A Dhaka court yesterday denied bail to wife of former Bangladeshi President H.M. Ershad and allowed police to hold her for up to 72 hours while they quiz her about allegations of misappropriating funds. Bidisha, who was arrested overnight at her apartment in the capital Dhaka, asked the court to free her, arguing she was the victim of a political conspiracy. Bidisha was detained after her husband filed a complaint, accusing her of misappropriation of money and issuing threats. Official sources said Bidisha was likely to be questioned on her alleged links with foreign intelligence organizations.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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By officially denying Michael Matthiessen, the director for civilian crisis management under Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Uzbek authorities appear to be taking extra time to eliminate the opposition completely, the Gazeta daily said Monday.
"They will show Islamic terrorists to international representatives when the real opposition has been destroyed," Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said. "Well aware that they are dealing with an Islamic state, Westerners appear ready to grant abatements to president Islam Karimov."
The refusal to let Matthiessen into Uzbekistan marked a new stage of the escalating conflict between the Central Asian republic and the West. Late last month, EU foreign ministers threatened to exert "diplomatic pressure" on Uzbekistan if it failed to let international organizations investigate the crackdown on the mid-May riots in Andizhan, a city with 300,000 population (second largest in the eastern part of the country).
Russia promptly called for a UN investigation. Late last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested Chechen terrorists might have been involved in the Andizhan unrest.
"The Taliban or Chechen terrorists could have played a role [in the Andizhan riots]. Now we are verifying this information," he said.
Interestingly, one of the first comments on Lavrov's remarks came from Taus Dzhabrailov, chairman of Chechnya's State Council, airing what Moscow's officials would have probably preferred to downplay: "Chechen militants, if they were among those who orchestrated the Uzbek events, prove that the structures designed to fight them are too weak."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 15:13 ||
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Russian reforms intended to prevent attacks by Chechen rebels are merely boosting militant recruits, their leader said on Saturday.
In comments broadcast on radio Liberty's Chechen service, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev said President Vladimir Putin had run out of ideas to end the 10-year war in the southern Russian region.
Shortly after the broadcast, an explosion outside Grozny wounded three people, the army said, in what bore the hallmarks of a rebel attack.
Putin introduced laws at the end of last year scrapping elections for regional leaders as part of a reform package he said was needed to combat the threat of terrorism.
"The changes to the Russian constitution, by which Putin himself appoints and removes regional heads from their posts, has brought the whole North Caucasus against him," Sadulayev said in the interview.
"Putin is himself creating new flashpoints in the North Caucasus. He is provoking the people."
Sadulayev took over as Chechen leader after the killing of veteran rebel Aslan Maskhadov in March. He has pledged to keep fighting and ruled out accepting any Russian peace overtures.
So far this year, there have been not been any large-scale attacks on the army or civilians -- such as last year's Beslan hostage raid when rebels seized more than 1,000 people in a school. Some 330 hostages died, mostly children.
But a series of small attacks have kept security tight.
"A Zhiguli (car) exploded just outside Grozny," an army spokesman said on Saturday. "Three civilians were wounded, we have no information on deaths. We are checking the cause."
In recent years the war has spread to other Caucasus regions. Explosions are now almost as common in neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia as in Chechnya.
"Putin has no way to end this war. And we are not weakening, and are not on our knees," said Sadulayev.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 15:11 ||
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#1
I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I?
Between a supermarket and a hardwarestore on a busy street close to the centre of Baku, a poster high on an advertising hoarding provides a glimpse of what the emerging hub of the Caspian Sea oil industry might yet become: a country built in the image of one man.
The poster displays portraits of Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's late president and, in the words of his son, "founder of an independent Azeri state", and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who really did create the republic of Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
That the supermarket is Turkish-owned is not coincidental. The juxtaposition of these two men is no accident either. Azerbaijan and Turkey are bonded by ethnicity, language, religion and culture. Both countries emerged from empires - Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union, Turkey from its Ottoman imperial past.
Now, a growing cult of personality around Aliyev bears striking parallels to, and may be a conscious attempt to emulate, the cult of Ataturk, "father of the Turks", whose legacy still resonates in his country three generations after his death in 1938.
In Baku, signs of the emerging cult of Aliyev, who died in 2003, are everywhere. His portrait glowers from posters at traffic intersections. The airport, schools and factories are named after him. His bust is in public buildings.
Last week a vast oil pipeline that is the key to Azerbaijan's future wealth was solemnly inaugurated as the Heydar Aliyev Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline.
The man guiding this memorialisation of Aliyev is his son, Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan's current president. At the ceremony to open the pipeline, Aliyev the younger gave an emotional speech in memory of his father.
"He was the architect, the strategist of Azerbaijan," he told an audience that included the presidents of Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
The old man was not present because "destiny has decided otherwise, but his ideas are eternal for us".
Azeris are wearily familiar with the cult of personality from their days as citizens of the Soviet Union. According to some western observers in Baku, they may also be torn between their Soviet and Turkish heritage, giving the parallels between the personality cults of Aliyev and Ataturk added potency.
Some Azeris make the comparison explicit. Samir Sharifov, executive director of the State Oil Fund in Baku, says that, just as Ataturk rescued Turkey from occupation and destruction after the first world war, Aliyev saved Azerbaijan from the same fate after independence from the Soviet Union and a war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. "Heydar Aliyev did for Azerbaijan what Ataturk did for Turkey," he says.
Is the parallel justified? The two men could hardly be more different. Ataturk was one of the great figures of the interwar years in Europe, forcing Turkey to modernise and turn westward. His legacy today is a democratic Turkey.
Aliyev was an apparatchik, the first non-Russian to head a KGB operation in a Soviet republic (Azerbaijan), who climbed the Soviet power apparatus to become a member of the Politburo. He was not the first president of independent Azerbaijan, but the third, coming to power in 1993 after internal unrest that he was instrumental in fomenting. He changed the constitution to allow his son to succeed him.
Aliyev appears to have left Azerbaijan as a hereditary autocracy that "he rules from beyond the grave", as a western official in Baku puts it.
Nasib Nassibli, director of the Foundation for Azerbaijani Studies in Baku, points out that Aliyev could have chosen to model his country on Turkey's democratic system.
But, from instinct and training, "Heydar Aliyev didn't like the Turkish version of democracy." What appealed, instead, was the memorialisation of Ataturk, who has been dead for nearly 70 years but is still alive in Turkey.
"The people of Azerbaijan need to feel that Heydar Aliyev is still alive," Prof Nassibli says. "Turkey has given us a very bad example."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 12:38 ||
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Pyongyang, June 4 (KCNA) -- British Ambassador to the DPRK David Arthur Slinn and intelligence agents embassy officials helped farmers of the Paeksong Co-op Farm in Phyongsong, South Phyongan Province, in farming on June 3. The guests were plucking and transplanting rice seedlings to help farmers busy with farming. During break the guests joined farmers in singing and talked with them. The British ambassador said that he saw with his own eyes the vigorous efforts of the Korean people to assist the countryside and increase agricultural production.
"Nigel, have you compiled the data on the estimated rice crop yields?" "Yes, Ambassador, they're doomed." "Very good, Nigel. Foward the report to London, there's a good lad."
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 09:35 ||
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#1
Next, peasant vacations for the British upper classes in ZimBobWe.
Posted by: ed ||
06/06/2005 9:58 Comments ||
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Sounds like a whole lot of fun! During the work I hope they were playing inspirational music telling the tale of how lil Kim visited to inspect other agricultural efforts and thereafter the yield of the fields he looked at increased 5 fold over the prior year. How cute, singing the praises of lil Kim and Juche idear on their break. Did they have grass or bark soup with sawdust bread for lunch? Wonder how many of them were thinking about why the hell they got to the point where they have to spend their free time planting crops by hand?
SINGAPORE, June 6 (UPI) -- Japan and the United States will move from research to the development stage on an upgraded sea-based missile defense system, the Yomiuri Shimbun said Monday. Japan's Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono told reporters Sunday in Singapore that the agency would request a multimillion-dollar budget in 2006 for the first year's development. Production will begin following a five-year development phase that ends in 2011, he said.
The two countries are jointly developing a sea-based interceptor missile with a 20-inch diameter that will be able to distinguish a targeted missile from a decoy. At the end of 2006 Japan will equip its Aegis destroyers with 13-inch-diameter interceptor missiles that can cover several hundred miles, but the new missiles will have a much longer range. "If the missile defense system can double the scope of Japan's defense, the number of Aegis vessels could be halved," Ono said.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 09:27 ||
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#1
I hope that this will be in time. Production starting in 2011? Will Kim wait that long?
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States has no deadline for deciding on next steps in policy toward North Korea, rejecting a comment by a senior Defense Department official that new measures may be in place by the end of June.
The Pentagon official, speaking to reporters aboard Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plane during a swing through Asia, said the administration may be poised to refer the matter of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program to the United Nations.
Rice noted that President George W. Bush said recently that the administration "still believes that there is life left" in the stalled six-party process. "I think that the idea that we're going to decide one way or the other is a little forward leaning," Rice said Sunday. "I would say, you know, I don't put timelines on things." Rice acknowledged that the administration will look at options beyond the six-party format.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Are they tiptoeing around this for some clever reason or has every Republican in this country been secretely castrated? Maybe Rice is a yes-man, er, yes-woman. I can't believe my party of choice has become such a brothel of jellyfish.
Suggestion 1. Tell everyone in the whole world to get the hell out of the way until we get this war on terror thing sewn up.
Suggestion 2. Make, don't ask, the congress and senate work on a majority rules principal again.
Suggestion 3. Quit going around trying to brown-nose every freak and deviant in the country for votes you know that you will never get anyway.
I have a list of about 30,000 other suggestions if anyone would like to hear them.
Bush has handled the NorKies as well as, no make that better, than could be expected after having had a fait accomplis, NorKs with Nukes, dropped in his lap by the Clintoon fuckwits.
That we do not put ourselves in a box, limiting our choices and keeping the asshats guessing, is a good thing - it is not a lack of stones. The General doesn't speak for the Bush Admin, Dr Rice does. He may find himself in Greenland tending the snow gauges if he barks again.
Separate this issue, NorKs with Nukes, from the others and you've got a deal. If only the Pub Senators had half the wits and balls that Bush & Co display every day.
BTW, Dr Rice doesn't brown nose - she works for Bush because she believes in the same things - and they're smarter than the MSM paints, by light years. Her job, now, is to communicate the US position in fairly restrained speech. Better her than you or me, eh? Sigh. I feel as frustrated as you do, but look at where we were in 2000 and ask yourself who could have done better - or even would have considered doing the good things Bush has done? al Gore? al Skeery?
#3
I've long thought that Bush's strategy in North Korea is simply a waiting game. The idea, apparently, is that North Korea is going to collapse anyway, so it really isn't worth going to war over. The six party talks are a perfect way to fritter time away while appearing to care about the problem. Tom Holsinger has been on the case for a while now.He believes that a recent WaTimes report may indicate that the regime's collapse is weeks away. The report says North Korea will turn out city folk to work on farms in the countryside.
There may also be the possibility that North Korea has acquired some sort of strategic deterrent. Beating a country with a strategic deterrent is possible, because WMDs don't offer much flexibility. After all the USSR lost in Afghanistan, the US lost S. Vietnam. (And yes, I'm aware of some of the debate on the latter, but I believe the point still holds.) The new generation of states that have acquired WMD have made calculations more difficult. I repeat it can be done, but gingerly: it'sstilla matterofbrinksmanship.
North Korea has always played closer to the edge in that regard. When I first read some suggestions about what North Korea's weapon of choice might be, I was incredulous. It was too fantastic, too ridiculous to be true. But I've since opened up to the possiblity that it might not be alltalltales, I still have difficulty believing. And that's probably a good thing!
#5
Sorry Rory, I didn't realize the bolded words were links. The Banjawarn Station incident is even stranger as this link documents. I have travelled through this country and it is extremely remote and sparsely populated. Hiding physical evidence of a nuclear explosion and missile test is entirely feasible.
#6
Not a Nuke physicist but...if a "mystery" nuke were to be set off in the Ausie bush it wouldn't be a mystery for long.
Quite a few countries test for atmospheric radioactive isotopes(fall out)regulary. In addition we have sats that monitor the "double flash" for clandestine tests or the real thing.
If, if somtin somtin did happen its more likely to be a unexotic natural cause .
OTOH it could have been flying monkeys comming out of Crocodile Dundees butt. ;)
Posted by: Red Dog ||
06/06/2005 5:35 Comments ||
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Phil B. - Not sure why my links came out in bold. Yeah, I saw the Brightskies material. I have it linked under "fantastic".
Red Dog - The speculation is that the Banjawarn Station events were actually some sort of directed energy weapon. Such a weapon might be based on the work of Nicola Tesla, who was a very interesting fellow. I think it's entirely possible the US gov't sits on large amounts of knowlege and technology.
I believe Aum Shinkrikyo is a front for North Korean intelligence.
#8
Rory, an interesting story. But I have a hard time believing anyone has a working directed energy weapon that can target on the other side of the planet. I wouldn't discount a small nuclear explosion as 1993 seems to predate the global air sampling regime.
#9
North Korean>Nicola Tesla>Aum Shinkrikyo>Banjawarn Station>Brightskies.
Hummmm..You've forced my hand Rory.
It's deep, so don't ask and by all means don't tell.
We have an entity placed in a very tenuious strange quarter(area 540 MeV). Nontheless for the challenge, Agent X has managed to penetrate
the matters you've commented about and keeps us informed and upto date with the latest, very encourageing.
Earnesty is the feature most admired about X. That's a *GOOD* thing, because He/She (i can't divulge) is very elusive. In fact X comes from a long line of earnest agents we call Spembles, most charming and lightweight.
If agent X were a beverage, it would best be described as something less than near beer, flavorwise that is.
#11
phil_b: Yeah, I have trouble believing it, too. Still Tesla did some truly odd things, and I believe some of his ideas about vacuum might be right. Though I don't have enough education to judge. I think a nuclear bomb test is possibility.
I'm much more certain about the Aum Shinrikyo-North Korea link. When Aum Shinrikyo first appeared in the 1980s, it was as a political party. I think it was a Soviet/NKor effort to penetrate the government, much as they had done with communist parties in European parliaments. AM wasn't elected to the Diet, so the next best thing was a religion, I suppose.
It seems to me that the Russians (understandably) lost interest after about 1991, but the North Koreans carried on. However, the NKors started to use AM to target Russian scientists and technology.
In Plague Wars, the authors reveal that before the successful sarin attack, AM also tried to attack US military bases with anthrax. This was unsuccessful. It is also mentioned, in passing, that AM tried to get ahold of drawings for the MiG 29. Who, in 1993, would try to steal MiG 29 drawings?
#2
Seriously insecure, which leads to verbal and physical bullying downward, and entirely too often slavish rule-following and kow-towing upward. And, because they are so good themselves at learning and following rules, a smug, self-rightous willingness to point out the rules to others. (And I enjoyed my years living there!)
#3
I'm no expert on Germany in the run-up to Nazi empowerment, but it seems to me that Hugo Chavez's latest doings in Venezuela more resemble Hitler in the '30's, than Bush ever has (duh!)...
Posted by: Mike ||
06/06/2005 14:39 Comments ||
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#5
I wouldn't be too hard on the Germans. We have lots of home-grown idiots right here in the USA. They get lots of publicitly because they are similar to the MSM point of view, just a little too far, too honest.
#6
Coming up next: Germany to be covered in tin foil. Right after this from Halliburton...
Posted by: Kent Brockman ||
06/06/2005 15:25 Comments ||
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Tatort has been a refuge for leftist screenwriters for the last decade. I wouldn't read too much into it. The whole plot was so much nonsense that I doubt a lot of people bought into it (people who don't celebrate MM, that is).
#8
President Kerry and the Downing Street Memo, Der StalinPanzer Hillary labeling Dubya as the worst abuser of the Oval Office, MadMan Dean's latest anti-GOP rants, AL Gore - FDR back in 1941 might as well call for US Congressional legislation demanding Yamamoto attack Pearl Harbor and the US West Coast!? CLINTONISM > Assassinate Dubya/Attack America = Patriotism - is prob why IRAN is reportedly holding off enrichment until July '05, cuz they and the Norkies wanna see whats going to happen to Dubya. The Left wants a new 9-11/WMD attack ags America, besides of course anti-US nuke war "brinkmanship" - federalist Washington must turn Socialist and Centralist due to the PC righteous demands of post9-11 new global Empire = America must be humiliated/discredited abroad, vv waging various wars {"quagmires"]due to faulty intel + being a bully fascist = imperfect Socialist imperialist brute. BY any measure, the Left > Rightist America is internally and externally/ internationally incompetent and unreliable,
ergo Rightist America has to "constrained and controlled" under Regulatory Centralism/
Socialism and the new, "proper" [read- Leftist]Socialist, i.e. Communist, OWG. Between now and 2020, no matter where US milfors are in the world, and no matter whom they are fighting against, the REAL BATTLEFIELD/WAR is in WASHINGTON DC! THE RISK IS VERY VERY VERY REAL THAT FREE AND SOVEREIGN AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT WILL LEGALLY CEASE TO EXIST, SAVE IN PC NAME/PROPAGANDA ONLY, DURING THE LIFETIME OF THE CURRENT GENERATIONS. ONCE FREE AMERICA IS GONE, THE COMMIES, SOCIALISTS, AND ORIENTALISTS ARE NOT GONNA GIVE IT BACK WITHOUT VIOLENT CIVIL WAR AND WORLD WAR! The Failed Left > 9-11 is about what -ism and which Nation(s) will dominate or control the future SOCIALIST ORDER and SOCIALIST OWG - HINT: ITS NOT AMERICA, RIGHTISM OR THE WEST! The Left knows America, Rightism, and Capitalism, etc. works, ergo they're gonna kill us anyway.
Prisoner Abuse: Self-flagellation over alleged human rights violations is not a foreign policy, but a recipe for long-term disaster. Some who now complain about Guantanamo had a key hand in making it necessary.
Newsweek's retraction of its story on the alleged flushing of pages from the Quran down a Guantanamo commode has not dissuaded critics convinced that Guantanamo is, as Amnesty International put it, a modern-day "gulag."
One of those who believe the human rights of prisoners at Guantanamo are being violated is former President Carter.
Speaking in September 2003, two short years after 9-11, he opined as to how the holding of suspected terrorists there ran counter to the democratic principles we preach. He also warned against curtailing human rights in the name of homeland security.
Carter charged then that these prisoners of the war on terror "have been held in prison without access to their families, or a lawyer, or without knowing the charges against them" and "kept in cages."
Yet it was Carter's attempt during his White House years to make human rights the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy that brought us to this point in our history. On taking office in 1977, President Carter declared that advancing "human rights" was among his highest priorities. America's ally, the Shah of Iran, was one of his first targets, with Carter chastising him for his human rights record and withdrawing America's support. One of the charges was that the shah had been torturing some 3,000 prisoners, many of them accused of being Soviet agents.
Carter ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to stop paying $4 million annually in bribes to the religious mullahs who opposed the shah to keep them quiet. But they opposed the shah not because he was dictatorial, but because he was secular, pro-Western and expanding the rights and equality of women.
This sent a clear message to the Islamic fundamentalists that the U.S. would not come to the shah's aid. The irony here is that, according to "The Real Jimmy Carter" by Steven Hayward, Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute: "(Ayatollah) Khomeini's regime executed more people in its first year in power than the shah's SAVAK had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years."
Khomeini was a human rights nightmare. When he overthrew the shah in February 1979, he established the first modern Islamic regime, a model for the Taliban and the jihadists to follow. And when our embassy was stormed that November and 52 American hostages were held for 444 days, lack of U.S. resolve was confirmed in the jihadist mind.
The rest, as they say, is history. The Soviet Union, seeing us so willingly abandon a staunch ally, quickly invaded Afghanistan, and it was the resistance to the Soviet invasion that helped give birth to the Taliban. The Iranian revolution led to the Iraq-Iran war that took 1 million lives and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait to strengthen his position.
That in turn led to Operation Desert Storm and bases in Saudi Arabia that fueled fanatical Islamist resentment, one of the reasons given by Osama bin Laden for striking at America, the Great Satan.
Now we are about to face a nuclear Iran as we are engaged in a great war on terror, prisoners of which are being housed at Guantanamo, where alleged "mishandling" of the Quran is the subject of more international opprobrium than the sawing off of innocents' heads or the strapping of bombs onto children's stomachs in Iraq.
If the U.S. had stuck by the shah and his successors, the history of the last 25 years in the Middle East and here at home would have been very different. As noted by Hayward, who has also written books on Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, the fruits of Jimmy Carter's Iran disaster are with us still, spawning the rise of radical Islam, terrorism, the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Carter and the usual gaggle of left-wing political groups are concerned that the human rights of Guantanamo prisoners are being violated. Isn't that where all this began? Add this to yor Legacy File, Jimmah. It's already pretty thick.
#2
Way to go, Jimmy. Your Iranian fiasco will compete with Kennedy & Johnson's Vietnam fiasco and Clinton's North Korean fiasco for greatest U.S blunder since WWII. I hope we never have another Democratic Party president again. If Betty Crocker Clinton wins in 2008, this nation is down the toilet.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/06/2005 16:23 Comments ||
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I can imagine in late 2001 asking a question of myself in 2005:
What’s the main story? The smallpox quarantine? Fallout from the Iranian – Israeli exchange contaminating Indian crops? A series of bombings in heartland malls?
"Well, no – the big story today has to do with soldiers mishandling terrorists' holy texts at a detention center."
Mishandling? How? Like, you mean, they opened it up without first checking to see if it was ticking, and it blew up –
"No, they handled it in a way that disrespected it. Infidels are supposed to use gloves."
#6
Y'know, I think the bigger problem wasn't Jimmah's human rights focus (unevenly applied, but one of the few semi-admirable things he did) but the fact he was such a craven wuss when the embassy was taken over. And when Afghanistan was invaded, he bravely....boycotted the summer Olympics.
We've been paying for that sheer cowardice ever since.
June 5, 2005: The U.S. Marine Corps is playing hard to get during efforts to arrange marine participation in special operations work with SOCOM (Special Operations Command). Under pressure from the Department of Defense, the marines have put together a force of training teams for working with foreign armed forces. This relieves the U.S. Army Special Forces of this task. The marines have put together 24 teams, with 13 marines in each one.
When SOCOM was established in 1987, all the services were asked to subordinate their special operations forces to SOCOM. The marines were the only ones to refuse, partly on the grounds that they believed all their troops were elite, and partly because the only elite force (by marine standards) they had was Force Recon. But the marines could not give up Force Recon, as it was the strategic recon teams the marines used for their own operations. But, under pressure from SOCOM after September 11, 2001, the marines agreed to help out. First, the marines created Detachment One (DET1), an 86 man force of commandoes who worked with the SEALs. DET1 became operational in 2003. The marines already lose a few dozen high quality troops each year to U.S. Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs and air force special operations units. So it was felt that DET1 would reduce this somewhat.
Now SOCOM wants several battalions of marines made available to SOCOM, and the marines are resisting. The marines have noted that once a service lets units go to SOCOM, they never get them back. While SOCOM picks up a lot of the costs of the units they take control of, the service the troops came from still pays lots of the costs. The marines are pretty tenacious in these inter-service battles, and may yet win this one. The marines are willing to provide battalions to SOCOM, "as needed," but with the understanding that these units go back to marine control once the mission is completed. Meanwhile, DET1 is still technically "being evaluated," as the Department of Defense and the marines have yet to agree on the exact details of how these marine commandoes would work for SOCOM and the marines. This sort of prolonged negotiations are one reason SOCOM considers the marines "hard to work with." The marines take that as a compliment.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 11:06 ||
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#1
If I remember correctly, the Marines had a Ranger outfit at the beginning of WWII in the Pacific, but disbanded it because they believe that all their troups are elite. This is just a continuation of that line of thought.
Besides, do people ever quit empire building?
#3
The Marines are now deciding to be part of SOCOM because they see the majority of the GWOT supplementals heading to SOCOM. Once they see how much Operational funding they will have access to they will get over their "all Marines are special" attitudes and realize special ops Marines will bring high dollar training and equipment back to the corp. A bonus for the Corps. they need to look across the services and check the benifits derived from SOCOM.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
06/06/2005 21:24 Comments ||
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A leading Senate Democrat has said the United States needs to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat. Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that an independent commission take a look at Guantanamo and make recommendations. "But the end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners," he told ABC's "This Week" television programme.
A Pentagon report released Friday detailed incidents in which US guards at Guantanamo desecrated the Quran. Last month, Amnesty International called the detention center for alleged terrorists "the gulag of our time," ...
... thus providing the Dems with a little political cover for stunts like what Joe is doing now ...
... a charge Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed as "reprehensible". The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, plans hearings this month on the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects at the prison camp.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Shut up, Joe. Go plagarize something, why don't ya?
Or how about this?: Shoot Gitmo's big fish, put the little fish in a leaky boat and point 'em east.
#2
The sad thing is, the practice that I'm beginning to think is both morally and practically dubious, "renditions" to foreign governments for interrogation, would probably vastly increace if Guantanamo were done away with.
Q: If WW2 were being fought today, would it be legally possible to have POW camps on the American mainland, or would the current state of lawfare mean everyone would wind up suing in the "If the glove don't fit you must acquit" justice system?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
06/06/2005 0:25 Comments ||
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#3
The world's most prominent leftists newspaper suggested it first. But I have a better idea: shut down the New York Times.
#5
I have an old HS classmate who lives in Deleware. They kind of view Biden as a piece of old furniture. Stuffing coming out - broken springs, but they don't have the heart to rid themselves of him because they are so used to him being there. Remember, he was elected at age 29, but became eligible because his birthday was in December of the year he was elected. He has been ther ever since 33 years...
#7
Yikes .com, from the way his (and, "yes, he is a man", to borrow from a better, lol) hair is glowing in your pic, the Israeli *Fish ray* may be currently targeted at him ...
#12
"Why is the left acting like they are in a position to make these demands?"
Because that's what they do for a living. Try to chill, Badanov -- Biden and company are just singing their same old worn-out tunes. I just got out of the car from listening to some "journalist" on NPR lamenting once again that the Bush administration didn't do enough Iraq reconstruction pre-planning before starting the war. Same old worn-out tunes.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/06/2005 11:07 Comments ||
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#13
When they lead, the Norks get the bomb. When they follow, they're pesky back-seat drivers. I'll take trhe latter.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/06/2005 11:10 Comments ||
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#14
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania,
Freakin' RINO's gonna play ball with Biden? Jeez, I really wish Toomey had won last year's primary...
#16
I think we should shut down the prison at Guantanamo, too.
Shoot all the illegal combatants held there - in accordance with the Geneva Conventions - then drench their bodies in lard, cremate them, and dump their ashes in the middle of the Atlantic.
Then make it our policy - again in accordance with the Geneva Conventions - to kill every illegal combatant we come across.
There, Joe - problem solved. Don't you feel better?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/06/2005 11:56 Comments ||
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#17
Aw, you guys just don't understand!
The bad guys are using Gitmo as a propaganda tool, so we goota shut it down! Simple message!
Since Joe is delivering the message, that make him ... ummm ... a tool of the terrorist recruiters. QED!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/06/2005 12:32 Comments ||
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#18
In 2001 I said, okay,let them play their games on judicial nominations.
In 2003 I said, okay, this is getting ridiculous, but I can see how the numbers are stacked against the right. We'll just have to win in 2004 and get those nominees through.
In 2004 I said, no sweat. Bush gets in with a bare majority, and the nominees can go through.
Now, in 2005, movement on a FOUR YEAR OLD nomination finally came to pass with the proviso that the senate not follow the constitution.
This has been going on for four solid years; unrelenting posturing by the left which has been losing steadily during that time, set against the right's insistance that we knuckle under.
If Frist expects to pull a hat trick in 2006, he'd better sh*t a way to undo this nominations games the left has been playing before things getting really serious with a SCOTUS nominee and they spin out of his control.
The right controls the agenda, or they should but what I see so far is capitulation on issues that we have clearly won on.
Does Frist really think folks like me are going to stand around and be called Nazis or facsists just becasue we want the Senate to do its f*cking work for two more years?
I play games. I play wargames. I understand strategy and I understand tactics. If Frist thinks he is going to draw the left into another rout in 2006, he best be thinking about conservatives staying home in 2006 and putting a pretty little dent in his plans to help the left defer more judicial as well as non-judicial nominiations over the next two years.
Frankly, I don't care about 2006 if we don't get to cash in some of our winnings from the 2004 election at least for judicial nominations.
#19
Bad, he's my Senator and I have repeatedly let his office know how I feel about his knuckling under. Support for the Republicans is dwindling here especially with the Democrats who jumped ship and voted for Bush. I can't believe I'm the only one pushing for action.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/06/2005 16:13 Comments ||
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#20
No Senator Biden, its ***YOU***, the treasonist MEDIA, and your leftish supports (AI) who are the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruting terrorists.
You would to anything to 'get Bush' -- even treason.
#25
Damn! I just posted this as I didn't spot it first. Oh, well.
I just get all tingly when I see him on the Sunday shows 'cause he is such a slimeball. And to see folks like Russert just get all gushy amazes me. He is so gelatinous.
The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) yesterday urged the United States to bring the officers responsible for the desecration of the Holy Qur'an to immediate justice. "The US must live up to its responsibilities and not be lenient with the perpetrators of the desecration and should bring those responsible for the despicable crime to justice immediately," said OIC spokesman Ambassador Atta El-Manan Bakhit. The spokesman for the world's largest Muslim organization also called for urgent measures to calm the tension caused by the incident in the Islamic world and ensure that such abhorrent acts are not repeated in the future.
Here's an idea: I think we should issue a warning that we'll take any desecration of any symbol of the United States, to include its flag, to be a criminal act and that we'll expect the perpetrators to be immediately and publicly punished. Further, in any country where it's against the law to speak "disrespectfully" of the chief of state, the same standards must be applied to discussion of American officials, starting with President Bush.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
NUTS!
Posted by: ST ||
06/06/2005 0:40 Comments ||
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#3
It is just a small consolation, that takes a little patience to properly enjoy, but these folks do something everyday that makes me feel better about my "Stupid should be painful" bumper sticker ...
#7
We want the OIC to insist their member states be punished for every Bible, Torah, or other non-islamic religious book that is destroyed by islamic countries, as well as reparations for churches, temples, etc., destroyed.
Should that happen, then we'll talk. Until then (and I'm not holding my breath), SHUT UP.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/06/2005 11:50 Comments ||
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#9
So descrating a holy book is bad and should be punished, right? What about a life? Is that not holy? How about taking innocent lives to advance one's political agenda? Isn't that a descration of human life? Anybody that would take a life over the treatment of a book needs to grow up!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/06/2005 12:36 Comments ||
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#10
This is just the bitch du jour. Next up: US must live up to its responsibilities and prosecute all those restaurant owners who offer bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.
Posted by: Matt ||
06/06/2005 13:12 Comments ||
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Azahari, a Jemaah Islamiah bomb maker and one of the masterminds behind the Bali bombing, is hiding in the Indonesian capital, where security measures are being stepped up in hotels, shopping malls and night clubs. Police widens its field of investigation into the Tentena attack.
Jakarta police spokesman Tjiptono said the terror alert in Indonesia has gone up one notch after reporting that one of Southeast Asia's most wanted Islamic militants might be hiding on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, where he might be preparing another attack following the bombing that killed 20 people in central Sulawesi on May 28.
"We think Azahari and his people are just outside Jakarta. We can't tell what they are planning to do, but we're on guard [and] are increasing security as a precaution," Tjiptono said.
Indonesian police consider the Malaysian-born Azahari to be Jemaah Islamiah's main bomb maker—the group, which is linked to al-Qaeda, operates throughout South-East Asia.
For the police, he is one of the masterminds of a series of attacks in the country such as Bali (2002, 202 dead), Jakarta's Marriott hotel (2003, 12 dead) and the Australian Embassy (2004, 10 dead).
The United States Embassy on Friday warned Americans of a threat to bomb the lobbies of hotels frequented by Westerners in Jakarta. Security in the capital's major hotels but also in its main shopping malls and night clubs was made tighter.
After several alarms and alerts warning of a new wave of terror attacks, two bombs exploded in the predominantly Christian town of Tentena (Central Sulawesi) killing 20 people making it the worst attack after that of Bali.
Senior Commander Tatang Somantri, head of the police team investigating the Tentena case, said that the search for the two main suspects was expanding into the Morowali regency.
He said that as of Saturday, the police had identified 18 suspects in connection with the bombing—ten of them are being questioned in Poso regency, whilst the rest are being questioned at Central Sulawesi Police headquarters.
Hasman, the director of a penitentiary in Poso regency, is among the suspects. It is thought that his office was used to assemble the bombs used in the attack.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 12:48 ||
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INDONESIAN police are checking a letter containing a "strong smell" sent to the head of a Bali court that recently jailed Schapelle Corby on drugs charges.
"Members of the police forensic laboratory, including officers from Jakarta, are investigating the smell and the letter has been taken for laboratory tests," Bali police spokesman A.S. Reniban said today.
The investigation follows an incident last week in which Indonesia's embassy in Canberra was sealed off in a biological agent scare triggered by an envelope containing a white powder.
Although it later proved to be harmless, authorities believed the letter was the work of supporters of Corby, a 27-year-old Australian woman jailed for 20 years last month for attempting to smuggling marijuana onto Bali.
Mr Reniban said judge Nengah Suriada had a dizzy spell on opening the noxious letter last Friday.
However, the judge had not reported the incident until today, when he returned to work and found his office still contained the odour, he said.
The letter was made to look as though it had been sent by the Australian consulate in Bali but did not carry the mission's letterhead, Mr Reniban said.
A second unopened letter also sent to the Bali prosecutor's office had been collected for investigation.
The results of the tests were not known.
Australian outrage against the Corby verdict has threatened to upset improving relations between the two countries, despite renewed pledges of friendship by Canberra and Jakarta
Many Australians have threatened to boycott Bali as a holiday destination and have demanded a return of cash donated to aid victims of last year's tsunami.
Defence ministers of Iran and Nigeria here Monday underlined defense cooperation within the framework of Islamic solidarity. Iran's Defense Minister Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani and his Nigerian counterpart Rabiu Kwankaso, in a meeting, exchanged views on cooperation in defence, military and economic areas, Publicity Department of Defence Ministry said. Islamic countries, with respect to Islamic solidarity, should further cooperate, said Shamkhani.
I guess that makes it official, Nigeria is an islamic state
He expressed hope that peace and stability would be crystallized across the world including Africa continent and that ethnic clashes would end.
"One turban to rule them all, one turban to bind them..."
He stressed that Nigeria is considered as a center of power in west Africa and Iran enjoys geo-politics and geo-economic privileges in the Middle East, saying expansion of defence ties between the two powerful states is of high importance.
The visit of president Khatami to African countries is considered as a sign of strong will from two countries' officials to promote bilateral relations that could pave the way for cooperation in defense and military areas. He noted that Iran's defence ministry is ready to upgrade defence potential of Nigeria and implement various industrial projects in that country.
Outsourcing a few weapons programs, perhaps?
The Nigerian minister, for his part, called for cooperation between defence ministries of Iran and Nigeria to supply his country with military hardware.
Cuz there ain't nuthing so islamic as military hardware
He stressed that his country would welcome Iran's contribution to implement industrial and economic projects in Nigeria.
Nigerian Defense Minister Rabiu Kwankaso arrived here Monday on an official visit. Kwankaso, heading a delegation, was welcomed by Advisor to Iran's defense minister Mir Hamid Nasl-Pak at Imam Khomeini International Airport. During his stay here, the Nigerian minister is to meet President Mohammad Khatami. He is also to hold another round of talks with his counterpart Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani. The Nigerian minister is also to visit industrial units of Iran's Defense Ministry.
Kwankaso and Shamkhani are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on bilateral defense cooperation.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 16:02 ||
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He expressed hope... that ethnic clashes would end.
Translation: please finish killing the non-Muslims at your earliest convenience.
Posted by: Matt ||
06/06/2005 16:29 Comments ||
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#2
Now that Iran and Nigeria have teamed up they are invincible, or something.
#4
So the Nigerians are going to bind themselves to a country Bush has his eye on. Not exactly wisdom there, guys. Should make the follow-up tracking down easier though, with the copies-in-triplicate-of-all-correspondence filed by terrified Iranian bureaucrats.
#5
When the Pak brass visited in March 2004, there was talk of nukes.
In January 2004, a North Korean vice president visted Abuja and they talked about the sale of ballistic missiles
Looks like the Iranians have come with new toys
Nigeria's nuclear power 'mix-up'
Nigeria has pulled back from an earlier press statement that it had discussed acquiring nuclear power from Pakistan.
The reference to nuclear weapons was a "typographical error," said a defence ministry spokesman.
The statement was released after talks between Pakistan's chief of staff and Nigeria's defence minister in Abuja.
Pakistan may make Nigeria a nuclear power
"Speaking at the opening of the discussions, the Pakistani chairman of joint chiefs of staff ... said that his country is working out the dynamics of how they can assist Nigeria's armed forces to strengthen its military capability and to acquire nuclear power," the Nigerian press release said. Neither the Pakistani nor the Nigerian governments clarified what Gen Khan had in mind.
Nigeria seeking N Korea missiles
Nigeria has admitted it wants to develop a ballistic missile capability and has been in talks with North Korea.
Posted by: john ||
06/06/2005 21:22 Comments ||
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#6
What're the Nigerians going to do with ballistic missiles? Shoot 419 letters at us?
Posted by: Mike ||
06/06/2005 22:17 Comments ||
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#7
spread Islam
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/06/2005 22:27 Comments ||
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An Iranian web writer arrested in a crackdown against online dissent has been sentenced to two years behind bars for "insulting the supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his lawyer told AFP wire on Monday. I havent heard a peep out of Amnesty about this
Mojtaba Saminejad "still faces charges of insulting the prophet and spreading curruption, which could cost him more jail terms," lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh said. The prophet? That's pushing it a little, isn't it?
MORE
Seifzadeh said his client had been aquitted of acting against national security and insulting the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He said he would appeal the Revolutionary Court's verdict.
Saminejad, 25, was based in the clerical capital of Qom. His weblog, or online diary, mainly dealt with sensitive religious and political issues. We'd be screwed.
In Iran, questioning the absolute power of the supreme leader is illegal. Iranians should have the freedom to insult their leaders with every bit as bad of jokes as we can in the U.S.
Jailed since September 2004, Saminejad was picked up along with some 20 other Internet writers and technicians working for pro-reform websites. Look at the bright side Sam, they can only hang you once
DAMASCUS, Syria (CNN) -- Syrian President Bashar Assad has said the media and technological revolution sweeping the region and the world is helping his country's foes to undermine and crush the Arab identity. Assad told the congress of Syria's ruling Baath Party on Monday that a media influx had left Arabs "swamped by disinformation" about themselves.
"These many inputs, especially with the evolution of communication and information technology, made the society open, and this opened the door for some confusion and suspicion in the minds of Arab youth."
Sucks when they have access to more than the party-controlled media, don't it?
"The ultimate objective of all this is the destruction of Arab identity; for the enemies of the Arab nation are opposed to our possessing any identity or upholding any creed that could protect our existence and cohesion, guide our vision and direction, or on which we can rely in our steadfastness," Assad said Monday. "We must face this situation with great awareness, responsibility and defiance."
Focusing on the swirl of modern information and the huge influx of ideas to the region, Assad said that development was being exploited by what he said were the region's enemies.
"Ideas are just a western plot to bring progress! We don't need either of them."
Delivering the opening address of his party's congress, the first in five years, Assad also urged its members to make reform of the economy and fighting corruption their priorities. "We have to reorder our priorities and tackle the most important and go from there. The economic situation is a priority for all of us," he told the gathering. "We need mechanisms to fight corruption that are more effective," he added.
The Syrian leader -- who has been under immense pressure by Washington and the West for its former presence in Lebanon and for its suspected role in helping the insurgency in Iraq -- used rhetoric that is customarily used to describe the United States and Israel. He referred to "forces behind" the modern trends that would exploit and generate societal upheaval in the Arab world, leading "to the cultural, political and moral collapse of the Arab individual and his ultimate defeat without a fight." "They simply aim at transforming us into a negative, reactive mass, which absorbs everything that is thrown at it without the will or even the possibility of thinking or rejecting or accepting it."
"If we want the people to have thoughts, we'll give them one."
The information revolution has had a wide-ranging effect on the Arab world, with the Internet and Arabic-language TV transforming attitudes from Mauritania to Iraq.
How ya gonna keep them down in the madrass, after they've seen MTV?
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 10:01 ||
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Transform the arab identity to what? Assad needs to get out more and talk to people, including his own! Somebody should tell Assad that in the eyes of many, the Arab identity is just that - a negative reactive mass that acts, often in violent, cruel, and unthinking ways! I heard that critique from none other than a Syrian friend!
#3
This from a guy so concerned about the "Arab Identity" that he allowed the secret of the world famous 'Damascus steel' to be lost. All the families that made it died out without passing the secret along, and his daddies' government just shrugged. If there was anything uniquely Syrian in the world, it was that.
#4
Sounds like news of the outside world is becoming an irritant to Assad,Kim Jong,and pretty much all the Ayatollahs, try as they might to keep their people like mushrooms.
You mean like herding camels and goats in the desert?
Go for it, Assad-baby. You first.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/06/2005 11:43 Comments ||
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#9
It's self-destructing. When your identity incorporates mindless intolerance, repression, graft, and pointless violence against itself and the outside world without having a productive, creative output, there is no future. No need to lift a finger to finish off the identity since it's been set on self-destruct or, at the least, self-mutilate, for a long time.
#11
the secret of the world famous 'Damascus steel'
You mean this secret? Method of making Steel in the style of Damascus Start out by forging six thin plates of iron, exactly identical in all respects. Let us suppose that they are each a pouce (an inch) wide, a ligne (1/12 inch) thick, and 12 inches long. Then forge five thin plates of steel, identical in form to those of iron, making in total eleven thin plates. The more plates one uses, the finer the material will be. Stack these plates one atop another, but be sure to put each steel plate between two of iron, which means starting and finishing with an iron plate. This is how it must be done, no matter how many plates one uses. This should become clear from Figure 1.[In the figure] each thin plate is numbered from 1 to 11, and under each number one sees a letter that designates the material: A for Acier (steel) and f for fer (iron).
Once all this is properly arranged, grasp all the plates with a tongs. Clamp the handles of the tongs with an "S" as shown in Chapter 12. Place this stack in a moderate fire. Raise the temperature so that all the plates heat uniformly through and through, but do not allow any of them to burn. To this end, turn the packet often in the fire, without removing it, and then let it rest in the fire a little while. The plates that are in the center will not heat up as fast as those on the outside, mainly because the latter receive heat directly from the coals, while those in the center receive none except from their neighbors. Finally, when the whole thing is uniformly hot, moderate the pumping of your bellows, "sand" [i.e. dust with flux] the material at least twice after each heat, and forge it squarely, working it down to a thickness of 8 or 9 lignes (2/3 to 3/4 inch) on a side. After this is done, heat the material up to a bright red, but not quite white, and clamp one end in the vice, as shown in Figure 2.
With stout tongs twist the material from one end to the other, as evenly as possible, so that it resembles a screw, as shown in Figure 3.
Now it is necessary to flatten and forge it out to a width of 9 lignes (3/4 inch) and a thickness of 3 lignes (1/4 inch). After this fold it in two [the long way], in the manner shown in Figure 4.
All this work, up until now, is for nothing other than to form a strong tenacious covering, such that no effort or power can break it apart. The plates of soft iron are thoroughly welded, married, and entwined with the ones of steel, forming together an extremely tough material, more tough than either component. The iron and steel are well bonded together, and the individual particles of each are very small. However, it is not possible for this material to be given a really fine cutting edge. The "veins" of iron that wind throughout prevent it. Make, therefore, a thin plate of good German steel 9 lignes wide, Figure 5, (that is, the same width as the covering), and at the very most 2-1/2 lignes thick; its length must be equal to that of the covering which has been folded in half.
Put this steel plate between the two sides of the covering. Then forge weld the whole assembly. Do not overheat the billet. Avoid striking it too hard. Use only the face of the hammer. Shape the surfaces squarely, so that the steel remains always in the center of the billet, because upon this depends the quality of the cutting edge. Then draw out the billet to the length and width which you require.
A blade made from damascus material can never break, save only by forcefully bending it back and forth many times. Therefore it makes a strong knife. And if one tempers this knife to the color of red copper, after having hardened it at a cherry color, one would be able to cut iron very readily with it, without the edge chipping, provided however that one made the edge a bit thick and rounded. But if one is making this knife to cut food at the table, and one does not wish to show off with it, one should give it a little finer cutting edge, which requires no more than tempering it to a gold color, instead of red copper color. Then one will have a good tool which will cut well, and which will keep a good edge for a long time.
Must be a real secret, I only find 213,000 hits on Google.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 11:53 Comments ||
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#12
"Damascuc steel" was called that because it was sold to the west from there. It was made further east.
#13
I have a double barrel 14 ga. shotgun made in Belgium in 1842 that has Damascus steel barrels. Yes, Ship, it is a muzzle loader.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/06/2005 12:25 Comments ||
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#14
Got me a 10 gauge Ithaca double, breech loader. It has Damascus barrels as well, a beautiful gun.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 12:42 Comments ||
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#15
Syrian President Bashar Assad has said ... technological revolution sweeping the region and the world is helping ... to undermine and crush the Arab identity.
#17
DB taker a picture of it, maybe for other blog. I'd like to see that. What goes into the cartridge? Same question for Steve. Can the shot nbe varied much?
#18
Mine is a very old black powder antique, no way I'd fire it.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 14:34 Comments ||
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#19
From the 1771 article found by Steve:
If men did not seek so often to pinch pennies on that which is useful, all the while making huge expenditures on useless ornamentation, then instead of having a sheath knife worn at one's side whose blade cost not even (2 pounds), but whose mounts cost 60 (pounds); one might instead have a blade which cost 60 (pounds), in mounts which cost (2 pounds).
Hey, sounds like my father wrote this !
Posted by: Carl in N.H. ||
06/06/2005 14:39 Comments ||
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Posted by: john ||
06/06/2005 15:27 Comments ||
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#21
yeah the 'Damascuc steel' can be found centuries before it was common in the middle east in Northern Europe and in Asia. The Indian's had something similar and better which they called wootz steel
#22
Let me clarify. The Mona Lisa is very simple, really. Just canvas and paint. Anyone could reproduce it with a pain-by-numbers kit. Or even easier, they could just make a digitized copy of it as good as the original. "Damascus steel" at its height was not the shotgun barrel product, it was works of art in steel. While metallurgically, one can reproduce a DS blade even at a microscopic level, the artistry of its production has been lost. Compare that to a hand made samurai sword compared to a high-quality knockoff, which is equally accurate, even at the microscopic level. Japan honors its sword craftsmen at the national level, whereas Syria ignored them and they died out. The Japanese understand and appreciate the high art involved, whereas the Baathist Syrians did not.
#23
I wouldn't say that the art of Damascene steel has been lost---rather that the art as practiced by the Syrians has been made archiac and obsolete. Quaint, even.
Modern "Damascene" blades made by Hungarian and Dutch smiths incorporate metallurgy of braided steel and powdered bi-metal infill that greatly exceed traditional Syrian blades in the consistency of the edge, the tensile strength of the blade, and corrosion resistance throughout.
And the ladder-lock pattern of cable twisted thirteen times per foot before stamping is shore purty. :)
#2
Iran is suspending enrichment in the facilities that we know about, and that the IAEA has inspected. The clandestine facilities have been feverishly working round the clock to get enough of the stuff stocked up for the long nuclear winter.
Syria's staunchest allies Hezbollah and Amal swept south Lebanon's general elections yesterday, in a victory widely seen as a vote for anti-Israeli fighters to keep their weapons. The Amal-Hezbollah list, dubbed the "steamroller", claimed it had won all 23 seats up for grabs in the two southern constituencies by a landslide. "I thank all my people in the great south for renewing their confidence in the list and for the victory of all its candidates," Amal leader and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told a news conference in the south. "The results have not changed from the past at all and the south came out to say its word for resistance, for liberation, for development," he said after polls closed.
Many in the Shiite heartland see a vote for Hezbollah as a vote for the group to retain its arms as a defense against neighboring Israel, which occupied the south for 22 years until its 2000 pullout. Hundreds of supporters waving green Amal flags celebrated outside Berri's villa as results began to trickle in. Others drove through streets of southern villages and towns flying yellow Hezbollah and Amal flags. Hezbollah, which Washington labels a terrorist group, and the more moderate Amal are the dominant forces among the Shiites, Lebanon's largest sect.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Never underestimate stupid people in large numbers.
Syria's ruling Baath party is set to authorize new political parties and free local elections during its national congress this week although hefty restrictions are likely to accompany the reforms, a member said yesterday. The first Baath party congress in five years comes as the regime of President Bashar Assad is under increasing pressure at home and abroad over allegations of supporting terror, missile tests over Turkey and a clampdown on dissidents.
Ayman Abdel Nur, a self-described "reformer" and Baath party member, told AFP the June 6-9 congress would propose free local elections in 2007 and a new law on political parties, allowing them to form as long as they are not "religion- or ethnic-based." The two main opposition groups in Syria are Islamists and the minority Kurdish population but the Baath is the only legal movement. Any new party would have to have branches in every region of Syria and collect a minimum of 10,000 to 15,000 member signatures, Nur said, a restriction that would likely prevent the formation of a Kurdish party because most of the country's 1.5 million Kurds live in the northeast.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Promises that major internal reforms could be announced at a Baath Party conference, set to begin today in Damascus, have Syrians waiting to see whether democratic changes may finally be on the horizon after five years of stalled reforms. "Expectations are down," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert who runs Syriacomment.com, a Weblog on Syrian affairs. "The president promised there was going to be a big leap. Everybody began hoping that this would be the break that would change the country and set it on a different course. Then the president was the leading person trying to bring down expectations."
In an address to Parliament in March, Assad promised that the Baath Party Congress would be a "great turning point" for internal reforms in the country. Syria has since hastily withdrawn its military forces from Lebanon, a move that many believe has weakened its role in the region. But under mounting U.S. pressure over the last few months, many here have been hoping that the government would begin to concede some much-awaited internal reforms in order to strengthen itself internally.
The last Baath Party Congress in 2000 installed Bashar Assad as president after the death of his father, Hafez Assad. The congress, which takes place every five to six years, will not produce any immediate legislation, but is instead expected to begin dialogues on key reform issues. Four reports, one on foreign policy, internal policy, the economy and the organization of the party, are expected to form the foundation for discussions at the conference. Over the last month, rumors have abounded on the type of reforms that could be revealed. The president is scheduled to deliver the opening speech at the three-day congress.
The congress is expected to discuss decreasing the role of the Baath Party, which has been the ruling party since 1963, in government institutions and society. Article eight of the Constitution, which makes the Baath Party the leading party in the government, will not be eliminated. The Regional Command, which constitutes the party's leadership in Syria and currently has 21 members, is expected to be reduced to 15 and possibly renamed the "Syrian Command," according to Landis. With the weakening of the Baath Party, analysts expect Syria to move further away from its reliance on a pan-Arab ideology.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Well of course they do. It's the same old Ba'ath Party isn't it? There's certainly no internal reason for it to do anything other than stay the same or off Baby Assad and shuffle the chairs is there?
Syrians will have to stand up on their hind legs and grow a pair if they want anything different. They can just stand still and maybe seethe or something for another 30 or 40 years while the rest of the Middle East, by force of arms or force of public will, passes them by.
A FORMER personal bodyguard to Osama Bin Laden has revealed how the Al-Qaeda leader survived at least three assassination attempts during his time in Afghanistan and rejected several requests to return to his native Saudi Arabia — including one delivered in person by his mother.
Abu Jindal, 35, a Yemeni who claims to have worked for Bin Laden from 1995- 2000, said he was given the authority to kill the terrorist chief if he seemed about to be taken by his enemies. "I was the only member of his bodyguard who was given this authority," he said when interviewed in Yemen by al-Quds al-Arabi, the London-based Arabic newspaper. "I took care to keep the two bullets in good condition and cleaned them every night ... If enemy forces surrounded Sheikh Osama and there was no possibility that he would escape, I was to kill him before they could catch him alive."
Abu Jindal said there were at least three assassination attempts during his time with Bin Laden in Afghanistan. The first was in 1998 by a young Uzbek, allegedly sent by the Saudis and offered a reward of 2m Saudi riyals — £300,000 at today's rates — and Saudi nationality. "He was only 18 and had been deceived. He was crying in a very pathetic manner and said, 'I made a mistake'. Finally, Sheikh Osama said to release him."
Following another failed assassination attempt in Jalalabad, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, convinced Bin Laden to move to the comparative safety of Kandahar in the south. Abu Jindal said Bin Laden and his family were guarded by 14-16 bodyguards who travelled with them at all times.
The Saudis tried many times to coax Bin Laden back to Saudi Arabia. "At one time the Saudi government sent his mother and his half-brother by a special Saudi plane that landed at Kandahar airport," said Abu Jindal.
On another occasion, Prince Turki al-Faisal, now Saudi ambassador in London, arrived in a large aircraft intending to return with Bin Laden and his retinue. "The delegation left without him," said Abu Jindal.
The former bodyguard, whose real name is Nasir Ahmad Nasir al-Bahri, served a short prison term after returning home. He is now free, although closely watched by the intelligence services.
This article starring:
ABU JINDAL
al-Qaeda
NASIR AHMED NASIR AL BAHRI
al-Qaeda
Prince Turki al-Faisal
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 15:22 ||
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“I took care to keep the two bullets in good condition and cleaned them every night"...
Looks like we've found the Barney Fife of Al-Qaeda...
Private family photographs of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader, are to appear in the first biography in English of the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The book includes pictures of Zarqawi with his Jordanian bedouin mother and father, both of whom are now dead. Other photographs show him shortly before his journey to become a fighter in Afghanistan and in prison in Jordan in the 1990s.
Zarqawi's group in Iraq has been linked to numerous insurgent atrocities, including the beheading of Kenneth Bigley, an engineer from Liverpool. The biography, Zarqawi: The New Face of Terrorism, will be published by Polity later this month. It claims that Zarqawi, as part of an attempt to build a Europe-wide network of sympathisers, has developed close links with an Islamic cleric under house arrest in Britain. "With Osama bin Laden out of circulation or incapacitated, Zarqawi ... is probably the most important figure within the radical Islamists,"said Jean-Charles Brisard, the book's author and a French terrorism investigator. Brisard recounts how Zarqawi, now 37, was expelled from school. He worked in a paper plant and then as a maintenance worker before drifting into crime. According to the book: "Those who knew him in those years say that he drank like a fish and covered his body with tattoos, two practices condemned by Islam. They called him 'the green man' on account of his many tattoos."
Zarqawi was later convicted for wounding with a knife. He was also arrested for shoplifting, drug dealing and a rape allegation.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 15:08 ||
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I have some interesting pictures of him too!
I miss you, Sheiky! Take care of your purty mouth!
Algeria's Islamic Salafi Group for Daawa and Fighting Monday claimed responsibility for killing 15 Mauritanian soldiers in a cross-border operation.
A statement by the Algerian armed group said, "The operation, the first of its kind, was carried out in revenge for our brothers who were rounded up by the Mauritanian regime and in support for the oppressed Muslims in that country.
The mujahedin of the Salafi Group for Daawa and Fighting carried out a major operation by ambushing the treacherous Mauritanian army, destroying at least seven military cars and killing and wounding a number of the soldiers of the authoritarian regime at home, the statement said.
The group said the operation was just a message which implies that our activity is not restricted to fighting the internal enemy, but all the enemies of the religion wherever they are."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 14:59 ||
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Mauritania's opposition leaders, including jailed Islamists, condemned on Monday the killing of 15 soldiers at the weekend which the government has blamed on an Algerian fundamentalist group allied to al Qaeda.
Defence Minister Baba Ould Sidi said late on Sunday the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was behind a dawn attack on a remote military post in northeast Mauritania on Saturday.
In a statement, a group of jailed Islamists, who were arrested at the end of April and accused of links with the GSPC, said they were saddened by the deaths of the soldiers.
Another group of 15 Islamic opponents, who have been in hiding since authorities launched the latest wave of arrests, denounced the killings as a "heinous crime".
"We consider that Islam has nothing to do with this kind of act," said the statement by the 15 activists.
"We affirm that our disagreement with the regime ... does not change the peaceful nature of our actions," it said.
Opposition parties met the prime minister on Monday and also expressed their condemnation.
The attack took place in the village of Limgheiti, not far from the border with Mali and Algeria. The defence minister said 15 Mauritanian soldiers were killed, 17 more were wounded and two were missing. Five of the 150 attackers were also killed.
The desert triangle between the three countries is a haven for smugglers and bandits. The United States says it is also a training ground for Islamist recruits.
Mauritanian troops were put on maximum alert, military sources said, and the army sent reinforcements to the area.
Residents in Zouerat, a town 400 km (250 miles) to the west of Limgheiti from where some of the soldiers came, said relatives had gone to the local military barracks to seek information about their loved ones.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/06/2005 14:56 ||
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The Matre'd at my favorite Indian Restaurant in Boulder is Napalese. He recently left for home to joing the fight against the rebels, and defend his homeland and family.
June 6, 2005: As the U.S. Army struggles to recruit enough people to maintain its strength, the U.S. Navy has the opposite problem; how to get rid of 50,000 excess sailors. The navy has to lose more people than the army is short. What's going on here? It's simple. The army is at war, and the navy isn't. You get shot at, you don't like it. Most folks can figure that one out for themselves. But it gets rather more strange. The army recruiting problems are with their non-combat troops. It's much easier to recruit troops whose primary job is fighting.
It's not like being a sailor is risk free. If you work on the deck crew of a carrier, or fly a carrier aircraft, your risk of death or injury is higher than for most civilian jobs. Also, living on a ship for six months at a time, and this is what happens to most sailors several times during a typical four year enlistment, is not the most pleasant experience. But if you're in the army, and sent to Iraq, you have a 2.5 percent chance of getting killed or wounded. Actually, only about 15 percent of those who get hurt die, and most of those who are injured are back at work in days, or weeks at most. But it's still more risk than you face back in the United States. It's the stress, the expectation of getting hurt, that most troops in Iraq remember the most. You spend a lot more time dealing with the expectation of getting hurt, than in actually being attacked.
The army has responded to this situation by increasing the stress and intensity of training for non-combat troops. For about a decade, the army offered two types of combat training. For the non-combat troops (who comprise about 85 percent of the army), there was rather low stress training, and not a whole lot of it. For the combat troops, life was much more intense. But that's what combat troops were there for, why they enlisted, and they ate it up. The army finally realized, after decades of seeing marine recruiters take the best prospects for combat jobs, that there are a lot of young guys out there looking for a challenge. The marines always deliberately offered this, now the army does too. "Are you tough enough?" is a recruiting pitch that works. But not for non-combat troops, who make up the vast majority of troops. These folks are looking for a job, and fringe benefits (particularly the tuition aid for college later on.) All the services have been successful at selling recruits on the idea that, "it's a job." The pay is competitive, and fringes are abundant, and you get to travel. But the downside is that, if there's a war, there is danger for some.
There are many people who seek out dangerous situations. You don't have to pay them to do it, they get off on the risk and stress. Look at the large number of people who, at their own expense, engage in dangerous sports. However, these enthusiasts are civilians, they can stop any time they want. And many do, after they get banged up a bit. In the army, you face the threat of legal prosecution, and prison, if you refuse to go into harm's way when ordered to.
The army generals are not in a panic over this situation. They have a solution that works, but will cause a big stink in Congress. No, it's not the draft. The last thing the generals want are reluctant conscripts. The way you get more volunteers is to offer more money. There is no shortage of volunteers, usually men with military experience, to take civilian security jobs in Iraq. These volunteers get paid at least three times what the troops get, and that makes a big difference. The army is already moving in that direction, one small step at a time. Special pay for those serving in combat zones has been increased several times already, and will probably go up again. This sort of approach is not new. During World War II, a lot of men who volunteered for parachute units said a major reason for taking on that dangerous job was the extra pay (about $500 a month, in current dollars). It turned out that being a paratrooper was safer as well, as the parachute divisions had lower casualties than the regular infantry divisions. This demonstrates another reason why people are reluctant to sign up for non-combat jobs. They know they will be less well trained for combat situations, and will be out there waiting to get hit, while the combat troops go looking for fights. This makes a difference when it comes to stress. To be in control of a situation is a lot less stressful. So the army plans to solve their recruiting problem with more training, more money, and turning a lot of non-combat troops into stress-proof fighters. This is not the kind of "transformation" the army was expecting before September 11, 2001. But wars always bring unexpected change, and there it is.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 11:02 ||
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Those "50,000 excess sailors" could easily be used to fill the ranks of an enormous and relatively inexpensive littoral fleet. Much like the PT boats of WWII, expendable littoral craft can be built modularly, then shipped to forward positions for storage, then assembled rapidly. Properly designed, they are like a Humvee, with any number of configurations: heavy MG patrol boat, mortar/rocket/artillery/AAA platform, rapid recce (with a souped-up engine), minelaying/antimine, anti-submarine, interdiction, insertion & denial, etc. Assembled in an ordinary port, not even a 'deep-water' port, once they are launched, they are on mission 24/7, needing only RRR. There is no need to preserve them, their lifespan is programmed to be short. Cheap, cheerful and very, very effective.
#2
I'm ready to sign up, do you think a used-up,overweight, surly,drunken Irishman in his mid 30's can get into the elite counter-insurgency force as an officer?
#3
Maybe they should quit publicly prosecuting everyone that hurts the enemy during a war. Maybe they should get rid of the guys(ACLU,AI) that are rooting for the insurgency. Just a thought, probably won't happen.
#4
The way you get more volunteers is to offer more money. There is no shortage of volunteers, usually men with military experience, to take civilian security jobs in Iraq. These volunteers get paid at least three times what the troops get, and that makes a big difference.
It's obvious that we need to pay soldiers significantly more, both non combat and combat. Offering them better life insurance policies or better VA care or better educational opportunities 6 years later is not going to cut it these days. If fat butted, lazy real estate agents can earn 6 figure salaries for doing nothing, if illiterate journalists earn the same as real estate agents writing yellow eyed pieces about the war from their desks state side, then I have no problem increasing soldiers salaries even if it means I need to pay War Taxes to do so. We suffer no inconvenience whatsoever while 2 wars are being waged because soldiers are being paid less than they would get delivering pizzas and I think that needs to change if we want to attract proper numbers of enlistees long term.
June 6, 2005: The U.S. Army announced what it considered it's most important recent weapons and equipment developments. Below are the top ten items, in no particular order. All were developed by U.S. Army organizations.
1. Armor Survivability Kit for the HMMWV. While the troops immediately began improvising protection for their hummers, the Army Research Laboratory quickly came up with a standardized (and tested) add-on kit, which contained ballistic glass for the windshield, as well as armor panels for the truck body. This kit probably saved more lives than any other recent development.
2. Chitosan Hemostatic Dressing. Using a freeze dried substance that caused clotting of blood, these dressings greatly reduced bleeding (which is the most common cause of death among wounded American troops.) This device was a major breakthrough in bandage technology.
3. Electronic Information Carrier (EIC). Makes it much easier to keep track of what treatment troops have had between the battlefield and a hospital. EIC is a wireless data storage and transfer device for medics and hospital personnel to get medical data to, and from, the data chips on soldiers dog tags. The IEC has a range of less than a foot, and a USB plug as a manual back up. The EIC can hold four gigabytes of data.
4. Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Countermeasure Equipment. Roadside bombs (IEDs) quickly became the main cause of American casualties in Iraq, and the Army Research Laboratory quickly came up with a supply of countermeasures equipment and techniques for dealing with this threat. The work continues, and the impact of IEDs has been greatly reduced because of it.
5. Lightweight Counter Mortar RADAR (LCMR). Lighter, faster and cheaper than earlier equipment, which was especially useful in Afghanistan. In Iraq, LCMR use forced enemy mortar teams to give up attacking some bases, because firing positions in residential areas (that American artillery or air strikes would not hit) were not available.
6. Lightweight Handheld Mortar Ballistic Computer. Finally, a hand held device that incorporated GPS and digital radio communications, for calculating where to aim mortars accurately. Made mortars much more accurate, and faster to respond to calls for fire.
7. M107 Cal .50 Long Range Sniper Rifle. The troops had been clamoring for this, and with a war on, the army was able to get an official version approved. Before that, commercial versions of the rifle were used.
8. New Army Combat Uniform. Better camouflage pattern, better material, better design. Popular with the troops.
9. Upgraded Aviation Force Battle Command Brigade and Below / Blue Force Tracking (Upgraded Aviation FBCB2 / BFT). This was the device that allowed all American commanders to see, on a computer screen, where everyone else was.
10. UTAMS (Unattended Transient Acoustic MASINT Sensor) Mortar, Rocket, Explosion Locator. Using the 19th century standby, sound ranging, combined with powerful microprocessors and signal processing software, UTAMS made it possible to know quickly where hostile fire was coming from. A very useful piece of equipment in combat, that never got much publicity.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 10:56 ||
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Well done indeed, weapons design teams! And some of them look to very nicely remove a good deal of the terrorists' assymetrical warfare advantage, yes?
#2
I'm always amazed at what comes out of the crucible of combat. And who knows what non-military applications will eventually come out of some of this tech?
#3
Using a freeze dried substance that caused clotting of blood, these dressings greatly reduced bleeding (which is the most common cause of death among wounded American troops.) This device was a major breakthrough in bandage technology.
Get 'em Dr. Tom! My 'ole buddy Dr. T is working on freeze drying whole blood. I expect he may have had a hand in this.
#6
#8 is pure self serving horse puckey. I have yet to meet a soldier who likes the "new" BDU uniform. The lack of accessable pockets when wearing body armor and the camo pattern are the #1 and #2 complaints I have heard from returning soldiers at the sharp end of the stick. Queer Eye for the GI Guy is not cutting it.
Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee opened the first phase of India's giant western naval base INS Kadamba in Karwar, Karnataka state, on May 31, saying it would protect the country's Arabian Sea maritime routes. Kadamba will become India's third operational naval base after Mumbai and Visakhapatnam. Also taking part in the commissioning were six frontline Indian naval ships, including frigates and destroyers. They were detached from the flotilla of 12 vessels that are presently taking part in routine exercises in the Arabian Sea. The Kadamba base is being built in the southern state as part of India's ambitious RUP 350 billion (USD $8.13 billion) "Project Seabird," which will include the naval base plus an air force station, a naval armament depot, and missile silos when it is completed in the next five years. Mr. Mukherjee admitted that the project had to overcome many impediments since it was sanctioned by the government in 1985 (it was originally slated for completion in 1995).
Sandwiched between the craggy hills of the Western Ghats in the east and the Arabian Sea in the west, Karwar is an excellent naval location. Encompassing over 11,200 acres of land along a 26-km stretch of sea front, Kadamba is the first base to be exclusively controlled by India's Navy. It will enable the Navy to decongest Mumbai and manoeuvre its fleet without worrying about the movement of merchant vessels, and it will be the first base/port in India to have a shiplift facility. The depth and width of the base's approach channel means that all of India's naval platforms will be able to sail into its harbour.
Commodore K.P. Ramachandran, INS Kadamba's first Commanding Officer (CO) said that 11 ships could be berthed at Kadamba once the first phase of construction was complete, with the figure going up to 22 after the second phase of construction was completed around 2007. The Kiev-class aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov is also scheduled to berth in Kadamba with its MiG-29K wing after it is refurbished, renamed the Vikramaaditya, and handed over to the Indian Navy around 2008. The harbour is designed to ultimately berth 42 ships when finally complete, including submarines if need be.
At commissioning INS Kadamba has a strength of 50 officers and 250 sailors, a number that will go up as facilities are upgraded. The base will initially be under the command of the Commanding Officer, INS Kadamba, but will in the near future be headed by a Flag Officer Commanding (Karwar), who in turn will be tasked by the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Western Naval Command. According to defense experts, the naval base at Karwar will play a major role in securing the seas not only for India but also for countries like Japan, which rely heavily on shipping for imports and exports through maritime routes in the Arabian Sea. In Pakistan, meanwhile, the new deep-water port of Gwadar is in use by Pakistan as well as China, which also relies heavily on shipping for imports and exports through maritime routes in the Arabian Sea.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/06/2005 08:59 ||
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The Indian Navy showed a nice dash of panche in the last war. Firing Styxx against oil storage was purdy clever. Not a Soviet idea at all.
Newsweek, June 13 issue - Some of Saddam Hussein's most notorious former lieutenants have been dishing dirt. Senate investigators looking into prewar U.N. Oil-for-Food deals have named Saddam's former personal secretary and security chief, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and former foreign minister Tariq Aziz as key witnesses who have provided inside info about Saddam's regime.
Senate staffers traveled to Baghdad earlier this year to interview Iraqi officials, and their reports are among the first official accounts of what captured Iraqi leaders are saying. "In interview after interview, the officials were generally forthcoming and quite proud—even boastful—of their creativity in undermining U.N. sanctions," says Sen. Norm Coleman, who leads one of several congressional probes into Saddam-era oil deals.
According to Senate documents, Ramadan is one of the most talkative captives, supplying pithy quotes about how Saddam allegedly manipulated the prewar oil program to buy support from influential foreigners. Senate investigators quote Ramadan saying that Saddam's regime gave foreigners oil allocations—which could be cashed in for lucrative brokerage fees—as "compensation for support." Al-Tikriti told investigators the former Iraqi leader and his aides "were all extremists" on the issue of oil sales to Israel. If they found an Iraqi oil buyer was selling to Israel, they would "not allow it," al-Tikriti said.
Footnotes in Senate documents show that Aziz, the urbane English speaker who was Saddam's principal mouthpiece to the outside world, confirmed key details of Saddam's alleged corruption. David Kay, former head of the postwar U.S. team hunting Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, told NEWSWEEK that Aziz and other Saddam aides were eager to discuss corruption in the former regime, and particularly Saddam's efforts to buy off friendly foreigners.
By contrast, when it came to talking about Saddam's WMDs, Kay says, the captives would say almost nothing—which Kay now acknowledges may be because there were no WMDs to talk about. Kay says that Aziz "sang like a canary" about Saddam's effort to use oil deals to buy friendship among French, Russian and U.K. politicos. Kay says that Aziz once told him that if the U.S. government released him from prison, he would tour the United States, telling journalists and the public about the evil deeds of the former Iraqi regime, about Saddam's corruption and about the former dictator's "demented" mental state. Kay says that when he asked Aziz how the United States could be sure Aziz would keep this bargain, Aziz told him: "Mr. David, because you now own me."
For Aziz: wring him dry. Try him. Shoot him.
This article starring:
ABID HAMID MAHMUD AL TIKRITI
Iraqi Baath Party
Sen. Norm Coleman
TAHA YASIN RAMADAN
Iraqi Baath Party
TARIQ AZIZ
Iraqi Baath Party
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Seems obvious...after all, they were toadies before, meet the new boss.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The International Criminal Court will launch a formal investigation into allegations of war crimes in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, officials familiar with the case said.
The court has been analyzing the situation in Darfur since the United Nations referred to it allegations of rape, murder and plunder in April, following a UN Security Council vote. Dozens of court officials have begun preparing for the investigation, the largest and most important yet to be handled by the fledgling body since it was established in July 2002.
And they've obviously got all the speed and zeal of Carla del Ponte ...
Prosecutors were to announce the decision to move forward in Darfur on Monday, and Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will brief the UN about his plans later this month in New York, the officials said on Sunday, adding that they could not comment officially until the investigation had been formally announced by the court.
Investigators have said they hope to move quickly and complete their work over a period of months, rather than decades years. Once they have gathered evidence and interviewed witnesses, court officials will then consider issuing indictments against individual suspects and seek their extradition to The Hague.
It's going to be a little hard for the surviving witnesses to identify the perps, other than as cruel, murderous, swarthy Arab males with guns ...
The referral of the Darfur case was made possible when the United States - which fiercely opposes The Hague-based court - backed away from exercising its veto powers as a permanent member of the Security Council.
I think GWB is planning to have the international community misunderestimate him again -- he'll give the ICC plenty of rope to hang itself. Once they demonstrate themselves to be completely incapable of dealing with the genocide of Darfur, we can politely ignore it.
Washington, which says it fears the court will initiate bogus charges against American nationals, has actively undermined it by signing nearly 100 bilateral treaties with countries that have agreed not to surrender US citizens to the court.
Given Amnesia International's call for countries to arrest Americans, our concerns aren't so far-fetched, are they?
A special UN commission of inquiry on Darfur, which spent several months gathering evidence of war crimes, handed the court its findings, including a list of 51 potential suspects.
Trials are planned for later this year at the International Criminal Court against alleged perpetrators of war crimes in two other violence-wracked African nations, Uganda and Congo.
Wonder when they'll indict King Leopold?
The court is intended to step in only when countries themselves are unable or unwilling to take action against war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on their soil.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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I'm sure Darfur is shaking in their boots, er, sandals. ICC is about as feared as the U.N.
#2
If you get convicted by the ICC, if they ever get things on the docket, you can get 3 hots and a cot. Such a deal. Of course, if Americans wind up there, they will humiliate us and flush our Bibles down the bidet.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/06/2005 3:12 Comments ||
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Once they have gathered evidence and interviewed witnesses, court officials will then consider issuing indictments against individual suspects and seek their extradition to The Hague The notion they can investigate and obtain evidence that will stand up in court is positively bizzare. Swarthy Arab males with guns did it, is exactly right.
JERUSALEM - Under heavy police surveillance, Israel began on Sunday to mark Jerusalem Day and commemorate what the Jewish state terms the "reunification" of the city following the 1967 Middle East war. Sunday and Monday mark the 38th anniversary, according to the Hebrew calendar, since Israel wrested east Jerusalem from Jordanian control during the Arab-Israeli war on June 7, 1967. Israel subsequently annexed the sector in a move that unfortunately was not recognized by the international community.
The Israeli government is to use the occasion Monday to submit for cabinet approval development plans to cement Israel's control over Jerusalem following the army's scheduled withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer.
Celebrations began with a giant parade through central Jerusalem presided over by Israeli President Moshe Katsav. Festivities were to continue Monday, with youth rallies and a commemoration on the strategic Ammunition Hill, captured by Israeli paratroopers in a fierce battle during the war. A fireworks display was to follow after sundown.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office has said development plans for Jerusalem will be presented to the cabinet during the Ammunition Hill ceremony. The plan sets aside 134 million dollars for construction and job-creation projects to encourage young couples to move to the city. "The plan will help to strengthen our hold over Jerusalem, make the city attractive to investors, new residents, tourists and turn Jerusalem into what it deserves, the first city in Israel," Sharon's office has said.
On July 30, 1980, parliament passed a bill declaring Jerusalem the "unified and eternal capital" of the state of Israel, but Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
This is one of the two final deal-stoppers for the roadkill plan. No way the Israelis ever, ever, give back an inch of Jerusalem, and no way they ever, ever give in on the claimed 'right of return'.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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BAGHDAD - The parliamentary commission tasked with drawing up Iraq's new constitution has agreed to bring on board representatives of the disenchanted Sunni minority, a member of the body said on Sunday. "We have agreed in principle to accept the fact that (Sunnis) will be on equal footing, under the same rules as the members of the committee," the body's vice president Adnan Janabi told AFP, himself a Sunni but elected on a secular list.
"Both of them."
Getting Sunni Arabs involved in politics and the constitution-drafting process is a key challenge faced by the Shiite-led government sworn in May since the minority community largely boycotted January's elections.
Sunnis, who held power under deposed leader Saddam Hussein, are believed to be driving in part the country's raging insurgency.
"The committee will consist of 69 members: the committee's 55 MPs, 13 Sunni representatives and a Mandean," added committee president Humam Hammudi, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the leading Shiite alliance in parliament. The Sabean-Mandeans are a small religious group who revere John the Baptist as the last in a long line of prophets.
Around half the Sunni representatives will be members of political parties and the others representatives from Sunnis regions, mainly in the centre and the west of the country, Hammudi said. "The Sunnis will decide (on their representatives) on their own, we have no right to dictate to them," said Janabi.
Sunni involvement in Iraq's political process will "clip the wings of those who think that taking up arms is the only way to obtain a free Iraq", he said.
But the question of who within the committee has the right to vote, a right the rules say is only available to MPs, remained vague. "The committee of the 55 has not yet decided how and under what circumstances" Sunnis will take part, said Janabi.
Parliament approved the committee on May 10. Twenty-eight of its members are from the dominant Shiite list, which won 143 seats in the 275-member parliament in January's elections. The committee also includes 15 Kurds, eight from former premier Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqi List and four others from minority groups.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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The Sabean-Mandeans are a small religious group who revere John the Baptist as the last in a long line of prophets.
The exclusion of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and jihadi outfits from the ongoing peace process would not have any adverse effects on it, the visiting All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) delegation observed on Sunday. Maulana Abbas Ansari and Bilal Ghani Lone told Daily Times the "individuals" who did not wish to support the peace process should come out of their belief that their absence would obstruct the process.
Another APHC leader Abdul Ghani Bhatt supported their point of view but said it would be better if jihadi outfits were also involved in the dialogue process. "There are two types of people in our society — the people who represent the brighter side of a picture and the people who represent the darker side," Bhatt added. He said there had always been a conflict of interests among forces acting in different directions. "But remember, only those who go with the growing current of history and understand the dynamics of change, reach their destination. And those who don't, perish," he observed.
Bhatt said the APHC leaders would meet the Indian leadership and brief it about their visit to Islamabad. He hoped that their visit would strengthen the ongoing peace process. Asked if Syed Ali Geelani had the support of the majority of people in held Kashmir, he said that Geelani did not represent all segments of Kashmiri society. He dismissed the impression that Kashmiris would not accept any solution to the dispute if Geelani and Syed Salahuddin, chairman of United Jihad Council, were not involved in the dialogue process. "Both of them do not enjoy the support of the Kashmiri people. They are not popular leaders, so their absence from the process will not create any problems," he said.
He admitted that an armed Kashmiri freedom struggle, started in 1988, had brought the Kashmir dispute into the limelight and forced the international community to try to help find a solution to the dispute. Lone said everyone involved in the freedom struggle played a role. "We cannot say that one or two individuals played a role. Or only because of the armed struggle the issue was highlighted at international forums," he added. Asked to comment on a split in the Hurriyat, he said: "The APHC is a forum of political parties and they might have differences with one another. And it happens everywhere in the world."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) protested under the leadership of Dr Muhammad Arif Khan in front of the Multan Press Club on Sunday, against the dictatorial rule of Qazi Hussain Ahmed and the monopoly of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in the six-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). "Jamaat-e-Islami should not impose its opinion on the Shoora and it should honour the opinion of other allies. Permission should be granted to NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani to take part in the National Security Council in the larger interest of the people of the province," Dr Arif Khan told a gathering of around 50 demonstrators. Political observers said that cracks have appeared in the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, and things could worsen if Qazi Hussain Ahmed did not change his attitude soon.
Commenting on the situation, MMA's Multan chief said that the alliance was united and stronger than ever. He said elements that were not affiliated with any of MMA's six component parties were making a noise just to please the government.
"Nothing to see here, folks! Move along..."
This article starring:
AKRAM KHAN DURRANI
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
MUHAMAD ARIF KHAN
Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl
QAZI HUSEIN AHMED
Jamaat-e-Islami
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06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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The Islami Jamiat Talaba, student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, organised another annual dinner at a Punjab University hostel on Sunday night, again defying federal and provincial government directives not to allow such student groups to organise university events. The IJT has previously managed other dinners in PU hostels. PU Hall Council chairman Prof Mugheesuddin Sheikh, PU IJT nazim Allah Buksh Leghari, hostel warden Dr Mujahid Mansoori and hostel superintendent Dr Javed Ahmed attended the dinner. Annual dinners are meant to be managed by a student committee, but the invitation cards for the dinner bore the IJT logo and announced that the IJT nazim would attend, PU students said.
Asked why the IJT was allowed to organise the event, the hostel warden said he had asked Prof Sheikh about policy, but he had responded that each hostel had the onus to stop such events. "We are unable to stop certain political elements. We have no administrative order to do so," he said. "How can we stop these elements when the university administration, including the vice chancellor, are unable to control them?" He said he had asked the hostel superintendent to 'minimise' the IJT's involvement. "Taking action on our own would have been a great risk, especially when the administration is silent on the issue." VC Lt Gen (r) Arshad Mahmood and Prof Sheikh were unavailable for comment. Female students of the PU College of Fine Arts have made a written complaint to the governor and the VC about harassment by IJT activists. College guards have been directed to stop such activists, but one guard said it was unfair to expect the guards to take care of something the administration was doing nothing about. He said the directions had not been given in writing.
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ISLAMABAD: The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) has deemed the Economic Survey of Pakistan as a pack of lies.
Guess the report was a little too optimistic, huh? It's hard to rouse the rabble when things are getting better...
Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, MMA deputy parliamentary leader, expressed these views while talking to Online on Sunday. Prices were increasing and despite unemployment forcing people to commit suicide, the government still claimed that poverty was decreasing. MMA Leader Liaquat Baloch said the State Bank Report had indicated that poverty had risen with some 20 million people living below the poverty line. He said that claims of agriculture development were false and baseless. Baloch said the budget session would not be boycotted, adding the MMA would fully participate in the session. He expressed pessimism at claims that the upcoming budget would be public-friendly, adding it would not benefit the poor.
This article starring:
LIAQUAT BALOCH
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
MAULANA ABDUL GHAFUR HAIDERI
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
Posted by: Fred ||
06/06/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
I know we don't like to "interfere" in other countries affairs, but doesn't the CIA or Mossad take care of people like these guys anymore?
Stalled peace negotiations between the Sudanese government and exiled opposition groups are to resume in Cairo next weekend and continue until a final deal is reached, officials said yesterday. Talks between the government and the opposition National Democratic Alliance will start next Saturday, Sudanese state radio quoted Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, secretary-general of the ruling National Congress party as saying. Omar also predicted that with many outstanding issues already resolved, an agreement could be signed a few days after the discussions commence, saying "the final agreement will be signed by the two sides on June 16."
The NDA, a coalition of northern, southern, eastern and western opposition groups, including the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement, confirmed talks with the government would resume on June 11. "The discussions will start on Saturday," NDA vice president Abdul Rahman Saeed told AFP. But he did not share the government's optimism that a deal could be signed five days later, saying "it was possible, but not certain." Saeed explained that the talks will kick off with meetings aimed at reaching a deal on how to implement an initial agreement the two sides signed in January, particularly on political and military issues. "We have already agreed," he said, adding that the discussions will focus on "implementing what we have agreed upon."
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The husband of Pakistani opposition leader-in-exile Benazir Bhutto has suffered a heart attack but is in stable condition in hospital in the United Arab Emirates, her party said in a statement yesterday. Asif Ali Zardari was recovering after undergoing angioplasty following a heart attack on Friday. He was still in intensive care, Benazir's Pakistan People's Party said in a statement. "It is expected that as soon as Mr. Zardari is allowed to travel he will be going to London for further follow-up of the angioplasty," the party said. Zardari, in his early fifties, was released on bail in November after eight years in jail on charges ranging from corruption to murder.
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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.
A Dhaka court yesterday denied bail to wife of former Bangladeshi President 
A leading Senate Democrat has said the United States needs to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Senator 
The 57-member 
Syria's ruling Baath party is set to authorize new political parties and free local elections during its national congress this week although hefty restrictions are likely to accompany the reforms, a member said yesterday. The first Baath party congress in five years comes as the regime of President 
Promises that major internal reforms could be announced at a Baath Party conference, set to begin today in Damascus, have Syrians waiting to see whether democratic changes may finally be on the horizon after five years of stalled reforms. "Expectations are down," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert who runs 
The 
ISLAMABAD: The 
Stalled peace negotiations between the Sudanese government and exiled opposition groups are to resume in Cairo next weekend and continue until a final deal is reached, officials said yesterday. Talks between the government and the opposition National Democratic Alliance will start next Saturday, Sudanese state radio quoted 
The husband of Pakistani opposition leader-in-exile 
