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Today: 52 articles and 180 comments as of 5:25.
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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Tunisia arrests 16 al-Qaeda suspects
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
8 23:31 twobyfour [336091] 
1 10:28 NoMoreBS [336073] 
6 21:32 BrujoTejano [336092] 
6 19:15 Redneck Jim [336089] 
1 10:25 Redneck Jim [336069] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
1 14:08 Besoeker [336072]
3 09:58 Glenmore [336089]
6 16:03 gorb [336069]
1 04:44 Besoeker [336089]
12 16:25 Mojo [336103]
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1 06:43 American Delight [336075]
1 03:17 Redneck Jim [336103]
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5 18:58 Zhang Fei [336086]
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1 03:19 Redneck Jim [336081]
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Page 2: WoT Background
1 11:29 Skidmark [336069]
19 23:29 trailing wife [336105]
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1 11:03 Bobby on the road [336080]
1 10:51 Redneck Jim [336082]
5 13:00 Pappy [336067]
1 10:40 Redneck Jim [336070]
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4 11:33 Bobby on the road [336072]
1 02:38 mojo [336070]
1 03:09 Redneck Jim [336077]
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2 16:24 lord garth [336085]
Page 3: Non-WoT
11 18:47 swksvolFF [336106]
2 19:22 Redneck Jim [336088]
6 13:27 Shipman [336107]
8 19:30 Redneck Jim [336095]
5 14:21 AlanC [336088]
2 04:01 Besoeker [336067]
8 15:45 JohnQC [336089]
10 11:26 Deacon Blues [336077]
3 12:18 P2Kontheroad [336076]
2 03:56 Besoeker [336071]
3 16:50 JohnQC [336093]
5 21:54 KBK [336096]
Page 6: Politix
10 18:15 P2Kontheroad [336092]
16 19:12 Redneck Jim [336096]
-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Beyond bizarre: University of Graz music professor calls for skeptic death sentences
Richard Parncutt, Professor of Systematic Musicology, University of Graz, Austria, reckons people like Watts, Tallbloke, Singer, Michaels, Monckton, McIntyre and me (there are too many to list) should be executed. He’s gone full barking mad, and though he says these are his “personal opinions” they are listed on his university web site.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/24/2012 09:29 || Comments || Link || [336091 views] Top|| File under:

#1  BTW You can also guess his politics.

So an Austrian socialist who wants to run death camps...
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/24/2012 11:17 Comments || Top||

#2  I don't know BP, I think I heard of something similar sometime in the recent past. /s
Posted by: tipover || 12/24/2012 12:03 Comments || Top||

#3  So an Austrian socialist who wants to run death camps...
He's an Australian intellectual with delusion of grandeur, BP
As they say down under "He's got a mob of 'roos loose in his top paddock'
Posted by: tipper || 12/24/2012 13:14 Comments || Top||

#4  He's got it slightly out of sequence. Raise taxes, destroy industry, and confiscate property first. Then execute the surviving non-believers.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/24/2012 13:20 Comments || Top||

#5  Seems like talk like that would run afoul of the europeon's anti hate speech laws.
They have a much more modest right of free speech than we do.
Posted by: bigjim-CA || 12/24/2012 13:35 Comments || Top||

#6  Naaahhhhh, bigjim - it's OK as long as he hates the right people. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara || 12/24/2012 13:41 Comments || Top||

#7  derision of grandeur
Posted by: KBK || 12/24/2012 20:50 Comments || Top||

#8  Wasn't there an Austrian painter once that was into death sentences too?

Something in water? WHAT is it with these Austrians? (I have an Austrian friend and he's a decent guy, but he immigrated to Canada when he was still young, thanks God!)
Posted by: twobyfour || 12/24/2012 23:31 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
Borderland Beat: A discussion of MANPADS in Mexico
Borderland Beat collegue Chivis Martinez has conducted an interview of security expert Dr. Robert Bunker concerning possible future cartel combat capabilities. Read the whole thing.

About MANPAD weapons like SA24 or RBS70 do you know at what price they would sell at on the black market?

The SA24 Grinch, which has only been in production since 2004, looks to be too high end for Mexican cartel use. Still, dozens of MANPADS turned up in Algeria in February of this year— many of which were SA24s—so these systems are out on the black market due to the recent civil war in Libya. The much older Swedish RBS 70 would be a better fit if the cartels decided to go down that path. My guess is you are thinking about some sort of Venezuela to Colombian FARC to Sinaloa or Zetas type of transfer.

I don’t think the black market price matters in the context of Mexican cartels. If a cartel really wanted a few of these systems, it could easily pay a multiple of the going black market price. Say a lower end system was going for $50,000.00—Sinaloa has the resources to offer ten times that number and not even blink an eye over it. Over the long term, they would not purchase MANPADS that way but for a few systems it would not break their bank.
Posted by: badanov || 12/24/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336069 views] Top|| File under:

#1  OK, How much is YOUR life worth?
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/24/2012 10:25 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Discussing Islam - A losing battle?
Posted by: tipper || 12/24/2012 04:20 || Comments || Link || [336073 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Absolutely on point. The ruse that Islam is a religion of peace and not a theology of conquest has been readily accepted by so many who do not want to face what it is.
As a corollary, search the bloody borders project online and view the reality of what proximity to an Islamic state brings.
Posted by: NoMoreBS || 12/24/2012 10:28 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
VIEW : The defining moment -- Mohammed Ahmad
[Pak Daily Times] It was Bashir Bilour on Saturday and Benazir Bhutto
... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
before that. Some other brave leader may be next but then the serpent of terror will also strike the timid. Its war is with democracy, freedom and any system that allows plurality of views even if it is in a stifled fashion. Even decades of military rule has not been successful in making people who democratically achieved a country believe in any system other than democracy and this is what is at stake. A successful election in Pakistain is the worst nightmare for Death Eaters who want the system to crumble and offer them the window to attain power here.

Pakistain is paying a heavy price for what has been done to it over the years. In the wake of the communist coup in Afghanistan, its radical president, General Zia ul Haq
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
involved it in the Afghan war and made its people embrace tyranny and oppression in the name of national security and no one dared to question the response for fear of life or being branded a traitor. All were made to believe that it was a war for freedom while in reality it was a war waged to secure and perpetuate the dictatorship in Pakistain. The dictator had succeeded in befooling both the US and the people of his own country to see it otherwise.

Why did the Soviet Union invade Afghanistan? The answer is simple. While Afghanistan had had its share of emirs, kings and tyrants, it had never had a democratic welfare government. It was internally weak and was thus ripe for a takeover by a form of government that at least claimed equality for all and claimed that all its actions were pro-people. History had proved that the communist invasion of Eastern Europe could not move westwards because of the democratic welfare-oriented governments there. Democracy rather forced the Bolsheviks to erect the Berlin Wall to stop the subjugated from crossing over. The free Germans saw the benefits of democracy and that was the end of the Soviet advance in Europe. The real solution for Pakistain was power to the people. The dictator instead adopted the course of a proxy war in a neighbouring country. The war fought for the self-interest of the dictator brought to this part of the world all those who could fight for money and of course, some unsuspecting Moslem youth as well who were made to believe that it was a war for Islam. The fall of the Soviets and the later fall of the Taliban government evaporated their utility there and made hundreds of thousands jobless overnight and now they are doing what they know best: killing and oppressing the vulnerable. Since the human conscience even at its lowest ebb abhors plain murder, they are deceiving both their own souls and those who fall prey to their propaganda as a war for faith.

It is unfortunate that years of radicalisation have created for these Death Eaters sympathisers in Pakistain who offer them sanctuaries. These sympathisers are the real force for the operatives who bank on them for dividing the people and weakening the response. On the larger horizon, these sympathisers work behind the scenes to convince the common man that democracy is secular and is hence opposed to religion. On a smaller front, they work on the common man to dilute the reaction when Shias, Ahmadis or Christians are targeted so that society fails to garner for itself any common value that may bring the people closer. The radicalisation has thus divided the national thought and whenever there is need for action there is divergence of views.

After a struggle of more than 60 years going through dictatorship, civil war and finally democracy, the people of Pakistain again stand at a crossroads. There are two paths to choose from. One is the easy path, the path of least resistance, the path of fatalism and ultimate despair, rule by tyrants and the Taliban, and governance by violence and terror. The other is the path of struggle and sacrifice, the path of hope and progress, in which the people of Pakistain find their identity in Jinnah's vision and stand united with his ideas and dreams. No doubt taking this path will be painful but the reward is a land of dreams. The decision we take will mark our destiny.

Pakistain is in desperate need of a modern, liberal, progressive and vibrant welfare society Pakistain needs to be developed as a modern, progressive, secular democracy adhering to the principles of fairplay and social justice. Those in authority here need to wake up and realise that when people give the authority to rule they do so to be given a better and secure future. A future of oppression and intimidation is not what the people of Pakistain want. The response of a responsible government cannot be timid. It is duty bound to act to save Pakistain. Those who plotted Mr Bilour's liquidation must be made to pay for their actions and the mindset that supports such fanatics on the mainland needs to be tackled now not later. We need to take the fight to them rather than waiting as sitting ducks to be targeted at will.

Pakistain cannot survive without upholding the principles and guidelines provided to it by its visionary founder. The time is now for all patriotic forces to band together and let democracy stay at all costs. Democracy may one day give us back Jinnah's Pakistain, the land of our dreams where all citizens live in peace and harmony, a country full of hope, optimism, and security for all. Jinnah struggled to protect and nurture the cultural values of the Moslems of South Asia and not those of the tribal Chechens, Arabs or Sudanese. Jinnah's Pakistain was to be a land free of prejudice. Discrimination was to be the forbidden word in Jinnah's Pakistain. Jinnah's Pakistain was not created for the Taliban.

The destiny of Pakistain will not be inked by India, the US or China. The future of Pakistain will be determined by the choice of its people. Do we want to take the easy path of doom and be ruled by the Taliban or do we want to take the path of struggle where the reward is prosperity, freedom, and democracy? Now is the defining moment. It is either now or never.
Posted by: Fred || 12/24/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  You can talk all day, there's no choice but the easy way.
And the author knows it.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/24/2012 2:31 Comments || Top||

#2  Its a Moslem country. Fruit of the tree. Pakistain ain't called that for nuthin'.. It a hole. And Mohammed was not askin' you, he was telling you. He would kill you and your whole family if you didn't git down and polish his curly toed slippers with the oil on your nose.
There is no hope for Pakiland. They are soaked in the Moslem cancer and the undertaker is standing outside with a tape measure. Not a prayer.

What should we DO? Nothing. Stand back and sell them ammo. Pop some popcorn. They can't reach us and besides they smell bad up close. Peter Lorrie , cheap perfume, and M, scrawled in chalk, on his back.
Posted by: Threater Flusoper9823 || 12/24/2012 3:01 Comments || Top||

#3  TF, agree with most of what you say but ammo is fungible and can be turned against us and others. If there was a practical way to quarantine the whole area I'd be all for it.

Otherwise I'm afraid that they would just be used as a pawn by the Chinese against the Indians.
Posted by: AlanC || 12/24/2012 8:13 Comments || Top||

#4  Pakistain is paying a heavy price for what has been done to it over the years.

"Halp us! We's a victim!"
Posted by: Frank G || 12/24/2012 9:40 Comments || Top||

#5  Frank G, nails it.

The first thing is to recognise that you have a problem and take responsibility for it. But, these are Muzzies and they are philosophically and culturally incabable of taking responsibility for anything.

InshaAllan
Posted by: AlanC || 12/24/2012 9:49 Comments || Top||

#6  Not quite, Allah Provides, so let Allah provide.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/24/2012 19:15 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
WHY GRAMPS CARRIES A GUN
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/24/2012 00:40 || Comments || Link || [336092 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yes Granny, my granny had several. Same reasons.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/24/2012 2:44 Comments || Top||

#2  My granny was deep into knives, all kinda knives. No one messed with her.
Posted by: Shipman || 12/24/2012 9:07 Comments || Top||

#3  I've heard the uptick in gun ownership by baby boomers is because we're too old to fight and too slow to run.
Posted by: Mercutio || 12/24/2012 12:15 Comments || Top||

#4  A man simply cannot own too many guns or knives.
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/24/2012 14:03 Comments || Top||

#5  Then maybe it's not true that more than two handfuls are a waste.
Posted by: gorb || 12/24/2012 16:22 Comments || Top||

#6  See story above: Drunk driver who ran down two boys shot dead in my dearest Texas.
Posted by: BrujoTejano || 12/24/2012 21:32 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
28[untagged]
6Govt of Pakistan
5Govt of Syria
2Arab Spring
2Ansar Dine
2Hamas
1al-Qaeda in Iraq
1Commies
1al-Qaeda in Arabia
1al-Nusra
1TTP
1al-Qaeda in North Africa
1Pirates

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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
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Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
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Fred
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Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2012-12-24
  Tunisia arrests 16 al-Qaeda suspects
Sun 2012-12-23
  Egypt vice-president resigns on final day of referendum
Sat 2012-12-22
  Scuds pummel Syrian rebel positions
Fri 2012-12-21
  U.N. Security Council Approves Mali Intervention Force
Thu 2012-12-20
  Yemeni President Restructures Army, Removes Saleh Cronies
Wed 2012-12-19
  Three more polio workers shot in Pakistan; eight dead in 48 hours
Tue 2012-12-18
  Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp
Mon 2012-12-17
  Rebel Offensive In Hama
Sun 2012-12-16
  Rockets Fired on Peshawar Airport, Five Dead, Dozens Injured
Sat 2012-12-15
  Tunisian Salafists attack bar, call drinkers 'infidels'
Fri 2012-12-14
  Coca-Cola resumes its production in Somalia
Thu 2012-12-13
  'Friends of Syria' Recognize Syrian Opposition
Wed 2012-12-12
  Syria Fires Scud Missiles at Insurgents, U.S. Says
Tue 2012-12-11
  North Korea 'launches long-range rocket'
Mon 2012-12-10
  Rebels Seize Chunk of Aleppo Base as Fighting Rages across Syria

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