Could this be one of Atomic Conspiracyâs constituents?
A 92-year-old man was sentenced Friday to 12 1/2 years in prison for a Texas bank robbery. J.L. Hunter "Red" Rountree pleaded guilty last October to robbing the First American Bank in Abilene on Aug. 12, 2003. U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings gave Rountree the minimum sentence allowed by federal sentencing guidelines and ordered him to the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth.
Posted by: Gasse Katze ||
01/24/2004 9:39:06 AM ||
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Cheaper than assisted living.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 10:32 Comments ||
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Our local radio station mentioned that he had had a 31 year old girl friend who recently stole all his money! Just try to re-plenish his chick money, I guess.
#3
Mr. Rountree apparently lived in Abilene but Judge Cummings is one of my neighbors.
The ancient bandit was sentenced in Lubbock because this is the seat of the Federal Court.
Here's a more detailed article with a picture.
Among other things, he has two prior convictions for bank robbery, led police on a 90 mph car-chase, and told an Esquire Magazine interviewer that "he'd robbed banks for fun, comparing the rush he got from a heist to that of 'a shot of cocaine.'"
Rountree might have done better if he'd waited a few years.
My 102 year-old grandmother was born in Ireland 6 months after Queen Victoria died.
She is not inclined to rob banks, but she does tell me that you can get away with practically anything when you reach the century mark; sleeping in church, cursing at telemarketers, ignoring obnoxious relatives.
She still lives in her own home, walks without assistance, cooks for herself and uses the net to keep up with 4 generations worth of descendants.
She quit driving a few years ago, and supports mandatory driving tests for everyone over 70. Her first response to this story was that "that's what they get for letting an old fool like that drive."
#4
Thought that would get a rise out of you AC.
Haven't seen your comments in a couple of days and was concerned. How's the ticker?
God continue to bless your grandmother. However, I can't agree with her on the driving tests tho. :)
Elephants arenât the only critters running amok.....EFL
Merseyside Police said the 75-year-old man was hurt when the dog jumped on to the accelerator, making the vehicle lurch forward, dragging the man with it and crashing into a lamppost. It is thought that it had been travelling in the cab while the milkman was doing his rounds in Wirral, Merseyside. Fortunately, the man suffered only a grazed knee. The dog, however, was taken to a local vet with cuts and bruises.
I think Doggy should be left with the vet. That ain't man's best friend...
Posted by: Desert Blondie ||
01/24/2004 2:40:36 AM ||
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Moral of the story: don't give Rover the keys to the Rover.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/24/2004 6:04 Comments ||
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Second moral: don't neuter Rover and leave the keys in the ignition.
Posted by: ed ||
01/24/2004 6:36 Comments ||
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Old
Officer making traffic stop: "You can't let the dog drive!"Grouchy Old Man: "Dammit it officer he's on a leash."
General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the powerful northern Afghan militia commander and security adviser to Afghan Transitional Administration Chairman Hamid Karzai, says most of his private militia is ready to disarm under a United Nations-sponsored program. Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek commander who heads the Junbish-e Milli-ye Islami political group. His private militia was part of the former Northern Alliance that helped U.S. forces oust the Taliban regime in late 2001. But since then, some of Dostumâs fighters have clashed repeatedly in the north with troops of a rival faction of the former Northern Alliance — a mostly ethnic Tajik group called Jamiat-e Islami that includes Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim. The clashes have raised concerns that field commanders under Dostum and Fahim may refuse to observe a major disarmament initiative aimed at easing the country in its transition to peacetime rule after decades of war.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, Dostum stressed that much of his private militia is participating in a UN disarmament program that is aimed at bolstering the authority of the central government by helping to build a multiethnic Afghan National Army. "I have never rejected disarmament and have, to the best of my ability, cooperated in this regard," he said. "We have surrendered more arms. The 19th and 70th regiments were both part of Junbish-e Milli-ye Islami, and I can tell you that we have surrendered about 150 pieces of heavy weaponry — such as tanks and mortars — to the National Army. We will continue to do so."
However, officials at a British-run Provincial Reconstruction Team near Mazar-e Sharif noted recently that the 50th Regiment of Dostumâs militia continues to refuse to surrender its heavy artillery. When asked about the British PRTâs report on the 50th regiment, Dostum insisted that some of his militia forces have the right to retain their heavy weapons until rival militia disarm. "We have made an agreement and told the Afghan government and the international community, as well as the [British-run] PRT, that there are other military troops in Afghanistan, in places such as Konduz, Kapisa, Kabul, Jalalabad, and Kandahar. When they surrender all their arms, we too will hand over every weapon in our possession to the National Army."
Altogether, some 100,000 militiamen across Afghanistan are supposed to surrender their weapons under the UN program. Some Western military observers in Afghanistan have expressed skepticism about disarmament, saying that militia commanders will not willingly surrender their modern arsenals. But there has been progress during the past two months. Last week, in a program that is backed by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan (ISAF), Afghan militia commanders in Kabul turned in more than 100 armored vehicles and heavy artillery pieces to the central government. That handover was seen as an important initial step toward demilitarizing the Afghan capital. Much of that equipment belonged to the military wing of Defense Minister Fahimâs Jamiat-e Islami faction. It included a convoy of armored troops carriers, ground-to-ground missile launchers, antitank guided missiles, and multiple rocket launchers that can destroy an entire city block with a single salvo. The weapons were given to the Afghan Transitional Administration and moved to a military camp about 10 miles outside of Kabul.
ISAFâs deputy commander, Major General Andrew Leslie, said disarmament in Kabul has been a tremendous success. He said it shows that rival commanders are beginning to trust each other on disarmament. More importantly, Leslie said the program shows that commanders who donât trust each other are at least ready to trust ISAF. Militia commanders in Kabul are expected to hand over another 300 heavy weapons during the next month. If successful, the program would remove all of Jamiat-e Islamiâs heavy artillery from the Afghan capital.
Yesterdayâs press conference by Dostum also highlighted suggestions he has made to Karzai for balancing the military powers of his faction against rival militia forces under Fahim. Dostum said he is qualified to either replace Fahim as defense minister or to serve as the chief of staff for Afghanistanâs National Army. He also suggested other possibilities, such as creating an armed antiterrorist force that would be independent from the Afghan Defense Ministry. "I have the ability, God willing, to perform if a military position — such as defense minister or head of the National Army — is offered to me. I have even submitted to Hamid Karzai a six-month plan to repress remnants of Al-Qaeda in the south as I did in northern Afghanistan. I even suggested a special commando force of 20,000 troops to be trained to tackle terrorism. My conditions were that they would act under the presidentâs direct authority as commander-in-chief — a force separate from the National Army." Dostum also told journalists that he would personally intervene in cases where some members of his militia have been accused of hindering the return of refugees in northern Afghanistan by robbing them or confiscating their property.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:19:39 AM ||
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"My conditions were that they would act under the presidentâs direct authority as commander-in-chief -- a force separate from the National Army."
Dare I say, a "Republican Guard"? Sounds like Dostum wants his milita under another name.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2004 0:36 Comments ||
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Each of these warlords have double-crossed so many allies that they expect to hung. Dostum has worked for and against everybody.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:12 Comments ||
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These guys have been in Warlord Mode⢠so long that they have not developed the skills AND mindset to work for the common good. Afghanistan is still feudal in mind and spirit. These guys are not the future of Afghanistan if it is to change for the good. But who is in the batter's box?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/24/2004 13:50 Comments ||
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PAKISTANâS President Pervez Musharraf said he believes Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda followers are still hiding in rugged mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where they are being chased by US, Pakistani and allied forces. "One canât be sure where he is," Musharraf told reporters at the World Economic Forum yesterday when he was asked where bin Laden was hiding. Musharraf said if he were a fugitive, he would regard the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as the safest place to hide, based on his experience as a commando in the Pakistani military. The mountainous backgrounds in videos of bin Laden are most likely along the border, he added. "Therefore, I conjecture that maybe he is moving around the border between the two countries, but I canât be sure at all."
Either that, or the vids were shot several years ago, in Afghanistan and he's not moved at all for the past couple years...
Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda followers cross the border to escape military operations on one side or the other, Musharraf said. The Pakistani army closely coordinates its operations along the border with US forces and the separate, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force on the Afghan side, he said. "A hammer and anvil effect is created with one operating and if they try to run across, there is a screen on the other (side) to net them in." I like that
The joint effort is paying off, he said. Pakistan alone has arrested 600 members of al-Qaeda throughout the country. And that
"Very recently, we surrounded a group and we killed nine, arrested 18," Musharraf said. And that too
He said Pakistan has "a very effective intelligence network" in its semi-autonomous tribal areas along the border. "In a region where even the British army never entered (during the colonial era) and our Pakistan army has entered only after a century, weâve got a very swift and very mobile hard-hitting quick reaction force. We are operating very effectively in our area. There is no chance whatsoever of al-Qaeda and the Taliban joining for any strategic threat across the border." He vehemently rejected a suggestion that Pakistan invite a large US force in to patrol the Pakistani side of the border. "No, sir, that is not a possibility at all," said Musharraf. "Itâs a very sensitive issue."
It's sensitive for Pakland's internal politix...
Pakistan has a large, experienced army and has no need of foreign forces on Pakistani territory, he said. "We have a very strong, effective, quick-reaction force who take action whenever we spot any al-Qaeda elements," Musharraf said. "Everyone is very satisfied with whatever weâve done. On our side, Pakistan operates. On the Afghan side, it is ISAF and US forces which are operating," he said. "There is total cooperation of the two sides, and things are functioning very well operationally. There is no need of change now."
There doesn't seem to have been a shootout between the two sides in a while...
Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces "are on the run", he said. "I am sure we will rid our country of this menace, of any foreigner operating in our country," Musharraf said.
Posted by: tipper ||
01/24/2004 12:17:07 AM ||
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could we not somehow cut off all food and fresh water in this region while at the same time launching a huge joint Allied and Pakistan 'invasion' of this area and pincer the bastards
#2
Jon, from what I have learned on Rantburg, I speculate that with the Pakistan military onboard, the Taliban would faxed version of our current plan after each coordination meeting. Working in conjunction with Pakistani forces would be exceeding dangerous for our troops and would ignite rebellion in large portions of the countryside. A coup would follow shortly and fundi jihadis would own their first nukes. I don't want UBL that bad.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:20 Comments ||
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Two decades ago, Saudi Arabia was classified as a wealthy nation with one of the best living standards in the world. Today, this classification no longer works. At the height of the oil boom in 1980, the per capita income of the Gulf Kingdom was as high as $17,000, which was one of the best rates in fixed prices. Last year, it did not exceed $8,200, lagging far behind most other Gulf oil producers and industrial nations.
That's what happens when you piss it all away on mosques and jihad...
Experts blamed poor economic performance, sharp fluctuations in oil prices and production, and the rapid growth in the country's population. "What do you expect from a country relying heavily on oil exports and whose population is growing faster than its economy," said Bushr Bakheet, a Saudi economist.
Except that the neighbors aren't having the same problems. Wonder why?
Saudi Arabia's dilemma is in a sharp contrast with neighbouring Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. The per capita income of those nations has steadily increased over the past two decades to keep them among the countries classified as superrich. It was not by magic nor was it a miracle. The simple reason was that the oil output of those countries is now much higher while Saudi production has sharply dwindled. Although Saudi Arabia's oil resources of around 261 billion barrels are as big as 52 times Qatar's five billion barrels, the per capita income of this tiny Gulf nation was as high as four times Saudi Arabia's income last year. During the 1980-2003 period, Saudi Arabia's private sector recorded a steady growth, galloping in some years by as fast as seven percent. But that was not the case in the oil and the government sectors, which have contracted in most years to offset the sharp expansion in the private sector. As a result, growth in the gross domestic product fell short of the population growth of around 3.5 per cent.
Figures by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) showed the per capita income of Saudi Arabia peaked at around 62,500 Saudi riyals in 1981, one of the highest in the world. In 2003, it dived to 30,450 riyals. Qatar's per capita income hit its highest level of around $29,000 last year as a result of higher oil production, mega gas projects and its low population. The UAE and Kuwait also had high per capita incomes of around $19,000 and $17,000 respectively. From just 30.4 billion riyals in 1971, Saudi Arabia's GDP skyrocketed to around 622.5 billion riyals in 1981, far outpacing growth in the population, which increased from nearly six million to 10.1 million. During that period, the Kingdom's oil production was growing fast to peak at nearly 10 million barrels per day in 1981 before it began its gradual decline in the following years. In the absence of high growth in other sectors, the GDP continued to plummet to reach as low as 320 billion riyals in 1987 while the population surged to 13.4 million. In the past few years, a recovery in oil prices and production allied with reforms and strong growth in some non-oil sectors to push the nominal GDP to its highest level of around 730 billion riyals in 2003. But in real prices, it was as low as half its level in 1981, considering inflation rates and the weakening dollar.
SAMA's figures showed Saudi Arabia's population more than doubled from 10.1 million in 1981 to around 24 million last year but the GDP expanded by only 13 per cent. The rapid growth in the population and lower than expected growth in the domestic economy has created a serious unemployment problem in Saudi Arabia, prompting calls for sacking foreign labour and radical reforms to ease dependence on volatile oil sales. A breakdown showed the Kingdom's oil sector was to blame for the plight as it plunged from a record 380 billion riyals in 1981 to 265 billion riyals last year. The private sector, however, swelled from nearly 181.5 billion riyals to 295 billion riyals in the same period.
Per capita incomes of some GCC states
* Saudi Arabia: Peaks at around 62,500 Saudi riyals in 1981, one of the highest in the world. In 2003, dives to 30,450 riyals.
* Qatar: Hits highest level of around $29,000 last year as a result of higher oil production, mega gas projects and its low population.
* UAE and Kuwait: High levels of around $19,000 and $17,000 respectively.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 18:25 ||
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domestic product fell short of the population growth of around 3.5 per cent.
Yikes! Population doubles every 21 years or so? Gonna run out of sand before long.
And they can't even use any of it to make cement either. Saudi Arabia has got to have something other than oil for natural resources. Personally if they were smart they would be wise to be getting into solar energy production. I man it is a friggin desert
#3
SA are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to oil production rates. If they crank up production, prices will fall, and they will lose out.
#4
the portion of the Saudi GNP that goes to 'development' is about 5%. Some of this is legit development but much of this goes to building mosques, paying imans, paying the salaries of the religious police (the ones who make sure women aren't driving or appearing without the body wrap) or paying for religious schools in other countries.
They seem to be a little late on this threat, given that their boss has been dead for nearly a year ...
A Yemeni Web site published on Saturday a statement purporting to come from the Yemeni wing of al Qaeda, in which it vowed to attack the United States to avenge the 2002 killing of its leader by a CIA drone aircraft. The statement, which could not be authenticated, said Osama bin Ladenâs network had over the past year prepared a "devastating and crushing blow in the United States that will happen soon". It would be in retaliation for the death of Ali al-Harthi, who was killed by a missile fired by the pilotless CIA drone at his car in eastern Yemen. The statement, published on the al-Sahwa and other Islamist Web sites, gave no details about the proposed attack.
That'd be the attack that's supposed to wipe out the USA on February 2nd...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 4:04:45 PM ||
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The imam of the Grand Mosque in Makkah yesterday urged Muslims all over the world to stand united and discard their divisions, taking inspiration from the Haj or annual pilgrimage. âThe Haj in its unique form and content is a practical course that emphasizes the need to unify Muslim ranks,â Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais told pilgrims who thronged the mosque âThe time has come for the Ummah, weakened by division, to make this season an opportunity to strengthen its unity.â The Haj, the fifth pillar of Islam, is the greatest manifestation of Muslim unity. Over two million pilgrims from around the world assemble in Makkah and other holy sites, wearing the same dress, chanting the same invocation âLabbaik Allahumma Labbaikâ or âGod, here I am answering you callâ, and perform the same rituals. Sheikh Sudais also urged the faithful to follow the moderate line of Islam and keep away from actions that would violate the sanctity of Haj. Nearly one million Muslim pilgrims have already arrived from abroad for Haj, which is to start on Jan. 30.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:04 ||
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Do the terror attacks, beatings, tramplings etc also demonstrate the unity of the ummah?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/24/2004 9:31 Comments ||
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Hat tip to Drudge TONY BLAIR has been embarrassed by his wifeâs displays of open animosity towards President Bush, according to a forthcoming biography of the Prime Minister. Cherie Blair is said to have made no secret of her conviction that Mr Bush âstoleâ the presidential election, and picked an argument with him over the death penalty during a private dinner. Loony lefty in bed with the PM
Although the Prime Minister was pragmatic about Mr Bushâs victory, Mrs Blair was far less sanguine about the Supreme Court decision that gave him the keys to the White House. She believed Al Gore had been ârobbedâ of the presidency and was hostile to the idea of her husband âcosyingâ up to the new President. Clinton mustâve nailed her with the charm, eh?
Even as they flew to Washington for their first meeting with the presidential couple, Mrs Blair was in no mood to curry favour, the book Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader by Philip Stephens, states. âCherie Blair still believed that Bush had stolen the White House from Gore,â he wrote. She asked more than once during the journey why they had to be so nice to âthese peopleâ. "Because, Cherie, you twit, theyâre going to join us in saving western civilaztion against the Arab death cults you love so much"
Mrs Blair scarcely concealed her impatience as the Blair team debated on the plane whether the gift he had brought for the President, a bust of Winston Churchill, was of sufficient quality for the Oval Office. They decided to find a better one and that Mr Blair would tell the President it was on its way. Mrs Blair was annoyed at the fuss but was overruled. Another bust was delivered months later. she gets overruled a lot, apparently....dumbass
The bookâs disclosures of Mrs Blairâs forthright views will cause embarrassment in Downing Street, because of Mr Blairâs good working relations with Mr Bush, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, although they will not surprise officials or ministers who know her well. She is known for expressing her views forcefully in private. loud mouth, small brain
Stephens writes that Mrs Blair behaved impeccably at her first meeting with the President âfor all her outspoken resentment on the flightâ and âto the great relief of her husband and aidesâ she had been at pains to make friends with Laura Bush. But when the Bushes came to Britain in the summer of 2001, Mrs Blair, âmore tribal in her politics than Tonyâ, according to a close family friend, embarrassed her husband. As the two couples sat down to dinner, with the officials no longer there, Mrs Blair could not resist an argument. She is a human rights lawyer and turned to the death penalty, a subject on which she has blunt views. She probably found that the President has strong views as well, and the decorum not to antagonize guests
Judicial executions were an immoral violation of human rights, an affront under the US Constitution as much as under European laws to the fundamental principles of justice, she said. This opinion was delivered to a man who as Governor of Texas signed warrants for more than 150 executions. "Hmmmm, could you pass the salt?"
Mr Blair was reported to have âsquirmedâ, even though he shares her opposition to the death penalty. The author says that when he asked Mr Blair about the incident during research for the book he looked uncomfortable â all he would say was that Cherie had raised the issue but as far as he was concerned the United States and Britain simply had different systems. Nice and safe at 10 Downing while the rest of the good citizens of Britain are defenseless against armed thugs and killers... human rights lawyer? How about hypocritical leftist harridan
A Downing Street spokesman said: âShe has always had a good relationship with President Bush and has of course discussed many issues with him, including capital punishment. The discussions have always been good-natured.â He didnât reciprocate the impropriety of arguing
Stephens also states that later in the evening Mr Bush had been embarrassed by his wife. Laura Bush had made it clear that her views on abortion were a great deal more liberal than his. Mrs Blair, who is writing a book about prime ministersâ spouses, has made her forthright views known several times in situations that have caused alarm at No 10. She issued an apology after saying during a visit to Britain by Queen Rania of Jordan in June 2002 that young Palestinians âfeel they have got no hope but to blow themselves upâ. Last month she said that âSaudi Arabiaâs image in the world is appallingâ over its treatment of women, in a speech in front of the Saudi Ambassador. oh well, one-for-two, batting .500
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/24/2004 9:44:51 AM ||
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#1
Someone should remind her that the spouse of a PM has the right to shut up and wave to the cameras. The right to open it is acquired through elections not through sleeping with the PM. Same thing for Mrs Clinton.
#3
Cherie Blair's and Laura Bush's political leanings are no more important to me than Hanoi Jane's or Michael Moore's . I feel sorry for Tony, though: apparently Cherie thinks that her rudeness will further her agenda. Must be some French genes, Cherie!
Posted by: Tom ||
01/24/2004 13:20 Comments ||
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#4
I respect Tony Blair more and more. I would have cracked under that type of pressure - if you know what I mean.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:30 Comments ||
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#6
Thus, by her comments and her behavior, Cherie Blair shows that her politeness and high class culture is only as deep as her makeup...
Note that Bush's response to Cherie's nailing him on the death penalty issue is not given. Was Tony Blair embarrassed by Cherie's discourtesy in raising the issue, or in sympathy to Cherie's shocked reaction when Bush's reponse not only nailed HER between the eyes, but doubtless showed that he wasn't a moron? Why else would the presidential response not be given, save to preserve the illusion that he's a moron?
#7
Ptah: That's exactly why the the reason wasn't given. Stephens only asked two of the four people who knew what happened. He didn't ask President Bush what his response was and Mrs. Blair sure as hell didn't tell him.
This book is just another attempt to smear President Bush. It's a shame that Tony Blair has been dragged into this by his wife.
Posted by: Charles ||
01/24/2004 17:11 Comments ||
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"This book is just another attempt to smear President Bush"
No offense, Charles, but why would you think that a biography of Tony Blair would have the purpose of smearing Bush?
Strange it may seem to you, but not *every* thing revolves around America and/or Bush. This book in particular probably revolves around Blair, if I may judge from its title.
In an era of anti-American and anti-Israel political correctness Australia has become the leader of a counterrevolution based on morality and common sense.
Instead of double-talk and double standards from much of the self-declared "international community," Australian leaders consistently say what they mean, and mean what they say.
When the head of Sydney Universityâs Peace Foundation emptied the concept of peace of any content by honoring Hanan Ashrawi, the PLOâs star propagandist and leader in the demonization of Israel, officials noted the absurdity of the decision and stayed far away.
The policies adopted and implemented by Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer â who is in Israel for an official visit â are characterized by a combination of backbone, courage and principle, which have paid off well for the Australian people.
Canberra is now widely recognized as a leader in the response to terrorism and the restoration of international stability.
In sharp contrast to European politicians and diplomats whose policies on terrorism and the Middle East have been total failures, the Australians are increasingly welcomed as realistic and effective.
Like the Bush administration and, on occasion, Tony Blairâs Britain, the Howard/Downer foreign policy recognizes the inherent immorality and transmission of weakness in evenhanded responses to terrorism and hatred.
Australia has consistently avoided being caught in the demonization of Israel, joining a handful of countries in opposing the General Assembly resolution which asked the International Court of Justice to investigate Israelâs separation barriers.
In contrast, Canada and most of Europe took a carefully evenhanded and entirely unprincipled position by abstaining.
THESE POLICIES go beyond words and UN votes, and include a direct role in the war against terrorism. After el-Qaidaâs 9/11 terror attacks, Australia was one of the few countries that recognized the essential need to respond without political hesitation or ethical equivocation.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq Australian forces showed an extraordinarily high degree of professionalism and dedication. Their special forces operating in the large desert regions of Western Iraq ensured the protection of Israel by prevented the launching of Scud missiles.
And before the war that ousted Saddam Hussein and his regime, the Australian navy played a leading part in the effective enforcement of the sanctions regime.
Although critics have ridiculed the Australian government for acting as Washingtonâs "deputy sheriff," these policies have been both principled and served Australiaâs national interest.
Although Australia is a continent unto itself and its location in the Asia-Pacific is far from the insanity of the Middle East, there are many local sources of instability and threat.
But in contrast to Europeâs hand-wringing and ineffective policies in the Balkans, Australia acted with effectiveness to end conflicts and impose order in both East Timor and the Solomon Islands.
Dismissing the criticism from Indonesia and others, Canberra sent troops to East Timor to end the violence and help the creation of an independent state and a new reality for its residents. Where other countries only pay lip service to human rights, this Australian policy places the emphasis on reality, including the right to security against terror.
The depth of the Australian commitment to universal human rights was clearly demonstrated in the case of the Iranian Jews arrested and tried in Iran. An Australian observer went from the embassy in Teheran to Shiraz in order to be present at the trial, letting the Iranian leadership know that its actions were being monitored and that Australia would not stay silent. Such actions may have prevented the Iranian authorities from issuing death sentences.
Recognition of the achievements created by this "both feet firmly planted on the ground" approach has also earned Australia the respect of many countries around the world.
The governmentâs critics warned that its very visible role and dispatch of troops to create stability in East Timor would lead to a crisis in relations with Indonesia and China. But instead of a crisis, Chinaâs leaders have gone out of their way to develop good relations with Asiaâs other emerging regional power, and stepped up contracts to Australian firms in energy development and other areas.
Widening the focus to the global dimension, Australia has been elected unanimously to replace Libya as head of the UN Human Rights Commission, creating conditions for undoing the enormous damage caused by the politicization of this organization in the days of Mary Robinson and the infamous Durban conference on racism. This is an opportunity to reverse the abuse of this and other human rights groups as frameworks for anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda.
For all these reasons, as well as steadily increasing trade with Israel and a firm rejection of anti-Semitism â old and new â Alexander Downer, Australiaâs foreign minister, deserves a very warm welcome in Jerusalem.
#1
Australia has a particular problem that the USA and Canada share to a lesser degree. The problem is a capital city (Canberra) which is effectively a 100% government town. Its a while since I was there but I rate it as one of the strangest places I have ever been. The whole place has this erie uniformity about it, and this is reflected in its politics which are solidly left wing and PC. This means the government apparatus is Left wing and PC, while the general population is mildly right wing and very un-PC.
John Howard is the first Australian prime minister in modern times to refuse to live in Canberra and has done a lot to shift the public debate towards positions of both pragmatic self-interest and moral principle and away from the ideological posturing the Left indulges in.
I am hopeful that the Howard government will be re-elected this year and that the changes brought by the Howard government will withstand a change to a Labor government (when it is eventually elected) which has been moving steadily to the right over the last few years as Howard has redefined the middle ground of Australian politics.
Canberra's not really that bad - I live there. There are a lot of very noisy lefties but it is a very solidly middle-class place and the great mass of the populace is apolitical. The lefties think they own the place but when push comes to shove they just get ignored.
The newspaper (Canberra Times) is very solidly lefty, but it has a low circulation and no influence.
If nothing else Canberria is a great place to raise kids!
Posted by: Russell ||
01/24/2004 23:10 Comments ||
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I agree with Russell, great place to live.
Should keep in mind that the PM's electorate of Bennelong is bang in the middle of Sydney (includes the Opera House) and as PM he gets to live in Kirribilly House, a grand house right on the harbour. The left go on about his "refusal" to live in Canberra to create another phoney "crisis"
Vice President Dick Cheney defended U.S. foreign policy and the decision to go to war in Iraq, in a speech to world leaders. But he also struck a conciliatory tone Saturday as he urged the United Nations to help with Iraqâs postwar political transition and good-naturedly took issue with critics in Europe who believe the United States sees itself as an imperial power. Cheney arrived in Rome on Saturday evening, where he was to meet with the pope and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Earlier Saturday, in a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Cheney did not retreat from administration policy but amplified it, saying the administration believed using force in Iraq had boosted its credibility in the campaign to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. But he said the Bush administration views military force as a last resort, and favored trying to resolve disputes diplomatically, in conjunction with international allies and institutions. But with allies like these...
"Saddam Hussein can no longer harbor and support terrorists, and his long efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction are finally at an end," Cheney told the annual gathering of political, business and cultural leaders at the alpine retreat. Anti-American sentiment ran deep at last yearâs gathering, because of the divide in Europe over whether to wage war in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell was the most senior U.S. official to attend last yearâs forum, and administration officials said the decision for Cheney to attend this year was, in part, an effort to convince critics in Europe that the administration wants to mend fences. "Cooperation among our governments, and effective international institutions, are even more important today than they have been in the past," Cheney said in his speech. He was polite and low-key when taking issue with the view voiced in France and elsewhere that Europe must unite against what critics see as a U.S. administration too willing to unilaterally flex its military and economic muscle. Hey, if youâve got it, flaunt it!
"Our choice is not between a unipolar world and a multipolar world," the vice president said. "Our choice is for a just, free and democratic world. That requires the insights, sacrifices and resources of all democratic nations." Administration critics view Cheney as an architect of what they consider to be a "go-it-alone" foreign policy, so it was noteworthy that his speech included a conciliatory call for international help in Iraq. "We urge all democratic nations -- and the United Nations -- to answer the Iraqi Governing Councilâs call for support for the people of Iraq in making the transition to democracy," Cheney said... In his speech, Cheney said promoting economic and political reform across the Middle East would ultimately be the strongest weapon in the war on terrorism, and he said Western powers must nudge along reforms, regardless of whether the country at issue is Syria or Iran, or more pro-Western nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. President Mohammad Khatami of Iran took part in the forum. Many Europeans have applauded Iranâs recent promise to allow international inspection of its nuclear program. Cheney said the administration was "generally supportive" of the European engagement with Iran, but the senior official who briefed reporters sounded a skeptical note, saying it was "important to be aggressive" in the inspections and that the international community needed to maintain pressure and be "very careful that it doesnât just become a head fake by the Iranians." In a sign of lingering suspicions about U.S. motives, Cheney was asked to respond to the notion that the United States was seeking an empire through military superiority. "We donât see ourselves in that way," Cheney said. Cracking a smile, he said that if the United States had had imperial or territorial ambitions, that much of Europe and other countries that U.S. troops helped liberate would still be under U.S. control. "Thatâs not the way we operate," Cheney said. Sometimes, you gotta point out the obvious. But the fact that he was asked to respond to this is breathtaking.
In his speech, Cheney said a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict would be critical to winning the broader war on terrorism. Although he said Israel should "avoid actions that undermine the long-term viability of a two-state solution," he made clear that the administration views Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as the biggest obstacle to peace. "Peace will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, tolerate and profit from corruption and maintain ties to terrorist groups."
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 6:24:34 PM ||
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Maybe the French are starting to get a clue? Of course, I am an optimist....
A well-known French comic will be prosecuted for on-air antics that included dressing up as an Orthodox Jew and decrying an "American-Zionist" axis, the Paris prosecutorâs office said Friday. Dieudonne MâBala MâBalaâs performance, which drew criticism from the French prime minister, came during a prime-time TV show, "On Ne Peut Pas Plaire a Tout le Monde," ("You Canât Please Everybody") on Dec. 1. As part of the skit, the comic raised an arm and shouted "Isra-Heil!" â a reference to the Nazi slogan, "Heil Hitler." Prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation Dec. 24 into whether the comicâs skit and "incriminating comments" constituted racial defamation. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has said he was "shocked" by the performance, and the showâs host, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, apologized for the episode. Several Jewish groups complained. On Thursday, Justice Minister Dominique Perben said that "justice would be inflexible" if racism is proven. "Racism is an evil that I donât want to see develop in this country," Perben said. France has been battling a wave of anti-Semitic violence for more than two years, often involving attacks against Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers.
I take the same issue with this that I do with the punishment of the kids who nominated a white South African as African-American of the Year. In most cases — and I exclude imams in the mosques calling for jihad — the way to deal with this sort of thing is to throw rotten fruit and call the perpetrator names. That's what he's doing. Bringing the Majesty of the State™ into it makes me queasy. It's too easy to do it in other cases, for instance people who point out that we're at war with inbred, eye-rolling limb choppers whose civilization hasn't managed to contribute anything of substance to human progress since somewhere around 1300 A.D.
Posted by: Desert Blondie ||
01/24/2004 3:05:43 AM ||
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"Racism is an evil that I donât want to see develop in this country"
Oops, too late.
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 7:37 Comments ||
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Last night I watched several stand-up guys on TV that were pretty funny. One was Vietnamese and two were black. None of their routines would have passed PC muster. Many of the jokes were aimed at undercutting not reenforcing racial and ethnic stereotypes. The routines were riblad but culturally healthy and protected by the first amendment. If they had offended me, I would have changed the channel or watched the commercials to see which companies I needed to schedule for individual economical reprisals.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:55 Comments ||
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This is an absolutely dumb way to deal racism. And watch. Just as they felt obliged to add skull caps and large crosses to their ban on head scarves (also stupid) they will now feel obliged to go out and arrest a Christian and a Jewish comic for "balance".
Russiaâs foreign minister on Friday dismissed French suggestions that there was open war in Chechnya, saying Moscow was battling terrorism there and urged Europeans to be more objective about the problem.
They don't have the problem, so they concentrate on "human rights." It's so much easier to be a Monday-morning quarterback...
Moscowâs tactics in Chechnya are a touchy subject in Russia — President Vladimir Putin once offered to have a French journalist castrated after he asked a critical question — and it is always quick to rebut any perceived criticism. "I cannot agree with the statement that war is going on in Chechnya... It is a fight against international terrorism," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters after a meeting with French counterpart Dominique de Villepin. "We very much want, and it is in Russiaâs interests, that Europe has an objective understanding of the processes that are under way in Chechnya."
They've got an ideological understanding. That's a different thing entirely. The Washington Post has the same problem.
Moscow has been fighting to keep the region in Russia for nine years, refusing to negotiate with rebels who ruled a de facto independent Chechnya for three years after 1996. It says elections and a referendum last year firmly tied the rebel region to Russia and put it on the path to peace, but security forces die almost daily in escalating violence. "Chechnya has been in a situation of open war for too many years," Villepin had said in a speech earlier in the day. "We know well, here as elsewhere, that there cannot be a solution founded only on a security-based strategy. Only a political process can restore peace and ease the sufferings of the civilian population."
Only killing Maskhadov and Basayev, and either killing or chasing out the Arabs, will solve the problem.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:38:05 AM ||
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President Vladimir Putin once offered to have a French journalist castrated
Isn't Putin about 100 years too late?
Posted by: ed ||
01/24/2004 3:19 Comments ||
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I doubt that Putin has much respect for Chiraq. Putin understands that he could say almost anything outrageously anti-french and receive only a mild rebuke.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:59 Comments ||
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Putin understands that he could say almost anything outrageously anti-french and receive only a mild rebuke.
Rumsfield has noted the same thing. By not saying the obvious, Bush shows he's got more class than, say, Cherie Blair?
Bulgariaâs National Security Service has received no specific information about any people in Bulgaria to be organizing terrorist attacks, the countryâs Interior Minister Georgi Petkanov said Friday. The Ministerâs statement came as a response to a question addressed to him during the Parliament session. He also refuted speculations that there were emissaries of the al Qaeda and Hezbollah terror networks operating in the Bulgarian towns of Velingrad and Sarnitsa. Earlier in the month media claimed that missionaries recruit volunteers among the poor population of the Rhodope mountains and offer them a USD 5,000 bounty to fight for the cause of liberating Iraq. The agents toured the regions of Balkan countries with predominantly Muslim population, convinced that the European Muslims should fight against the invaders in Iraq. The missionaries reportedly assured the Muslims that the service in Iraq does not threaten their life, but would only prove them to be real Muslims.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:22:52 AM ||
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....poor population of the Rhodope mountains and offer them a USD 5,000 bounty to fight for the cause of liberating Iraq. The missionaries reportedly assured the Muslims that the service in Iraq does not threaten their life, but would only prove them
Send them to fight in a war zone,but not to worry they won't die.
Sounds like the Rope-a-dope mountains are apptly named.
"Brigitte's wife" sounds so... Franco-Lesbian.
The lawyer for the Australian wife of suspected Islamic militant Willie Brigitte has confirmed she has been released by French police without charge.
"Le Gume, we must let her go! We have nothing to hold her on!"
"But Inspecteur! She was an Anglican who became a Jewish lesbian and then became the wife of an Islamist!"
"True, Le Gume. True. But the only laws against that aren't made in La Belle France!"
"Sacre bleu! We must... go to the UN?"
"Non. Higher than that... There, there, Le Gume. Don't take it so hard! Here! Have some cheese!"
"Mmmm! It smells like feet! My favorite!"
Melanie Brown spent three days being quizzed by France's domestic intelligence agency DST at the request of anti-terrorist magistrate Jean-Francois Ricard. She was picked up after flying in to Paris to visit her husband in prison. Mr Brigitte, 35, spent five months in Sydney before being deported to France on October 17 and placed under judicial investigation for terrorism-related offences. Ms Brown's lawyer, Stephen Hopper, says she was released this morning Australian time. "She's in good health, she's obviously tired, it's late at night in France and she's been in there for around three days and wants to have a good night's sleep," he said.
"Then she'll probably do some shopping, or go cruising for chicks."
"We haven't had the opportunity to have a full discussion with her, but she's OK." Mr Hopper says he understands French anti-terrorism legislation allows people to be held without charge for up to four days. âShe could have been detained for a little bit longer, but obviously the French authorities have managed to canvas all the business they needed to,â he said. âIn fact, she's been released a little bit earlier than the time she could have been held, so we're quite grateful to the French authorities for that.â
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:15 ||
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LOL
The article got in the way of hilarious dialogue.
The al-Qaida network has been severely destabilized but not destroyed by the war on terror and still represents a "very motivated and very dangerous" threat, the head of France's domestic intelligence agency said Friday. At the same time, French intelligence has over the past 18 months monitored "a surge in strength" by terror cells that have no organizational links with al-Qaida but which "exist all over Europe," Pierre de Bousquet de Florian said in an interview with The Associated Press.
They're component parts. A part of them, I'd guess, is allied with or controlled by al-Tawhid and possibly (Dan's opinion) out of Chechnya. Another large part is made up of Takfiri, who just want to kill infidels.
One such cell was dismantled in France over the past year, with the latest arrests coming this month. France says the cell planned chemical attacks against Russian targets. Generally, the threat of terrorism for France "is real and of a high level," he said.
You've only got to miss one of those cells...
The 49-year-old former aide to President Jacques Chirac heads the Directorate for Territorial Surveillance, known by its French initials DST. Created in 1944 to fight espionage, the DST has evolved to take a lead in French efforts to combat terrorism. It still handles counterespionage and other security threats, including weapons proliferation. Bousquet de Florian said that because France opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, it appeared to have become less of an immediate target for Islamic terrorists. But he said that was not why France opposed the military campaign and he indicated that this unsought-for benefit would likely be short-lived. Bousquet de Florian said France has no indication that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida had links. But he said France has evidence that Saddam's regime financed another group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, which the United States and the European Union have branded a terrorist organization.
Also the PLF and Ansar al-Islam...
France cracked down on the Mujahedeen Khalq's French operations last June, raiding over a dozen sites including its walled headquarters in Auvers-Sur-Oise, north of Paris. More than 150 people were detained. The Mujahedeen Khalq is an Iranian opposition group which for years fought Iran's Islamic leadership from Iraq with the backing of Saddam's regime. It was disarmed by U.S. forces in Iraq soon after major hostilities ended in May.
I still haven't quite figured that. Once the U.S. had defanged them, they ceased to be a real threat. But I may have done the same thing. Certainly I'd do the same with Hamas or IJ...
As for al-Qaida, Bousquet de Florian said it "has been destabilized to a large extent" but "retains a capacity to carry out operations."
I think we've hit it hard, but the best thing we can do is stop if from finding a new home. Somewhere, in the hinterlands of someplace nobody pays attention to, there should soon be another little independent enclave like Ansar had in Kurdistan springing up.
"Very apparently," November's suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, were, if not ordered by al-Qaida, then "validated by the heads of al-Qaida or by Osama bin Laden himself," he said. Despite losing leaders, fighters, training camps and financing to the war on terror, al-Qaida "remains a structure that is very motivated and very dangerous," said Bousquet de Florian.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:05 ||
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These French intelligence guys are just plain geniuses aren't they.
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 7:24 Comments ||
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Officials disciplined students who [advocated] a white student from South Africa for the school's "Distinguished African American Student Award." Peggy Rupprecht, spokeswoman for the Westside Community Schools district, said administrators at Westside High School discovered more than a hundred of the posters throughout the school first thing Monday â Martin Luther King Jr. Day. "The content of the posters, they believed, was inappropriate and insensitive to some members of our school community," Rupprecht said.
When it's unlawful â in this case, not allowed by the rules â to be "insensitive," then you're on the way to true repression. When I die and go to hell, my punishment will probably be having to spend eternity walking on eggs to avoid offending the overly sensitive.
The award has been given the last eight years to an outstanding black student as part of the school's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, she said. The poster pictured junior Trevor Richards, 16, smiling and making a thumbs-up sign. A message at the top encouraged votes for him for next year's award. Karen Richards said her son and his friends were not trying to hurt anyone. "My son is not a racist," she told the Omaha World-Herald. "He has black friends, friends from Bangladesh and Egypt. Color has never been an issue in our home."
Of course, he couldn't be a racist if he wanted to be, which I consider to be a bad thing. In this case, he's too young to actually understand the term. He's a high school student. He's a goof. All high school students are goofs in one way or another. And the school administration utterly lacks any vestige of a sense of humor. I'd call the school administration intrinsically racist, as well as oppressively authoritarian. I stand by the boy's right to like or dislike individual members of all races. I heartily condemn the school's "protected species" approach to categorizing its students.
Two of her son's friends were disciplined along with him, she said. A fourth student was punished for circulating a petition Tuesday criticizing the practice of recognizing only black student achievement with the award. Tylena Martin, a junior, said the poster had been on the door to her homeroom class where she is the only black student. She said she felt hurt by the posters and the backlash that ensued.
Tylena, also a goof, should work on getting a life.
According to 2002-2003 state statistics, 56 Of Westside's 1,632 students are black. Well he is African and American... I guess that skin color is all that matters to some folks - and this time its not the KKK. Whatever happened to Dr King's statement that we "should not be judged by the color of our skin but the content of our character" -- that sound too Republican for the liberals these days?
Posted by: OldSpook ||
01/24/2004 3:46:35 AM ||
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I've never been comfortable with the term African American the way it is being used. If my ancestors immigrated from Morrocco wouldn't I also be African American. There is more than one "racial" type living on the African continent and the "Negroid" has been just as expansionist and empire building in the past as anybody else. The reason for the quotation marks is I do not like race tags or ethnic tags. We are all human beings (even if some act as subhumans) and in this country we are all Americans or should be.
#2
My HR guy had this same problem when inprocessing a native of Rhodesia (naturalized US citizen) who happened to be a white fellow. The new hire insisted on being listed on the forms as "Africa-American". It actually was comical to listen the the HR slug guy try to explain why he didn't fit the definition. I'm convinced the guy raised hell just to stick a finger in the eye of HR. Oh yeah - he was officially listed as a Africa-American.
Thunder boomed overhead and rainwater pooled on the empty streets of the capital as the wife and eldest daughter of Ahmed Said Khadr, their faces veiled behind black Islamic headscarves, described for the first time their familyâs relationship with the clan of Osama bin Laden. Mr. Khadr, a Canadian and devout Muslim whom Pakistani officials confirmed yesterday was killed by the military three months ago in a shootout near the Afghan border, first met bin Laden in 1985 when they were both running money into Afghanistan to support the mujahedeen guerrillas battling the Soviets.
I'm happy to hear he's dead. I hope it was very painful. Kind of late for uluation, but I'll have a nice glass or two of underpriced champagne in celebration...
"He knew Osama bin Laden," his adult daughter Zaynab admitted in an interview with the National Post. "If you want to say they were lovers friends, well, they were lovers friends 20 years ago. During the Afghanistan war, Osama bin Laden and my father were taking money into Afghanistan. "Is that a crime now?"
He wasn't killed 20 years ago, was he?
Sitting in their lawyerâs office, on the bottom floor of a large home guarded by a locked metal gate, Zaynab and her mother, Maha Elsamnah, spoke openly about their familyâs mounting troubles, which they attribute to anti-Muslim sentiment. "They have destroyed our lives," Ms. Elsamnah said.
Nothing to do with Pop's actions, of course, or those of the boyz...
But they also spoke about happier times, like when their family would meet the bin Laden family at social events and religious holidays in Afghanistan. "We knew them. We talked. They had kids our age," said Zaynab, who is in hiding in Islamabad with her younger sister and mother. "You see we were living in Kabul and we were living in Jalalabad," explained Ms. Elsamnah. It was only natural that they should socialize with families that, like them, were foreign Arabs. "By nature, you try to find somebody who speaks your language. Osama bin Ladenâs family are usually kept away, they are not mixing, so we only meet if they have weddings. They were just normal human beings."
"See? Nothing out of the ordinary. We used to go out of our way to socialize with people who spoke Canadian, too."
Bin Ladenâs wives would sometimes ask the Khadrs to take them to see a doctor. "They would come to me only to go to the hospital," Ms. Elsamnah said. The Khadrs never gave money to bin Laden, she said. He was so wealthy, he did not need it. "Maybe we took money, but we never gave."
"We were hangers-on, members of his entourage."
The family has not yet been notified that DNA tests have confirmed that Mr. Khadr is dead, but they have long suspected as much. "I prefer him to be dead than in Guantanamo," said Zaynab, whose teenage brother Omar is detained at the U.S. military base in Cuba. "But even if he is dead, itâs nice to know."
"I find it so nice to know Pop is dead. Now he's cavorting with 72 doe-eyed virgins instead of trying to marry me off to that 78-year-old guy down the street with the soup stains on his turban."
His death closes a file that has preoccupied Canadian security and intelligence officials for more than a decade. Mr. Khadr came to Canada from Egypt in the 1970s, studied computer engineering at the University of Ottawa and married Ms. Elsamnah, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, he joined Human Concern International, an Ottawa Muslim charity that was then funded by the Canadian governmentâs aid agency, CIDA, and went off to Pakistan to help the millions of Afghans displaced by the fighting. But by the late 1980s, Canadian intelligence began receiving reports that Mr. Khadr was a fundraiser and money courier helping finance the mujahedeen resistance, and that his refugee camps along with border in Pakistan were being used by Islamic fighters. Mr. Khadr returned to Canada in 1992 after his leg was injured in an explosion, but he went back to Pakistan as soon as he was healed. He was living in Peshawar in 1995 when the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad was bombed, killing 17. Mr. Khadr was arrested as the alleged financier of the operation. But Jean Chretien, then the prime minister, intervened in the case during a state visit to Pakistan. Mr. Khadr was freed by the courts a few weeks later.
"Jean and Pop always got along so well together! They had so much in common!"
Mr. Khadr again returned to Toronto with his wife and six children, most of them Canadian-born. He soon went back to Pakistan to continue his work, this time as part of a Toronto-based group called Health and Education Project International (HEPI). He eventually moved his entire family to Afghanistan and began working closely with the Taliban.
"He had a lot in common with them, too."
That did not mean he supported the Taliban or its ally al-Qaeda, said Ms. Elsamnah. It was just that a foreign aid worker had to deal with the government in power, and that was the Taliban. "We donât care which government controls Afghanistan, itâs the cause," she said. Zaynab added, "My father used to say, âIf the Taliban are bad, what did the children do?â"
Nice, firm tug at the old heartstrings there...
Zaynab said it was not unusual for her father to be at odds with the Taliban. Once, she recalled, her father took over an abandoned building that had been an office of KHAD, the Afghan secret police. After he fixed it up, the Taliban wanted it back. Mr. Khadr was so angry he sent a letter to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, saying he would not leave the building until he was compensated for the money he had spent on repairs and renovations. The Taliban was also not pleased when Mr. Khadr opened a school for girls, who under the strict religious codes of the former regime, were not entitled to an education. The Taliban never closed the school "but it was a fight, we really had to fight to get those schools running," Ms. Elsamnah said. A petition filed in Pakistan supreme court last month by a lawyer representing the family (they are asking the court to order the government to reveal the whereabouts of Mr. Khadr and his youngest son Abdul Karim) said Mr. Khadr "since 1983 has devoted his life [to] helping the suffering human beings globally in general and in Pakistan and Afghanistan in particular."
"That's how he came to get bumped off in a shootout..."
His dedication stemmed from his Islamic beliefs, his wife said. "Human relief work is part of our belief and I think itâs our right to collect money." There is no proof he financially supported terrorism, she said. "The Canadians donât have anything against us, only that we were collecting funds for our projects, and we were never getting that much funds."
"Yez got nuttin' on us, coppers! Nuttin'!"
The court petition claims that Mr. Khadr established five clinics and two hospitals in Peshawar, schools, vocational institutes and an emergency mobile clinic, a camp named Hope Village, Makkah Mukarama Hospital, and agricultural and irrigation projects. According to the petition, his organization HEPI distributed medical supplies collected in Toronto to Kabul hospitals, financed the Jalalabad public hospital and fed hundreds of "orphans, widows, disabled and needy government employees." He also gave "computer training for the government employees from 14 departments and provided required computer sets for the program." Khadr and his son Abdul Karim "are innocents," reads the petition. "They have served the suffering humanity as declared by their conscious [sic] and teaching of Islam just because they are although Canadian nationals but originally Arabs [sic] Muslims."
"That shootout was all a misunderstanding!"
When bin Laden began lashing out against the West in the late 1990s, training Muslim extremists at camps inside Afghanistan and orchestrating attacks such as the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Mr. Khadrâs dealings with the Saudi terrorist and his Taliban hosts put him on international watch lists. It was at about that time that Mr. Khadr began sending his sons to bin Ladenâs training camps. His eldest, Abdullah, went first and is described in Canadian intelligence reports as the suspected commander of an al-Qaeda camp in Logar, where his father ran a school. The Khadrs sent their next oldest son, Abdurahman, then just 15, to Khaldun Camp, the notorious base that trained such terrorists as Ahmed Ressam, the Montreal-based Algerian terrorist who tried to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. Hashmat AliHabib, the Khadrâs lawyer, described the camps as akin to Scout camps in the West.
"Only with high explosives. And occasional experiments with chemical weapons."
But Abdurahman himself has admitted he received weapons training there. His mother portrays the training camp as a form of tough love for a youth who was unfocused and smoked cigarettes. Ms. Elsamnah said Abdurahman had run away from school in Karachi and taken a bus back to Peshawar. "He wants to play and have fun," she said. "We needed to get him into something just to be disciplined."
"Jihad was just the thing! Any parent would have done it!"
"They did go to training camps and the past 20 years many people have been going," added his sister Zaynab. "Yes, they do weapons training," she said, but that was just the way it was in Afghanistan. "From a religious point of view, a Muslim had to know how to defend himself."
Afghanistan is, of course, crawling with... ummm... uhhh... people who want to kill Muslims."
Mr. Habib worded it differently. "The Koranic teaching is you keep your horse ready." Ms. Elsamnah compared their situation to a well-known Hollywood movie. "Remember that film 'Home Alone'? They said, âThis is my house and Iâm going to defend it.â" The family felt so strongly about Afghanistan, they were prepared to fight, Ms. Elsamnah said. "We believed so much it was ours we were ready to defend it." But the Khadrs never got the chance. When the Americans started bombing Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, they fled toward Pakistan. They left Kabul in one of hundreds of trucks loaded with people, bags, blankets, pillows and guns. They went to Logar, in eastern Afghanistan. Abdurahman and Omar had gone there, too, but Abdurahman returned to Kabul the next day and was captured by the Northern Alliance, which handed him to the Americans, who took him to Guantanamo. Omar ended up at a suspected al-Qaeda base near Khost, Afghanistan, which was raided by American and Afghan troops in July, 2002. He allegedly killed an American medic with a hand grenade but was shot, captured and taken to Guantanamo. (Ms. Elsamnah said the boys were targeted because of their father. "They just happen to be the children of Mr. Khadr.")
Yeah. And Omar just happened to toss the grenade. If he hadn't been one of the Khadrkiddies nobody would have said anything...
The Khadr women stayed for a while at Logar but eventually fled across the border into Pakistan and made their way to Islamabad, where they are supported by the charity of locals. Mr. Khadr also crossed the border but remained in Waziristan, a region of Pakistan under the control of tribal authorities sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Because Mr. Khadr was crippled, and had trouble walking, Abdul Karim went to the region late last summer to live with him. The 14-year-old boy wrote his mother in September asking for food and warm clothes. But the border region was not a perfect sanctuary. Pakistani and U.S. forces were operating intensely there, hunting for bin Laden and his followers. Intelligence reports indicated that a group of foreign al-Qaeda fighters was hiding in five mud-walled houses five kilometres from the Afghan border. A large military unit was dispatched to flush them out. On Oct. 2, the Pakistanis surrounded the targets and told them to surrender. Instead, the Arab fighters opened fire.
That's what harmless aid workers usually do, isn't it?
The gun battle lasted all day, and by the time it was over at least eight suspected al-Qaeda members were dead and 18 had been captured. The troops seized what was described as ââa massive cacheââ of anti-tank mines, grenades, rockets, machine guns and foreign currency.
The normal implements of providing Islamic aid and comfort...
Most of the dead were named in local newspapers, and Mr. Khadr was not among them, but military sources were also quoted as saying some of the bodies could not be identified. Even the captured Abdul Karim did not recognize his father when he was shown a photo of the corpse. Eventually, a DNA comparison confirmed the death of the man known locally by the alias as Abu Abdurahman Al-Kanadi, or The Canadian. During the interview, Ms. Elsamnah lifted her veil to sip from a tea cup, but not high enough to see her face underneath. All that was visible were her dark eyes and strong hands. Her daughter sat to her right, dressed identically.
Two bundles of Islamic potatoes...
Asked if she regretted having taken her children to one of the worldâs most troubled and dangerous places, Ms. Elsamnah said it was better to raise a child in an Islamic society than in Canada, where she said young people take drugs and have casual sex. "I am not sorry that I have raised them to believe in their rights and protect them."
"My boyz were better off growing up in Afghanistan, where instead of taking drugs and having casual sex they could smoke opium fresh from the poppy and rape women from the lesser races..."
She said if the Canadian government gives her a new passport (her old one has expired), she intends on resuming her fundraising so she can reopen the aid offices closed down since the Talibanâs collapse. But Canadian authorities are refusing to issue passports to her and her daughter, saying they have lost their old ones too many times. If they want to return, they will have to get travel permits for the journey. The Khadrs said they are afraid to return to Canada on travel permits because if the government continues to deny them passports, they will be unable to leave again, and they want to continue living in Pakistan. "We love to be in an Islamic society, and this is our right," Ms. Elsamnah said. She said that only Zaynab lost her passport, and only once.
Then stay there and rot.
One of the men helping the Khadr women is Khalid Khawaja, a friend of bin Ladenâs who served in the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, during the Soviet war, airdropping weapons to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. He later gained notoriety as one of the sources who met with Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl before he was murdered and warned him he could be at risk.
Ain't life crawling with coincidences?
Wearing a light brown pakul hat and a grey herringbone jacket over his shalwar kamiz, he sat in the Khadrsâ lawyerâs office and ate fried fish as he spoke about the Khadrs in heroic terms. "They left all the luxuries of Canada and all that and moved to Afghanistan because they wanted to live according to their faith," he said. But he said they have been targeted because they are Muslims and because Canada is a "slave" to the Americans. The days of Western power will soon be over, he added. "We love death," he smiled. "I am looking forward to it like a beloved. You run away from death, so how can you win?"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:30:52 PM ||
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The days of Western power will soon be over, he added. "We love death," he smiled. "I am looking forward to it like a beloved. You run away from death, so how can you win?"
Sound almost Japanese. From, say, the 1940s...
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
01/24/2004 12:37 Comments ||
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Not exactly, the Japaneese loved Japan not death.
#3
....spoke openly about their familyâs mounting troubles, which they attribute to anti-Muslim sentiment."They have destroyed our lives," Ms. Elsamnah said.
Pro-muslim sentiment has destroyed a 'few' lives too,Zaynab. Literally. Like in actually dead.
#5
the Khadrâs lawyer, described the camps as akin to Scout camps in the West.
"Only with high explosives. And occasional experiments with chemical weapons."
Umm, actually, we experimented with explosives and chemicals at the Boy Scout camps I went to. Of course, the scoutmaster almost never found out.
Posted by: Carl in NH ||
01/24/2004 18:01 Comments ||
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But Canadian authorities are refusing to issue passports to her and her daughter, saying they have lost their old ones too many times. [....] She said that only Zaynab lost her passport, and only once.
Somebody is lying here, and I think it's these two Moslem knuckleheads, not the Canadian authorities.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
01/25/2004 0:08 Comments ||
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You want my honest opinion on this, the whole Khadr clan looks, acts, and smells like a smaller Canadian version of the al-Ghamdis and should probably be regarded as such.
The family of a Canadian teenager being held by Pakistani authorities is trying to get him back home. Abdul Karim Khadr, 14, was wounded and taken into custody when Pakistani security forces raided an alleged al-Qaeda hideout last October. Damn, the initial reports said he was dead ...
Khadr is the third member of his family to be taken into custody by counter-terrorism forces. His sister, Zaynab, who lives in Pakistan, says Canadian authorities contacted her on Thursday. She was told Karim was injured in a gunfight when taken into custody back in October. Itâs the first news sheâs heard of her brother in months. "They said that he has an arm injury and that it is healing very well. And they said he has a spinal injury and that he canât feel his lower half, from his waist down."
They don't tell you about that part when they're recruiting, do they? Hope he has a colostomy bag and daily pain...
Karimâs brothers and father are also accused of having ties to al-Qaeda. His father, Ahmed Said, is suspected of having close ties to Osama bin Laden. His oldest brother is accused of being the commander of an al-Qaeda training camp. And two other brothers have been held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One brother was released late last year, the other is still in U.S. custody. For now, Zaynab says she simply wants to see Karim. "I really hope I can see him. I really do. The Canadians say that heâd really be happy to see us. I can understand, I mean heâs 14, he hasnât seen us for the last three months."
How many months did he go without seeing you when he ran off to fight jihad?
Zaynab says Canadian authorities are hoping to arrange to bring the teen back to Canada for medical treatment. But, just what role the Canadian government can play in the matter is still unclear. It might be wise to keep in mind that the kidâs age aside, he was involved in fighting Pakistani troops when this whole thing went down back in October. Al-Qaeda doesnât recognize our Western adult/child combatant distinctions and releasing him is setting loose another of bin Ladenâs foot soldiers - his brother, for example, is only a couple years older but killed a Special Forces medic.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:15:30 AM ||
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And they said he has a spinal injury and that he canât feel his lower half, from his waist down.
Oh well, no boom boom with the 72 virgins.
Posted by: ed ||
01/24/2004 3:32 Comments ||
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err, 72 raisins I think you'll find ed.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
01/24/2004 15:23 Comments ||
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#3
Here's an idea for SUNKIST's marketing folks. Package 72 raisins and a bunch of nuts in a small box. Suggested name: Martyr's Mix
Perv seems to be getting mighty productive of late on this issue, letâs hope he keeps up ...
Pakistani security agencies on Saturday conducted a series of raids in southern city of Karachi and arrested seven people suspected to have links with Al-Qaeda and Taliban. According to a report of local news agency News Network International, the security agencies on a tip of raided Sohrab Ghot and arrested two Afghans, Hayat Gul and Zar Gul. Two satellite telephone sets were also recovered from them, who belong to Al-Qaeda or Taliban remnants. In another raid on a flat near Disco Backery in Gulshan Iqbal, the security agencies arrested two foreigners of Al-Qaeda group. Further investigation is in progress, sources said. The security agencies also arrested two people, who belong to Taliban forces, in a vegetable market and recovered a satellite phone. Their accomplice Aminur Rehman was also arrested in Hasrat Mohani Colony. According to a primary investigation, the arrested people came Karachi three months ago and they are planning to leave for western Pakistan city of Quetta.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 3:59:33 PM ||
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Should have killed Perv when they had the chance. Now they learn 'Cause and Effect: 101'.
Posted by: Charles ||
01/24/2004 17:14 Comments ||
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Perv still hasn't got Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed in jug. Qazi hasn't had an unfortunate accident.
Perv just isn't serious. This is for external consumption only.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/24/2004 18:38 Comments ||
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Most of the al-qa'ida high value targets acquired have been due to the General. If anyone brings in usama or his bits and pieces, it will be the General.
Pakistani security forces have arrested a former Afghan Taliban governor, a close aide of Islamic militiaâs supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, officials said. Security forces seized Maulvi Abdul Mannan Khawajazai as he stepped out of a car in the Pakistani border town of Chaman in the countryâs south-west, an official who asked not to be named told Reuters. He said intelligence agencies had been chasing Khawajazai for several days after learning he was in the south-western border area of Pakistan. A Taliban spokesman said Khawajazai had been close to the movementâs supreme leader Omar and was the former governor of the western Afghan province of Badghis. A Pakistani intelligence source said Khawajazai used to manage the Talibanâs financial matters. It was not immediately clear whether Khawajazai would be handed over to the United States like fellow Taliban members arrested in Pakistan and now in detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:36:15 PM ||
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Before you're off to the Americans and Gitmo, the Pakistani security forces have a few questions for you...
Posted by: Tom ||
01/24/2004 13:37 Comments ||
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Pakistanâs probe into its secret nuclear programme has revealed limited approval of cooperation with Iran by former military ruler Zia-ul-Haq while the fate of its father of atomic bomb Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan hangs in balance. The investigation of nuclear scientists , currently being grilled to determine allegations of proliferation of nuclear technology to Iran, pointed out that at least two Pakistani scientists acted inappropriately and exchanged information with Iran beyond the limit authorised to them by the government in late 1980s, the News daily reported on Saturday. It said one of them could be booked for violating Official Secrets Act . Quoting local officials, the newspaper said former military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq had approved a longstanding request from the Iranian government in 1987 for an unpublicised cooperation in peaceful nuclear programme for non-military spheres. "Just before his death in 1988 when I told Zia about Iranâs growing interest in non-peaceful nuclear matters, he asked me to play around but not to yield anything substantial at any cost," it quoted an unnamed top retired nuclear scientist as saying.
The retired scientist, was, however, not very forthcoming about allegations about Ziaâs successor Aslam Beg who was accused of trying hard to prevail on the subsequent governments to help Iran to develop nuclear technology. He, however, said he was aware of Begâs successor trying to do the same but did not name him. "I donât know about the exact nature of transfer of technology that took place but I knew that nothing moves in Pakistani nuclear spectrum without the knowledge of the chief of army staff," the retired scientist said and questioned Begâs statement that the decision-making about nuclear programme was with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and later with Nawaz Sharif. The newspaper said that officials, however, did not discount Begâs influence and knowledge about the nuclear exchange that took place between some Pakistani and Iranian nuclear scientists in 1989-90.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:35:01 PM ||
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Two more houses of wanted men were demolished in South Waziristan Agency and four tribesmen accused of sheltering Al Qaeda and Taliban militants were handed over to the political administration. The tribal lashkar set explosives to the houses of Ghulam Jan and Dawar Khan in the Addakhel and Shalam areas. The houses were bulldozed later. Rehmatullah Wazir, deputy administrator of Wana told Daily Times on the phone that the four men handed over to the authorities were Noor Karim, Muhammad Rasool, Noor Mohammad from a Shudiakhai sub-tribe and Khattay from a Sperkai sub-tribe. Tribesmen have so far handed over 28 wanted men out of a list of 57 to the political administration. Meanwhile, the Wana administration arrested four tribesmen after shots were fired from a taxi in Wana bazaar. The authorities raided various houses after rumours that Naik Muhammad, ranked top on the administrationâs list, was hiding in the area. Mr Wazir denied that there was any truth in such rumours.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:17:00 AM ||
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Blow the house into rubble and stir the rubble.
Pakistanâs president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged Friday that scientists from his country appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations probably "for personal financial gain." He denied that the Pakistan government knew of any sales at the time but vowed that suspects would be dealt with "as antistate elements."
Good idea. Stretch their necks...
General Musharrafâs statement at a global economic forum here came after weeks of delicate efforts to force Pakistan to deal with the scientists, according to diplomats and American officials. Technical documents recently obtained from Libya on its nuclear program, as well as documents relating to Iranâs nuclear activities, undercut years of Pakistani denials and appeared to force General Musharrafâs hand, diplomats and American officials said. The documents "have created a situation in which the denials no longer hold up," one senior American official said.
Took awhile to back him into a corner, didn't it?
General Musharraf met several times in recent weeks with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, who is revered in the country as a national hero. A number of scientists closely tied to Dr. Khan have been detained for questioning. There have already been protests in Islamabad over the detentions, and some European and American officials said that General Musharraf seemed to be preparing for arrests or other legal actions. Starting in late December, Pakistani government officials began backing away from their vigorous denials that their scientists had provided critical help to several aspiring nuclear states, including Iran and North Korea. But on Friday, General Musharraf went further. "Well, I would not like to predict," he said in an interview with CNN, "but it appears that some individuals, as I said, were involved for personal financial gain." General Musharraf continued to insist that the government was not involved in the sales, portraying the actions as the efforts of corrupt scientists.
Time to toss them overboard, unless he can get out of doing it...
American officials, however, are clearly skeptical of those claims. They note that when Pakistan received missile parts from North Korea â believed to be the quid pro quo for nuclear aid â a Pakistani air force cargo jet was dispatched to Pyongyang, North Korea, to pick up the parts. They also note that the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories are the crown jewel of the Pakistani nuclear program, with close ties to both the military and the intelligence agency, the I.S.I. "I donât think anyone has proven the case for officially sanctioned transfers of technology," one senior American official said recently. But a senior European diplomat who has reviewed much of the evidence said that "it stretches credulity that proliferation on this scale can occur without senior officials in the government knowing about it."
Yes, but this is Pakistan, where people are prepared to believe five impossible things before breakfast...
General Musharraf told CNN that there were also credible allegations against European nuclear middlemen and other nations, "so it is not Pakistan alone." The same theme was struck Friday by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who said that the global black market in nuclear materials and equipment had grown into a virtual "Wal-Mart" for weapons-seeking countries.
Yeah. And Qadeer Khan's the greeter...
Dr. ElBaradei, director general of the agency, the United Nationsâ watchdog on atomic weapons, said he was astonished by the scale and complexity of the illicit trafficking through which the Libyans obtained material and blueprints for nuclear weapons designs. "All of that was obtained abroad," he said in an interview during the World Economic Forum meeting here. "All of what we saw was a result of the Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation. When you see things being designed in one country, manufactured in two or three others, shipped to a fourth, redirected to a fifth, that means thereâs lots of offices all over the world," Dr. ElBaradei said. "The sophistication of the process, frankly, has surpassed my expectations."
Perhaps someone should devote some attention to shutting down that network?
Dr. ElBaradei said he was satisfied with the level of cooperation shown by the Libyans. Documents provided by the Libyans indicated that the uranium enrichment equipment they were using was based on a sophisticated design that could only have come from the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories. The centrifuge design is known as a "Pak-2," indicating that it was a second-generation version that probably dates from the late 1980âs, American officials said. "They are taking us everywhere we want to go," Dr. ElBaradei said of the Libyans. "They are answering all our questions, they are showing us all of what they have."
I'll bet toilet paper consumption in Islamabad is up 900 percent...
In interviews, American officials have insisted that Pakistan, not the United States, is leading the investigation, though the American officials acknowledge goosing them providing information to Islamabad. The biggest trove came after the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, agreed in December to dismantle his unconventional weapons programs, and to turn over documents about how he developed them. "Pakistanâs cooperation is key for us to understand the dimension of the problem," Dr. ElBaradei said in the interview on Friday. "I have no reason to believe the government was involved, but I hope to have a clear picture in a few weeks." Dr. ElBaradeiâs confidence, however, was leavened by his acknowledgment that neither his agency, nor the intelligence branches of the big countries, have a clear idea of the extent of nuclear trafficking. "The system is under a good deal of stress," he said. "We need to take this seriously." American officials say they are uncertain why General Musharraf is now moving against the scientists.
Gee. Golly. Which part of his anatomy do you think he's covering?
They suggested in recent interviews that the evidence has become so overwhelming that he has begun to fear the reimposition of sanctions by Congress. But they also suggest that he may be trying to reassert his power, demonstrating that he will not be intimidated by critics who say he has warmed up too much to the United States, both in the hunt for Al Qaeda terrorists and in Washingtonâs demands to clamp down on proliferation.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:06:31 AM ||
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"wal-mart for weapons"--i thought they only like sold walls in wal-mart--paris hilton
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/24/2004 0:14 Comments ||
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Amid high alert in New Delhi ahead of the Republic Day, the Delhi Police yesterday claimed to have foiled a major terrorist strike in the national capital by arresting an alleged Hizb-e-Islami militant and recovering 3.5 kilograms of high explosives from him. Ayaz Mohammad Shah, who had allegedly planned to strike in the capital to disturb the Republic Day celebrations, was nabbed near Welcome Metro Railway Station in northeast Delhi late in the evening yesterday, Joint Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Karnal Singh said. Singh said the police also recovered 300,000 rupees from Shah who hails from Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir. Shah is considered to be close to the outfitâs chief Sarfaraz and was in his direct contact, Singh said, adding he had been instructed by Sarfaraz to reach Delhi and carry out the strike.
The Indos don't even have to think about this around Republic Day. There's always somebody with a turban wanting to blow things up.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:05 ||
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President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday that thanks to the strong pursuit by his countryâs forces in the border region with Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda had been rendered an âineffectiveâ group that was âon the runâ.
Kind of a different interpretation from the Frenchie...
At a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Musharraf categorically ruled out any deployment of US forces on the Pakistani side of the border in operating against either Al-Qaeda or Taleban elements. With Pakistani forces and intelligence operatives working effectively against Al-Qaeda, the groupâs underground and personal networks had been severely hampered. âTherefore it is an ineffective organization,â Musharraf said about Al-Qaeda. âThey are hiding and on the run.â Asked whether the efforts against the groups could see the deployment of US forces in Pakistan, he stated: âNo sir, that is not a possibility at all.â
"So, really, there's no reason to have the Merkins tromping around in NWFP..."
Musharraf, who has survived two assassination attempts, said the threats to his life were due to the strong efforts against Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. âI am treading on their toes and so they are a danger to me,â the Pakistani president said, avowing that the vast majority of his countrymen supported his stance against the groups, with only a âminority of extremistsâ who are opposed.
That's... ummm... three... no, four assassination attempts. There were two more in 2002...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:05 ||
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A Pakistani court has sentenced three Islamic militants to death for killing four women as they prayed at a church near the capital last year, a police official said Friday. The three men were captured shortly after the Aug. 9 attack on the grounds of a Presbyterian hospital in Taxila, a small town about 25 miles northwest of Islamabad. They were convicted and sentenced on Thursday. The women were all nurses at an adjacent hospital. They died as attackers hurled grenades at worshippers leaving the church. One assailant also died in the assault. A police official in Taxila, Jan Mohammed, told The Associated Press by phone that the judge ordered three other defendants freed for lack of evidence.
"Yeah. The witnesses are all dead!"
The Taxila hospital is supported by the Presbyterian Church USA and the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan. It was founded in 1922 and treats mostly poor Muslims, specializing in eye diseases. The attack was one of several against foreigners and minority Christians in the months following President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's decision to ally himself with the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. On March 17, 2002, a grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad's heavily guarded diplomatic quarter killed five people. In October 2002, 16 people were killed in an attack on a Christian church in Behawalpur, a city in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. In July, assailants shot and killed Rev. George Ibrahim, a Roman Catholic priest, at his home near a church. The priest had allegedly received death threats from militants after his church took over a school in Ranala Kot, a village about 180 miles south of Islamabad.
Christian priests notoriously being unarmed...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:05 ||
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Quagmire, no. Another Chechnya, yes.
Five U.S. soldiers and four Iraqi civilians were killed Saturday in three separate bomb attacks in Iraqâs so-called Sunni Triangle. Insurgents have been active all this week. In the Sunni Triangle, three attacks in a 24-hour period Wednesday and Thursday killed nine people, including two U.S. soldiers. The violence comes as U.S. officials announced the arrests in Iraq of two men linked to al Qaeda: Hasan Ghul, a senior operative with the terrorist network, and Husam al Yemeni, a top lieutenant to a man operating with Ansar al-Islam. In recent days, U.S. commanders in Iraq expressed fears of al Qaeda attempting to link up with the anti-U.S. insurgency. In Khaldiyah, a car bomb killed three Task Force All American soldiers and wounded six others. Several Iraqi civilians also were wounded in the attack. Two of the wounded soldiers were taken to a combat support hospital and four were being treated at a local military base. West of Fallujah, a roadside bomb exploded as a vehicle carrying two U.S. soldiers passed by Saturday. The soldiers were assigned to the U.S. Armyâs 82nd Airborne Division. The latest deaths bring the number of U.S. soldiers killed in the war to 511. Also Saturday, a bomb hidden along a road near a government building in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra exploded as a U.S. military convoy passed by. The blast killed at least four Iraqi civilians and seriously wounded another. Thirty-three civilians were treated for minor wounds at a local hospital. Three U.S. soldiers also were wounded. The bomb was probably detonated remotely and was hidden near a Toyota pickup truck parked near the building.
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 1:27:54 PM ||
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I'll say it again, the "Sunni Triangle" has to be neutralized. Force evacuate the area, and then drop no less than 6 MOABs. Catch the rats as they run for cover.
#2
No, just Saddamms hometown should be MOABed. It looks tp ,e tjat we caigjt Ghul and Yememi right after they gave the orders for these attacks.
Posted by: Charles ||
01/24/2004 17:07 Comments ||
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Oh no, the bad guys are fighting back. Run Away, Run Away. Weakness invites surrender. Grow up and understand history. People die in war. Just passing a law here will not make these guys stop trying to kill us. We have to go kill them first. And yes, in this game they do get a turn. Comparing this to Chechnya is being simple and stupid. The only comparison is that the average Soviet/Russian citizen after years of government control is about as motivated to fight as your average lefty striving for total government control is.
Posted by: Patrick ||
01/24/2004 17:12 Comments ||
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Comparing this to Chechnya is being simple and stupid.
Not really. The dynamics and tactics of the jihadis/insurgents/whatever in Iraq are the same as in Chechnya (or any other jihadi land for that matter). The only difference will be the end result (hopefully).
BTW, I'm not advocating running away, far from it. My contention is that US soldiers are being killed needlessly because of this "hearts and minds" approach. Compare how many died in actual combat versus how many died while on patrol without having a chance to shoot back, not to mention those national guard helicopters.
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 18:06 Comments ||
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Wall Street Journal
Just a few months ago, resolution of Iraqâs gigantic debt seemed pretty much insurmountable. But with almost no media fanfare, special Presidential debt envoy James A. Baker III has been making notable progress. In December, the former Secretary of State visited Iraqâs main European creditors and Japan, winning promises for major debt reduction. Now itâs the Arab worldâs turn to make its contribution to a stable, free Iraq. Early this week Mr. Baker won general debt forgiveness promises from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, and Thursday he reportedly got the same from the biggest Arab creditor, Saudi Arabia. . . .
Whatever the posturing going on now, the eventual number is expected to settle around 70% for all the debts, according to Richard Segal, an economist at Exotix, a London-based brokerage. The deepest write-off ever recorded by the Paris Club was the 66% extended to Serbia in 2001. But Iraq is expected to gain bigger concessions since some of its military-related debts will take a deeper discount. The net of all these guesses is that if Iraqâs debt is about $116 billion, then debt reduction would shrink it to $35 billion. Even if one factors in new loans from the World Bank and other international institutions at $5 billion, Iraqâs crucial ratio of debt-to-exports would be considered "sustainable" and encourage other, future lenders to plunge in.. . . Although there are continuing, behind-the-scenes negotiations, nothing formal can happen until Iraq has a legal government. If all goes according to U.S. plans, a new Iraqi government will take over in July, an agreement with the International Monetary Fund will follow quickly, and then the creditors will offer concrete concessions. All in all, the Baker creditors tour looks to be a victory for U.S. diplomacy, and for the future of Iraq. Not a front-page story, and not as visually exciting as combat, but in the long run, just as important to the War on Terror.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/24/2004 5:39:16 AM ||
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"behind-the-scenes negotiations"
Danm,guess we won't get to see what is in those Iraq docuents that have been siezed.
#3
Using damning information, that you would love to release just to nail all the bastards that opposed you, instead to wring concessions for the benefit of the Iraqis you rescued, even though it will be letting the bastards off the hook from a public embarassment perspective, is true statesmanship. This Canadian admires Mr Bush more every day.
#4
The contents of that magic briefcase will eventually be released. Probably several years after the guilty parties are either retired, dead, or indicted.
EFL
More than a month has passed since U.S. forces unearthed Saddam, but the threats facing American forces in Iraq are no less lethal with him in captivity. According to some U.S. and Iraqi officials, that is in part because of the rising influence and activity of Islamic extremists. These militants are assuming a leadership role in the anti-American insurgency as the ranks of Iraqis loyal to the secular Baathist regime dwindle. An Iraqi with close ties to the resistance says that a group of former Iraqi military officers held two meetings with religious militants last fall that established an alliance aimed at coordinating anti-American attacks.
The Iraqi source close to the insurgency says militant groups employ networks of smugglers to take foreign enlistees over the Syrian, Saudi Arabian and Jordanian borders. Afterward the enlistees are ferried through safe houses until they reach a hub city such as Ramadi or Fallujah. A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad says religiously inspired violence will probably replace attacks by former regime loyalists as "the principal threat we face" as the occupation heads into its second year. Says the official: "Itâs already starting to shift."
The jihadists are stirring up those sentiments in the one place that generally remains off limits to the Americans: the mosque. U.S. and Iraqi officials say a worrying number of mosques are providing support for insurgents, whether jihadist, Baathist or both. Early this month U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Ibn Taymiyah mosque in Baghdad, arresting the mosqueâs imam and 31 suspected militants and uncovering a cache of weaponry. Still, according to a senior military official, U.S. forces in Iraq have conducted relatively few raids inside mosques for fear of offending ordinary Iraqis. Says the official: "You could win the battle and lose the war."
Many of the indigenous jihadists in Iraq practice Salafism, a stringent brand of Sunni Islam that was brutally repressed by Saddamâs regime after it began gaining adherents in Iraq a decade ago. A Salafist who claims to be a "manager" of an insurgent cell based near Balad says his group is part of a resistance movement called Mujahedi al-Salafiyah. The man, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ali, says the Salafists model themselves on the mujahedin who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s and on other international jihad movements. He says the Salafists have forged links with their former nemeses in the Fedayeen Saddam militia on the condition that they renounce their allegiance to the former dictator. An Iraqi close to the guerrillas says Salafists have become decision makers in cells as the strength of the Baathists has waned. A senior military official says the U.S. is paying more attention to the role of Salafists because of their "long-standing relationship to terrorism in other locations." The official mentions Algeriaâs violent Salafist Group for Call and Combat.
It doesn't sound like the writer makes the connection between Salafism and Wahhabism. That tends to lessen the value of his opinions.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
01/24/2004 1:23:18 AM ||
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Simple solution,
1)surround the suspect Mosques with troops and barbwire.
2)Search everyone goining in and out.
3)Nothing except a Quran and prayer beads allowed in.
After the Imam,and any fighters hiding in the Mosque get hungry enough,they have the option of inviting Iraqi troops in to search.
This preserves the"sanctity"of the Mosque,makes it real tough on the the Immam,and fighters hiding there and any weapons are for all intents and purposes unusable.
#2
yeah i agree,quarantine the fuckers in a large barbed wire ring round thier towns and move in and quash them,i'm betting the locals would grass them in left right and centre.
The CIA named a new inspector to lead the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction Friday, choosing a veteran investigator who has expressed recent skepticism that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons that posed an immediate threat. Charles Duelfer, the No. 2 United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq for much of the 1990s, is taking over the task of sorting out Saddamâs weapons program. He said CIA Director George Tenet assured him he wanted one thing: "That is the truth, wherever that lay."
The Bush administration has been frustrated in its search for convincing evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, banned by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait. No such weapons have been found although the previous inspector, David Kay, said he did find evidence of programs to develop weapons. Duelfer will be taking over the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group of roughly 1,400 scientists and other experts who are combing through documents, searching facilities and interviewing Iraqis to determine the capabilities of the fallen government. In a conference call with reporters Friday, Duelfer wouldnât offer a timetable for his investigation. Duelfer, 51, will replace Kay, who came home from Iraq for the holidays and never returned. "At a time when our WMD hunt efforts were just beginning, David provided a critical strategic framework that enabled the ISG to focus the hunt for information on Saddamâs WMD programs," Tenet said. Hate to say it, but Saddam pulled a fast one — moved to a just-in-time inventory system and farmed out some of the equipment and work to others (Syria?) Just as Libya, NK, the Paks and Iran split up the nuclear work to avoid being hammered, Saddam did the same with chem/bio.
Duelfer said he sees the job as an opportunity to pursue questions unanswered during his seven years tracking Saddamâs weapons program as the top American on the U.N. team enforcing the 1991 cease-fire agreement. Before last yearâs invasion, Duelfer took a hard line, consistently arguing that the Iraqi government posed a significant threat due to Saddamâs dedication to the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since Saddamâs fall last spring, however, Duelfer has grown more skeptical that weapons will be found. In a column published by the Washington Post in October, he said Saddam had long differentiated between actually retaining weapons and maintaining a capability to produce them quickly. The absence of weapons stocks "does not mean Saddam did not pose a WMD threat," Duelfer wrote. "But clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war," he also said. "The WMD threat appears to have been longer term. Assuming this finding does not change, it will be very important for the Iraq Survey Group to establish when all agents and weapons were eliminated."
In the conference call on Friday, Duelfer said his earlier comments were those of an outsider, and his job now is to be an investigator. "My goal is to find out what happened on the ground, what is the status on the Iraqi weapons programs, what was their game plan, what were the goals of the regime," he said. David Albright, a former weapons inspector, said Duelfer had gained respect for his work at the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq. He said there was a perception that Kay was more of an ideologue, convinced the weapons existed. "Having Duelfer go in gives me more confidence that they can wrap this up, and we can have some closure. Duelfer has much more experience as an inspector," Albright said. Hope so, itâd be nice to have an answer that can withstand a challenge.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2004 12:49:29 AM ||
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"But clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war," he also said. "The WMD threat appears to have been longer term..."
The White House should have made this argument before the war. I think there's more than a few people eating crow in the administration right now.
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 7:35 Comments ||
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Not so sure myself.
Look, Saddam was a threat to us as well as his own people. Even if you disagree on the WMD issue, you have to admit that his removal was a good thing for the Iraqi people.
At best you can complain about being fooled into doing the right thing. Are you sure you want to make that case?
Posted by: Ben ||
01/24/2004 8:00 Comments ||
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I think the media in general is being incrediably transparent in its efforts to try to break apart and undermine the Allies.They constantly jump on the 'no WMD found' bandwagon but fail to realise if left unchecked Saddam would have reaquired these weapon and and lets face it he's used them before so he'll have no qualms about using them again.The media fail to realise he could also used WMD on a stratigic assymetrical attack on homeland America,think kinda Bin-Laden style but perhaps a bomb with chems in detonated in say Washington or New York.
#4
I still haven't seen where anyone in the Bush administration called Iraq an "immediate" or "iminent" threat. In fact, I remember Bush himself saying the threat was NOT iminent.
Why people keep CLAIMING he did is a mystery to me.
But Duelfer has one thing right -- Saddam still had a WMD program that he could have ramped up the minute sanctions were lifted. Remember, the people who wanted to keep Saddam in power were those who had claimed the sanctions had to be lifted for the good of Iraq's children...
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/24/2004 10:11 Comments ||
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Most of the people in the world - including 100% of the "news professionals" in the United States, still don't see Bush's master plan to fight terror. What a bunch of dumba$$es.
You can pick at terror around the periphery, or you can get right in the middle of the entire terror network and fight from there. George Bush decided it wasn't worthwhile to try to fight terror from the fringes. The invasion of Iraq had a four-fold purpose:
1) Topple Hussein and end his terrorist regime;
2) Stop the potential development of WMD by the Iraqi regime, and keep such weapons out of the hands of terrorists;
3) Establish a base of operations in the heart of the terrorist-producing Middle East from which to operate;
and 4) use bases in that central location (Iraq) to attack terrorists and terror sponsors in Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and in the newly-independent Muslim states in the southern portion of the old Soviet empire.
Very few Americans comprehend those last two goals, or understand their necessity. Terrorist leaders DO understand that if the United States establishes a firm hold in Iraq, the entire Middle East terror war against the "infidel" is doomed. That's why they keep sending in cannon fodder to disrupt the US activities. We need to keep whacking the "foreign jihadis", and choke off any internal support for them or their goals. If it means busting a few Imams and hanging them from lamp posts, so be it.
This is going to be a long war. It's best to fight from a position of strength within the heart of your enemy's territory than from far away. I just hope that the people involved don't lose sight of the overall goal: the destruction of militant islam. That's the only way any of the rest of us will ever be allowed to live in peace.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/24/2004 13:01 Comments ||
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Old Patriot,
3&4 Were why I supported going into Iraq, from the pragmatic point of view.
1 should have been done in 1991. At least we corrected our error
The WMD thing never really had anything to do with my decision to support dropping the cease-fire and going back in.
Posted by: Kathy K ||
01/24/2004 13:27 Comments ||
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Ben, you're preaching to the choir :) It was a quiet hope of mine that WMD would be found, just to shut up the critics and anti-war crowd. I would have supported the war even without the WMD argument.
But anyone with several brain cells knows that what matters is the long term development capability of these WMD. Saddam would have been a constant threat and thorn in the side of the US. I just wish Duelfer had said this before the war. It's as if Bush was banking on finding something in Iraq, and he didn't. And now Duelfer will be viewed, by those with fewer than several brain cells, to be doing damage control.
I think it was David Spade who used a great analogy once: if you're hiding weed in your room, and your mother tells you she's going to inspect your room in one hour, guess what, there ain't gonna be any weed in your room when she gets there. (dedicated to Stevee).
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 13:53 Comments ||
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The Bush administration said Friday it was open to revising its plans for turning over political power to Iraqis but insisted the transfer must be done by its stated July 1 deadline. With U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expected to announce on Monday he will send experts to Iraq to seek a formula acceptable to all Iraqi groups, the State Department offered to ease Annanâs misgivings about their safety. "We are prepared to do everything we can to ensure that its people are safe in Iraq and to protect its people in Iraq," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said. Annan has sent a two-person survey team to Iraq but has not moved to resume a strong U.N. presence in the midst of persistent attacks on U.S. and other peacekeeping troops. "We are looking forward to an early positive response from the secretary-general and that team so that we can basically investigate all the alternatives," Ereli said.
While the administration holds to the July 1 deadline, the spokesman said, "We have an open mind about how to most effectively facilitate an orderly transfer of sovereignty." Annanâs special adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi, conferred Thursday at the White House with Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials. Then, on Friday, Powell conferred by telephone with Annan before a scheduled trip to the Georgia republic and Russia. The administration is not insisting that Annan select Brahimi to take over the senior U.N. post in Baghdad, which has remained vacant since senior U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in a suicide bombing of U.N. headquarters last August. Still, Brahimiâs expertise could help resolve the dilemma facing the administration as it presses to end U.S. political control of occupied Iraq five months before President Bushâs bid for re-election while also responding to the demands of Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and other Iraqi groups. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric called Brahimi "a man of unique talent and experience." At the same time, Dujarric said Annan had not offered the assignment to Brahimi. A U.N. diplomat, insisting on anonymity, said Brahimi "would be the personality to get Sistani aboard."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:10:36 AM ||
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Pressure on Washington to hold direct elections in Iraq mounted yesterday as a high profile member of the US-appointed Governing Council backed the popular call for polls before a July handover of power. The United States plans to hand sovereignty back to Iraqis by July 1, but says there is not enough time to arrange elections first. It wants regional caucuses to appoint a transitional government, paving the way for polls in 2005. There have been huge popular protests across Iraq, spearheaded by the majority Shiite community, rejecting the plan and demanding that Iraqis themselves be allowed to choose who governs them. Yesterday, Ahmad Chalabi, a member of Iraqâs Governing Council generally seen as close to Washington, said it would be possible to hold elections before the mid-year deadline, dealing another blow to the US political plan for Iraq. âDirect elections are possible,â Chalabi told a think tank conference in Washington. âSeek to make them possible and they will be possible.â Iraqâs Shiites, who represent 60 percent of the population, have mounted big demonstrations across Iraq in the past week, peacefully supporting their top leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani who says direct elections are essential.
I don't think it'll be any skin off our collective fore if there are elections rather than caucuses. I'd have gone for elections off the bat, myself.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:04 ||
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chalabi's a shite--nuf said
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/24/2004 0:06 Comments ||
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60 percent of the Iraqis are Shiites, so calling Chalabi one doesn't mean much, other than the fact that you are biased, Tolui.
Insist on separation of church and state, disallow clerics running for office -- and then let the direct elections take place.
#3
Psst, Aris: "separation of church and state" doesn't mean not allowing clerics to run for office. I'd say it comes close to meaning the opposite: not caring at all who runs for office.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/24/2004 10:13 Comments ||
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Call me defeatest, but I don't see any way that we can establish democracy and prevent the 60% Shiite population from imposing their stubborn will. An intact Iraq is a tinderbox for civil war and a divided Iraq is a large gift to Iran. The best we can do is to stall until there is regime change in Iran. A democratic Iran and a divided Iraq seem to be the only acceptable stable solution.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/24/2004 13:35 Comments ||
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I think Bush is playing a game here. Encouraging the UN to participate and involve itself in Iraq makes it appear he is being multilateral, not a bad thing in an election year. At the same time, he offers to Sistani the opportunity to deal with the same UN bastards that supported Saddam and allowed his death squads and oil-for-palaces corruption to proceed without end. Sistani and Co. are going to have to make a quick decision, an I'll bet GW already knows what it will be.
Posted by: john ||
01/24/2004 16:26 Comments ||
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"Psst, Aris: "separation of church and state" doesn't mean not allowing clerics to run for office"
I know. That's why I said that you should do *both* of these, not just one or the other. The second is mainly to ensure that the former doesn't end up violated in practice.
"I'd say it comes close to meaning the opposite: not caring at all who runs for office."
Not so. It means that state shouldn't care who runs for church positions, and church shouldn't interfere in who runs for state positions, but it doesn't mean that additional means shouldn't be taken in order to separate the two institutions.
You can disallow people that hold a certain profession from running for office, as they long as they keep on practicing that profession -- e.g. in Greece MPs aren't allowed to be at the same time a number of other profession which are considered to be potentially conflicting, if they have not resigned prior to the elections. This (again in Greece) includes civil servants, people serving in the armed forces, chairmen of corporations and I think a number of other people.
If clerics want to run for office, then they should first resign from being clerics.
A senior al Qaeda operative and several associated figures were captured last week in Iraq by local Iraqi and U.S. forces, a senior administration official said yesterday. Hassan Ghul, described as the most senior associate of Osama bin Laden found in Iraq, was picked up last week in the northern part of the country by Kurdish forces, the official said. "He was a senior facilitator who was caught coming into the country," the official said. Speculation was that Ghul, a Pakistani, was scouting out what al Qaeda could do in the future against U.S. forces. Ghul has been part of al Qaeda for at least a decade and was known to deliver money to terrorist groups in the Middle East and Africa.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:02:45 AM ||
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he'll definitely enjoy diego garcia on his way to gitmo
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/24/2004 0:18 Comments ||
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More terror attacks are likely in Southeast Asia ahead of elections in the region, Chulalongkorn University security expert Panithan Wattanayakorn warned on Thursday. The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are all set to hold national elections this year, while Thais are expected to go to the polls in February 2005. The academic said that Thailand could not avoid the issue of terrorism. âWhether or not the government wants to admit it, the terrorist support networks are already in Thailand,â he said. âThe Thaksin government has reformed many institutions in Thailand but not the security agencies: intelligence, police and army. There is an urgent need to improve all of them in the face of their daunting task.â
Panithan said that Hambali, a kingpin of the regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah who was captured in Ayutthaya last August, had contacts in the south of Thailand and had discussed his terrorist plans with some Thais there. Hambali also gave them financial support, he said. He said that the use of car bombs, explosives in shipsâ cargoes and female suicide bombers would be increasingly common terrorist techniques. Moreover, many countries in Southeast Asia have expanded their military capabilities, which could be seen as a predictor of tension and conflict in the near future, he said.
Speaking of the recent spate of violence in the South, Panithan said that although there was still no clear evidence if the assailants had any links with international terrorist networks, its scope was certainly beyond that of ordinary bandits. The sophistication of the operation in Narathiwat on January 4 entitled the perpetrators to receive a âfranchiseâ from terrorist groups, he said. It was the biggest-ever violent incident in the history of southern Thailand, he said. The hub of terrorist networks has now moved to Bangladesh, he added.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:49:31 AM ||
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THE governmentâs antiterrorism operations have isolated the Jemaah Islamiah terrorists, a top security official said on Friday. Acting National Security Adviser Victor Mayo said the scheduled resumption of peace negotiations with the government next month has prompted the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front to distance itself from JI terrorists seeking refuge in MILFâs Central Mindanao camps. On top of it, the arrest of Taufec Refke, JIâs liaison officer in the country, and the killing in October last year of Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, another JI operative, have driven many JI terrorists out of the country, Mayo said. âThis is an honest-to-goodness assessment by our intelligence units. The JI here are being isolated and they no longer have the protection they need,â he said in a phone interview. Mayo was reacting to radio reports that an undetermined number of JI members have fled Mindanao and are now hiding in Muslim communities in Metro Manila and other nearby provinces. However, he said intelligence agents from the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police have yet to confirm the radio reports. âThese are only raw information,â Mayo said. âThere has been no confirmation of this.â He said that before 2002, an undetermined number of JI terrorists were able to train in Mindanao, particularly in Camp Abu Bakar, the largest MILF camp which was overrun by the military in 2000. Among the graduates of these training activities were al-Ghozi and Refke. The military believes a big number of the graduates had already left the country through its southern backdoor.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:46:39 AM ||
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Two Buddhist monks and a policeman have been killed in Muslim-majority southern Thailand in attacks believed to be linked to separatist unrest in the region, the government and police said on Saturday.
"Unrest" must be a synonym for "murder."
"Two monks were killed while they were walking to receive alms and one monk was seriously hurt at about 6:00am (local time) in separate but simultaneous attacks", police in Yala told AFP. "A policeman was also shot dead late Friday in Ying-or district in neighbouring Narathiwat province."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:19 ||
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The Buddhist Thais are about to get a bit unrestful themselves, methinks. One does not go about murdering monks in Thailand.
Posted by: Kathy K ||
01/24/2004 13:30 Comments ||
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IRNA -- Senior US Senator Joseph Biden criticized the American government`s policies on Iran during a meeting with Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on the fringes of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
You're not supposed to do that, Joe...
According to the ministry`s press bureau, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from Delaware, "stressed the importance of Iran and the role which it can play in the sensitive and volatile region" in the Middle East.
They appear to be doing their part to keep it volatile, I'd say...
"Joseph Biden told the Iranian foreign minister that he hoped the existing problems between the Islamic Republic of Iran and America would be removed someday," it added. Kharrazi had a 90-minute meeting with Biden in a rare high-level contact between Tehran and Washington, which have held no official relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in full view of reporters in a lounge at the World Economic Forum. "Kharrazi, in turn, said `the Iranian nation has suffered gravely from the antagonistic steps of the American government and so long as these wrong policies continue, there will be no ground for dialogue and improving the two countries` relations`," the ministry said.
Sounds like Persian for "piss off." At least Kharrazi's playing by the rules...
"The Iranian foreign minister stressed that ... American statesmen are required first to change their existing approach and prove their good will in order to pave the way for dialogue and diplomatic relations according to mutual respect," it added.
I'm still trying to figure why we have to please them. Seems like it should go both ways, but then, I'm just an infidel. What do I know?
The Bush administration, which has tagged Iran part of an `axis of evil`, offered humanitarian aid to the victims of the December 26 Bam quake and dispatched an 80-member relief team and supplies like tents and blankets after receiving Iran`s green light. Bush also ordered unilateral American sanctions against Iran to be temporarily waived in order to send any form of aid, including cash mostly by the large Iranian diaspora in the United States, to the victims.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 20:22 ||
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Every time Joe Biden smiles, I have an urge to check my wallet.
#2
First Biden travels to Pyonyang to take part in an episode of Nuclear Blackmail Theater, now this. Did he also go to Baghdad with Jim "Red" McDermott to snuggle up againt Uncle Saddam?
Posted by: ed ||
01/24/2004 22:40 Comments ||
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Biden. Whudda a maroon.
Yes mojo, I have the same reaction.
Not surprisingly, the earlier media reports all just had him mentioning that WMDs werenât in Iraq without acknowledging the reason as to why. David Kay, the former head of the coalitionâs hunt for Iraqâs weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Husseinâs secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last yearâs war to overthrow Saddam. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddamâs WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
Dr Kayâs comments will intensify pressure on President Bashar Assad to clarify the extent of his co-operation with Saddamâs regime and details of Syriaâs WMD programme. Mr Assad has said that Syria was entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own biological and chemical weapons arsenal. Syria was one of Iraqâs main allies in the run-up to the war and hundreds of Iraqi officials - including members of Saddamâs family - were given refuge in Damascus after the collapse of the Iraqi dictatorâs regime. Many of the foreign fighters responsible for conducting terrorist attacks against the coalition are believed to have entered Iraq through Syria. A Syrian official last night said: "These allegations have been raised many times in the past by Israeli officials, which proves that they are false."
I guess that settles it, then...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 8:15:45 PM ||
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You boys might want to re-think that "who, us?" position. We have lots of spare armor sitting in Iraq right now, and the Med fleet is moving closer.
Commerce Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari said Friday that political resolve exists in France to expand all-out ties with Iran. Talking to IRNA, Shariatmadari said France`s political will to promote relations with Iran was quite clear in his talks with senior French officials. He said Iran`s cooperation with three European countries on atomic energy has prepared suitable grounds to expand all-out economic relations. "Iran has potentials for economic cooperation with the European Union in general and France in particular. With respect to the activities of French companies in Iran in the past, we think the volume of joint economic ventures would stand at around 50 billion dollars within a period of 5-7 years," the minister said. He termed the outcome of his talks with French economic officials as positive and said the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding to promote bilateral trade ties and cooperation. Shariatmadari noted that the MoU stipulates providing facilities to investors in various areas of transportation, communication, advanced technologies, housing and urban development, tourism, agriculture and fishery, medicine and pharmaceuticals, construction of power plants, energy and oil. He further stated the necessity of settling problems that companies and trade organizations of the two countries are currently faced with and France`s support for Iran`s membership in World Trade Organization are among other issues mentioned in the MOU.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 20:12 ||
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I suspect France has a closet full of Monkey Wrenches just for throwing into US foreign policy
#2
My, my. After everything that has happened in the last two years the F#$*h still try to play the game against us. I remember a definition of fanatic that goes something like "one who forgets his purpose but redoubles his efforts."
President Mohammad Khatami and Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi on Saturday called for "a fundamental review in the earliest" of wholesale disqualifications, which bar many candidates from standing in February`s parliamentary elections. In a joint statement, the two officials described the rejections as "unworthy of the religious-democratic establishment" of the Islamic Republic and called for "healthy, free and competitive elections".
Yup. That'll work.
"We hope that the esteemed Guardians Council, above the existing psychological (campaign) and propaganda, will pave the way for healthy, free and competitive elections by reviewing the supervisory boards` rulings in the earliest," the statement said.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 19:45 ||
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EFL, fair use. NewsMax, so some salt recommended. Labor Secretary Chao: U.N. a Threat to U.S.
Wes Vernon
President Bushâs labor secretary warned a gathering of conservatives that Americans must pay more attention to the United Nations and its related organizations, which she noted were chipping away at U.S. sovereignty and threatening freedoms. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, making her charges late Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, explained that powerful tax-exempt organizations were applying pressure through the U.N. to have the world body make decisions for Americansâ lives without any input from U.S. citizens, and frequently without their knowledge. Chao cited a recent case where a labor union complained to the United Nations that the U.S. government was violating international law and international standards on the treatment of government employees.
The idea that tax-exempt U.N. and allied non-government organizations would presume to dictate to Americans how they live, work and conduct themselves on their internal business was a major theme late Thursday at CPAC, not only from Secretary Chao but also from panelists who preceded her. Secretary Chao cited not only labor organizations but also groups in other areas of concern, such as Environmental Policy Institute and self-described human rights groups that have used their tax-exempt status to try to bring the U.S. into line with their worldview, without a single American vote being cast or even an awareness on the part of most U.S citizens. The long list of accredited left-of-center NGOs, she said, have become âkey players in laying the groundwork for international lawâ and, she fears, âone day, the U.S. will be pressured to adoptâ the globalist agenda without a single vote being cast. âConservatives who ignore the U.N. do so at their peril,â Chao declared.
Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, charged that the goal of this unholy alliance was to "erase national boundaries," redistribute wealth on an international scale and steer decisions on American affairs from representative government to the "global village," with all of us as "global citizens." He and another panelist, Jeff Gayner of Americans for Sovereignty, called for the U.S. to get out of the U.N. and to force the U.N. to get out of the U.S.
The internationalist-minded NGOs, the secretary observed, are encouraging the U.N. and its offshoot agencies to pressure the United States into policies mandating âgender neutralityâ and âreallocating defense expenditures for otherâ left-favored causes. DeWeese said the international tentacles of the NGOs reached down to local governments around the country. He said they were working with city and county governments to use familiar programs to forge ahead with such ideas as âsustainable development,â and âsmart growth,â euphemisms, he said, for pressuring us out of the wide-open suburbs and into crowded cities. These policies also make housing more expensive, though liberal politicians constantly bemoan the lack of âaffordable housing,â a shortage they have abetted. It goes to the philosophy of these particular NGOs that all living creatures are the same, perhaps crowing humans together in cities, with the animals looking in. âIf you love liberty,â the American Policy Center president told CPAC, âsustainable development is your enemy.â
The job-killing, China-boosting Kyoto âglobal warmingâ treaty and the International Criminal Court, both rejected by President Bush, are just the tip of the iceberg, DeWeese warned. âFew Americans are aware of what is going on,â he noted. Gayner said Americans would have to use the same mantra with international planners and their NGOs that former first lady Nancy Reagan used with the drug culture: âJust say no.â
âThe World Court and the International Criminal Court are building blocks to control the American people,â he said. He praised President Bush for his State of the Union statement that the U.S. did not need a permission slip from foreigners to defend its own interests. Moreover, he cited polls showing near unanimity among the American people in agreement with that. Yet the pressure for world governance continues unabated. Gayner urged support for a proposal by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, to end U.S. membership in the United Nations.
Panelist Tom Kilgannon of Oliver Northâs Freedom Alliance noted that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan lives âlike a kingâ at the U.N., where âCastro is a hero and George W. Bush is reviled or barely tolerated.â âKofi Anan is no friend of the American people, and the U.N. is no ally of the Untied States,â he declared. Secretary Chao said she was encouraged that such pro-American groups as the Heritage Foundation and the American Conservative Union had persisted in their efforts, against heavy resistance, to obtain accreditation as observers of the U.N. General Assembly.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/24/2004 3:42:45 PM ||
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Wow. As a first-off, I'm surprised that Elaine Chao is this ideological - I considered her a "shadow secretary" until now - but wow ... any know how the ACU and Heritage are doing with that effort? (Because she's right on a lot of this stuff ...)
Posted by: Lu Baihu ||
01/24/2004 16:32 Comments ||
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A security guard at an ammonia plant in Freeport was shot Saturday morning after checking out a suspicious vehicle. A guard on patrol at the BASF plant noticed a pick-up truck parked where he didnât think it should be. He went to investigate and questioned the man in the truck. Thatâs when that man pulled a gun and fired. The guard ducked. The bullet hit him in the shoulder. The description of the suspect prompted Freeport police to contact homeland security, the FBI and DPS. The suspect sped off in a white pick-up truck with a black stripe. Freeeport police searched the area with a canine unit. That dog found gun powder on the scene and the bullet that was used in the shooting. The guard was shot through the shoulder. Heâs in Brazosport Hospital. Found thanks to Janie Skipper, posting to Ringoâs Tavern on Baenâs Bar. It sounds fairly suspicious to me.
#1
They had a railcar full of ammonia explode near the plant on 14.Sept.2002 and were lucky to have only a handful of people exposed to the gas. Wonder what this creep had in mind? It'd be nice to have a description of the guy.
Posted by: Dar ||
01/24/2004 11:52 Comments ||
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The description of the suspect prompted Freeport police to contact homeland security, the FBI and DPS.
And what, pray tell, is that description?
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
01/24/2004 12:09 Comments ||
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From FNC..
Workers dismantling an aging nuclear weapon secured broken pieces of high explosive by taping them together, federal investigators found. An explosion could have occurred, they said. Well, bombs exploding ARE kind of traditional, but tell me more!
The incident was among several recent safety lapses at the Energy Department?s Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, noted by the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. ..Is it just me, or do the words "safety lapses" and "nuclear" in close conjunction to one another give YOU the heebie-jeebies too?
Last fall, workers taking apart another old warhead accidentally drilled into the warhead's radioactive core, forcing evacuation of the facility. ...Actually, all they found was Edward Teller's recipe for Chicken Paprikas...
This month's unorthodox handling of the unstable explosive increased the risk that the technicians would drop it and set off a "violent reaction," the safety board said Tuesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Such a reaction could have "potentially unacceptable consequences," board chairman John T. Conway said in the letter, which raised disquieting questions about safety at the Pantex plant. ...F**kin? DUH, Mister Chairman...
About 250,000 people live within 50 miles of the Pantex plant, where the motto on its Web site is "Maintaining the safety, security and reliability of America's nuclear weapons stockpile." Nothing exploded, and no one was hurt. The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs, is investigating, spokesman Bryan Wilkes said Friday. "Safety remains a priority for us," Wilkes said. "We are working to address the issues in the letter." "...but it?s hard for us to do that, cover our asses, AND save our phoney-baloney jobs at the same time, so throw us a bone here, okay??"
Safety board chairman Conway?s letter did not make clear whether the explosive had been separated at the time from the softball-sized chunk of plutonium that forms the pit, or trigger, of a thermonuclear warhead. "...and we ain?t tellin?, either."
To prevent a thermonuclear blast, the pit would have to have been separated from the larger warhead. There?s actually a whole bunch of other things that have to happen in a precise order and fashion to get a thermonuclear yield, and these lunkheads weren't close to any of them. On the other hand, they could have spread nuclear material all over the break room - read on.
If the explosive were still connected to the trigger, an explosion could have injured or killed workers and could have spread plutonium or other radioactive materials around the facility. The taping and removal of the explosive did not go as planned, and only quick thinking by the technicians prevented them from dropping the explosive, Conway wrote. "...that and the fact that it was apparently taped to Mister Dumbjohn's ass."
Conway said taping the explosives together was one of several mistakes made by Pantex officials that risked an explosion. Pantex officials also played down the risk, Conway said, calling the cracks in the explosive and the fact that workers taped it together a trivial change in procedures. "...Normally we use string, bailing wire,and staples, which are a whole heck of a lot better than that muicilage we used to use." Jud Simmons, a spokesman for Pantex plant operator BWX Technologies Inc., did not return telephone messages on Friday. Good move, Jud. When you DO answer them, just tell ?em that you deny everything, demand counsel, and besides, it was some other nuclear weapons manufacturing plant.
The pit's plutonium is surrounded by an explosive shell. When the explosives detonate, the plutonium is compressed and causes a nuclear explosion. In a thermonuclear weapon, that explosion sets off an even stronger nuclear blast. Basically, yes.
Workers dismantling the pit in question found the explosive was cracked, which made it more unstable and easier to detonate, Conway wrote. Their solution was to tape together the cracked explosives and move them to another location. Of course, they STILL haven't mentioned whether or not the detonators were attached to this stuff.
In his letter, Conway said other problems included:
--Failing to consult the explosives' manufacturer to determine how unstable the cracked explosives might be; "...Thank you for purchasing your new Wham-O nuclear bomb! It will give you many enjoyable hours of fun if you follow these simple instructions..."
--Performing an incomplete and inadequate safety review before going ahead;
--Allowing workers to perform the taping and removal without practicing on a mock-up;
--Failing to have experts who had developed the procedure watch the taping and removal to try to spot any problems.
Conway's letter does not elaborate on what might have happened had the explosive detonated. Okay, anybody here NOT know what would have happened? Anybody?...
The Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has an inspector stationed at the Pantex plant and at the nation's other nuclear weapons sites. Weekly reports by the Pantex inspector, William White, show several problems with safety at the plant, including flaws in the software designed to control the movement of nuclear and explosive materials around the site. White reported in October that Pantex technicians had made a mistake while dismantling a W62 warhead from a Minuteman missile. A drill damaged part of the warhead's nuclear core, prompting officials to evacuate the facility until experts determined that no radiation had leaked, White wrote. From my time in SAC, I remember Pantex having a distinctly lousy reputation for safety and reliability. These guys were not, repeat NOT going to set off a nuclear yield - they could not have possibly done that. What they could have done, and IMHO were awfully close to doing, was getting an HE yield out of the conventional detonators, which would have scattered nuclear material all over the damned place and definitely required some heavy duty cleanup.
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/24/2004 8:35:20 AM ||
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#1
It's no accident that the plant's located in Amarillo. My first choice would have been in the middle of Death Valley but Amarillo's a very close second.
#2
Workman Publishing Company: We bet you know someone who uses or abuses duct tape on anything and everything (except possibly duct work). These books make a GREAT gift idea fo any one (constructing nuclear bombs)!
#3
Mr. Mike: I think you are right about the HE explosion versus nuclear yield.
It is my understanding that warheads are worked on inside a contraption called a 'gravel gertie', an assembly/disassembly bay. This is basically a big hole constructed under some feet (meters) of gravel that is designed to collapse during an explosion. Apparently this would hinder the spread of nuclear material.
The amount of "hindering" may not be known because, to my knowledge (which is certainly not exhaustive), the gerties have never been used (of course, if they worked properly we'd never know, right?)
As far as duct tape goes, remember it is like The Force: It has a light side, a dark side and it binds the Universe together.
Mr. Shipman: They do have lots of good restaurants. And let's not forget the Helium Centennial Times Column Monument and the Headquarters of the American Quarter Horse Association are located there. Death Valley, indeed!
#4
I drive through Amarillo every time I go down to visit my brother in Houston. The nuke plant is quite visible as you take the bypass around the northeast side of the city - along with one of the biggest prisons in Texas. The red dirt canyonland noth of Amarillo would be quite at home in Death Valley, except that it's home to quite a number of oil and gas wells. We seldom stop there for anything but a quick meal and gas - many of the small towns between Amarillo and Wichita Falls provide a better place to stop, and are about halfway between our departure point and our destination.
Amarillo must be a pretty good place for people to live - it keeps growing, even after losing the Bell plant to the east. I like it best in my rear-view mirror.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/24/2004 12:44 Comments ||
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#5
Somehow, my BS detectors pegged on this one. If a section of the HE detonates (incredibly unlikely without a detonator), you'll have a malformed pit and a big mess. NOT the unwritten but implied 'nooklyar' explosion. And you can't even get to the pit assembly without the second 'thermonuclear' stage being removed. Somebody is using general ignorance of these things to try and scare people....
"Failing" to to consult a manufacturer of 30 year old RDX? Please.... Yeah, call tech support!
The best part is "Failing to have experts who have developed the procedure watch the taping and removal to spon any problems". Yeah, get a 'duct tape expert'.
Whoever was working on this thing likely saw a cracked lens, and taped it down so it wouldn't fall, or come loose. And, they're probably being hounded by some GS-12 flunkie trying to get a cash award for 'safety'.
#6
Quana: My remarks were mainly due to the weather... I've been in Amarillo during the Winter when the local weatherman person uses a length of 40 lb. chain to check the wind speed. :)
#8
Does anyone know how we managed to get an article inside a comment, and then comments on that article? You see that the article about the nuke plant is comment #4 to the article about the ammonia plant, and then the comment numbers start over (because they're comments to the nuke plant article/comment). Have we boldly gone where no one has gone before? I hope this sort of thing does not cause spontaneous vacuum decay, and destroy the universe.
#9
Yes. I left a quote mark out of a link. I mailed Fred and asked him to fix it.
(Sorry!)
Posted by: Kathy K ||
01/24/2004 14:18 Comments ||
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#10
The article goes out of its way to leave open the assumtion that a nuclear explosion was possible. As indicated by several others, this is a physical impossibility.
Without going into too much detail, it is very hard to create a nuclear explosion even when you set out on purpose to do it.
A nuclear bomb is not a chunk of explosive, it is an apparatus, a complex machine. Under these circumstances, a nuclear explosion is no more likely than a partially dismantled '83 Buick spontaneously starting itself and driving coast to coast without fuel or human assistance.
Spreading disinformation about nuclear energy of any kind seems to be a default position for lazy and ignorant journalists; that is, most of them.
#11
Mr. Shipman: I quite agree, the folks are nice. As for the weather and lengths of 40 lb. chain, with my own eyes I have seen birds walking because the wind was blowing too fiercely for them to fly.
Mr. Katz: Yes, somewhere back there. My parents failed to include the 'h' because they thought the name more feminine without it. You may do the math on that one, I am bereft of clues.
It appears that the readers (and commentators) of Rantburg are well endowed with the critical thinking skills necessary to debunk this piece of...ahem..."journalism".
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union may end its ban on arms sales to China this spring, diplomatic sources said Friday, a move that could allow Chinaâs big-spending military to buy cutting-edge weapons ranging from French Mirage jets to stealthy German submarines. At a meeting Monday, the EU foreign ministers will debate the issue but not make a formal announcement, said the officials. "It will take a few months," said one EU diplomat close to the negotiations. Everything takes a few months in the EU.
Europe imposed the ban on weapons sales after Beijingâs bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The guy who stood in front of that tank is still dead.
But EU spokeswoman Emma Udwin said there had been a "shift of mood" in European capitals, although some opposition remained. "There is clear pressure from China to get the arms embargo lifted," Udwin said. And clear pressure from France and Germay to sell arms.
The foreign ministers of the 15 EU nations - and the 10 countries joining the bloc in May - have agreed to re-examine the embargo, said French foreign ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous in Paris. "No one is really opposed to this objective," he added. Proponents of ending the ban say there will still be the EUâs Code of Conduct for arms sales to act as a safety net. The code forces EU nations to ensure the arms they sell are not used for internal repression, external aggression or where serious violations of human rights have occurred. EU Code of Conduct? The one that keeps their MPâs from looting the treasury or the one that forces the governments to keep their deficits within the required range?
The EU view has long been that China must significantly improve its human rights record before the arms embargo can be lifted. However, last fall, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, on a visit to China, said France and Germany wanted the embargo gone. Desparate for exports, are we?
The Netherlands and Scandinavian nations lead opposition to ending the arms ban, along with the European Parliament. For its part, however, China responded by saying relations with the EU "now are better than any time in history" and that ending the arms ban can only make things better. Selling arms to thugs always makes things better. For the thugs, that is.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2004 12:58:40 AM ||
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This has all the earmarks of a foreign policy coming back to bite its owners in the ass.
Posted by: Val ||
01/24/2004 1:03 Comments ||
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#2
As Mssrs. Penis-wrinkles Chirac and de villepin have said, it is their desire to create a multi-polar world to counter America. If that 'pole' is China, so be it.
On the other hand, if they wish to sell the Chicoms euro hardware, I'm all for it. Hopefully the chicoms won't realize it's obsolete until it's too late.
#4
It will be interesting to see whether their capability improves when they buy actual Western weapons instead of 'improving' Russian designs. The gear that they had developped outs USA plans obtained by spying and/or reverse engineering is soso.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:35 Comments ||
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Chiraq and Co. have finally realized that their ME markets are drying up and despite all the artifical sweeteners their foreign ministry-types have applied to the US, they have and will be locked out of the ME picture. Now China wants to buy. China sees it as an opportunity to get arms it needs and to drive a wedge between the US and the EU. The EU sees it as a wedge to get at the US and to get foreign exchange. Perfect fit. As far as that poor chap who faced accelerated depreciation under the Tieneman Tank, he's yesterday's roadkill.
It is sickening.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/24/2004 14:03 Comments ||
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#6
"No one is really opposed to this objective,"
...couple of lines later:
The Netherlands and Scandinavian nations lead opposition to ending the arms ban, along with the European Parliament...
So I guess Herve Ladsous is right, no one is really opposing.
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/24/2004 15:21 Comments ||
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A spoof newsflash by a TV station in Lebanon saying that Osama Bin Laden had been captured in the northern city of Tripoli was taken more seriously than the programme-makers had expected. Despite several clues onscreen that the bulletin was a joke, the LBC station was inundated with calls. The rumour of Bin Ladenâs capture temporarily overshadowed a meeting between the Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, and the Greek President, Costas Stefanopoulos.
After the programme, Lebanonâs media watchdog convened an urgent meeting to look into the incident. Lebanese viewers watching LBCâs weekly satirical show Bass Mat Watan on Thursday evening could have been be forgiven for choking on their snacks as the programme was interrupted by breaking news. One of the stationâs most respected news presenters, Bassam Abou Zeid, solemnly informed viewers that a major security operation was under way in Tripoli. He said there was an attempt in progress to arrest one of the Arab worldâs most important and wanted figures. A few minutes later, he reappeared to report that Bin Laden had just been arrested in the house of a former prime minister.
The station received a number of worried calls and the report was suddenly the main topic amongst the guests at the dinner Mr Hariri was hosting for Mr Stephanopoulos. All this despite the fact that LBC had given something of a clue to the true nature of the broadcast - with the word "Live" on screen being written "Lie". But not everyone got the message - one viewer even called the station to correct their spelling. At the end of the programme, Bassam Abou Zeid appeared one more time to say it was all a joke. A bad one, according to many newspapers in Lebanon. A paper owned by Mr Hariri - who also owns LBCâs main competitor, Future TV - called the joke irresponsible. A source at LBC said the programme on which the spoof occurred is likely to be suspended.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:52:05 AM ||
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What? You don't say! I heard Gen. Clark is drafting a report claiming himself personally responsiblity for OBL's capture. Chiner
#3
Fascinating that so many Lebanese viewers would believe that OBL was in the house of a former Lebanese prime minister, but sad that a satirical program would be suspended for such a "Lie" report.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/24/2004 17:24 Comments ||
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Guess thatâll make it 1,498 ...
Two rebels have been killed in Chechnyaâs Vedenskiy District, the regional operational headquarters in the North Caucasus have reported. "Yesterday, not far from the village of Ersenoy in Vedenskiy District in a wooded mountainous area, two rebel fighters were located and killed thanks to directions from local residents," an official from the headquarters said. He said that the rebel fighters did not have any documents with them. "Two Kalashnikov assault rifles, a Makarov pistol, an underbarrel grenade launcher and 10 rounds of ammunition for it, as well as eight F-1 grenades, over 500 cartridges, a land mine based on an 82-mm mine and a radio set were found at the scene after a short exchange of fire," the source said. He also said that initial reports indicated that the rebel fighters had gone out to set up the mine and were waiting for federal forces. "However, they were killed as a result of the well-coordinated actions of the law-enforcement bodies," the source said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:39:38 AM ||
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If someone can point me to some reliable bodycounts of this conflict I would apreciate that very much.
1,500 militants grouped in some 80 bandit rings are currently operational in the Chechen Republic, a source at the headquarters of the federal forces in the region told Tass on Friday with reference to a report prepared by headquarters chief Rear Admiral Yury Maltsev in Khankala. The "bandit rings" are a Russian term (and a fairly apt one given how much these guys are said to be involved in the drug and kidnapping trade) used to describe the Chechen jamaats that each operate under a local commander but ultimately answer to Basayev.
The groups are mainly manned by residents of western Chechnya who posed as forced migrants to gain the legal status in the republic and âforeign mercenaries from far and near abroad who keep playing the key role in the separatist forces,â Maltsev was quoted as saying in his report. In 2003, the federal troops killed 335 extremists and detained 75 criminals listed on the federal and local âmost wantedâ registers, according to the source. During the same period of time, the military confiscated more than 3,000 pieces of small arms, about a million rounds of ammunition and 4.5 tons of explosives. The headquarters official also said police forces in Chechnya had detained nearly 1,500 individuals on suspicion of maintaining links to militants.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:34:24 AM ||
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I've noticed most of the alleged "Hard Boyz" seem to fold up like lawn furniture when confronted with (U.S. Army) regular infantry.
#2
That's because the Russians are fighting these guys by and large with draftees - hence the high corpse count on their end. We have a far more professionalized and trained military and to be quite frank - you get what you pay and train for.
Not to say the Russians don't have their own trained and disciplined forces, they do, but the difference between the average American and the average Russian soldier are rather striking and I know who I'd rather at my back.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 0:41 Comments ||
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Maybe we should deploy a brigade (173rd?) to chechnya, give the mutts something else to shoot at*.
#4
The Russian Army is generally made up of people to poor to buy their way out of consciption. Even with the war in Chechnya, the Russia Army loses more soliders in non-combat situation tan in fighting. This is due to the hundreds of suicides, the scores of murders, and the spread of HIV, Typhus and other diseases through the ranks.
Most soldiers barely get enough to eat, are beaten and tortued by their superior officers, and try to get through the war alive, while making money from various criminal enterprises; such as smuggling, gun running and extortion.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
01/24/2004 1:41 Comments ||
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It's not only the conscripts. The Russian NCO and officer corps are thoroughly corrupt. I'm sure the Hard Boyz get a long way with a little cash.
Posted by: Pete Stanley ||
01/24/2004 2:18 Comments ||
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According to reports received from pro-democracy activists in the isolated west Sudan state of Darfur, the "Jinjawid" Arab militia allies of the Islamist military dictatorship of Sudan have attacked around 100 villages in recent days burning all the grass huts to the ground. Thousands have been forced to flee the attacks against the unarmed villagers, adding to the around one million displaced men, women and children over the past months in what the UN has termed the worldâs current "worst humanitarian disaster".
The front-man for the dictatorship, military General Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir had recently vowed on state-run television to "crush and wipe out" the pro-democracy rebellion in Darfur. With peace agreements being signed between the dictatorship and the main southern rebel movement, the SPLA at talks in Kenya, the regime has diverted its attention to seeking a military solution to the resistance against its brutal oppression in Darfur to the west. Aid agencies have been kicked out of the region, with the regime claiming they had no right to be there. As a result the humanitarian disaster is enourmous with disease spreading and many dying from fatigue and lack of supplies as they walk over large distances away from the raids by the Arab militia and aerial bombardments by the air force of the Khartoum dictatorship.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/24/2004 12:30:06 AM ||
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Didn't the Islamists boast about thousands of killed enemies a week back. Maybe they weren't exagerrating.
Posted by: Pete Stanley ||
01/24/2004 2:13 Comments ||
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It's the opposition who have been claiming to have wiped out thousands of troops and militia. Which is almost certainly a fantasy
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
01/24/2004 4:56 Comments ||
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A Stalin-like take on the strategic village concept. No villlage can be a base for the rebels if all the inhabitants are dead.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:23 Comments ||
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This sounds like a job for Jacques ChIraq and Old Europe and the UN. We're busy with the Axis.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/24/2004 13:25 Comments ||
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A moderate offshore earthquake rattled northeastern Japan on Friday, authorities said, but no damage or injuries were reported. The earthquake, which hit Friday evening, registered a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 and was centered 43 miles beneath the seabed off the coast of northeastern Fukushma prefecture, the Meteorological Agency said. The agency said there was no danger of tsunami, powerful ocean waves caused by seismic activity. Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. It sits atop four tectonic plates, slabs that move across the earth's surface.
They seldom lose 40,000 people at a shot in earthquakes, either...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:05 ||
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The only thing more dangerous to live in than a Oklahoma trailer park is an Iranian four story mud hut.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:39 Comments ||
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I'd rather die in an Okie single wide poor, than own an Iranian mud flat rich.
A possible suicide bombing at a train station in central China killed two people Friday and injured three others, the government said. The blast occurred at 6:01 a.m. in the ticket sales hall of the railway station in the city of Zhengzhou, an industrial center, the Xinhua News Agency said. One person was killed instantly and another died later in a hospital, the agency reported. "The explosion is possibly a suicide bombing," Xinhua said, citing police. Seven people were detained and the blast was under investigation, the report said. It didn't identify the person killed or give any other details. Explosives often are used in attacks in China stemming from grudges or business disputes. Most gun ownership is illegal, but explosives are readily available for construction and mining.
Explosives don't kill people... ummm... yes, they do.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:05 ||
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well thye did lose selling weapoms to iraq so they ahev too sell too someone. and i am being a smartass
#2
If I were resolving a grudge or business dispute, I would go for the homicide bombing option rather than the suicide style. Maybe people feel more strongly about grudges in Chinese society. Couldn't they just key the side of his car, Super-glue his locks talk behind his back to all the neighbors? Moderation is the way to go.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:47 Comments ||
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The Algerian government and leaders of the Berber minority have agreed to overturn the results of elections held in 2002, paving the way for talks to resolve the long-running crisis in Kabylie province, a government statement said yesterday. The accord, which was signed by both sides late Thursday after 13 hours of talks in the national capital, Algiers, called for âunduly elected officialsâ voted into office in regional, local and parliamentary elections in Kabylie in 2002 to be removed from office.
That's pretty drastic...
In the statement, the government said the revocation took effect on Jan. 20 and committed itself to take âthe necessary measures with the concerned partiesâ to overturn the results of the elections âin a climate of calm and within a reasonable time scale.â Talks on the broader crisis in Kabylie, considered the Berbersâ homeland, were due to begin later yesterday. The government statement said that the results of local, regional and parliamentary elections would be overturned in the voting districts of Tizi Ouzou, Kabylieâs main city, and in Bejaia, the northeastern provinceâs second largest city. In three other regions â Bouira, Setif and Boumerdes â the results would only be overturned in predominantly Berber vote precincts, where a call by Berber leaders to boycott the polls was widely heeded. Voter turnout for the 2002 elections in Kabylie and nearby districts with large Berber populations was in single-digit percentage figures.
First time I've ever heard of a vote boycott actually working...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/24/2004 00:04 ||
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Fred, usually just teh threat of a vote boycott can wring some concessions out of a government that has the world community watching the process and expecting to find unfairness.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/24/2004 13:28 Comments ||
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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.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
