Post by jonnygemini on Jun 27, 2005 9:40:26 GMT -5
Making the news today...
Revenge is a dish best served served hot...the real crusade in Iraq...CIA running peak oil simulation this week
from the news.telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/26/wrape26.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/26/ixworld.html
from The Boston Globe
www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/06/26/evangelicals_building_a_base_among_iraqis/
from Myrtle Beach Online
www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/11983351.htm
Revenge is a dish best served served hot...the real crusade in Iraq...CIA running peak oil simulation this week
from the news.telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/26/wrape26.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/26/ixworld.html
Mother sets fire to her daughter's gloating rapist
By Peter Upton in Alicante
(Filed: 26/06/2005)
A Spanish mother has taken revenge on the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him alight. He died of his injuries in hospital on Friday.
Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, had been sent to jail for nine years in 1998, but was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar, 30 miles south of Alicante, on the Costa Blanca.
While there, he passed his victim's mother in the street and allegedly taunted her about the attack. He is said to have called out "How's your daughter?", before heading into a crowded bar.
Shortly after, the woman walked into the bar, poured a bottle of petrol over Soriano and lit a match. She watched as the flames engulfed him, before walking out.
The woman fled to Alicante, where she was arrested the same evening. When she appeared in court the next day in the town of Orihuela, she was cheered and clapped by a crowd, who shouted "Bravo!" and "Well done!"
A judge ordered her to be held in prison and undergo psychiatric tests, provoking anger from friends and neighbours, who have set up a petition calling for her release.
Soriano suffered 60 per cent burns in the attack on June 13 and was airlifted to a specialist unit. He survived for 11 days before succumbing to his injuries.
It is understood that the woman, who cannot be named because of laws safeguarding the identity of rape victims, claims to have no recollection of the attack which took place in the Bar Mary, just 300 yards from the family home.
As decorators painted over the blackened walls of his bar last week, Antonio Ferrendez Lopez told how Soriano had walked in at lunchtime.
"The place was packed with people eating. I was sitting at a table and Soriano was standing at the bar very close to me when the woman walked in," he said. "She didn't acknowledge anyone but walked up to Soriano, who was drinking a coffee, put her hand on his shoulder and turned him round to face her.
"Then she pulled the bottle she was carrying from under her arm and began to tip it over him. At first I didn't realise what was happening, but then I smelt the petrol. I jumped up and tried to grab her, but when she struck a match I got clear.
"The petrol was in a pool around Soriano, and she threw the match into it. It ignited with a whoosh, and he screamed and staggered about covered in flames. As people rushed outside to escape the flames, she just looked at him, then turned and walked away."
Customers helped Mr Lopez put out the fire with extinguishers and doused Soriano with water until paramedics arrived.
Soriano's attack on the woman's teenage daughter took place in 1998. The girl was going to buy a loaf of bread when Soriano snatched her from the street, threatened her with a knife and raped her. Her mother is said to have suffered mental illness ever since.
Soriano was convicted of the rape and ordered to serve 13 years in jail. The sentence was later reduced to nine years on appeal.
The woman's lawyer, Joaquín Galant, told The Sunday Telegraph last night: "The family has suffered a double tragedy. First the attack on their daughter and now this. Both the father and his daughter would like to express their sadness at the death of Soriano."
Earlier, Mr Galant said that the woman did not deserve to be kept in prison. "For seven years she has been deeply affected by what was done to her daughter," he said. "This man, fresh from prison and asking how her daughter was, might be considered to have provoked her."
By Peter Upton in Alicante
(Filed: 26/06/2005)
A Spanish mother has taken revenge on the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him alight. He died of his injuries in hospital on Friday.
Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, had been sent to jail for nine years in 1998, but was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar, 30 miles south of Alicante, on the Costa Blanca.
While there, he passed his victim's mother in the street and allegedly taunted her about the attack. He is said to have called out "How's your daughter?", before heading into a crowded bar.
Shortly after, the woman walked into the bar, poured a bottle of petrol over Soriano and lit a match. She watched as the flames engulfed him, before walking out.
The woman fled to Alicante, where she was arrested the same evening. When she appeared in court the next day in the town of Orihuela, she was cheered and clapped by a crowd, who shouted "Bravo!" and "Well done!"
A judge ordered her to be held in prison and undergo psychiatric tests, provoking anger from friends and neighbours, who have set up a petition calling for her release.
Soriano suffered 60 per cent burns in the attack on June 13 and was airlifted to a specialist unit. He survived for 11 days before succumbing to his injuries.
It is understood that the woman, who cannot be named because of laws safeguarding the identity of rape victims, claims to have no recollection of the attack which took place in the Bar Mary, just 300 yards from the family home.
As decorators painted over the blackened walls of his bar last week, Antonio Ferrendez Lopez told how Soriano had walked in at lunchtime.
"The place was packed with people eating. I was sitting at a table and Soriano was standing at the bar very close to me when the woman walked in," he said. "She didn't acknowledge anyone but walked up to Soriano, who was drinking a coffee, put her hand on his shoulder and turned him round to face her.
"Then she pulled the bottle she was carrying from under her arm and began to tip it over him. At first I didn't realise what was happening, but then I smelt the petrol. I jumped up and tried to grab her, but when she struck a match I got clear.
"The petrol was in a pool around Soriano, and she threw the match into it. It ignited with a whoosh, and he screamed and staggered about covered in flames. As people rushed outside to escape the flames, she just looked at him, then turned and walked away."
Customers helped Mr Lopez put out the fire with extinguishers and doused Soriano with water until paramedics arrived.
Soriano's attack on the woman's teenage daughter took place in 1998. The girl was going to buy a loaf of bread when Soriano snatched her from the street, threatened her with a knife and raped her. Her mother is said to have suffered mental illness ever since.
Soriano was convicted of the rape and ordered to serve 13 years in jail. The sentence was later reduced to nine years on appeal.
The woman's lawyer, Joaquín Galant, told The Sunday Telegraph last night: "The family has suffered a double tragedy. First the attack on their daughter and now this. Both the father and his daughter would like to express their sadness at the death of Soriano."
Earlier, Mr Galant said that the woman did not deserve to be kept in prison. "For seven years she has been deeply affected by what was done to her daughter," he said. "This man, fresh from prison and asking how her daughter was, might be considered to have provoked her."
from The Boston Globe
www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/06/26/evangelicals_building_a_base_among_iraqis/
Evangelicals building a base among Iraqis
Other Christians, Muslims see threat
By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post | June 26, 2005
BAGHDAD -- With arms outstretched, the congregation at National Evangelical Baptist Church belted out a praise hymn backed up by drums, electric guitar, and keyboard. In the corner, slide images of Jesus filled a large screen. A simple white wooden cross adorned the stage, and worshipers sprinkled the pastor's Bible-based sermon with approving shouts of ''Amen!"
National Evangelical is Iraq's first Baptist congregation and one of at least seven new Christian evangelical churches established in Baghdad in the past two years. Its Sunday afternoon service, in a building behind a house on a quiet street, draws a couple of hundred worshipers who like the lively music and the focus on the Bible.
''I'm thirsty for this kind of church," Suhaila Tawfik, a veterinarian who was raised Catholic, said at one service. ''I want to go deep in understanding the Bible."
Tawfik is not alone. The US-led toppling of Saddam Hussein, who limited the establishment of new denominations, has altered the religious landscape of predominantly Muslim Iraq. A newly energized Christian evangelical activism here, supported by Western and other foreign evangelicals, is now challenging the dominance of Iraq's Christian denominations and raising concern from Muslim and Christian religious leaders about a threat to the status quo.
The evangelicals' numbers are not large -- perhaps a few thousand -- in the context of Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians. But they are emerging at a time that the country's traditional churches have lost their privileged status and have seen their flocks depleted because of decades-long emigration. Now, traditional church leaders see the new evangelical churches filling up, not so much with Muslim converts but with such Christians as Tawfik seeking a new kind of worship experience.
''The way the preachers arrived here . . . with soldiers . . . was not a good thing," said Baghdad's Roman Catholic archbishop, Jean Sleiman. ''I think they had the intention that they could convert Muslims, though Christians didn't do it here for 2,000 years."
''In the end," Sleiman said, ''they are seducing Christians from other churches."
Iraq's new churches are part of evangelicalism's growing presence in several Middle Eastern countries. In neighboring Jordan, for example, ''the indigenous evangelical presence is growing and thriving," said Todd Johnson, a scholar of global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.
Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordan Baptist Convention, said in an interview in Amman that there are about 10,000 evangelicals worshiping at 50 churches in Jordan.
While most evangelicals in Jordan come from traditional Christian denominations, Abbassi said, ''we're seeing more and more Muslim conversions."
Iraq's Christian population has been organized for centuries into denominations such as Chaldean Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. While Hussein's secular regime allowed freedom of worship, it limited new denominations, particularly if backed by Western churches.
During the US-led invasion in 2003, American evangelicals made no secret of their desire to follow the troops. Samaritan's Purse, the global relief organization led by the Rev. Franklin Graham -- who has called Islam an ''evil and wicked" religion -- and the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, were among those that mobilized missionaries and relief supplies.
Soon after Hussein's fall, they entered the country, saying their prime task was to provide Iraqis with humanitarian aid. But their strong emphasis on sharing their faith raised concerns among Muslims and some Christians that they would openly proselytize.
Then the security environment deteriorated in Iraq -- four Southern Baptist missionaries were killed, Westerners were kidnapped, and at least 21 churches were bombed -- forcing most foreign evangelicals to flee. But Iraqi evangelicals remain.
''For Christians, it's now democratic," said Nabil Sara, pastor at National Evangelical Baptist. Some church leaders, however, are questioning that premise.
''Evangelicals come here and I would like to ask: Why do you come here? For what reason?" said Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, head of the Eastern rite Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq's largest Christian community.
In interviews, Delly and Sleiman were torn between their belief in religious freedom and the threat they see from the new evangelicalism. They also expressed resentment at what they perceive as the evangelicals' assumption that members of old-line denominations are not true Christians.
''If we are not Christians, you should tell us so we will find the right path," Delly said sarcastically. ''I'm not against the evangelicals. If they go to an atheist country to promote Christ, we would help them ourselves."
Sleiman charged that the evangelicals are sowing ''a new division" because ''churches here mean a big community with tradition, language, and culture, not simply a building with some people worshiping. If you want to help Christians here, help through the churches [already] here."
Other Christians, Muslims see threat
By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post | June 26, 2005
BAGHDAD -- With arms outstretched, the congregation at National Evangelical Baptist Church belted out a praise hymn backed up by drums, electric guitar, and keyboard. In the corner, slide images of Jesus filled a large screen. A simple white wooden cross adorned the stage, and worshipers sprinkled the pastor's Bible-based sermon with approving shouts of ''Amen!"
National Evangelical is Iraq's first Baptist congregation and one of at least seven new Christian evangelical churches established in Baghdad in the past two years. Its Sunday afternoon service, in a building behind a house on a quiet street, draws a couple of hundred worshipers who like the lively music and the focus on the Bible.
''I'm thirsty for this kind of church," Suhaila Tawfik, a veterinarian who was raised Catholic, said at one service. ''I want to go deep in understanding the Bible."
Tawfik is not alone. The US-led toppling of Saddam Hussein, who limited the establishment of new denominations, has altered the religious landscape of predominantly Muslim Iraq. A newly energized Christian evangelical activism here, supported by Western and other foreign evangelicals, is now challenging the dominance of Iraq's Christian denominations and raising concern from Muslim and Christian religious leaders about a threat to the status quo.
The evangelicals' numbers are not large -- perhaps a few thousand -- in the context of Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians. But they are emerging at a time that the country's traditional churches have lost their privileged status and have seen their flocks depleted because of decades-long emigration. Now, traditional church leaders see the new evangelical churches filling up, not so much with Muslim converts but with such Christians as Tawfik seeking a new kind of worship experience.
''The way the preachers arrived here . . . with soldiers . . . was not a good thing," said Baghdad's Roman Catholic archbishop, Jean Sleiman. ''I think they had the intention that they could convert Muslims, though Christians didn't do it here for 2,000 years."
''In the end," Sleiman said, ''they are seducing Christians from other churches."
Iraq's new churches are part of evangelicalism's growing presence in several Middle Eastern countries. In neighboring Jordan, for example, ''the indigenous evangelical presence is growing and thriving," said Todd Johnson, a scholar of global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.
Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordan Baptist Convention, said in an interview in Amman that there are about 10,000 evangelicals worshiping at 50 churches in Jordan.
While most evangelicals in Jordan come from traditional Christian denominations, Abbassi said, ''we're seeing more and more Muslim conversions."
Iraq's Christian population has been organized for centuries into denominations such as Chaldean Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. While Hussein's secular regime allowed freedom of worship, it limited new denominations, particularly if backed by Western churches.
During the US-led invasion in 2003, American evangelicals made no secret of their desire to follow the troops. Samaritan's Purse, the global relief organization led by the Rev. Franklin Graham -- who has called Islam an ''evil and wicked" religion -- and the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, were among those that mobilized missionaries and relief supplies.
Soon after Hussein's fall, they entered the country, saying their prime task was to provide Iraqis with humanitarian aid. But their strong emphasis on sharing their faith raised concerns among Muslims and some Christians that they would openly proselytize.
Then the security environment deteriorated in Iraq -- four Southern Baptist missionaries were killed, Westerners were kidnapped, and at least 21 churches were bombed -- forcing most foreign evangelicals to flee. But Iraqi evangelicals remain.
''For Christians, it's now democratic," said Nabil Sara, pastor at National Evangelical Baptist. Some church leaders, however, are questioning that premise.
''Evangelicals come here and I would like to ask: Why do you come here? For what reason?" said Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, head of the Eastern rite Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq's largest Christian community.
In interviews, Delly and Sleiman were torn between their belief in religious freedom and the threat they see from the new evangelicalism. They also expressed resentment at what they perceive as the evangelicals' assumption that members of old-line denominations are not true Christians.
''If we are not Christians, you should tell us so we will find the right path," Delly said sarcastically. ''I'm not against the evangelicals. If they go to an atheist country to promote Christ, we would help them ourselves."
Sleiman charged that the evangelicals are sowing ''a new division" because ''churches here mean a big community with tradition, language, and culture, not simply a building with some people worshiping. If you want to help Christians here, help through the churches [already] here."
from Myrtle Beach Online
www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/11983351.htm
Officials clash, gas prices zoom in oil-crisis simulation
Scenarios show how unrest in producer nations risk economies
By Kevin G. Hall
Washington Bureau
1/83/8
WASHINGTON | Former CIA Director Robert Gates sighs deeply as he pores over reports of growing unrest in Nigeria. Many Americans can't find the African nation on a map, but Gates knows that it's America's fifth-largest oil supplier and one that provides the light, sweet crude U.S. refiners prefer.
It's 11 days before Christmas 2005, and the turmoil is preventing about 600,000 barrels of oil per day from reaching the world oil market, which already was drum-tight. Gates, functioning as the top national security adviser to the president, convenes the Cabinet to discuss the implications of Nigeria's spreading religious and ethnic unrest for America's economy.
Should U.S. troops be sent to restore order? Should America draw down its strategic oil reserves to stabilize soaring gasoline prices? Cabinet officials agree that drawing down the reserves might signal weakness. They recommend that the president simply announce his willingness to do so if necessary.
The economic effects of unrest in Nigeria are immediate. Crude oil prices are more than $80 a barrel. June's then-record $60 a barrel is a memory. A gallon of unleaded gas now costs $3.31. Americans shell out $75 to fill a midsize sport utility vehicle.
If all this sounds like a Hollywood drama, it's not. These scenarios unfolded in a simulated oil shock wave held Thursday in Washington. Two former CIA directors and several other former top policy-makers participated to draw attention to America's need to reduce its dependence on oil, especially foreign oil.
Fast-forward to Jan. 19, 2006. A blast rips through Saudi Arabia's Haradh natural-gas plant. Simultaneously, al-Qaida terrorists seize a tanker at Alaska's Port of Valdez and crash it, igniting a fire that sweeps across oil terminals. Crude oil spikes to $120 a barrel, and the U.S. economy reels. Gasoline prices hit $4.74 a gallon.
Gates convenes the Cabinet again. Members still disagree on whether America should draw down its strategic oil reserves. Homeland Security chief James Woolsey, who ran the CIA from 1993 to 1995, says a special energy czar is needed with broad powers to bypass the bureaucracy and impose offshore oil drilling and construction of refineries.
That won't help now, though, or resolve any short-term issues, says Gene Sperling, who was President Clinton's national economic adviser.
The energy secretary suggests that relaxing clean-air standards could help refiners squeeze out every last drop of gas. That makes the interior secretary, former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner, bristle. She blames Detroit for the mess because automakers failed to develop hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.
The Cabinet can't agree on even the simplest short-term solutions. There aren't many options beyond encouraging car pools and lowering thermostats. There's no infrastructure in place to deliver alternative fuels such as ethanol or diesel made from soybeans or waste.
Fast-forward again, to June 23, 2006. Saudi insurgents attack foreign oil workers, killing hundreds. An evacuation follows from the world's pivotal oil producer, the one country that could be counted on to boost production in shortages.
A take-charge guy with a Texas accent who led the CIA from 1991 to 1993, Gates calls yet another war-room meeting. Global recession looms. The world economy turns on cheap oil. Without foreign oil workers, how will Saudi Arabia meet its production targets and quench the oil thirst of America, China and India?
Oil prices have reached an unthinkable $150 a barrel. In Philadelphia, Miami and Kansas City, Mo., gas prices reach $5.74 a gallon. Now it takes $121 to fill that midsize SUV.
You get the picture. The scenario is intended to show how vulnerable the United States and world economies are because of dependence on oil from places where political instability threatens orderly production and distribution.
This year, the world is consuming about 84 million barrels of oil a day. America guzzles about 20.8 million barrels a day. Experts think oil-producing nations have only 1.5 million barrels a day or less of unused production capacity right now. A disruption anywhere could cause market panic and spiking prices. That's largely why oil and gasoline prices are so high.
Saudi Arabia and other countries are trying to increase production, but that won't help much before next year at the earliest. Meanwhile, any hiccup in production, delivery or refining could cause disaster.
"A million or a million and a half barrels of oil a day off the market is a very realistic kind of scenario. You can think of a dozen different countries around the world ... where you can see that happening. Or even a natural disaster could do that," Gates said in an interview.
Scenarios show how unrest in producer nations risk economies
By Kevin G. Hall
Washington Bureau
1/83/8
WASHINGTON | Former CIA Director Robert Gates sighs deeply as he pores over reports of growing unrest in Nigeria. Many Americans can't find the African nation on a map, but Gates knows that it's America's fifth-largest oil supplier and one that provides the light, sweet crude U.S. refiners prefer.
It's 11 days before Christmas 2005, and the turmoil is preventing about 600,000 barrels of oil per day from reaching the world oil market, which already was drum-tight. Gates, functioning as the top national security adviser to the president, convenes the Cabinet to discuss the implications of Nigeria's spreading religious and ethnic unrest for America's economy.
Should U.S. troops be sent to restore order? Should America draw down its strategic oil reserves to stabilize soaring gasoline prices? Cabinet officials agree that drawing down the reserves might signal weakness. They recommend that the president simply announce his willingness to do so if necessary.
The economic effects of unrest in Nigeria are immediate. Crude oil prices are more than $80 a barrel. June's then-record $60 a barrel is a memory. A gallon of unleaded gas now costs $3.31. Americans shell out $75 to fill a midsize sport utility vehicle.
If all this sounds like a Hollywood drama, it's not. These scenarios unfolded in a simulated oil shock wave held Thursday in Washington. Two former CIA directors and several other former top policy-makers participated to draw attention to America's need to reduce its dependence on oil, especially foreign oil.
Fast-forward to Jan. 19, 2006. A blast rips through Saudi Arabia's Haradh natural-gas plant. Simultaneously, al-Qaida terrorists seize a tanker at Alaska's Port of Valdez and crash it, igniting a fire that sweeps across oil terminals. Crude oil spikes to $120 a barrel, and the U.S. economy reels. Gasoline prices hit $4.74 a gallon.
Gates convenes the Cabinet again. Members still disagree on whether America should draw down its strategic oil reserves. Homeland Security chief James Woolsey, who ran the CIA from 1993 to 1995, says a special energy czar is needed with broad powers to bypass the bureaucracy and impose offshore oil drilling and construction of refineries.
That won't help now, though, or resolve any short-term issues, says Gene Sperling, who was President Clinton's national economic adviser.
The energy secretary suggests that relaxing clean-air standards could help refiners squeeze out every last drop of gas. That makes the interior secretary, former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner, bristle. She blames Detroit for the mess because automakers failed to develop hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.
The Cabinet can't agree on even the simplest short-term solutions. There aren't many options beyond encouraging car pools and lowering thermostats. There's no infrastructure in place to deliver alternative fuels such as ethanol or diesel made from soybeans or waste.
Fast-forward again, to June 23, 2006. Saudi insurgents attack foreign oil workers, killing hundreds. An evacuation follows from the world's pivotal oil producer, the one country that could be counted on to boost production in shortages.
A take-charge guy with a Texas accent who led the CIA from 1991 to 1993, Gates calls yet another war-room meeting. Global recession looms. The world economy turns on cheap oil. Without foreign oil workers, how will Saudi Arabia meet its production targets and quench the oil thirst of America, China and India?
Oil prices have reached an unthinkable $150 a barrel. In Philadelphia, Miami and Kansas City, Mo., gas prices reach $5.74 a gallon. Now it takes $121 to fill that midsize SUV.
You get the picture. The scenario is intended to show how vulnerable the United States and world economies are because of dependence on oil from places where political instability threatens orderly production and distribution.
This year, the world is consuming about 84 million barrels of oil a day. America guzzles about 20.8 million barrels a day. Experts think oil-producing nations have only 1.5 million barrels a day or less of unused production capacity right now. A disruption anywhere could cause market panic and spiking prices. That's largely why oil and gasoline prices are so high.
Saudi Arabia and other countries are trying to increase production, but that won't help much before next year at the earliest. Meanwhile, any hiccup in production, delivery or refining could cause disaster.
"A million or a million and a half barrels of oil a day off the market is a very realistic kind of scenario. You can think of a dozen different countries around the world ... where you can see that happening. Or even a natural disaster could do that," Gates said in an interview.