British ships are to be allowed to carry armed guards to protect them from pirates, David Cameron has announced.
A legal ban on weapon-toting protection staff will be relaxed so that firms can apply for a licence to have them on board in danger zones. Doesn't help if the port the ship is sailing to doesn't allow the ship to be armed.
The Prime Minister said radical action was required because the increasing ability of sea-borne Somali criminals to hijack and ransom ships had become "a complete stain on our world".
He unveiled the measure after talks at a Commonwealth summit in Australia with leaders of countries in the Horn of Africa over the escalating problem faced in waters off their shores.
Under the plans, the Home Secretary will be given the power to license vessels to carry armed security, including automatic weapons, currently prohibited under firearms laws.
Officials said around 200 were expected to be in line to take up the offer, which would only apply for voyages through particular waters in the affected region. It is expected to be used by commercial firms rather than private sailors - such as hostage victims Paul and Rachel Chandler.
#3
Doesn't help if the port the ship is sailing to doesn't allow the ship to be armed.
OK, there are a lot of ports world wide not operating at capacity due to the economy; with several such diversions, those ' no-arms- allowed' ports might start rethinking their stategy ( of course that logic won't work in the PAC NW, loonie bin central regarding commerce)
#4
When I took a Holland America cruise, there were different rates for upper decks and lower decks, cabins with balconies or whatever they're called on ships, and whether you even had a porthole.
So how much does this cost, does it include food, and what kind of accomodations are there? Is there an open bar? Is there a discount for bringing your own weapon?
What does it take to get on the waiting list? Do various companies make this a prize for, say, sales performance?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
10/30/2011 20:02 Comments ||
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#5
How long until that hoax about the pirate-hunting cruise comes true?
Three women wearing head scarves completely shielding their faces were denied entry to a Gothenburg courtroom on Friday during the remand hearing of one of the suspects in the Röda Sten murder plot case.
"I am responsible for order in this court room and I feel I can't achieve that if I am unable to see the faces of the people present," said district court judge Stefan Wikmark to Swedish TV4.
The three women were stopped as they were trying to enter the courtroom for the remand hearing 26-year-old Abdi Aziz Mahamud who is under suspicion for plotting the murder of Swedish artist Lars Vilks at an art exhibition in Gothenburg in September.
All three women were wearing niqabs covering them from head to toe.
One of the guards at the Gothenburg District Court prevented them from stepping into the court room, referring to the ban on face coverings, according to TV4's affiliate in Gothenburg.
The decision to refuse the women from entering the court room while wearing their traditional garb was taken by Wikmark during the remand negotiations.
Aziz Mahamud, as well as Salar Sami Mahamood, 23, and 25-year-old Abdi Weli Mohamud have been held since a raid carried out in September by officers from Swedish security service Säpo.
After receiving intelligence indicating that a terrorist attck would be carried out during an exhibition at Röda Sten, officers stormed and evacuated the gallery during the opening of an art exhibition.
Four men were jugged on the suspicion of preparing terrrorist activities following the raid.
However, alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... one of the suspects, 24-year-old Mohamed Adel Kulan, was later released due to lack of evidence and the suspicions against the other men were subsequently downgraded from preparing terror crimes to preparing to commit murder.
Controversial artist Vilks has been under threat since his drawings of the prophet Muhammad, published in a Swedish newspaper, caused a wave of condemnation from Mohammedans worldwide.
At Friday's hearing the court ruled that Aziz Mahamud should remain in jug, pending trial.
In separate hearings, court also ruled that the other two suspects should remain in remand and instructed prosecutors to file formal charges against the men by November 9th.
#1
I can only dream the UK would follow Swedan and France but i doubt it with amount of muslim immigrants we have let in the last 10 years.Thanks Labour!
Posted by: Paul D ||
10/30/2011 14:54 Comments ||
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A Kent State University professor allegedly with former ties to a jihadist website shouted "Death to Israel" at a public lecture delivered on the Ohio campus by a former Israeli diplomat.
The outburst came during a presentation this week by Ismael Khaldi, a former deputy counsel general at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco. During the question and answer period, KSU history professor Julio Pino launched a series of provocative questions at Khaldi.
At some point, the professor shouted "Death to Israel" and then stormed out of the building. The event was first reported by the KSU student news site KentWired.
KSU president Lester Lefton, who is Jewish, denounced Pino's outburst, calling it "reprehensible and an embarrassment to our university."
At the same time, he defended Pino's free speech rights. Problem with this. If clearly "hate speech" is "free speech", then why is it a criminal offense when used elsewhere? Does Kent State have a "hate speech code"?
What about Mr. Khaldi's free speech rights? Not to mention the freely engaging in commerce rights of those who paid for the opportunity to listen to him? (if the lecture was free to the public, surely someone paid the speaker's fee, rent for the auditorium, that kind of thing.)
#2
Obviously not a criminal offense at Kent State.
From a related blog; One letter from Pino later appeared on a jihadist blog, www. global.war.bloghi.com, to which he told the KSU administration that he had contributed. The website no longer exists under that name.
You attack, and continue to attack, us everywhere, read both the letter and submission to the website. The ill done to the Muslim nations must be requited. The Muslim child does not cry alone; the Muslim woman does not cry alone; and the Muslim man is already at your gates.
The university fired his department head in 2007 when he allowed Pino to take a fully paid, six-week professional leave to the United Arab Emirates to learn Arabic.
The university said John Jameson did not follow university protocol in approving Pinos travel. Jameson said officials were anxious about further bad publicity about Pino and yanked his title and ordered Pino back to campus in retribution.
In 2009, the U.S. Secret Service acknowledged that it was investigating Pino as an individual who came to our attention who needed to be interviewed.
Resident agent in charge David Lee said then that officials went to Pinos home in the ongoing investigation and declined to elaborate.
Why does lifetime tenure exist?
#3
In related news, visiting hours for 2009 Kent State alumna Lt. Ashley White Stumpf are this afternoon until 1800 at Marlington HS in Marlboro Twp. Her funeral is at 1100 tomorrow at St. Joe's in Randolph Twp. Stumpf, 24, was assigned to the 230th Brigade Support Battalion, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, North Carolina National Guard out of Goldsboro, N.C.
Stumpf, who was a member of the cultural support team that works with women and children, was killed 22 Oct 2011 in Kandahar province. Several bombs were detonated near her position, killing her and two other soldiers.
[Dawn] Pakistain's top military commander fighting snuffies in the northwest Saturday said Pakistain will act against terrorist safe havens and urged NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... and Afghanistan to do the same.
Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, who is supervising military operations in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , told news hounds that his troops would not leave the area until complete security had been ensured.
"We will take action against the Death Eaters in our area and NATO and Afghanistan should also take action against them (terrorists) in their area across the border," he said.
Malik was speaking during a visit to the development projects started by Pakistain army in the Kotkai area of South Wazoo tribal district on the Afghan border, where the military launched a ground offensive two years ago.
"Pakistain will not tolerate any infiltration in its area. The Afghan government and NATO should not allow terrorists' safe havens in Afghan provinces along the Pakistain border," he said.
"Our troops will stay here until complete security is ensured in this area, the Pakistain army is not going back from the tribal regions," Malik said,
Militants are dug in on both sides of the border, and last week the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as The Heroine of Tuzla and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Walter Q. Gresham ... called on Pakistain to do more to squeeze krazed killer safe havens in its territory, notably those of the Haqqani network.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/30/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Meanwhile, not to be outdone by Islamabad + NATO ....
* NEWS KERALA > TALIBAN URGES FIGHTERS "TO TARGET EVERY PARTICIPANT, CALLER" OF PLANNED KABUL CONVENTION.
* SAME > TALIBAN ATTACK IN KABUL INDICATE INSURGENTS GROWING RELIANCE ON HIGH-PROFILE ATTACKS THERE.
[Dawn] Pakistain on Saturday termed the US drone attacks inside its territory as "unjustified" saying these were counterproductive and decreased space for creating support against turbans.
"Our leadership has always condemned these in the strongest terms and unjustified," Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told students here at a lecture at the University of Western Australia, organized by the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
Khar, who is here for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) spoke on the challenges Pakistain was facing after the 9/11 and the ways it was dealing with these.
She rejected that Pakistain was into any "Double Game", as alleged by the BBC in the war against terror as it has sacrificed so many precious lives.
"Were we not sincere, why the faceless myrmidons and beturbanned goons would be targeting our innocent people and security forces across the country," she said.
"We lost 30,000 people besides around 6500 belonging to the security forces, with financial losses running in billions," she told the students. "Still we are being blamed for terrorism."
She termed the fight against the faceless myrmidons as taking place in the backdrop of a complex and uncertain regional situation.
"This is a fight we have to do for our own survival," she said and added the faceless myrmidons had single agenda to destroy the social fabric of the Pak society.
She dwelt at length about the reasons leading to the creation of beturbanned goons and faceless myrmidons and attributed it to the vacuum created after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan.
She said Pakistain still has to host around 3.5 million Afghan refugees.
Khar said Islam was the most maligned and misinterpreted religion of the modern world.
She said it was being viewed quite opposite to what it really preaches -- love and care for the fellow beings, whereas it is seen as a religion of violence.
She focused on the way today Pakistain is being perceived by the world and said the nation has a strong resilience and remains determined to rise above all challenges.
"We had seen some of the world's worst natural disasters like the earthquake of 2005 and the floods of 2010 and 2011, yet we managed to bounce back."
The Foreign Minister in her lecture at the Centre for Mohammedan States and Societies of the University covered wide ranging issues -- including role of women in all spheres of life in Pakistain and the challenges it was confronting, particularly in the wake of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and its fallout on Pakistain.
She said Pakistain's biggest foreign policy objective was peace and stability in its neighbourhood.
Talking about Pakistain's role in Afghanistan, she said it has "gigantic" interests in its strife torn neighbour and wants to ensure it stays secure and stable as it is in the vital interest of Pakistain.
Khar termed economic issues as the second and essentially linked most serious internal challenges confronting the country.
She termed the death of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani ... the gentlemanly murdered legitimate president of Afghanistan... as most damaging for the Pakistain and Afghanistan relations and termed it a "death blow to the grinding of the peace processor.
She said blaming Pakistain was just complicating the matters.
She however hoped that President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... in his forthcoming meeting with President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... in Turkey would be able to clear up the misperceptions.
Ms Khar however was very clear that Pakistain does not want to see any chaos in Afghanistan post 2014.
"That is too horrific a scenario to imagine with grave implications not only for Afghanistan, but also for Pakistain and the region as a whole.
She stressed that clarity and strategic coherence were a sine qua non for realizing peace in Afghanistan and added, "We are therefore, working overtime to put our engagement with US back on track."
Referring to the recent visit of Secretary Clinton to Pakistain, she said it has helped move the matters forward.
"There is no reason for Afghanistan, US and Pakistain not to be working together to achieve our shared objectives," she said.
The Foreign Minister expressed the hope that the upcoming conferences in Istanbul and Bonn would achieve their objectives.
"This can only be done if we proceed with a clear sense of purpose and do not engage ourselves in the pursuit of objectives which are elusive," she said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/30/2011 00:00 ||
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"we was gonna do th' right thing, yessir, but den, dose dirty rotten coppers showed up an' we jus' hadda break th' law..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/30/2011 13:10 Comments ||
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[Dawn] Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... Saturday categorically said there was no permission given to the United States to launch any drone strike against any target inside Pakistain's territory.
"There is no such permission," Gilani told a large group of Pak expatriates. The prime minister is here on a four-day visit to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, that is being attended by over 50 world leaders.
The Prime Minister said such attacks were counterproductive because of the collateral damages caused as these were undermining government's efforts to get the unanimous support of the masses against the snuffies and terrorists.
He said drone strikes were one of the reasons of tense relations between Pakistain and the United States of America.
He said Pakistain has also conveyed to the United States that the unilateral military operation, such as the operation of May 2 to get the late Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden is dead.
He took two shots to the head.
That made him frown
and he had to lie down.
Osama bin Laden is dead. would not be acceptable.
Prime Minister Gilani, who also had an interactive session with the community members, said there has been a sea change in the country's foreign policy towards terrorism as a result of the vindication of his vision of three Ds, dialogue, development and deterrence. "There has been a paradigm shift in the policy between a democratic government and a dictatorial regime," he said and added that now the people of Pakistain and the Parliament were the ultimate arbitrators to take important decision of national importance.
"Unlike the policies of the past when things started rolling with a single telephone call from the United States of America, now we seek mandate of the Parliament and take decisions with consensus."
He said it was for the first time that the Army Chief and the DG (ISI) briefed the Parliament which had never happened before in the history of the country.
He mentioned the Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... operation that went ahead, after the reluctance of the Taliban leaders to honour their commitment for not indulging in any unlawful activities.
"Their defiance led me to take army operation against the hard boyz and the people wholeheartedly supported the government throughout," he added.
The Prime Minister told the Pak expatriates that the nation stood united to eliminate Death Eater and terrorist elements from the country regardless the sacrifices, adding, they had suffered over 35000 causalities. Many of them in drone strikes.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/30/2011 00:00 ||
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Pakistan seems to be more concerned/upset that we got Bin Laden without telling them more than the fact he was hiding in a Military town for years!
Says it all about where their loyalties lie!
Posted by: Paul D ||
10/30/2011 9:20 Comments ||
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'Pagri' dishonoured Oh, noze! Not the pagri!
Writing in Express Tanvir Qaiser Shahid stated that by using the pagri (turban) in the killing of Tajik leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Taliban had dishonoured the pagri as it was one Muslim killing another Muslim with the symbol of Muslim honour. It was equally shocking that the killer and the killed were both wearing pagri.
Shocking indeed. Completely not what one would expect from such honourable people.
America doing 'badmashi' Sorry. That was me. I shouldn't have had the chili.
Famous TV anchor Hamid Mir wrote in Jang that after making Pakistan fight its war against terror the US was doing badmashi against Pakistan. He said this was condemnable and he had condemned it earlier also but it was important to tell Pakistanis that Musharraf's surrender of airfields and other facilities began this slavery for which wee were paying a price today.
Osama was killed before Abbottabad attack
Daily Pakistan reported on a seminar at Lahore Press Club in which the orators led by Jamaat Islami chief Munawwar Hasan said that Osama bin Laden had been killed long before the Americans attacked Abbottabad. Other speakers insisted that if Osama was killed before the attack then facts about his earlier killing should be brought to light. Well, you'd hardly expect them to admit publicly that we done him in using the Hairy Eyeball, wouldja? Hina and Mullen
Writing in Jang lyrical columnist Irfan Siddiqi stated that just as Pakistan's foreign minister Hina Khar was getting herself and her husband photographed together with the royal couple the Obamas of America,
People speak about the "royal couple" Prince Charles and whatshername, but never the royal couple King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his chief wife...
the American military chief Mullen was becoming a volcano of accusations denouncing Pakistan as a terrorist state. Ahah! How could we possibly have missed the connection... Whatever it is? Imran Khan's extremists
Columnist Ataul Haq Qasmi wrote in Jang that he was a great admirer of Imran Khan but was disappointed by his habit of doing character assassination of those he considered his opponents. But when he wrote about it in his column he was attacked by the partymen of Imran Khan who sent him a hundred messages of abuse. He wrote that he was not the only journalist thus attacked; Nusrat Javeed had suffered the same kind of extremist reaction earlier.
Uniting under attack!
Famous intellectual Oria Maqbul Jan wrote in Express that America's attack on Pakistan has united all Muslims.
And unitedly the taqfiris are killing as many of the rest as they can, while the secular nationalists do the same from the other side.
This is what happened under British Raj when the Sunni-Shia divide disappeared in the face of the British imperial challenge. Even today in India the Shia-Sunni communities were united against the injustice of the state.
Pak Army will break America's face!
World famous military genius and ex-army chief Aslam Beg was reported in daily Pakistan as saying that if America attacked Miranshah, Pakistan army will break its face (muhn tor). America was defeated and was trying in vain to find a way out of Afghanistan but if it attacked Pakistan it will regret its action.
It is indeed manifest from that statement that ex-army chief Aslam Beg is a genius. Only I've forgotten -- which war was it that he won?
Touching Qazi Sahib's knees
Writing in Jinnah Khushnood Ali Khan stated at a supper where he and Hamid Mir were present, ex-PPP leader Senator Anwar Beg walked in and approaching Jamaat Islami ex-chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, touched his knees in great reverence. In return Qazi Sahib also showed him great affection. Beg was recently fired from the PPP and was looking to start a new direction in politics.
Zaid Hamid runs away!
Daily Jinnah reported that Zaid Zaman Hamid the hate speech expert was invited to engage in a polemic with Allama Tahir Ashrafi in Faisalabad. Ashrafi had challenged him to prove that he was not the successor of the false prophet Yusuf Kazzab. Zaid Hamid instead of coming to the discussion ran away from the venue because he could not defend himself against the charge of having supported a blaspheming man who claimed to be a prophet.
Why was Zaid Hamid invited to military college?
Daily Jinnah quoted chief editor Khushnood Ali Khan as asking the Army Chief to inquire why Zaid Hamid was invited to address the prestigious military college in Islamabad, The National Defence College. He asked to know the name of the officer who invited the condemned man to the College and asked: who were the elements in the army promoting Zaid Hamid?
America defeated in Afghanistan!
Famous chief editor Majeed Nizami was reported in Nawa-e-Waqt as saying that America had been defeated in Afghanistan and was now looking for excuses to make its fleeing from there look like victory. He said Pakistani youth needed to be educated on the basis of ideology and should be told about the great difficulty with which Pakistan was created.
Ex-foreign secretary appeals for sovereignty
Quoted in daily Pakistan ex-foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmad Khan stated that Pakistan had itself was an enemy of its sovereignty by making too many concessions to America and by becoming its slave. The fact is that no one can kill Pakistan nor will the Pakistanis be killed because America cannot survive without Pakistan (Hamaray baghair nahin reh sakta).
What if Kayani became president? They used to ask the same thing about Musharraf, didn't they?
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in Jang that if the US pressed Pakistan too hard the government in Islamabad could fall and America may be forced to face a situation in which General Kayani rings Obama and says this is President Kayani speaking, let's talk now. At the present time only junior officers from the US talk to the government of Pakistan.
Don't take risk for the sake of Haqqanis
Ex-foreign minister Asif Ahmad Ali stood out when he told Mashriq that Pakistan was unwise if it was taking risks of isolation for the sake of the Haqqani Group. He said doing so would jeopardise the security of Pakistan through panga (messing) with a superpower.
What America wants
Writing in Express Tanvir Qaiser Shahid stated that America wanted India to get its claws into Afghanistan, wants to strengthen nuclear India and destroy Pakistan's sovereignty by targeting the ISI. It was an irony that America wants a poverty-stricken Pakistan to also get its men killed while confronting the Haqqani Group.
Altaf Hussain has divorce trouble!
Reported in Jinnah the divorced wife of MQM chief Altaf Hussain, Faiza Gabol was once again knocking at the door of a court in London trying to reopen the case of her divorce from Altaf Bhai. Altaf Hussain she said had lied about his property and therefore did not pay her what was owed to her after divorce.
Durrani's Bahawalpur versus Seraiki province
Chief Editor Khushnood Ali Khan wrote in Jinnah that during a supper with Qazi Hussain Ahmad ex-minister under Musharraf, Muhammad Ali Durrani walked in, on which the writer told him to touch Qazi Sahib's knees out of reverence because his campaign for a separate province of Bahawalpur will postpone the setting up of a Seraiki Province in South Punjab. Hamid Mir whispered that Durrani's final place was inside the PMLN and not PMLQ.
A stupid case of blasphemy
Daily Express reported that a Christian child was being accused of blasphemy because of a spelling error she made in her answer sheet during an exam. She was kicked out of school. She wanted to write na'at (hymn of praise to Prophet OBUH) but through a misplacement of diacritical marks ended up writing la'nat (curse). Her parents went to school and apologised for the error to save their daughter from being convicted under blasphemy and hanged.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [Professor Brahma Chellaney = India Today] THE DRAGON'S FAMILIAR DANCE (PROF WARNS THAT CHINA MIGHT INVADE INDIA AGAIN) | WITH THE 50TH ANIVERSARY OF THE 1962 INVASION APPROACHING, HISTORY IS IN DANGER OF REPEATING ITSELF.
True enuff, but Indjuh in this situation may ultimately be only one target of several in East, SE Asia for China, + the likelihood is higher for INDO-PAK WAR which will draw in China + US. AFAIK Beijing still prefers to protect its developing global economy, + not wage any regional major war invol other Great/Nuke Powers at this time - unfortunately, by the same token its stance allows Beijing to be manipulated + exploited by the likes of KIMMIE = NORTH KOREA, IRAN, ANTI-US, PRO-ISLAMIST HARDLINE ELEMENTS IN PAKISTAN, + of course ANTI-CHINA, ANTI-INDIA, ETC. PRO-SEPARATIST JIHADIES IN CENTRAL, EAST, + SOUTH/SE ASIA.
The jury is still out in Sunni Pakistan as to whether seemingly new BFF Shia Iran is a reliable ally, + not out to undermine Pak-specific ambitions + interests in West Asia.
IMO, the key marker = benchmark remains "2012" + Shia Iran becom a de facto NucWeaps State.
JERUSALEM: The Palestinian president, in a remarkable assessment delivered on Israeli TV, has said the Arab world erred in rejecting the United Nations 1947 plan to partition Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state.
That twitched the surprise meter just a bit...
The Palestinian and Arab refusal to accept a UN plan to partition the then-British-controlled mandate of Palestine sparked widespread fighting, then Arab military intervention after Israel declared independence the following year. The Arabs lost the war.
It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Channel 2 TV in a rare interview to the Israeli media on Friday. But do they (the Israelis) punish us for this mistake 64 years?
Nah, not for that, for everything you've done since...
Abbas also addressed his negotiations with former Israeli leader Ehud Olmert, now in the spotlight because of the publication of the memoirs of former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rice backs Israels account that Olmert made a peace offer that was rejected, while Palestinians say that talks never actually reached a point where a firm offer was on the table. Abbas claimed that he and Olmert were very close to reaching a peace agreement in 2008, before the Israeli leader left office under the cloud of corruption allegations.
It was a very good opportunity, he said. If he stayed two, three months, I believe in that time we could have concluded an agreement.
He confirmed Olmerts account that the Israeli leader was prepared to withdraw from 93.5 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians, Abbas added, responded by offering to let Israel retain 1.9 percent of the West Bank.
In her forthcoming book, No Higher Honor, excerpted in Newsweek this week, Rice claims that the Palestinians rejected Olmerts proposal. Rice said Olmert proposed in a May 2008 conversation with her to cede about 94 percent of the West Bank, and to share sovereignty over the disputed holy city of Jerusalem and put an international body in charge of its religious shrines.
In its waning days, Rice wrote, the administration of President George W. Bush tried one last time to wrest a peace deal: To have an Israeli prime minister on record offering those remarkable elements and a Palestinian president accepting them would have pushed the peace process to a new level. Abbas refused.
In their last meeting before Bush left office in December 2008, The President took Abbas into the Oval Office alone and appealed to him to reconsider. The Palestinian stood firm, and the idea died, Rice wrote.
On Friday, the chief Palestinian negotiator told The Associated Press that the Palestinians had never rejected the Israeli offer.
With Abbas offering in his counter-proposal to let Israel annex 1.9 percent of the West Bank, Bush set a meeting for Jan. 3, 2009, to lock in the positions, which had been delivered verbally, so the next administration could begin where we left off, he said. That meeting was scuttled because of Israels December 2008 invasion of Gaza, Erekat said, and Olmert was soon out of office. Since that time, talks revived for only a brief three weeks last year.
Last month, Abbas bypassed the troubled negotiations route to ask the UN to recognize an independent state of Palestine.
In his interview with Channel 2, Abbas acknowledged the Palestinians might not be able to muster the necessary nine votes in the 15-member Security Council to approve the statehood bid. But majority support would be a moot point, anyway, because the United States has threatened to veto the statehood petition. Israel also opposes the UN bid, arguing like the US that only negotiations can yield a Palestinian state.
Abbas said it is difficult ... to launch any kind of negotiations with the current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who takes a hawkish stand on territorial concessions. He said Netanyahu wants to retain an Israeli military presence along the West Banks eastern border with Jordan for 40 years, even after the establishment of a Palestinian state.
I told him, I prefer occupation, Abbas said.
Netanyahu has never publicly specified how long he wants to hold on to that territory, known as the Jordan Valley, and his office had no reaction to Abbas comment.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/30/2011 00:00 ||
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We will expel all the Muslims and the Christians.
It is our land, it was given to us, not them. When we remove them from it they fight us. They can either go and take their heretic religions and their racial impurity with them or they must be destoryed. We won't have them pollute our land.
The US Special Representative to Muslim communities has expressed concern over the education and the livelihood of young Muslims in southern Thailand.
Farah Anwar Pandith spoke yesterday after her visit to Thailand in August, where she met a group of 60 young Thai Muslims. Pandith, who was appointed to her job at the US State Department two months ago, said one of her missions was to forge links with young Muslims around the world. Pandith told a media briefing, "The young [Muslim] voice matters to us. We can work together."
She said Thai Muslims had talked about how the violence has affected their quality of life, education and communities. Pandith said Muslim youths are particularly concerned about their education. US ambassadors around the world are working with young Muslims to make their voices heard.
But she added that the US was concerned about extremism at Islamic religious schools, and hoped young Muslims stand up and voice their opposition.
Pandith said, "Combating extremist ideology is important for all of us everywhere, not just from the government, but from people themselves. It is local-to-local, and it is community-to-community. Many young Muslims around the world are saying this kind of ideology cannot exist in my backyard."
Those 'civil libertarians' who go into such hysterics over trivial symbolic support of Christianity seem to have little to say about taxpayer funded intervention to help one religion in a way that our government helps no other.
Not sure if this is a ploy by the military to marginalize her in a more subtle way, or a play by her to set up the Parliament to wrench the country free of the generals.
YANGON: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi might stand for Parliament in an upcoming by-election after her party re-registers itself to enter politics, a party spokesman said.
Suu Kyi has been blocked from politics and detained for long stretches of time since returning to her homeland from abroad in 1988.
But after holding the first election in 20 years last November, Myanmars military nominally handed power in March to a civilian government and it has introduced some reforms and started a dialogue with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi.
Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party was officially disbanded for refusing to take part in last years election although it has continued to function. NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the party was likely to get re-registered under an amended party law that drops clauses the party had objected to.
Asked if Suu Kyi herself would stand in a by-election after the partys re-registration, Nyan Win said: I think she will and I personally want her to.
Asked by Reuters a month ago if she would stand in a by-election if the law was amended, the 66-year old Suu Kyi said she would have to get the approval of her partys central executive committee.
A set of by-elections is expected late this year.
Analysts say the governments reforms, including the recent release of about 200 political prisoners, are aimed at shedding Myanmars pariah status and giving it some legitimacy with the international community, particularly the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member.
Since coming to power this year, the new government has stopped criticizing Suu Kyi and issuing veiled threats and instead sent an envoy, Labor Minister Aung Kyi, to meet her on three occasions. They are due to meet again on Sunday, government and party officials said. Suu Kyi also had a meeting with President Thein Sein in the capital, Naypyitaw, in August.
Well-informed sources close to the government said the government wanted Suu Kyi and members of her party in Parliament to give it legitimacy.
They think the participation of some NLD lawmakers including Suu Kyi would surely help improve their image and legitimacy, said a retired senior diplomat.
Under the amended political party law, a clause barring anyone convicted of a crime from joining a party has been dropped. Another change requires political parties to respect and obey a 2008 constitution instead of preserve and protect.
Suu Kyi and other democracy activists objected to the constitution, drafted by a military-appointed convention, because it effectively enshrined the supremacy of the military in politics.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/30/2011 00:00 ||
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[Telegraph UK ] In his first interview with a Western journalist since Syria's seven-month uprising began, Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad The Scourge of Hama... told The Sunday Telegraph that intervention against his regime could cause "another Afghanistan".
Western countries "are going to ratchet up the pressure, definitely," he said. "But Syria is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen. The history is different. The politics is different.
"Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake ... Do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?
"Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region."
Thousands of anti-government demonstrators erupted into the streets in two Syrian cities on Friday to demand the imposition of a Libyan-style no-fly zone over the country. According to the United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... , at least 3,000 civilians, including 187 children, have been killed during protests against the regime. Thousands more have been imprisoned. The government says 1,200 members of the security forces have also died.
President Assad admitted that "many mistakes" had been made by his forces in the early part of the uprising, but insisted that only "terrorists" were now being targeted.
"We have very few police, only the army, who are trained to take on al-Qaeda," he said. "If you sent in your army to the streets, the same thing would happen. Now, we are only fighting terrorists. That's why the fighting is becoming much less."
On Friday alone, however, opposition groups claimed that 40 people were killed by the regime, and government troops shelled a district of Homs, a centre of opposition.
Seventeen soldiers also died in overnight festivities with suspected army deserters in the city, which foreign journalists are forbidden to enter.
Syria was condemned yesterday by Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... foreign ministers for its "continued killings of civilians".
The number of protesters appeared to fall earlier this month, but has increased again after the death of Col Qadaffy ...a proud Arab institution for 42 years... gave opposition groups new heart. A general strike affected much of the southern part of the country.
President Assad insisted that he had responded differently to the Arab Spring than other, deposed Arab leaders. "We didn't go down the road of stubborn government," he said. "Six days after [the protests began] I commenced reform. People were sceptical that the reforms were an opiate for the people, but when we started announcing the reforms, the problems started decreasing e_SLps This is when the tide started to turn. This is when people started supporting the government."
Some Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... -based opposition leaders say the reforms, which include laws ostensibly allowing demonstrations and political parties, are a start, but not enough. However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... the leaders of the main protests say they are meaningless and President Assad must go.
"The problem with the government is that their dialogue is shallow and just a tool to gain time," said Kadri Jamil, of Kassioun, a Damascus-based opposition group. "They have to act to begin real dialogue because the security solution has failed. We have one to two months before we pass the point of no return."
One Homs-based opposition activist said: "Killing people is not an act of reform. We aren't calling for economic or even political reform under Assad, but for the departure of this bloodstained president and free elections."
President Assad said: "The pace of reform is not too slow. The vision needs to be mature. It would take only 15 seconds to sign a law, but if it doesn't fit your society, you'll have division ... It's a very complicated society."
He described the uprising as a "struggle between Islamism and pan-Arabism [secularism], adding: "We've been fighting the Moslem Brüderbund since the 1950s and we are still fighting with them."
In interviews in Damascus, some without government minders, secular Syrians and members of the country's substantial Christian and Alawite minorities said they supported the Assad regime for fear of their positions under a new government. Those attending a large demonstration in support of the regime last Wednesday did not appear to be coerced, according to independent observers.
However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... interviews, even some with minders present, revealed widespread and vocal discontent over corruption and living standards.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/30/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Not another Afghanistan! But with a coastline & adjacent to Israel...
#5
It's not entirely out of the question that he would get significant help from his friends in Iran.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/30/2011 16:19 Comments ||
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#6
"We have very few police, only the army, who are trained to take on al-Qaeda," he said. "If you sent in your army to the streets, the same thing would happen.
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.
Three women wearing head scarves completely shielding their faces were denied entry to a Gothenburg courtroom on Friday during the remand hearing of one of the suspects in the Röda Sten murder plot case. 
Wazoo
[Dawn] Pakistain on Saturday termed the US drone attacks inside its territory as "unjustified" saying these were counterproductive and decreased space for creating support against
"This is a fight we have to do for our own survival," she said and added the 
[Dawn] Prime Minister Syed 
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
'Pagri' dishonoured
The US Special Representative to Muslim communities has expressed concern over the education and the livelihood of young Muslims in southern Thailand.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
