The US Justice Department on Oct. 11 announced charges against two men allegedly working for "factions of the Iranian government" with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, and to attack Saudi embassies. The indictment, unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, identified the two as Manssor Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American car dealer in Corpus Christi, Tex., and Gholam Shakuri, described as Arbabsiar's cousin. Attorney General Eric Holder said Arbabsiar, who was arrested on Sept. 29 in New York, was working for Iran's Revolutionary Guard and had confessed to the plot. Shakuri, who is based in Iran, remains at large, Holder said. He allegedly is a member of the Quds Force, a special unit of the Revolutionary Guard. Holder said the case started when Arbabsiar made contact with an undercover DEA informant in Mexico and asked for assistance from Los Zetas drug cartel to assassinate the ambassador by blowing up a restaurant that he frequented. Arbabsiar allegedly wired $100,000 to the informant as a down payment on a $1.5 million assassination fee. (InSight Crime, Oct. 12; Associated Press of Pakistan, Oct. 11)

In an interview with the BBC's Pashto service, a key leader of the Haqqani network denied that the group is responsible for killing Burhanuddin Rabbani, or that it is receiving aid from Pakistan's ISI. But Siraj Haqqani asserted that he's been approached by the US to join the Afghan government as part of a peace deal with the Taliban. "Right from the first day of American arrival till this day not only Pakistani but other Islamic and other non-Islamic countries including America, contacted us and they [are] still doing so. They are asking us to leave the ranks of Islamic Emirates," he said referring to the Taliban leadership. He said that the outsiders have promised an "important role in the government of Afghanistan." (BBC News, AP, Oct. 3

The UN Security Council's Standing Committee on Admission of New Members is currently considering Palestine's application for full United Nations membership. Eight of the Security Council's 15 members have already declared their support for the Palestinian application: China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Lebanon, Niger and Gabon. But the Palestinians' bid faces a practically inevitable veto by the United States, one of the five permanent Security Council members—which, unlike the 10 rotating members, wield veto power within the Council. (KashmirWatch, Oct. 1)

This week, Libya's Berber (Amazigh) minority held the "First Libyan Amazigh Forum" in Tripoli, under the slogan: "Officialize the Amazigh language and support national unity." The unprecedented conference, which started Sept. 26, opened with the new Libyan national anthem, sung in Arabic and Tamazight, the Berber language. Thousand took part in a Berber music festival, making the Libyan capital echo with lyrics in the long-banned language, with revelers raising the yellow, blue and green Berber flag. "We...want to tell the transitional government and the government...that the Amazighs are an integral part of political life," said Fathi Abu Zakhar, chairman of the preparatory committee. "We want Tamazight inscribed as a right in the constitution."

This one is really good. The poorly named 9-11 "Truthers" (perhaps more accurately rendered "Falsers") continue to moronically assert that al-Qaeda never claimed responsibility for the 9-11 attacks—despite the fact that it has done so time and time and time again. Now the terror network takes Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to task for spouting revisionist malarky that would steal the glory from Osama and his crew by blaming the attacks on the US government. David Goodman writes for the New York Times' The Lede blog Sept. 28:

The right-wing blogosphere is having a field day with this one. The Daily Call started it all with a Sept. 13 piece on comments offered by the Palestinian Authority's ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat at a breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. The Call entitled its write-up "Palestinian ambassador reiterates call for a Jew-free Palestinian state." Here's the offending quote:

Taking a tip from the "indignados" who occupied downtown Madrid for several weeks over the summer, hundreds of protesters on Sept. 17 established an encampment in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park—now renamed "Liberty Square"—just three blocks north of Wall Street, where they have remained since, despite rain and an intimidating round-the clock police presence. Wall Street itself, of course, is inaccessible behind police barricades. When protesters marched down to Wall on the morning of Monday the 19th to greet the arriving traders and office workers, police quickly moved in, arresting six and dispersing the rest. (NYT, Sept. 19)

It is nonetheless sickening for being de rigueur to hear Barack Obama mourning the death of the war criminal Burhanuddin Rabbani as a "tragic loss." Rabbani had recently been appointed to lead a "High Peace Council" to start negotiations with the Taliban. He was killed at his home in Kabul by a visitor with explosives hidden in his turban. President Hamid Karzai, at the start of talks with Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, said Rabbani's death "will not deter us" from continuing the quest for peace. (Reuters, LAT, Sept. 20) Rabbani ruled Afghanistan from 1992 until the Taliban take-over of '96, and then led the Northern Alliance insurgency. He has been perceived as the real power behind President Karzai. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) decried Rabbani as leader of the "Northern Alliance mafia" made up of "millionaire rapists busy in the opium trade under the very nose of the US troops."