Oct 10 Others

Saudi mufti bans soccer for Muslims
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/203853.html
Mon Oct 10, 2011 6:55PM

A Saudi Arabian mufti has issued a religious degree (fatwa) prohibiting soccer for Muslim youth because it has been invented by Jews, Christians, infidels, the US, Russia, France and their lackeys.

Abdullah al-Najdi advised Muslim youth to avoid playing soccer unless under specific conditions, IRNA reported.

He added that if Muslim youth wish to play soccer aspects of the game must be changed so that it does not resemble the game played by the infidels.

Based on the decree terms such as "foul," "penalty," "corner," and "out" which have been invented by infidels should not be used in the game.

Al-Najdi said soccer players in a team should be more or less than 11 to avoid resemblance to infidels and they must play the game in every day clothes or nightgown because regular soccer uniforms are not befitting for the Muslim youth.

He further said that soccer games do not need referees after technicalities such as penalty, foul, out, and corner have been crossed out.

"If one of you scored a goal, don't run toward him and hug or kiss him and don't rejoice because these are what the Americans and the French do. Basically, you don't need these things because your goal is clear," Al-Najdi

He added that no specific player should be designated as substitute, but players should change position when one of them is tired.

Wahhabism is an extremely intolerant interpretation of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, which gained momentum after the discovery of oil in the kingdom in 1938.

Their "oil money" helped finance a large-scale program of assistance to the Afghan mujahedeen, some of whom later joined the Taliban.

Saudi muftis have a long history of issuing strange decrees which defy common sense. Authorizing the murder of the owners of television networks broadcasting allegedly immoral content, calling for the destruction of holy Shia site in Iraq, prohibiting the construction of structures over graves and demanding the demolition of the Prophet's shrine in Medina are but a few examples.

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موظفو الجمارك الكويتية يبدؤون إضرابا للمطالبة بتحسين الأجور
Kuwaiti customs officers begin strike to demand better wages
http://www.sana.sy/ara/3/2011/10/10/374720.htm
10 October, 2011
Kuwait, (SANA) -

Began more than three thousand employees in the Kuwaiti customs day general strike to demand better wages, which impacted negatively on the movement of import and export in the country.

A member of the customs union Fahad Al-Ajmi, told the French press: The strike includes all employees in the customs and the nearly three thousand employees, explaining that the strike is open until the implementation of the demands of all staff in the Customs.

He Ajami: that the work influenced in part at the airport in Kuwait, while completely stopped shipping and land warning at the same time that oil exports could be affected later due to the necessity for carriers, oil the permission of the customs to leave the country, pointing out that an oil tanker and at least one Today, prevented from sailing because they did not get the necessary permission from the customs.

It is noteworthy that the Kuwaiti customs officials who are demanding higher wages and better working conditions have already rejected an offer made by the Customs Director Ibrahim Al Ghanim implementation of their demands if they stopped the strike, according to Ajami's comments.

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From Libya to Syria and Armenia, Turkish-French rivalry is back
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=from-libya-to-syria-and-armenia-turkish-french-rivalry-is-back-2011-10-09
Sunday, October 9, 2011
MURAT YETKİN

Last week on Oct. 7, the French Interior Minister signed a conceptual agreement with his Turkish host İdris Naim Şahin on the joint struggle against terrorism. Opening the door for operational cooperation as well, the agreement is the first of its kind for Turkey; France has similar, even more detailed ones with a limited number of countries, including the U.S.

But as Turkish and French ministers were preparing for the agreement ceremony in the morning, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was on his way to Armenia to make bitter statements that Turkey should admit the allegation that massacres against Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide.

It was like an ultimatum since Sarkozy was giving a deadline to Ankara by the end of this year, or else. A reporter for Hürriyet asked him in Yerevan whether he had a schedule in mind for official recognition of the alleged genocide by France, since it was Sarkozy himself who blocked a resolution by the French Parliament over the past four years.

No, he did not have any schedule in mind, but he implied the approaching of the 100th year of the infamous campaign of 1915 that led to the cleansing of the native Armenian population of Turkey before the end of WWI that triggered the War of Liberation in which the Ottoman Empire ended as well.

Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s reply to that the next day was interesting: France should first face with its colonialist past in Africa before attacking Turkey’s past.

This was a mind-opening correlation to make. Like a Freudian slip, in return to what Sarkozy had said in his tour of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to mark their 20th year of independence from the former Soviet Union, Davutoğlu recalled the refreshed rivalry in the Arabian North Africa, or Maghreb, almost a century ago.

This year marked the 100th year of Turkish withdrawal from Libya and Algeria to leave the rule of the lands to Italy and France respectively. Perhaps that was the reason why Sarkozy, having British Prime Minister David Cameron as a companion, rushed to Benghazi a day before Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the Libyan city.

It can be speculated that Sarkozy sees Erdoğan as an obstacle in front of his country’s Maghreb comeback. Perhaps it was a subconscious reflex that pushed Sarkozy to the Turkish and Russian backyard of Caucasus to disturb Turkey’s balances there.

There is of course another theater that could cause another Turkish-French face off in the region: Syria. The Turkish southernmost province of Hatay, where camps are set up for those who escaped from the Beshar al-Assad regime, joined Turkey from a French mandate in 1938 through a plebiscite. France would not like to see Turkey increase its influence again in the Mediterranean basin almost after a century of keeping a low profile after the WWI defeat in 1918.

It seems that the two NATO members are likely to get into more political confrontation, which has a tendency to escalate, unless the two countries find new cooperation areas, not necessarily security but especially economics, which would bind their interests together.