." on Google Video

Palestinian Media Watch

Nazis, al-Husseini, Iraq, and Hussein

'Palestinian' security forces salute during a training session in the West Bank city of Tulkarm February 1st, 2005. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini

Palestinian police officers salute during a graduation ceremony in the West Bank town of Jenin May 9, 2006. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

Yasser Arafat's interview with the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat was reprinted by a leading Palestinian daily Al Quds (August 2, 2002):

Interviewer: I have heard voices from within the Palestinian Authority in the past few weeks, saying that the reforms are coordinated according to American whims...
Arafat: We are not Afghanistan. We are the mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini?... There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

Within weeks of Adolf Hitler`s ascendance to power, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, contacted the German counsel-general in Palestine. With the exception of funding some anti-Semitic riots, Germans rejected the Arab`s overtures until 1937, when Adolf Eichmann and Herbert Hagen were sent to Palestine to establish a framework to provide Husseini with military and financial aid by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Haj Amin al-Husseini cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II and helped recruit Muslims for the Waffen SS.

When the Red Cross offered to mediate with Adolf Eichmann in a trade prisoner-of-war exchange involving the freeing of German citizens in exchange for 5,000 Jewish children being sent from Poland to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, Husseini directly intervened with Himmler and the exchange was cancelled.

From Egypt al-Husseini was among the sponsors of the 1948 war against the new State of Israel.

Both Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein were greatly influenced by al-Husseini during their time in Cairo during the 1950s.

Iraq 1941

In 1941 there was a pro-Nazi coup attempt in Iraq, chronology here.

One of the Iraqi coup plotters was Gen. Tufah Khariallah. Tufah Khariallah is the uncle and mentor who raised SADDAM HUSSEIN.

• Rashid Ali and the Golden Square at War

• Air War Over Iraq - In May 1941, British forces were fighting to keep Iraq in Allied hands
  

• The Battle for Habbaniya - The forgotten war - The RAF fought a battle which lasted five days and a campaign which lasted a month, which against all odds they won.
  

• Iraq, 1941, Second World War

"Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: The Jews are yours."

Former Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in his post-World War II memoirs.

"The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures."

Adolf Eichmann`s deputy Dieter Wisliceny in his Nuremberg Trials testimony.

• The Muslim/Nazi Connection

• The Arab/Muslim Nazi Connection

• PHOTOS AND DOCUMENTS

• Islamism, fascism and terrorism: (Part1) (Part2) (Part3)

• The Nazi Origins of Modern Arab Terror
  

Remembering Arafat

Arafat the monster

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | November 11, 2004

YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul." God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.

Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.

Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims -- or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms.

Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive. No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful" terrorism.

Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her empathy for Arafat -- whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian unity, steadfastness, and resistance" -- was heartfelt:

"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's victims. (That is, when they mention them -- which Plett's teary bon voyage to Arafat did not.)

And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered in this Arafat death watch?

How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy -- the rise of modern terrorism -- without recalling the legions of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed? If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention all those he murdered on 9/11?

It would take an encyclopedia to catalog all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying to recall at least some of it.

Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.

Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

FREE!!!!

Cell Phones

A person can open a cell phone, and if there is a signal, place a call to virtually any phone in the world. A person can be walking down a busy street where hundreds of others are using mobile phones and receive a phone call of their own from virtually anywhere. How exactly does that work?

Cellular telephones use radio waves to communicate with a cellular telephone tower which contains a transmittor/receiver. Why are they called cellular? Geographic areas are divided into cells, which can range in size from one half mile to 50 miles. Each cell has it's own tower which provides service for that area. The tower is then connected to a Cellular Telephone Switching Office (CTSO) or Mobile Telecommunications Switching Office (MTSO). The Switching Office is connected to the local telephone system.

Radio waves operate at different frequencies, and there are only a certain amount of frequencies available for specific applications. In each cell there is at least one channel, called the setup channel, which the cell telephone uses to transmit it's ID information. The cellular telephone company accepts the ID information and identifies the telephone and which cell it is in. The phone retransmits this ID information on the setup channel periodically to identify which cell it is located, in case the phone is moving around.

So how do you place a call? When a call is placed, the cell telephone transmits the dialed number and ID information on the setup channel, which is sent to the Switching Office. If the account is good, the Switching Office assigns a channel to be used. The cell telephone then uses the assigned channel for the call.

How do you receive a call? When there is an incoming call, the Switching Office sends the cell telephones ID information to the cell it is in, and the telephone seizes the setup channel and transmits it's ID information to the Switching Office. The Switching Office verifies the ID, then assigns a channel and connects the call.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!