KATHMANDU - Nepal will go ahead with next monthâs municipal polls despite Maoist attacks around the capital in which 12 policemen were killed, a minister said on Sunday. Five blasts rocked areas around Kathmandu on Saturday. The deadliest attack occurred in Thankot, 10 km from the capital, where heavily armed rebels tossed a bomb at a police post and sprayed bullets from automatic rifles, killing 11 policemen.
You'd think the police would be ready for this sort of thing.
In another attack, near the temple town of Bhaktapur, one policeman was killed and eight people, including seven policemen, were wounded, state television said. Two policemen were also missing after the attack, officials said. Other blasts around the city caused no injuries.
âThese incidents will not deter the elections,â junior information minister Shris Shumsher Rana told Reuters in the first official comments after the attacks. âSince the Kathmandu targets have high propaganda value the utility of such incidents becomes evident for those who would want to impede elections,â Rana said.
âWe are prepared for any eventuality,â he added.
"Tut-tut, my good man."
At Thankot, witnesses said dozens of rebels in plain clothes arrived in a bus followed by armed guerrillas in another bus. They carried out the raid then ran away fled into nearby forests. Unexploded bombs and bullets left after the raid littered the police post on a highway linking the hill-ringed capital with the southern plains.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
22:35 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
Iranian scientists are expected to start work this week on the highly technical task of enriching tons of uranium to a level where it could be used in the production of atomic weapons, say the latest reports received by western intelligence agencies.
The work is to be undertaken at the top-secret Natanz uranium enrichment facility 90 miles north-east of the capital, Teheran.
The very existence of the plant was concealed from the outside world until two years ago, when an Iranian exile group produced details of its work.
Intelligence sources say Iran will begin feeding converted uranium into 164 centrifuges at Natanz this week. That could enable it to create enriched uranium of sufficient quality for nuclear weapons production within three years.
Previous estimates of the minimum time required had ranged from five to 10 years.
Iran's unilateral decision to resume enrichment is by far the most critical development in its latest stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations-sponsored body responsible for enforcing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
As a signatory to the NPT, Iran is obliged to provide the IAEA with a comprehensive breakdown of all its nuclear activity, which Teheran insists is purely for the development of an indigenous nuclear power industry - despite Iran having one of the world's largest known oil reserves.
But the discrepancies that have appeared in declarations to IAEA inspectors - which included concealing the existence of the Natanz complex - have increased suspicions that Iran is well advanced in its clandestine programme to build a nuclear weapon.
Nuclear experts working for the intelligence agencies have concluded that it now has the resources necessary for developing a nuclear weapon.
"Iran has spent the past 20 years scouring the world to acquire all the means of production and materials necessary for building nuclear weapons," a senior western intelligence officer told The Daily Telegraph.
"The big intelligence debate now is not whether Iran can build a bomb, but how long it will take them to build it."
Despite concerted attempts by western intelligence to prevent them acquiring nuclear equipment, the Iranians have managed to import key components.
Latest reports suggest that Iran has at least 1,000 tons of uranium -"yellowcake", the oxide of uranium that can be enriched to create weapons-grade uranium.
It was acquired from Niger and South Africa in the late 1990s. When processed, that quantity of yellowcake could provide enough material for five nuclear bombs.
The Iranians have also obtained key components for processing the yellowcake and technical expertise from A Q Khan, the controversial scientist regarded as being the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.
By far the most alarming acquisition from Pakistan, according to western intelligence assessments, is the P2 centrifuge, the highly sophisticated device necessary for enriching uranium to weapons grade.
In order to reach the advanced stage needed for building an atomic weapon, it is necessary to connect a number of centrifuges so that they form a "cascade".
When they were finally allowed to visit Natanz two years ago, IAEA inspectors were alarmed to discover that the Iranians had managed to construct a cascade. This comprises 164 centrifuges, which are based on Pakistan's P2 design.
Any doubts about the effectiveness of the devices were banished when soil samples taken from the site by IAEA inspectors showed traces of weapons-grade uranium.
If the nuclear programme were genuinely aimed at developing nuclear power, there would be no need to process weapons-grade uranium.
Asked to explain the soil samples, the Iranians provided the rather lame excuse that the traces had inadvertently been imported from an unidentified foreign power - believed to be Pakistan - when the centrifuges were purchased.
This is only one of the many glaring inconsistencies that have appeared in the Iranians' submissions to the IAEA, which has been powerless to prevent their relentless pursuit of nuclear technology.
As a consequence Iran now has all the means of production and materials to proceed to the final weapons stage.
That process will begin this week when scientists resume work on processing uranium to weapons grade at Natanz.
Much of the preparatory work has already been done at the Isfahan nuclear conversion plant.
Work resumed there last year when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the removal of IAEA seals, unilaterally breaking the Paris Accord of November 2004.
This was negotiated with the European Union as Iran promised to suspend its nuclear activities until IAEA inspectors had satisfied themselves that Teheran's nuclear intentions were purely peaceful.
Isfahan has the capacity to process 300 tons of yellowcake a year, and before work was suspended in 2004 it was known that 37 tons had been developed to make uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas. UF6 is a key component in achieving weapons grade.
Once the UF6 is produced, it is transferred to Natanz where it is fed into the centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
Exactly how much UF6 has been produced since the Isfahan seals were removed last August is unknown, although conservative intelligence estimates suggest there are sufficient stocks of UF6 for 30 kilos of enriched uranium. The warhead used at Hiroshima contained 25 kilos.
The only question remaining for western intelligence is to assess exactly how long it will take the Iranians to complete the process.
"We just don't know how efficient the Natanz plant is at enriching uranium," said an intelligence official.
"This is a very complex and highly sophisticated process that requires a great deal of technical ability."
IAEA officials have estimated that it will take Iran three years to produce weapons-grade uranium once the Natanz plant resumes work.
Given that its Shahab-3 ballistic missile system has the range to hit southern Europe, it is clear that the threat posed by Teheran's hard-line regime is significant and urgent.
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/15/2006
21:22 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[21 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"That could enable it to create enriched uranium of sufficient quality for nuclear weapons production within three years."
So Iran in 2006 can enrich at about the speed of the US in 1942? Does that make sense?
#3
Didnt the Norks break the seals on their processors in early 03' and was showing off weapons grade in 04' or was that stuff they worked during the cheat time frame?
And then this jewel::
"Exactly how much UF6 has been produced since the Isfahan seals were removed last August is unknown, although conservative intelligence estimates suggest there are sufficient stocks of UF6 for 30 kilos of enriched uranium. The warhead used at Hiroshima contained 25 kilos."
Is that saying the Iranian's have a WW2 bomb NOW or in 3yrs?
If I am not mistaken I think that while the EU/UN were talkin the Iranians have in piece meal brought thier process back on line as the material moved down the line the Natanz is the last stop so does the 3yr clock start 2yrs ago or today?
I say bomb everything we know, the leadership, the military, any places we may suspect in Iran, and then sit back hit at will opportunity sites while we contain Iran and figure out what the hell we are going to do with it or who is worth negotiating a peace with if the "revolution" doesnt materealize. Worst case senerio with the current leadership gone, military crippled, nuke program gone, and no fly zone overhead a humbled Mullah leadership would be a huge improvement.
EFL
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday he has no intention of running again after his current term as chairman of the PA expires in 2008, also predicting sweeping changes from this month's parliamentary election. "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Abbas said the new Palestinian parliament to be elected on January 25 will offer a "new type" of democracy, welcoming the participation of other factions in the race. His ruling party Fatah has controlled the Palestinian Authority since the first parliamentary election in 1996.
Abbas was elected a year ago to replace Yasser Arafat, who died on November 11. "The presidency is four years, and it is possible (legally) to go for another term," Abbas told reporters. "But from now, I say, this ... will not happen."
Abbas, 70, said the next election should be for a vice president as well as a president, but that would require parliamentary action. Or a plurality of automatic weapons
On concerns that the parliamentary elections may be marred with violence, Abbas repeated that he ordered his security forces to prevent anyone with a gun from getting close to the polling stations. Other than normal "poll workers"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006
16:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
2 other pics for Frank to consider LOL. I wonder if Darth Bolton made an impression on el Baradai or if he realizes just how close things are to going up ....
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006
16:55 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
couldn't decide on "Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious" pic or One of the meter pics/pegged needle
what a tool....
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 16:57
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Someone musta finally gotten through his Helm of Ignorance and Shield of Blindness with the Clue-bat.
Someone send this guy/gal a white flag with cheese.
French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Sunday talks should be pursued with Iran even though the country was resuming sensitive nuclear activities.
'In a situation like this, there are two options: either we will finally take steps that will isolate the country or we will try as hard as we can to talk to convince and make advances,' Alliot-Marie during an RTL-Le Figaro-LCI radio and television debate.
'If we allow the country to close in, it will also mean that IAEA inspectors will not know what is happening' in Iran, she said referring to the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency.
A spokesman for the French foreign ministry said Friday it was 'premature' to speak of sanctions against Iran for resuming sensitive nuclear activities.
Instead it was necessary to 'proceed step by step' after Thursday's meeting of the British, German and French foreign ministers in Berlin.
The European group of three had called for an extraordinary meeting of the IAEA board of governors to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.
Paris would 'continue consultations' with China, Russia and its European partners on the issue, the spokesman had said.
Officials from China, the EU, Russia and the US are to meet over the Iran nuclear crisis in London on Monday.
Alliot-Marie said that 'as long as there are a number of points which allow us to believe we can make advances we have to persevere because the day when Iran will be totally closed in we will no longer know what's going on.'
She added that Tehran should be given the opportunity to play a role on the world scene, which she said was 'a natural desire for a country like Iran'.
Iran said Sunday it was 'not scared' of being hauled before the UN Security Council and warned any sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme could cause an unexpected hike in oil prices.
The country this week resumed nuclear research -- involving small-scale enrichment to test centrifuges. It insists this is separate from full-scale uranium enrichment, which remains frozen for the time being.
Enrichment can produce reactor fuel but can also be extended to make the core of an atomic weapon. The West fears that if Iran is allowed to master the technology via this research work it would gain the know-how to make a bomb.
Britain, France and Germany have for more than two years been trying to convince Iran to voluntarily limit its nuclear activities in exchange for trade and other incentives.
But Iran has ruled out any such deal.
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/15/2006
16:19 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
if we allow the country to close in, it will also mean that IAEA inspectors will not know what is happening' in Iran
Reality:
"We'd rather know they are building a nuke, than try to stop them."
Its pretyt obvious - why do they say such amazingly stupid things? Don't they realize that knwoing about the nukes doenst mean anything if they buidl the damendthings? They are going to USE it when they build it.
Its like telling a rapist to show you his "gun" before he rapes you instead of shooting him to stop him.
#8
Of course they surrender. The French rulers can look at the demographic figures and plainly see the native French will be the minority. They just hope to keep their heads long enough to die of old age. Screw their children.
The question is why anyone in the west still considers France an ally.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 21:56
Comments ||
Top||
#9
When someone decides to make themselves irrelevant we should ignore their drivel. The French leadership are working hard at becomming irrelevant. Bypass them and lets get on with removing Iran's nuclear capability.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/15/2006 23:35
Comments ||
Top||
AUSTRALIA'S Defence Force is about to embark on its biggest weapons buying spree since World War II, spending $52 billion on new planes, ships and tanks. The massive expenditure will make Australia's navy, army and air force the most powerful and high-tech military in the region well into the 21st century.
The spending splurge comes not to combat the war on terror, but because much of the Defence Force's most costly equipment is 30 years old and has to be replaced.
Pressure from international arms firms to sell Australia the big ticket items is intense. This month the new American destroyer USS Pinckney will sail into Sydney on a mission to persuade the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to splash out. The US ship has the latest anti-air warfare Aegis system and is designed to protect fleets from air and missile attack.
The ADF plans to spend $6 billion buying three such ships and is looking at a future cut-down version of the Pinckney as well as the existing Spanish F100 destroyer. The US Navy is pulling out big guns to win the contract and the ship will host Defence Minister Robert Hill and other ministers on board when it visits during the Navy's Sea Power Conference starting in Sydney on January 31.
The destroyers will be the most powerful warships in the navy, but not the biggest. Two new 22,000 tonne amphibious assault transport ships costing more than $1 billion each are to be decided on in 2007. ADF is looking at a French design that resembles a mini aircraft carrier.
The spending spree continues in the air force where the Government plans to lay out $16 billion on 100 American-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. But the cost is likely to blow out beyond the current $160 million per plane as the US is cutting back its orders. The F-35 is still being tested and isn't due until 2012. Defence insiders believe the Government will curtail its plans and announce next month that it will buy just 50 to 60 of the F-35s.
Big new transport planes are also on the RAAF wish list. The $200 million McDonnell Douglas built C-17 Globemaster can carry 120 troops or the heavy M1 Abrams tank, far more than the existing trusty Hercules.
New surveillance drones to help the Orion aircraft are also being considered. The US built Global Hawk unmanned drones, costing $45 million apiece, could be patrolling Australian northern waters in the next decade.
Big bucks have already been tied in by the army. In June the first of 59 second-hand American M1 Abrams tanks the ADF has bought from the US Army will arrive. The Government has just announced there will be an extra $1.5 billion in May's budget to recruit another 1500 troops for the more mechanised army. Another $3 billion is being spent on 7000 units of army field equipment such as helicopters, trucks, jeeps and trailers.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
16:17 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
All good for integrating the Aussies into the new post-NATO Western Defense Force. G'day, Mates.
#4
How about transferring a squadron of retiring B-1's to Australia? The airframes are less than 20 years old and will more than make up for their geriatric FB-111's.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 21:15
Comments ||
Top||
"We'll negotiate [with Israel] better than the others, who negotiated for 10 years and achieved nothing," Sheikh Mohammed Abu Tir, second on the Hamas national list for the Palestinian parliamentary election, told Haaretz recently.
Abu Tir does not dismiss future negotiations with Israel. He makes a great effort to explain to Israel and the world, which are attempting to come to terms with his organization's expected good showing in the elections later this month, that Hamas is playing by new rules.
"For instance, now we allow the two-point conversion."
According to Abu Tir, the movement's decision to enter the elections - as well as the decision to remove from its election platform sections in its constitution calling for Israel's destruction - are not only tactical measures. Rather, they represent a strategic shift. "In the past, it was said that we don't understand politics, only force, but we are a broad, well-grounded movement that is active in all areas of life. Now we are proving that we also understand politics better than the others," Abu Tir said.
"And we've also seen that the Israelis have more force than we'll ever have. Let me tell you, my brothers, that the light came on after the last helizap," he added.
Abu Tir, 55, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Umm Tuba, does not have a high media profile in either the West Bank or Israel. However, he is considered one of Hamas' most prominent individuals. He was released from an Israeli prison about six months ago, after spending most of the last 30 years in administrative detention or serving sentences for membership in a terror organization, weapons possession and directing the activities of the Hamas military wing, Iz al-Din al-Qassam. Following his release, Abu Tir was recruited by the Hamas leadership to head its national list after the group's Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh. "The use of the word muqawama [resistance in Arabic, used by Hamas and many other organizations to signify the armed struggle] in the platform does not necessarily refer to weapons and the use of force," Abu Tir said.
"What else could it mean?"
"Um, .. we're working on that. We'll let you know."
When asked whether Hamas would negotiate with Israel after the elections, he said, "We will not give Israel the justification and the legitimacy to occupy our lands." But he immediately added that "we are not saying 'never.' The question of negotiations will be presented to the new parliament and, as with every issue, when we reach the parliament it will be discussed and decided in a rational manner."
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
16:13 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Hamas to talk with Israel? What, their boomers will say "Hope you suffer unbearably" to their civilian victims?
Female soldiers have long fought off perceptions that their bodies just aren't equipped to handle the rigors of training and warfare. But a decade's worth of research suggests that women are hardly as fragile as critics once thought. A new study by military researchers found that many assumptions about female bodies are "astoundingly wrong." Women are just as good as men -- in some cases, perhaps even better -- at handling intense exercise and decompression sickness.
The findings, reported in the Journal of Women's Health, don't change the fact that women -- on the whole -- are smaller and less powerful than men. Still, they suggest "that human physiology is more consistent than would be suggested by the social embellishments and exaggerations" that come about when there isn't any actual research, said Col. Karl Friedl, commander of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine and co-author of the report (.pdf).
Friedl examined the results of more than 130 studies that followed a 1994 order from Congress to spend $40 million on biomedical research into women in the military. One of the most surprising findings "was the reversal of the age-old belief that high-volume exercise would be harmful to the reproductive system of women" and hurt their bones, Friedl said.
Continued on Page 49
#2
TW-My stick buddy in flight school was a woman, go ahead I've heard all the jokes. She is a solid officer. When the bomb went off in Zamboanga it was a woman that convinced the locals to talk to the FBI. There is a place for all on this GWOT, but in management? Come on, my frail ego can't take that! :)
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/15/2006 23:49
Comments ||
Top||
In an obvious attempt to declare war on the Bush Administration, so as to sell more copies, the NY Slimes takes another shot....
You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity.
Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners.
The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts.
Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/15/2006
15:56 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
imagine! A media organization that uses its' influence to sell a book, regardless of the damage it exerts on the WOT and national security...and they have the chutzpah to talk about GOOD FAITH! F*&kers, bastards, traitors and cowards fit the NY Times and their ilk more likely than a "news" organization
*spit*
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 20:39
Comments ||
Top||
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent a successful tracheotomy Sunday to help wean him off a respirator that has been helping him breathe since he suffered a massive stroke 11 days ago, hospital officials said, but he remained in a coma. The surgery, conducted under general anesthesia, took less than an hour as doctors cut a small hole in Sharon's neck to insert a tube directly into his windpipe.
The hospital said that before the throat surgery, Sharon had a brain scan, which showed his condition was "unchanged since the previous scan, carried out last Thursday."
Sharon also had been taken off the last of the sedatives that have kept him in a medically induced coma Saturday evening, but he was still unconscious, according to the statement.
Outside experts said the tracheotomy was necessary because the plastic tube that had connected his windpipe with the respirator would have started to cause damage.
Sharon's comatose state and the tracheotomy do not bode well for the prime minister's future, said Dr. Philip Stieg, chair of neurosurgery at the Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York. It is becoming more probable as time passes that Sharon will either remain in a vegetative state or have low abilities to think and reason, said Stieg, who is not involved in Sharon's care.
"It suggests that the brain damage is as serious as we thought it was based on earlier reports and now its all playing out," Stieg said. "He's not turning the corner, he's not waking up ... they're having to do more things to keep him alive."
Doctors said Saturday that Sharon had activity on both sides of his brain.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
13:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
Israeli troops reportedly shot dead a Palestinian mother and her armed son in a West Bank village after mistakenly believing they had found a fighters' hideout.
Residents of the village of Rajub say that in the small hours of Sunday morning soldiers fired at a house on the outskirts of the village, where 20-year-old Fawzi Dwaikat was standing guard with a rifle after arson attacks on the family's cars.
Dwaikat and his 50-year-old mother Nawal were killed by shots from the soldiers who apparently believed they had come across a hideout, neighbours said. and he was holding a kitty
The military said initial reports indicated that an army patrol had been shot at from a house in the village and returned fire, killing two people and wounding three. There was no immediate confirmation of the age or sex of the dead, but the army said arms and ammunition were found in the building. bad kitty
On Saturday, armed Palestinians, including off-duty policemen, temporarily halted traffic on two major roads in the Gaza Strip amid mounting chaos ahead of the 25 January Palestinian elections.
With the violence reinforcing Hamas' prospects in the legislative election, US officials warned that millions of dollars of aid could be in jeopardy if the Islamic group joins the Palestinian government.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Hamas participation in the government is not a US affair. We are founded on terrorism. Bugger off.
Lebanese riot police have fired smoke grenades and sprayed water to disperse dozens of students protesting against the visit of senior US diplomats to Beirut. The protest turned nasty on Saturday, when security forces tried to clear protesters who gathered outside the government headquarters in anticipation of a visit by David Welch, the US assistant secretary of state. Welch and Elliott Abrams, a US deputy national security adviser, began a trip to the region last week.
Side note: Cheney, Bush 41, Burns, and now Welch and Abrams. All in the Middle East capital cities at the same time. Buckle your seatbelts, 'Burgers.
Some of the protesters, waving Lebanese flags and carrying placards protesting against US influence in Lebanon and the Middle East, pelted police with stones. One placard read: "Welch is not welcome in Lebanon". Aljazeera reported that police used tear gas to disperse the anti-US demonstrators near government offices. The demonstrators mostly belonged to the Baath Party, the Syrian National Social Party, Hizb Allah and the Amal Movement.
#4
Dozens?!? Hell, you can get a better crowd than that at Berkeley with about 15 minutes notice. And that includes the ugly naked protestors and the giant puppets.
George Clooney is convinced he ruined John Kerry's chances in the race for US president in 2004 - by snubbing an invitation and hurting his feelings.
The Ocean's Twelve actor was one of several screen stars invited to ride on Kerry's election train, but it all went downhill for the Democrat when Clooney stayed away.
He recalls: "Kerry asked me to ride on his train - he had a train going cross-country after he was nominated and some actors went on board. I called him and explained that I couldn't do it. I'd hurt him. I'd actually caused him harm at the polls."
#1
And what happened then...?
Well...in Hollywood they say
That the Clooney's small ego
Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his ego didn't feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load-o-shite through the bright morning light
And he brought back the girls and boys! The votes for the election!
And he...HE HIMSELF...!
The Clooney, led the revolution!
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 11:44
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Yes, without the support of the Film Actors Guild (FAG) the Democratic nomination was doomed. Maybe this year the the Dems can partner up with FAG and ride it to a great win in November. I only hope that FAG stands firmly behind the Dems and penetrates the electorate in a way that ensures that satifaction of both parties.
#6
cripes....what a massive ego. BTW - very funny, "Jake" :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 13:24
Comments ||
Top||
#7
Hold on here! The article is not clear. It quotes Clooney using the conditional, i.e. "I would hurt him." implying that Clooney realizes how stupid it is for Dems to position themselves as the party of Hollywood and self-righteous celebrities. Clooney seems vaguely aware of his own limitations. He strikes me as marginally smarter than Affleck, et al.
On Beacon Hill last week, the big issue for Massachusetts lawmakers was whether tuition should be reduced for illegal aliens at the state's public colleges. On Capitol Hill, the senior senator from Massachusetts was busy implying that Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. is a racist and a liar. Is it such a stretch to imagine that an awful lot of Americans look at Massachusetts and think: How can people stand to live there? Or that a fair number of Massachusetts residents eventually decide that they can't stand to live here?
This is a state in which a tax cut can be decisively approved by the voters yet never go into effect. In which grocers can be prosecuted for pricing milk too low. In which archaic blue laws decree when shops may and may not open for business. In which a $2 billion Big Dig ends up costing $14 billion. In which Ted Kennedy keeps getting reelected.
Is it really any wonder so many people are fleeing Massachusetts? Maybe the real mystery is why so many of us stay.
#1
I live here, and I'm definitely making plans to leave. I just can't take the smug, patronizing politics any more - and that's the voters. The state govt. is beyond fixing.
#2
I grew up in california, but would never, and will never live there again. This is happening all over the country. You know the places, where leftwing elitists pontificate from their jeweled thrones and demand that you smile while they chisel away at your earned income and give it to illegals/welfare class/pointless social programs. All the while getting richer from their barely taxed passive income and at the same time bitching about the republicans cutting taxes for the rich.
Sure is getting complicated, isn't it?
#3
Heck haven't we come far. Back in the Middle Ages the ruling class looted the people to build great monuments called cathedrals while lining their pockets and increasing their power. Their same argument was to buy moral purity because those really working the fields didn't know how to run things and were convinced by their betters that they could buy God's grace by such displays of devotion. Now instead of a church they have the Holy Grace of the Victims a whole ideological structure no less damnedifying than the doctrines of the Medieval church on sin. See your more morally pure than those retches in the other state because you care. Of course you have far less means to create real wealth and employment because the state takes our earnings and property and is thus less efficient in creating new jobs, etc. However, youâre soul is saved. Now kiss my [Harvard] ring.
BERLIN - Former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam, a fierce critic of President Bashar al-Assad, told a German magazine he was forming a government in exile and believed Assad would be forced from power this year....He said he would be ready to work with both Islamist leaders, whom he called "part of the rich Islamic mosaic that defines the basic character of our country" and the Baath Party.
"I would not rule out any political group that sticks to the basic rules of democracy," he said. "One should not make the mistake with the Syrian Baath Party that the Americans made with the Iraqi Baath Party," he said. i.e., he is against abolishing the Baath Party; he simply want to lead it instead of Assad leading it
"The majority of Baathists in Syria have long ago turned against the regime. not sure if that's true but I do think that the Saudis and Egyptians have turned against Assad.
"They see the government's mistakes every day," he said.
#1
ehhh we may send a few bombers over to Syria when we move on Iran, I remember hearing about captured GPS units that still had the start point locked in great for a cruise missle cluster munition or two and if some accidentaly vered off and hit Assad well sh*t happens.
I dont know about this guy anyway the fact that he is supported by the French alone says alot not for the better either.
#2
I dont know - if he truly favors a represntative deomcracy like the Orange Revolution, and de-fanging Syria, then who cares if the French back him? Liberty is the objective - and a liberated Syria is one less piece of the region for the axis of evil in the region. I'll settle for a Qaddafi-like change, with a rapproachment to the US. One less thing for us to worry about, no more haven for Hezbollah and Hamas, Lebananon gets space to become a democracy again, and that gives us that much more to pressure to use on Iran.
#3
Oldspook I dont know no saying just that because france likes him he is automaticly bad but deserves a little more digging, And he is a Bathist of the same stripe as Assad he just got outwitted and seems to now be a oportunist I read somewere that he had a major hand in crushing the Syrian democracy movement during his time. Some quotes just from this piece that is woresome
"He said he would be ready to work with both Islamist leaders, whom he called "part of the rich Islamic mosaic that defines the basic character of our country" and the Baath Party. Islamist are the basic character of Syria // that sounds pretty damm freindly to Hamas, Hezbollah, AQ ect...
"I would not rule out any political group that sticks to the basic rules of democracy," he said. This is a little promising however depends on interpitation.
A ROW between pro-Syrian Hizbollah guerrillas and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has plunged Lebanon deeper into a political crisis that has paralysed the Government and divided the country along sectarian lines. In an unprecedented attack, Jumblatt accused Shiite Muslim Hizbollah of hiding behind its "weapons of treachery", capping a month-old campaign against the group that is under pressure to disarm in line with a UN resolution.
Hizbollah, close to Syria and Iran, responded with a biting attack against Mr Jumblatt, the most outspoken critic of Syria's domination of Lebanon after the 1975-1990 civil war.
"Which are the weapons of treachery, the weapons of the resistance or those of Walid Jumblatt? The arms that liberated and protected Lebanon or those that destroyed, expelled, burned, killed and committed massacres?" it said referring to his role as a warlord during the war. "If treachery was embodied as a man in these bad times, it would be Walid Jumblatt".
The standoff spilled over into a public slanging match after a flurry of diplomatic efforts failed last week to reach a compromise over a U.N. inquiry that has implicated Syria in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February.
#2
A perhaps obtuse question: has there ever been a period of time, however brief, when Lebanon's political sector has not been in pending, actual, or temporarily patched up crisis?
A secret document obtained by Iran Focus shows that recent political developments in Syria and Lebanon have aroused deep anxiety among the top commanders of Iranâs Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who see the events as âa direct threat to the national securityâ of the Islamic Republic and who want to speed up the development of nuclear weapons.
The document, provided to Iran Focus by a reliable source in Iran, is a political analysis of the situation by the IRGC leadership prepared earlier this month for circulation among the clerical regimeâs top officials. The paper, entitled âRecent occurrences in Syria and their effects on the regionâ, warns that the ârapidly changingâ political climate in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, would be âsignificantly detrimentalâ to Tehranâs interests.
The IRGC leadership identified the United States military presence in the Persian Gulf region as âthe root of evilâ and said âgreater measuresâ were needed to counter it.
âFrom a strategic point of view, any change in, or destabilisation of, Syria will reduce or eliminate the calculations and reach of the Islamic Republic of Iran to counter the threats posed by the Zionist regimeâ, the Revolutionary Guards commanders said, referring to Israel.
âThe plot that is being implemented in Lebanon with quickening steps aims to change the political makeup of the country and its officials and their positions, so that they force Hezbollah to accept the new imposed realitiesâ.
Elsewhere in the report, Iranâs nuclear program is highlighted as the ânext targetâ of the international community. The paper argues that the West will attempt to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear capabilities and that the Islamic Republic must push forward with its nuclear advancements in order to ensure its survival.
The paper concludes by saying, âAltogether, in all the regions mentioned from Syria to Iraq, and Lebanon to Palestine, the desire of Arab leaders to remain in power in return for cooperating with America brings with it active and potential threats which directly threaten Iranâs interests and national security, while at the same time progressively and quietly limiting the areas that are within our reach and weakening our regional tools and assetsâ.
âThese two points, when considered alongside other active threats, can be significantly detrimental to the Islamic Republicâs interests and security. Vigilance, wisdom, and well-planned and comprehensive measures are required to deal with these threatsâ, the top IRGC commanders noted.
#2
âFrom a strategic point of view, any change in, or destabilisation of, Syria will reduce or eliminate the calculations and reach of the Islamic Republic of Iran." [the period goes right there]
Heh, it's no secret - it's called the Bush Doctrine.
#4
If this info is true then it pretty much settles the question. Iran want nukes. We is the rest of the world going to do about it?
Iran has no business in Lebanon. Every effort should be made to get rid of it's agents in Lebanon. They have what amounts to a private army that this hostile to the will of the majority of the population. That has got to go.
A GREENPEACE activist was thrown overboard when a Japanese whale harpoon was launched across an inflatable boat in the Antarctic seas yesterday. Real shame it is, I tell you.
The incident has forced Greenpeace to rethink their human shield style protest against Japanese scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese says Greenpeace is taking the risks for the sake of public relations. The Japanese speak truth.
A harpoon from Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru No.2 was fired directly over the Zodiac inflatable boat, which was shadowing a minke whale in Antarctic seas. Greenpeace chief executive Steve Shallhorn said the harpoon had flown within a metre of the inflatable. "Greenpeace had been doing what it has been doing for three weeks â putting out inflatables between whales and harpoons," he said. Speechless, I am.
"The harpoon impacted on the whale but the towing rope got caught on our boat. And as the whale began to sink it put our boat in jeopardy. The rope got taut and threw one of our people into the ocean." Canadian activist Texas Joe Constantine, the second mate on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, struggled in the water for a short time before getting back into the boat.
Wait a minute! How does a "Canadian activist" get to be named "Texas Joe"? Maybe "Manitoba Joe", or even "Yellow Knife Joe," but unless he's from down Amarillo way or points south, "Texas Joe" should be out.
"He may have swallowed some seawater and whale blubber but he is all right," Mr Shallhorn said." Salt to taste.
#8
Well, (ducks for cover) I think it is stupid that the Japanese are still whaling. It's as popular as killing elephants for their tusks. Most people like and relate to elephants and whales and dolphins and don't like seeing them slaughtered.
There can't be that much money in whaling - except the money that groups like Greenpeace get for opposing it. The only accomplished here was publicity for Greenpeace.
#11
The Japanese rely on the sea to feed their people, they eat whales (And other things I don't even want to know about) as a necessary diet
This is stupid on the Greenpeace side, I for one, would sink their boats, try the survivprs for Piracy, and consficate their assets for damages, they have absolutely no business there.
Witness some of their past stupidities, the attempted stoping of the seal harvest, the spotted owl fiasco, the campaign to eliminate nuclear power (Just as it's most needed to reduce petroleum dependency)etc.
Note also the following excerpt from
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/save-our-seas-2
Quote
Whalers ram Greenpeace ship
This morning our ship the Arctic Sunrise was deliberately rammed and damaged by the Nisshin Maru, the factory ship of the Japanese whaling fleet. Straight after the ramming, the Nisshin Maru began to steam away from the "scene of the crime". However both the Arctic Sunrise and the Esperanza are in pursuit with every intention of continuing to peacefully protest the hunt.
Note especialy that while Greenpeace says it's ok for Greenpeace to ram and sink whaler ships, they're all bent out of shape when their own tactics are used against them.
And I don't call sinking ships a "peacefull protest"
Do you?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/15/2006 11:48
Comments ||
Top||
#12
NS: I wonder how much of the whale they use anbd how much is chum.
They eat the whole thing. The meat from the catch usually winds up on dinner plates in the form of sashimi, bacon, or marinated with soy sauce at some of Japan's higher end restaurants.
#15
You forget: the Japanese are whaling in an international whale sanctuary.
They've even trespassed on Australian Territorial waters to hunt whales - in breach of our laws and our sovreign territory.
Sink the bastards! They can go catch whales in their own territorial waters and if they're too povvo and stupid to manage their fisheries so there aren't any left, too bad. They can eat rice.
#17
anon1, you shouldn't believe what the media says. Australian territorial waters only extend 12 nautical miles from the coastline. Australia has a claim to an exclusive economic zone in the area based on the Heard and McDonald Islands, although international law doesn't recognize such claims because they are based on 'uninhabited' islands. And then there is the even more dubious in international law, Australian claim to part of Antartica.
Greenpeace has it comming. They have been breaking law on the high seas with impunity. Stuff like this is bound to happen. They should be glad to be alive and not in jail.
#20
I find it no more "Evil" to hunt and eat Whales than to hunt and eat Deer, Elk, Sheep, Goats, Rabbits, Quail, other critters like possum crabs, crayfish, lobsters, oysters, clams, squid, octopus, and the various fishes of lakes and oceans.
If the Whales were hunted simply for sport, that would be different, but as food, no problem with that at all.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/15/2006 15:43
Comments ||
Top||
#21
Given how leftist enviromentalists fight the evils of bathing in anything but patchouli oil, did the one that fall overboard file the enviromental impact statement of the oil slick his contact with the water was sure to have caused? I mean, who knows how many years he's not bathed and instead coated himself in the stuff.
#22
As there are "First Nations" that still hunt whales, why don't these activists go after them? Even if the tribes use the traditional Evinrude and explosive harpoon, it's gotta be easier to keep up with them and safer to interfere with them.
Probably not as photogenic or sympathetic, though.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/15/2006 19:29
Comments ||
Top||
#23
"it's gotta be easier to keep up with them and safer to interfere with them"
Something tells me the second part of that statement is not true, RC. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/15/2006 19:58
Comments ||
Top||
#24
Fine, but can we at least leave one whale alive so we can put its bones in a museum or something...
What Greenpeace needs are bigger and faster boats. Better equipped too.
You know, if they have simulated crab meat, maybe someone can come up with simulated whale meat? Worth millions...
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/15/2006 21:40
Comments ||
Top||
#25
Dress up the Ainu in seal skins and claim whale hunting is an aboriginal right. Watch (non-whale) heads explode in cognitive dissonance.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 22:19
Comments ||
Top||
A suicide car bomb hit a Canadian military convoy in a southern Afghan city Sunday, killing two civilians and wounding 13 people, officials said.
The blast occurred as the convoy was driving near the Canadian base in Kandahar city, a former Taliban stronghold, said Interior Ministry spokesman Dad Mohammed Rasa. He said at least two civilians were killed and 10 were wounded. He said an unspecified number of Canadian troops were also hurt.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said three soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack on a U.S.-led coalition convoy, but declined to identify their nationalities. Calls to a spokesman for the Canadian force in Kandahar went unanswered. Canada has about 650 troops in Afghanistan, nearly all in Kandahar.
Shopkeeper Rahim Gul said he saw a sedan vehicle blow up as it was passing the convoy. "The explosion was so big. It destroyed one jeep and blew it totally to the other side of the road," he said, adding that he saw at least three wounded soldiers.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006
08:40 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
A dinner invitation to al Qaeda's second-in-command triggered a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan's tribal region but Ayman al-Zawahri failed to show up, Pakistani intelligence officials said on Sunday.
Pakistan condemned Friday's strike, which killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and summoned U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker to protest. Thousands of local tribesmen also rallied near the scene, chanting anti-American slogans.
The Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that foreigners had been near the village of Damadola in the Bajaur region bordering
Afghanistan and were the probable target.
Pakistani intelligence officials said they were checking reports up to seven foreign militants had been killed and their bodies removed by local supporters. But they said there were no indications Osama bin Laden's deputy, Zawahri, was there. "He was invited for the dinner, but we have no evidence he was present," a senior intelligence official told Reuters.
Al Arabiya television quoted a source it said had contact with al Qaeda saying Zawahri was alive.
The U.S. government has not commented, but U.S. sources familiar with the operation said it was too early to determine his fate and the remains of the dead would have to be examined to determine whether Zawahri was among them.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitive nature, said the airstrike was carried out on the basis of "very good" intelligence indicating Zawahri was at the targeted location.
Another Pakistani intelligence official said two local Islamist clerics, known for harbouring al Qaeda militants, had attended the dinner but left hours before the airstrike at 3.00 a.m. (2200 GMT). Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006
08:36 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I'm still waiting for the video or tape of Zarwahiri's next announcment.
#4
The headline in my paper (page 3) is US Strikes prompt anti-war protests. I managed to read the opening paragraph, it only mentioned we had violated Pakistani air space.
#7
I think he's dead and the ISI is pissed we struck him without their permission.
I suspect both UBL and Zawahiri are (were) being protected by the ISI to be used as bargaining chips with the US.
"Maybe if we got a few more F-16s we could find him"
"and maybe some F-15s"
"and maybe some Raptors"
F*ck 'em
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
01/15/2006 11:52
Comments ||
Top||
#9
We knew about a specific dinner engagement? Thank you for getting out that information -- you've been a great help to our side (you know who you are). ;-)
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/15/2006 15:49
Comments ||
Top||
#17
I would be curious to what our military is saying not much word from them yet. Wether preadators (I think doubtfull three block buildings leveled by a few hellfire only has a 200lb warhead / 2missles per plane) pulled the trigger or strike craft I am sure thier was a predator on scene for targeting and damage assesment, those guys know. Of course the military wont release this and better not but even so they may know AQ was thier but face recognition in infrared not going to happen so with the 5bodies hauled off again no recognition how are you to know who you killed you know 5 AQ but not which ones just rumors. so back to Wait and see. 20+yrs from now when alot of stuff gets declassified the WOT will and our actions will make for some amazing TV.
#19
I s'pose then that our Special Forces guys are expert at cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. I do hope someone has hot cocoa waiting for them when they get back. ;-)
#1
Heh, Sea. I detect something of Joe M -- minus the unique shorthand. You could dazzle Bill with Betty Crockercrats and HillarySpetznaz. He'd be boggled... until he got the hang of it. A Joe M Dixionary... kinda like the APL of geopolitics. ;-)
#2
That's why I'm supporting Joe M's bid to become the next Secretary General of the United Nations. The diplomatic process would be *vastly* improved.
Posted on the off-chance that Europe still matters.
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - MEPs will next week debate a report that is aimed at salvaging the EU constitution, and forming a clear decision byt the end of 2007 on how its core parts should be ratified despite last year's "no" votes in France and the Netherlands.
The two co-rapporteurs of the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, the UK liberal Andrew Duff and the Austrian Green Johannes Voggenhuber, on Friday (13 January) joined the choir of EU leaders expressing their opinion over the fate of the text since the beginning of this year. The MEPs described the interventions so far as "simplistic" and presented instead a report setting out a specific roadmap for the resuscitation of the constitution in a revised form.
The Duff-Voggenhuber report, on which the parliament will vote on Thursday, proposes to intensify the so-called period of reflection on the constitution, agreed by EU leaders after French and Dutch voters rejected the text in referendums last year. According to the plan, the European Parliament will this year and next year together with national parliaments promote a series of parliamentary forums, which the MEPs hope will be echoed by a series of national debates.
Yeah, more talking, that will get the process back on track.
The reflection period should then be "brought to an end in the second half of 2007 with a clear decision how to proceed with the constitution".
Is dumping it and starting over an option?
The MEPs urge the plenary session of parliament to adopt their call for a "revision process" of the present constitutional text, which "nevertheless respects the constitutional core". "The eventual constitution will have to be modified", they said in a statement.
Mr Duff suggested to EUobserver that for example, as a means of wooing Dutch voters, provisions on the stability pact (the rules underpinning the euro) could be enforced, and accession criteria for new member states clarified in the constitutional text. The call for modification of the current constitutional text is set to be one controversial aspect of the parliamentary debate on the Duff-Voggenhuber report next week, with many MEPs still demanding the salvation of the entire current text, perhaps clarified with interpretative annexes.
Because after all, the EU Constitution as it stands isn't long enough and it's still too easy to read.
German leader Angela Merkel has proposed attaching a declaration on the "social dimension of Europe" in a bid to save the charter in its entirety. French president Jacques Chirac, by contrast, has urged closer co-operation in individual policy areas covered by the constitution.
To be done the French way, of course.
The Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot has said the constitution is "dead", after the Austrian leader Wolfgang Schussel declared that it is "not dead", but "in the middle of a ratification process."
After negotiations on improvements in 2008, a revised text should be put to European citizens in an EU-wide consultative referendum on the same day as the European elections in 2009.
At which time a sufficient number of people will vote 'non' as to make the whole process a farce.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
01:47 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
No problem:
Step 1. Bring in Carter
Step 2. Rig vote
Step 3. Rinse and repeat
Ted Koppel acknowledged Friday that he met with a rep from the soon-to-launch English-language al-Jazeera television network before deciding to work for Discovery Channel after he left ABC's "Nightline."
"I make it a habit always to listen to people first before I say no," Koppel told The Reporters Who Cover Television at Winter TV Press Tour 2006. "None of your business," Koppel snapped when a reporter asked what al-Jazeera had put on the table.
The questions kept coming; Koppel got testier. "Come on!" he said, "I routinely meet with some of the nastiest people in the world. . . . I meet with terrorists, I meet with murderers behind bars." But, of course, not to talk about going to work for them, one reporter noted with, we presume, some degree of accuracy.
Koppel said that he was "fascinated" by what the al-Jazeera rep had to say but that he and Bettag did not "entertain the idea for 38 seconds. I know it's fashionable just to look at al-Jazeera as a propaganda outlet for al Qaeda," Koppel said Friday, but "we have been covering the Middle East for many, many years . . . [and] al-Jazeera is a huge step up from where the Arab world's journalism has been over the past 40 years." Koppel said that it "may be possible" that al-Jazeera is "more inclined toward anti-American stories perhaps than American networks are" but that he suspects that will not be true of the new network "if they want to make any progress with their English-language outlet here in the United States."
If Al J plays their cards right they can get the Move-On.org audience, the Kos kids and many others to tune in. The interesting thing is who they will get to advertise on their station.
Once an oppressed minority under Saddam Hussein, the Kurds of Iraq's north are now the kingmakers, hosting a string of visiting politicians from Sunni Arab and Shiite Muslim factions for consultations on shaping a future government.
The Dec. 15 national elections gave a lead role to the largely secular and independence-minded Iraqi Kurds because a two-thirds majority is needed to control parliament and no group is expected to come close to that.
Accounting for about 15 percent of the country's people, the pragmatic Kurds say they will work with anyone willing to offer them something in return. Independence is their ultimate prize - even if the politicians don't say it publicly.
Final election results may be released in the coming week, and the Kurds are set to win about 55 seats in the 275-member parliament and will likely mediate between the majority Shiites and minority Sunnis in cobbling together a coalition government.
The current governing religious Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, is expected to have as many as 130 seats, but that is far below the 184 needed to rule on its own. Sunni groups are heading for around 50 seats, while former Prime Minister Ayyad Allawi's secular bloc could get 25.
Right now, religious Sunnis and religious Shiites are not happy with each other.
The Sunnis boycotted the first post-Saddam election last Jan. 30 and they complained of electoral fraud and voter intimidation in last month's vote.
Shiites say the Sunnis complain too much about the election and should be concentrating on the politics of forming a government.
"The (Sunni coalition) Accordance Front has been making threats of violence to change the results," Hussain al-Shahristani, a senior official in the United Iraqi Alliance and deputy speaker in the outgoing parliament, told The Associated Press. "They must understand that they cannot use violence to force their way into government."
Ending the deadlock is where the Kurds come in.
"Kurds in Iraq are an important part of the Iraqi equation," said Kamran al-Karadaghi, chief of staff to Jalal Talabani, the first Kurd to be Iraq's president and leader of one of the two main Kurdish political parties.
"After Saddam's fall, Iraqi Kurds abandoned their semi-independence to become part of a new Iraq ... a very effective part of it," al-Karadaghi said.
Following the election for an interim legislature a year ago, Talabani helped broker often bitter negotiations between the Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni communities, leading to the government of current Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is a Shiite.
"Of course the Kurds are an important factor now ... They will occupy a big chunk of the assembly," said Nassir al-Ani of the Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab coalition.
He and two colleagues from his group met at year's end with Kurdistan regional President Massoud Barzani in Irbil to talk about the shape of a future government.
Al-Ani said his delegation asked Barzani to "put pressure on other parties" to meet Sunni demands for greater minority rights.
The Sunnis are demanding that voting be held again in some provinces, including Baghdad - the country's largest with 59 seats in parliament.
Sunnis also are seeking Kurdish help in pressuring Shiites to accept amendments to the constitution adopted by national referendum in October, including a provision that keeps the central government weak in favor of strong provincial governments.
However, the leader of the fundamentalist Shiite religious bloc, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, insisted Tuesday that Shiites would not allow any substantive constitutional changes.
Al-Jaafari, the prime minister, also visited Barzani for talks as did al-Hakim, who also met with Talabani.
Al-Hakim's talks in the north focused on who should get the top 12 government jobs, including Cabinet posts. The meetings were also widely seen as part of an effort to force Sunni Arab groups to come to the bargaining table.
The Shiite bloc needs the Kurds to form a government.
The Kurds may want Shiites to agree to more powers for the president as a counterbalance to Shiite strength. The constitution gives nearly all executive powers to the prime minister, and Talabani has indicated he is not interested in a second term if the presidency is not given more authority.
"All the main political groups, especially the alliance, is talking about Talabani as a president for the next four years. If they really want him to be president, they should accept" his condition, al-Karadaghi said.
Kurdish leaders say privately that they do not favor al-Jaafari remaining as prime minister. Talabani and al-Jaafari did not get along in the eight months of the interim government. Talabani, in particular, felt al-Jaafari sought to monopolize power and threatened him with a "no confidence" vote in the interim legislature.
Talabani said recently that there was an agreement in principle on a forming national unity government with representatives of all the factions, but that striking a deal would be harder than after last year's election. "The devil is in the details," Talabani told reporters.
Kurdish politicians say they enjoy good relations with both Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs, even though for decades the Kurds - who are mostly Sunnis - suffered under the brutal regime of Saddam, also a Sunni.
But Kurdish leaders still have grievances. The Iraqi constitution allows their region autonomy close to independence, but not - for the time being - the oil city of Kirkuk. However, the Kurds can drill for oil and own any newly discovered reserves.
Distrust of both Sunnis and Shiites persists among the Kurdish population, a majority of whom want independence, not federalism. More than 2 million people favored independence in an unofficial referendum last January.
Iraq's neighbors, notably Turkey, fear such a move would inspire their own Kurdish populations to renew separatist struggles.
For 13 years after the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Kurds lived in a semiautonomous region under the protection of Western warplanes, and Kurdish language and customs flourished.
Many Sunni Arabs, who comprise an estimated 20 percent of Iraq's population and have long opposed Kurds' aspirations, are beginning to accept the notion of a Kurdish federation in the north - as long as the rest of the country doesn't follow their example.
"We don't want to carve up the country into different parts," said al-Ani, the Accordance Front official. "But the Kurdish federation is a fact on the ground. Kurds have their own ethnicity, customs and traditions."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
01:17 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I rather like this development. Nice work, Kurds, and thanks for being willing to be the grownups here.
As Iran rushes towards confrontation with the world over its nuclear programme, the question uppermost in the mind of western leaders is "What is moving its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to such recklessness?"
Political analysts point to the fact that Iran feels strong because of high oil prices, while America has been weakened by the insurgency in Iraq.
But listen carefully to the utterances of Mr Ahmadinejad - recently described by President George W Bush as an "odd man" - and there is another dimension, a religious messianism that, some suspect, is giving the Iranian leader a dangerous sense of divine mission.
In November, the country was startled by a video showing Mr Ahmadinejad telling a cleric that he had felt the hand of God entrancing world leaders as he delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly last September.
When an aircraft crashed in Teheran last month, killing 108 people, Mr Ahmadinejad promised an investigation. But he also thanked the dead, saying: "What is important is that they have shown the way to martyrdom which we must follow."
The most remarkable aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's piety is his devotion to the Hidden Imam, the Messiah-like figure of Shia Islam, and the president's belief that his government must prepare the country for his return.
One of the first acts of Mr Ahmadinejad's government was to donate about £10 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the pious come to drop messages to the Hidden Imam into a holy well.
All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour - denied by the government but widely believed - is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a "contract" pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.
Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.
He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.
This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.
Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.
The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?
The 49-year-old Mr Ahmadinejad, a former top engineering student, member of the Revolutionary Guards and mayor of Teheran, overturned Iranian politics after unexpectedly winning last June's presidential elections.
The main rift is no longer between "reformists" and "hardliners", but between the clerical establishment and Mr Ahmadinejad's brand of revolutionary populism and superstition.
Its most remarkable manifestation came with Mr Ahmadinejad's international debut, his speech to the United Nations.
World leaders had expected a conciliatory proposal to defuse the nuclear crisis after Teheran had restarted another part of its nuclear programme in August.
Instead, they heard the president speak in apocalyptic terms of Iran struggling against an evil West that sought to promote "state terrorism", impose "the logic of the dark ages" and divide the world into "light and dark countries".
The speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to "hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace".
In a video distributed by an Iranian web site in November, Mr Ahmadinejad described how one of his Iranian colleagues had claimed to have seen a glow of light around the president as he began his speech to the UN.
"I felt it myself too," Mr Ahmadinejad recounts. "I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blinkâŠIt's not an exaggeration, because I was looking.
"They were astonished, as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."
Western officials said the real reason for any open-eyed stares from delegates was that "they couldn't believe what they were hearing from Ahmadinejad".
Their sneaking suspicion is that Iran's president actually relishes a clash with the West in the conviction that it would rekindle the spirit of the Islamic revolution and - who knows - speed up the arrival of the Hidden Imam.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
01:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
Iranâs hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended on Saturday his previous comments calling for the destruction of Israel and rejected criticism from Unites States President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the issue.
In several demagogic speeches since his taking office last year, Ahmadinejad had claimed that the Holocaust was a âmythâ and declared that the Jewish state had to be âwiped off the mapâ. Iran was twice censured at the United Nations Security Council for the presidentâs comments.
In his first press conference since taking office, which was broadcasted live on state television, Ahmadinejad defended his statements and said that the U.S. was seeking to âwipe Palestine off the mapâ. âBut you will not be able toâ, Ahmadinejad insisted. âIf we look at a map from seventy years ago, we will see that Israel never existedâ.
Asked about the U.S. and German leadersâ positions, the Revolutionary Guards commander-turned-President said, âEveryone is free to make comments, but I ask this: are these two individuals supporters of Israel or not? If they are then they are also liable for their crimesâ.
He said that those who support Israel must be prosecuted for war crimes, so âthese people better watch what they sayâ.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
01:03 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
Radical Shiâite cleric Moqtada Sadr emphasised his hostility towards the US-led forces in Iraq and said he was ready to help make them leave peacefully, in a rare interview broadcast on Friday.
Sadr called on the Iraqi government to âget rid of the occupationâ when he spoke to the Al-Arabiya television channel in Saudi Arabia, where the young cleric had been taking part in the annual hajj pilgrimage for the first time.
The firebrand leader said he was willing to help rid the country of foreign forces by taking part in âprotests, strikes and peaceful marches.â He also accused the US military of creating the presumed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who is blamed by US and Iraqi officials for some of the worst attacks in the country. âAs long as the occupation remains in Iraq, Zarqawi will continue to harm the security and stabilityâ of the country, Sadr said.
As for political wrangling taking place following the December 15 general election, Sadr insisted he was above politics. At the same time, he indicated he would help bring together the different Iraqi political groups to create the next government, but warned this would be impossible to do under the occupation.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
01:02 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
assassinate this one. he has caused problems. he is young, he will cause problems for another half a century if his spittle-flying rabid islamist mouth isn't silenced by a clod of earth
I very much doubt that these guys are al-Qaeda, but my guess would be that they're likely a combination of Baluchs and Iranian Sunnis who want to send a message to Ahmadinejad that they aren't going down without a fight. They aren't anti-American for one, and from what their mouthpiece sez they may even be open to working with us against the mullahs.
Deep in the lawless triangle connecting Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, eight terrified Iranian soldiers are being held hostage by a Sunni group that is vowing to "slaughter" them if Teheran does not bow to its demands.
"We will chop their heads once our deadline is over," Abdul Hameed Reeki, chief spokesman of the Jundallah or Brigade of God group, told the Sunday Telegraph, slowly drawing an index finger across his neck to demonstrate the seriousness of his intent.
The deadline for the men is tomorrow.
The emergence of a fanatical Sunni group operating inside Iran's south-eastern border poses a startling new threat to the country's Shia clerical regime.
It already faces a crisis with the West over its nuclear ambitions, the risk of pre-emptive Israeli strikes and the undermining by a Sunni-dominated insurgency of the pro-Iranian regime which has begun to emerge in neighbouring Iraq.
Now, Iran's own Sunnis, who number six million of the country's 68 million population and are the majority in some south-eastern provinces, are becoming restless - and groups like Jundallah are emerging from the shadows.
The eight members of the Iranian border security police were kidnapped by the group near the Gadarnahouk post in the Sarawan region and south-eastern city of Zahedan last month. Now, they find themselves being offered as bargaining chips in exchange for the release of 16 of their captors' colleagues, jailed by the Iranian government.
In his first media interview, Hameed, 27, said: "If they release our men, we will release soldiers but if they don't, we will chop their heads off and will send them as a gift to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [the Iranian president]."
The desolate plains of Ribat, which straddle the border with Pakistan and are infested with bandits, drug traffickers and rebel tribesmen are the perfect place for an insurrection.
Armed with assorted rifles, hand grenades and a few anti-aircraft guns, the group has been operating from Iran's lawless borderlands for the past four years.
They claim to have killed 400 Iranian soldiers in hit-and-run operations. Teheran's Shia government has accused the US of supporting the Sunni group and is trying to persuade President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to intercede on behalf of the eight hostages.
But the Jundallah deny any link with either the US or the Pakistani government. Although they hold out little hope of their 16 members being freed, they hardly appear to care. "If they hang all the 16 of our colleagues, we do not mind because we know they would be martyrs and will go straight to heaven," said Hameed.
Killing the hostages might be necessary, he suggested, to deter Iranian soldiers from killing innocent Sunnis, who he claimed were being persecuted by Mr Ahmedinejad's hard-line regime. "We will cut them, cut them and cut them until they ask for the mercy and Teheran is compelled to give us our political rights," he declared.
He said that Iran, which announced this week that it was breaking seals on three nuclear plants in order to resume sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work, was just a "screwdriver turn away from manufacturing a bomb". He added: "Once they do it, they will become a mad elephant and will be a real threat to the world peace."
Although Jundallah had just 1,000 trained fighters, he said, it had the dedication needed to defeat the Iranian army - particularly if some help were to prove forthcoming from the West.
"Our determination is mightier than the mountains and if we are provided with a little back-up from outside, we have the guts to take over, if not Teheran, but at least the Sunni majority province of Iranian Baluchistan within a week's time," he said.
Another option, he added, was to assassinate Iranian leaders, perhaps even Mr Ahmadinejad. The group has already been accused by the Iranian government of an attack on presidential security forces last month.
It supplied two compact discs to the Sunday Telegraph, showing chilling footage of their captives being paraded and threatened.
The group says it is spurred by the way that Iran's 90 per cent Shia majority and its government, dominated by Shia clerics, persecutes its Sunni population and denies them their rights.
"No Sunni has a right to become a president, prime minister or even a minister in the Iranian government," said Hameed.
"Between 12,000 and 15,000 Sunnis in the Iranian Baluchistan province have been hanged and scores jailed since the Shia revolution of 1979," he claimed, adding that human rights organisations were prevented from reaching areas to verify the figures.
"Only the centre of Iran is dominated by the Shia, while Sunnis are in the majority along three sides of the border and all of them are victims of the reign of terror."
All the senior figures of Jundallah had been motivated to found and join the group by injustices they had experienced personally, said Hameed. Its leader, Abdul Malik Baluchi, 25, launched the group after his brother and uncle were killed in separate encounters with the Iranian police.
Nasir Kurd, 28, said he joined after his brother was convicted and hanged on "trumped up" charges and his wife was raped and killed in front of him by Iranian soldiers. The Iranian government was offering a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest, Hameed said.
Asked whether the satellite telephone he was holding might not lead to his being located, he allowed himself a smile. "We are not fighting against America," he said.
Support for Jundallah was growing, he said. "There are hundreds of others who are desperate to sign in, but we ask them to wait because we do not have enough weapons or camps."
Hameed said Jundallah would not be satisfied until full political rights had been secured for Iran's Sunnis and a more democratic government installed. "This is just the beginning We will fight till the day of persecution is over."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ya gotta luv islam--its the state of nature plus
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/15/2006 3:12
Comments ||
Top||
#2
The West can take the high road, and say anyone who kills captured prisioners is a criminal, and should be hunted down as such.
#3
Re: High road--
I concurr, SOT. While it would be fun to give the MM's a dose of their own meds, on the whole we would be better served by making it clear we do not support ANYONE who behaves like a barbarian.
OTOH, we also would not mind if the MM's wound up swinging from a lamp post. After a fair trial, of course.
Posted by: N guard ||
01/15/2006 16:58
Comments ||
Top||
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said here on Saturday that civilized Iran does not need nuclear weapons.
âWe are a civilized and ancient nation, and a nation that has culture and logic does not need nuclear weapons,â Ahmadinejad told reporters at a news conference.
Nuclear weapons are sought by people who intend to solve everything through force and bullying, he underlined.
âUnfortunately, today people face rulers who think they have more rights than other nations because their arsenals are stocked with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.â
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Charter and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), all member states have the right to gain access to nuclear technology meant for peaceful purposes and no pretexts can be used to infringe on these rights, even inspections, he pointed out.
âEach year, tens of new nuclear power plants are constructed, but a few Western countries which have nuclear weapons are questioning Iran, even though, with unprecedented inspections and supervision, there is not the slightest evidence against us.
âThey think they have the power and want to deprive Iran of its rights. They clearly announced that they are against research. They want to monopolize nuclear energy and impose their policies on other nations.
âThese countries supplied Iranâs previous regime with weapons and power plants and helped (its attempts) to master the nuclear fuel cycle, but after the victory of the Islamic Revolution they changed course and stood against us, they imposed sanctions on us and equipped Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons in the (1980-1988) war against Iran.â
Ahmadinejad defended Tehranâs move to restart nuclear research, saying that research is not limited and that the move is neither a violation of the NPT nor its additional protocol.
âResearch is necessary for a dynamic nation. How can you halt a countryâs scientific progress?
âDespite the technological progress in the world, a few Western countries are mentally living in medieval times and say you don't have the right to scientific progress,â AFP quoted him as saying.
âI tell those few Western countries that today it is time for you to create confidence. The time has passed for the language of bullying, domination, and relying on your nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
âIt has become obvious for us that they donât want Iran to achieve scientific progress. They openly acknowledge that they are against research. Is this not a medieval approach? They want to govern the 21st century with medieval ideas.
âYou must have a better understanding of the Iranian nation and government; otherwise, you will regret your future actions. You need us more than we need you.â
Iran seeks dialogue and respects international law, the president said, adding that so far there have been 1400 man-hours of inspections of Iranâs nuclear sites and that now it is the Westâs turn to build confidence.
Ahmadinejad noted that Iran will not be deflected from its right to develop nuclear technology by referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
âIf they want to destroy the Iranian nation's rights by that course, they will not succeed.
"Even if the Security Council becomes involved, it will not help resolve the issue. We are not interested in going down this path, but if some people insist on depriving the Iranian people of their rights, they should know that such a thing will not happen."
The president criticized European countries for imposing a âstickâ policy on Iran and threatening to send the country to the UN if it did not consent to their proposals.
He stated that the IAEA should not be forced to enter political dealings, adding that the UN Security Council belongs to all nations and should not be used as a tool by a few countries.
"Why are you harming the reputation of international bodies? Why are you employing the Security Council? Is it your device to use? Doesn't that endanger world security? Doesn't unilateralism endanger security?
âWe are not interested in creating tension or in useless talks. Naturally, our nation will not accept anything imposed on it. It is our definitive right to have nuclear technology.
âWe are the only nation that invited (the West) to set up a partnership with Iran and to supervise the countryâs nuclear activities if they lack confidence. We are also ready to be their partner and to supervise their activities.
âYou fill your arsenals (with nuclear weapons) but prevent us from conducting research.â
Elsewhere in his remarks, Ahmadinejad said Iran seeks to develop peaceful ties with the entire world.
He said that the Islamic Republic pursues an active foreign policy based on justice.
âWe neither oppress anyone nor will submit to oppression ourselves. We seek justice and peace for all nations.
âWe believe that lasting peace can only be achieved based on justice and spirituality. An imposed peace under the shadow of swords and nuclear, biological, and chemical arsenals will not be permanent.â
Ahmadinejad attacked arrogant rulers for causing suffering, saying, âLeaders who believe they can create peace for themselves by creating war for others are mistaken,â the BBC reported.
He said Iran seeks to further develop ties with regional states, adding, âWe defend the territorial integrity, security, and independence of all countries, including neighboring states.
âWe believe neighboring states can solve their problems by themselves and that world powers should withdraw and allow them to make their own decisions.â
The president also announced that Iran is prepared to hold scholarly dialogue with those who claim to uphold human rights.
âYou canât define a specific framework for human rights and impose it on the world.
âWe are ready to dispatch committees to these nations and accept committees from them to assess the human rights situation on both sides and to inform the public about the contents of the committeesâ reports.
âThese committees will be sent to their secret prisons, they will observe the election process, the discrimination against religious minorities, the economic measures that are taken against the nation, and the decisions which are made to support terrorists.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:53 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
âWe are a civilized and ancient nation, and a nation that has culture and logic does not need nuclear weapons,â Ahmadinejad told reporters at a news conference.
Pronunciation: 'si-v&-"lIz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -lized; -liz·ing
transitive senses
1 : to cause to develop out of a primitive state; especially : to bring to a technically advanced and rationally ordered stage of cultural development
Oh yeah, that's a REAL good description of Iran since 1979.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/15/2006 15:30
Comments ||
Top||
Iran's hardline Interior Ministry has decided to control and crackdown the NGOs by preparing a list of groups that it claims are planning to overthrow the Islamic regime. Conservative Qods daily has exposed a plan by the ministry to deal with Iranian NGOs. Based on Qodâs report, the Interior Ministry has accused some NGOs of misusing money, supporting members of the former government of Khatami and secretly communicating with foreign agents.
During the last days of President Mohammad Khatami's reform government, Ashraf Boroujerdi, social affairs deputy at the Interior Ministry had stressed the existence of plans to fight NGOs and their so-called activities against Iran's national security.
It seems that through the news regarding the interior ministry's list of NGOs, the fundamentalist and hardline government of Ahmadinejad is exposing its strategies aimed at slaughtering the NGOs.
With 20 million votes, Khatami became the first president after the revolution who regularly and systematically emphasized on the establishment of a civil society in Iran. Eight years ago the media and political analysts took note of the call for the establishment and institutionalization of a civil society in Iran. In order to institutionalize the reform movement in Iran, Khatami's aides advised him to pay more attention to non-political and civil institutions and paved the way for the formation of NGOs that blossomed in Iran's short-live reform period. A Ministry of Interior official asserts that more than 10,000 active NGOs were established during Khatami's eight-year presidential term. During the last months of Khatami's government, the interference of semi-military and security shadow groups, prevented the activities of many NGOs while also intimidating activists through interrogations and even arrests.
But things have come a long way and have changed drastically since the victory of the current hardline administration. Instead of strengthening the status of the NGO, some government officials today call for strengthening the religious and Islamic organizations. In the same light, the new government has shown a familiar intolerance towards the media and non-government political and student organizations, threatening them with closures and suspension of activity.
A number of media editors too have expressed their concerns over the crackdown of NGOs and have called the pressures a plot to limit the free flow of information between Iranian institutions that operate in the global intellectual arena.
This confrontational attitude and policies have raised the concerns of social activists as well. They believe these intuitions will form the foundations for social and civil justice, and eventually pave the way for people's participation to protect their rights and interests.
Ahmadinejad's hard-line government does not believe in NGOs and prefers to provide the masses with ideology and rather than with modern organized organizations. The plot to crackdown such activities revealed itself when the government announced its plan to formally review the legal files of the NGOs.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:51 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Damm I feel sorry for everyone in Iran that on election day voted against Ahmandinejad. The clensin be a comin. Their screwed
North Korean three-star General Ri Chan Bok tells correspondent Dan Rather that if the U.S. invades his country, he will use nuclear weapons to defend it.
If you want us to believe you, you might try talking to someone other than Dan Rather.
Rather spoke to the general during a recent visit to the reclusive Communist dictatorship for a 60 Minutes report airing this Sunday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. âTell the American people that you met the general. If the United States invades our country and starts a war, the Peopleâs Army will fight to the death and defend ourselves, taking appropriate revenge,â says Gen. Bok.
Does the general think that the United States might attack North Korea? âWe firmly believe that the United States will carry out its policies on our country, even if they have to use military means,â Gen. Bok tells Rather. âWhat we can say to you definitely right now is that we currently have nuclear weapons,â he threatens.
Bok wouldnât show 60 Minutes cameras any of his missiles, but did show Rather his troops at the border with South Korea. There are more than 30,000 American forces on the other side. The general said that the Americans and their South Korean allies have stepped up military and propaganda exercises recently. He said itâs because of what he calls the âneo-conservativesâ in the Bush administration.
â[Neo-conservatives] are people who want to dominate the world, just like the Nazis of Germany. After striking Iraq they want North Korea,â says Bok.
'cause we need more starving people dressed in rags, ya know.
The U.S. State Department refused to discuss North Korea with 60 Minutes.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:51 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
I'm currently stationed 12 miles from the DMZ, and am not in the least bit worried about things. Mister Kim Jung Chill Ill and his homies can talk all the smack they want, but the situation will never make it that far. Im's A thinkin' that his own countrymen will take care of things internally after they finally run out of tree bark and grass Kimchee. As per them'uns attacking the South, SKor has had a 50few years to build up natural and man-made defences (Whole cities in a few cases) and formulate a rock-solid defence plan. A Rack of Stuttgarter Hofbraus says they don't make it to Seoul before they get a giant foxhole stomped in their asses.
Reporting from the front and standing by for further orders,
#4
Hey BodyGuard, are you American or Australian ? I am from Aussie and wondering how many of our guys are posted near the DMZ... I have been following all the goings on in NK for years now & am planning a trip there end of this year.
#5
â[Neo-conservatives] are people who want to dominate the world, just like the Nazis of Germany. After striking Iraq they want North Korea,â says Bok.
#6
"North Korean three-star General Ri Chan Bok tells correspondent Dan Rather that if the U.S. invades his country, he will use nuclear weapons to defend it."
Why is this news? Is there any country that would'nt say they would fight back, in whatever way they can?
#7
BillH "I see the general reads our newspapers."
No the Norks are not allowed any outside info or news (punishable by open public execution) that little jewel their came from his brief conversation with comrade Rather in which Rather explained to gerneral Bok the state of amerika under Bushitler.
#8
So I wonder how Rather will argue that Korea was Bush's fault? Gen Bok was the best ol Danny could get for an interview? Guess they are seeing him for what he is also.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/15/2006 9:27
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Bodyguard = RB guard
Reporting from the front and standing by for further orders,
Thanks for the report, informative and funny at the same time...a two-fer!
#11
49 Pan - Kerry and the Democrats already did that - they tried their best to pin the blame on Bush for North Korea having nukes.
Odd they never mentioned HalfBrights 'no, no need to verify - we are all dishonorable here' worthless agreement with them. Nor did they cite Comrade Clinton's 8 years of ignoring the problem.
#16
Maybe there's a startup opportunity he just can't pass up in Guandong province where he was touring a few days ago. Hot market there I hear. And Dear Leader would definitely bring a unique perspective to the capital markets there.
#17
If General Ri Chan Bok granted an interview I can tell you it had to be authorized by Dear Leader and it was almost certainly scripted. FYI Pan the higher echelon folks get to read outside news and some even get Sat TV. It's only the workers that need to be kept in the dark lest they start to get any ideas.
Algerian police nabbed 13 members of a terror group which was uncovered in a recent raid in western province of Tilimsen, Algerian news agency reported Friday. The police seized a batch of ammunition as well as some trafficand communication equipment such as vehicles, mobile phones and computers.
The terror group had grabbed money money through blackmailing, smuggling and counterfeiting to fund terrorism activities, said the report.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:50 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
An "imam" of a mosque here was arrested today by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Mumbai Police for his alleged links with three suspected militants of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, arrested last week in the city.
Maulana Ghulam Yahya Allah Baksh, hailing from North 24 Pargana district in West Bengal, was picked up from the Haj House in south Mumbai by ATS after the three suspected militants spilled the beans during interrogation.
The "imam", who leads prayers in a mosque, was arrested under several sections of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 2004, Jaijit Singh, Additional Commissioner of Police Jaijit Singh told PTI. Fortyfour-year-old Maulana was produced before a magistrate who remanded him to police custody till January 24.
According to ATS, Maulana was instrumental in providing shelter to the three militants from Jammu and Kashmir, arrested last week. Maulana, who had been working as Imam in Haj House Masjid since 1996, had also helped them to conceal arms and material used for making bombs, ATS alleged.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:49 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
Law enforcing agencies are yet to arrest the masterminds behind with the August countrywide serial bomb blasts although the government is continuously telling the people that hauling up of culprits involved is a âmatter of time.â
Meanwhile, police arrested some top leaders of the banned Jamaâatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and they confessed to their involvement in the heinous activities.
"Ooch! Ouch! Anything! I'll tell you anything! Does it have to be true?!"
Experts wonder why the law enforcing agencies were taking time to nab the kingpins. At least 100 cases have so far been filed throughout the country in connection with the serial bomb blasts and only 40 charge sheets have so far been submitted, sources said.
Soon after the arrest of the military commander of JMB Ataur Rahman Sunny, younger brother of JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman, on December 14, the law enforcement members as well as the government had claimed that the entire network of the JMB has been broken. As no major subversive act was committed after the arrest, it appears that the government claim was partially true.
"Cheez it Muggsy, lay low for a while til we get the G-men off our backs!"
The sources said they could sense a reshuffle in the central leadership, mainly in the military wing, by going through the threat letters issued by the JMB different parts of the country.
But sources fear that the JMB is taking time for regrouping as their kingpin Shiekh Abdur Rahman and its operational wing JMJB's chief Bangla Bhai are still at large and working behind the scene.
Meanwhile, two top arrested JMB leaders including Chittagong militant commander Javed Iqbal alias Mohammad gave statements under Section 164 to the metropolitan magistrate court on Friday. Metropolitan Magistrate Maksudur Rahman first started recording of the deposition of confessional statement of Operational Commander of JMB, Cox's Bazar district Naimuzzaman at around 3:30 PM.
"Ease off the pliers a moment, Ahmed, I need to get his jibbering on tape."
After completion of recording of the one hour statement of Naimuzzaman the magistrate turned to record deposition of statement from Javed Iqbal alias Mohammad at around 6:00 PM which is still going on till filing of this report at 7:15 PM.
A source linked with the investigation said that deposition of statement of the rest two JMB leaders Monirul Islam and Rafiqul Islam also seconds-in-command to Mohammad will also be recorded in turns.
"Hand me the electric sander, Ahmed, I have another deposition to record."
The arrested JMB leaders have been produced before the court at around 3:00 PM under RAB escort and other law enforcers were also put on maximum alert.
Different satellite television channels have screened an exclusive appeal of Ataur Rahman Sunny, in which the JMB's military commander called upon his fellows to surrender and hand over their weapons and explosives to police and other law enforcing agencies. But a day after his (Sunny) appeal, an Ehsar (member of suicide squad) of JMB in Rangpur has threatened to launch fresh bomb attacks in Rangpur claiming that they were reorganising under new leadership.
Since all the old leadership is in jug or in Dr. Quincy's morgue.
Despite repeated screening of the appeal of Sunny in BTV, none of the JMB member have so far surrendered or handed over their weapons ignoring the appeal of the military commander.
Before its underground launching, the JMB has spread its organisation under the banner of Ahle Hadith Andolan led by grilled Dr Asadullah Al Galib. Shaikh Abdur Rahman's father Fazal Munshi was the founder of the party. After the death of Fazal Munshi, Dr Galib became the chief of Ahle Hadith Andolan. But soon a split took place over the leadership resulting in creation of another faction led by Shaikh Abdur Rahman.
Everyone following so far?
Later, Shaikh Abdur Rahman formed the JMB and recruited hundreds of youths from all parts of the country in the name of carrying out an Islamic revolution.
As part of the 'test case' of Jehad, Shaikh Abdur Rahman has deputed one of his influential commanders Bangla Bhai, also the member of Majlish-e-Shura (top policy making body), at Bagmara in Rajshahi where he (Bangla Bhai) let loose a reign of terror. Bangla Bhai, under the banner of JMJB, has brutally killed a number of innocent people in the name of eliminating the outlawed party.
JMB first launched countrywide serial bomb attacks on August 17 apparently to declare their presence and strength killing two people. On November 3, they launched simultaneous bomb attacks on court premises in Chittagong, Laxmipur and Chandpur also killing three people. The outfit carried out its first suicide attack on judges in Jhalakathi on November 14 killing two judges â Sohel Ahmed and Jagannath Pandey.
On October 18, a judge of the Speedy Trial Tribunal in Sylhet, Biplab Goswami, narrowly escaped a bomb attack. The suicide bombers on November 29 carried out bomb attacks at District Bar Library in Gazipur and Chittagong court leaving 13 people dead. The banned Islamic outfit carried out another suicide attack on December 1 killing a man and injuring 20 people in front of Gazipur DC office. The suicide bombers carried out their last attack on December 8 in Netrokona where 10 people were killed and many others injured.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:47 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Fred, LOL! That is the first meter I've seen with pi on the scale.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/15/2006 13:16
Comments ||
Top||
A militant belonging to the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba was killed during an encounter with the security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district early on Saturday morning. The security forces gunned down the militant identified as Abu Hamza, sector commander of LeT and a Pakistani national, while searching for a group of militants operating Kishtwar belt of Doda.
Earlier the security forces had got the information about a terrorist group operating in the area.
The forces have claimed recovery of One AK rifle, two magazines, 7 grenades, one wireless set and some diaries from the slain militant.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:44 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
Chechen police have detained a militant in the Shali district, a source in the district's police department told Interfax. "Tapa Umayev, a member of Akhmed Yunusov's group was apprehended in an operation in Duba-Yurt," the source said.
A local resident found artillery shells near the village of Zony in the Shatoi district, a source in the district administration told Interfax by telephone.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:42 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
Although Saudi Arabia has cracked down on militants within its borders, the kingdom has not met its promises to help prevent the spread of terrorism or curb the flow of money from Saudis to terror cells around the world, U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and other officials say. One result, these critics said, is that countless young terror suspects are believed to have escaped the kingdom's tightening noose at home by fleeing across what critics call a porous border into Iraq. U.S. military officials confirm an aggressive role by Saudi fighters in the insurgency in Iraq, where over the past year they reportedly accounted for more than half of all Arab jihadists killed. And millions of dollars continue to flow from wealthy Saudis through Saudi-based Islamic charitable and relief organizations to al-Qaida and other suspected terror groups abroad, aided by Riyadh's failure to set up a government commission to police such groups as promised, senior U.S. officials from several counterterrorism agencies said in interviews.
Those officials said Saudi Arabia has taken some positive steps within its borders. But they criticized what they called the Saudis' failure to take a more active role in the global fight. Daniel L. Glaser, the deputy assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, recalled attending a counterterrorism conference in Riyadh last February at which the Saudis declared they would be an international leader in fighting al-Qaida and in eradicating terrorism worldwide. Nearly a year later, Glaser and other U.S. officials say, those promises are unfulfilled. "They promised to do it and they need to live up to their promises," Glaser said. "They need to crack down operationally on donors in Saudi Arabia. And they need to exert their influence over their international charities abroad . . . . They have to care not just what al-Qaida is doing just within their own borders but wherever it is operating."
In response, a senior Saudi official vehemently insisted that the kingdom has taken strong steps to fight al-Qaida -- not only at home but worldwide. In a series of interviews last week, the official said the government is working closely with regional partners and the United States on operational and intelligence-gathering fronts. The official objected to U.S. criticisms about Saudi fighters playing an important role in the Iraq insurgency, and said Riyadh has done a good job of sealing off the border between the two countries. Any Saudis entering Iraq have been forced to transit through other countries, he said.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:37 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"We have a problem with imams," the Saudi official said. "We have a hundred thousand of them. Can we stop every one? No."
Simple. Each imam that speaks out on behalf of jihadism, or even the hatred and killing of non-Mulsims, should be removed from the payroll. Immediately and without discussion. Demonstrate that the House of Saud does not support such beliefs.
As for the continued flow of suicidal idiots across the border? That would be our pack culling their herd. Or, low-cost target practice for the Iraqi trainees. Saudi choice, our result. I can live with that, for a while anyway.
#2
A question....
If an "Ocean's 11" type group was to drain some soddy charity would the FBI and Interpol care?
Its sounds like a dream op for that sort of folk.
Al Arabiya Television reported on Saturday that Ayman al-Zawahiri was alive, quoting a source which it said has contact with Al Qaeda. âA source with contacts with Al Qaeda reiterated to Arabiya that Zawahiri is alive,â the satellite television said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:26 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
They'd say that no matter what. Give this a week and we'll see.
The missiles were deadly accurate. In the pitch dark of a night in Pakistan's sparsely populated North West Frontier Province, they not only located the three targeted houses on the outskirts of the village of Damadola Burkanday but squarely struck their hujra, the large rooms traditionally used by Pashtun tribesmen to accommodate guests.
Yesterday some of the results of the strike were very clear: three ruined houses, mud-brick rubble scattered across the steeply terraced fields, the bodies of livestock lying where thrown by the airblast, a row of newly dug graves in the village cemetery and torn green and red embroidered blankets flapping in the chilly wind. Four children were among the 18 villagers who died in the brutally sudden attack on their homes.
Yet evidence emerging appeared to indicate that, though the technology that guided the missiles to their targets at 3am on Friday was faultless, the intelligence that had selected those targets was not. Even as American military and intelligence sources spoke of the possible death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda and the man considered to be the brains behind the militant group's strategy, Pakistani officials said that there was no evidence any 'foreigners', shorthand locally for al-Qaeda fighters, were among the 18 victims, though they said that 'according to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area'.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:23 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[21 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Should have just used a MOAB on the village and not told anybody.. After the snow melts somebody might have missed them but by then no evidence...
We are precise. We work off the best information we can find, and we always work to get more. We don't deliberately target civilians. We take great care not to harm innocents. We treat people well when they deserve to be treated well. We punish our own when they fail to abide by our moral code.
Splattering a whole village to get Zawahiri isn't worth it. We'll get him eventually.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006 1:32
Comments ||
Top||
#3
its amazing--the pakis say we didn't get him--yet yet they don't know where he is--so how do they instantaneously know he's still alive?--can anyone say isi--i believe the villagers--there is no lying in islam--oy--more taquiyya for the kufr--i hope he's paste and mist and some residual dna for id purposes only
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/15/2006 2:36
Comments ||
Top||
#4
hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at one home and that some bodies had been removed quickly after the attack. This was denied by villagers
I got 10000 dinars and 7 goats for each of you gents who denies we wuz here.
#5
Two things happenedthat night. First, if we did not get Z we got someone important enough to be removed like the article posts. Second we have sent a very clear message to every Pak that lives in a mud hut that if you provide sanctuary to AQ leaders we will send in the helfires. This was a win at the end of the day.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/15/2006 9:03
Comments ||
Top||
#6
And whoever the dinner guests were who got zapped were legitimate targets. I tend to agree with Steve White's sentiments, but I believe that whever the terrorist leader is, that venue is a legitimate target.
People need to understand that the terrorist leader is a liability and that even his presence will hurt them if they let him hang around them. Finding these ideal venues to zap a terrorist leader is extremely difficult and time consuming. Take Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, for example. He hid around civilians, making himself almost impossible to take out. Then he was finally taken out, pretty clean hit, but the Paleos hate the Israelis anyway.
In the case of hits in the NWFP, they will always be difficult to impossible, because the venues will never be ideal. Intel is so hard to get and maintain without compromise. The terrorists are protected by the tribes and the ISI. But it is still a sanctuary for terrorist heirarchy and it cannot allowed to fester. Tough calls, but the terrorist leadership must always be pressured and on the run. The tribes living in the NWFP need to realize that their are harboring a liability and not an asset. Fine line on hits, but judgements must be made and we must keep the pressure on the leadership.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/15/2006 12:57
Comments ||
Top||
#7
AP and all make good points. Those goat herding warrirs think they are an independent country until someone pops their cap. Bunch of pussies.
In any case...the message now should loud and clear in the wilds of that goat-buggering Province. No more Mister Nice Guy. If you and your family harbor AQ, or taliwhackers you are in trouble.
#8
I understand the MOAB sentiments, but think on balance Steve is right. For OUR sakes
We are precise. We work off the best information we can find, and we always work to get more. We don't deliberately target civilians. We take great care not to harm innocents.
Police arrested four suspected militants, three of whom had links with an alleged Malaysian terror chief blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Indonesian since 2002, media reports said on Sunday.
Police were not immediately available for comment on the arrests, which the reports said took place on Friday in central Java province.
"We can say no more!"
The Jakarta Post said three suspected militants arrested in the town of Semarang had ties with Noordin Top, who is believed to be a senior member of the Al Qaeda linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. Another suspect was detained in nearby Klaten district, the report said.
No other details were immediately available.
Under Indonesiaâs anti-terror laws, police can hold suspects for up to seven days before having to charge or release them. Police often do not immediately release news of the arrests for fear other suspects may go to ground.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:22 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
Thousands of angry tribesmen ransacked offices of two NGOs and a government body, and damaged shops in Inayat Kallay of Bajaur Agency on Saturday. They were protesting against the killing of civilians in Fridayâs US air strike on a village.
Scouts and Khasadar Force used teargas and fired gunshots to disperse the mob while the law enforcing agencies detained at least 30 protesters. Eyewitnesses said thousands of tribesmen gathered in Inayat Kallay town near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to lodge a protest over the killing of 18 people in Damadola area of the agency.
Different political parties and organisations had given a strike call against the US plane attack. Tribal MNA Sahibzada Haroon Rashid and others spoke on the occasion and called for waging Jihad against America.
Emotionally charged protesters, who assembled at a local market, made facesrolled their eyes chanted slogans against the US government and President Bush for attacking residential compounds.
Speaking at the rally, MNA Sahibzada Haroon Rashid denied the presence of foreigners, including a senior Al Qaeda leader, at the time of the US aircraft attack on Damadola, saying: âNo foreigner was present in the area. They (Americans) are responsible for the killing of children and women.â
Witnesses said the protest rally ended peacefully. However, a mob attacked the offices of two NGOs and the National Commission on Human Development (NCHD) in the area. It damaged stationery, computers and set furniture and motorcycles on fire of two foreign-funded NGOs and the NCHD.
Later, the mob attacked a market and damaged audio, video shops and net cafes. Personnel of the Frontier Corps and Khasadar force resorted to teargas shelling and fired gunshots in the air to disperse the crowd. Sources said the authorities had arrested 30 tribesmen allegedly for damaging public and private property.
This is the Pak version of 'peaceful'.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:21 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
At least 15 Myanmar soldiers and six Indian insurgents died and dozens were seriously wounded in heavy fighting to evict the rebels, a separatist leader said on Saturday. "So far we have killed 15 Myanmar soldiers and lost six of our cadres," rebel leader Kughalo Mulatonu said by telephone from a location near the India-Myanmar border where the offensive took place this week. "It is no longer mere fighting but a full-scale battle with the junta using mortars and heavy weapons on us," said Mulatonu, who heads the main faction of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).
"National Socialists! I hate those guys!"
The group is fighting for an independent tribal homeland in India's northeastern state of Nagaland. It claims to have some 50 camps and 7,000 rebels in Myanmar's northern Sagaing Division, which borders Nagaland.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:20 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
Osama bin Ladenâs second-in-command, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, was invited to a village in the Bajaur area but was not present there when aeroplanes, in a CIA-supported operation, hit three houses on Friday and killed 18 civilians, official sources said. âThere is no indication that he (Zawahiri) was there,â a senior official said. âProbably there was an intelligence botch- up.â
Most of the victims of the air strike on the houses at the foothills of Damadola village, about 25km to the northeast of Bajaur regional headquarters, Khaar, were women and children.
A source said the operation was launched on the basis of an intelligence report that Al-Qaeda No-2 was amongst the few invited to a dinner in one of the three houses at the night of the attack. Besides Zawahiri, the source said, two local clerics, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Maulvi Liaqat, both wanted for harbouring foreign militants, had also been invited to the feast.
Incidentally, it was Faqir Mohammad who delivered a fiery anti-Pakistan and anti-US speech at the collective funeral of the civilians killed in the Friday action. The clerics left the village at around 12.30am and the air strike came at around 3.15am.
Missed them by that much.
The source said the intelligence reports indicated that the Egyptian surgeon (Zawahiri) had been visiting Bajaur for about a year and security agencies had been trying to keep an eye on his movement over the past few months.
Another reason for Zawahiriâs visit to the Bajaur village was to meet his family, the source said. âBin Ladenâs deputy is married to a woman from Mohmand tribe who, with her children, lives with her father in the border area between Bajaur and Mohmand tribal regions,â the source said.
Oh really? Then he'll be back at some point.
But it had been quite sometime since Zawahiri visited his family or met his in-laws, the source added. Zawahiri carries a $ 25 million bounty on his head and has eluded capture.
While intelligence officials desperately searched for clues and indications of Zawahiriâs presence during or before the strike, confusion was further compounded by reports that some bodies, apparently those of foreigners, might have been removed by elements close to them soon after the attack.
A senior security official said foreign militants had frequently been visiting Bajaur and even Abu Faraj al-Libbi, said to have been No. 3 in Al-Qaeda hierarchy, had told interrogators that he had lived in Bajaur. He recalled that an Uzbek militant had been arrested from Faqir Mohammadâs house in last April with laptop computer and improvised explosive devices.
The source said Maulvi Liaqat, soon after the attack, removed seven bodies, said to be of foreign nationals. Investigators are trying to ascertain the veracity of this report and establish the identity of the foreign âguestsâ killed in the attack. There is another report that another cleric, Maulvi Atta Mohammad, removed four bodies, said to be of people from Punjab, and buried them at an undisclosed location.
If true, it would put the death toll in Friday attack at 29, including the 18 civilians.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:20 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
a ha--ayman came for some local young nookie from his tribal wife--pocohontas--and an inhospitable clan feudster or some such dimed him out to the company--if they really got him look for some happy abdullahs buying primo real estate in cap ferrat next summer--25 mill buys some really kewl bord de mer digs
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/15/2006 2:46
Comments ||
Top||
#2
This article has the ring of a lot of truth to it - I would guess that if there is a Mrs. al-Zawahiri in the area that it's probably a political marriage with the local tribal leaders, though I'd be kind of curious as to why she hasn't been "disappeared" yet given all of the effort the US has gone to in order to take custody of Binny's wives.
One other note is that we know that Mohammed and Liaqat were in Damadola and skipped town ahead of the attack (thank you, Mahmoud the Weasel) but the article doesn't indicate whether or not Ayman was with them when they skipped town.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006 3:00
Comments ||
Top||
#3
The local jihadis are sitting around the camp fire and decide its time to cause the americans some international heartburn. Here's the plan: convince the dupes at CIA Zawahiri will be in Bajaur on a certain date, time and location. If and when the CIA strikes killing a few innocents the jihadis scream bloody murder. The americans come away with egg on their face. Their collective will to fight is diminished another notch. They then become overly cautious to a fault. The americans will think twice or three times, long and hard, before crossing the afghan border into pakistani sanctuary. Their will to act is frozen. The pacifist anti-war Dems are given fresh propaganda to use against Bush. All in all its a win-win for the jihadis.
Al Qaeda's influence in Iraq is unraveling, a senior U.S. general based in Baghdad told reporters today during a satellite news conference at the Pentagon.
"Al Qaeda is increasingly in disarray and we have pursued, captured and killed a large number of them," Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, commanding general of Multinational Corps Iraq and the 18th Airborne Corps, said.
That news, Vines said, accompanies escalating participation of capable Iraqi security forces in the fight against both foreign jihadists and home-grown terrorists.
"Iraqis are increasingly in the lead," Vines said. "The capacity of the Iraqi security forces is exponentially greater" than a year ago.
Much terrorist influence was removed from Iraq last year, Vines said, as the result of several U.S. military offensives targeted against insurgents operating in Anbar province and along the Iraq-Syrian border.
The Anbar area was a hotbed of terrorist and criminal activity, other U.S. military officials have said, with smugglers assisting foreign terrorists in crossing the Syrian border into Iraq, and on into the Euphrates River Valley or Baghdad.
Terrorists also intimidated Sunni Arabs and other groups living in Anbar province in efforts to keep them from participating in the political process of the new Iraq, Vines said.
Vines said foreign fighters now comprise a small portion of terrorist activity in Iraq, with the majority being disaffected Iraqis who'd been followers of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. Other terrorists simply don't want U.S. or other foreign troops in Iraq, the general said.
Asked by a reporter about the whereabouts of enemy forces engaged during last year's fighting in Anbar province, Vines responded: "Many of them are dead." The general also said some Iraqis who are tired of violence and other terrorist interference in their lives have begun to attack al Qaeda operatives.
Citing recent intelligence reports, Vines reiterated, "There are a fair number of indicators that tell us, currently, al Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray."
"Does it have the capability to regenerate? Unfortunately, it could," he said. "But we must keep the pressure on."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:19 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
More than anything else, I think the Anbar Sunnis are running low on motivation. Since it's abundantly clear that the US doesn't want to *rule* them; *and* that there are important Sunnis in the new government, *and* that these guys aren't complaining too much; *and* there are fewer and fewer outsiders to rile them up; *and* even lots more coppers against the local tough boyz and gangs.
I mean, they're running low on their supply of seethe. And there is a big difference between grumbling over your morning coffee and launching a few bullets in the direction of someone who most likely will kill you.
#2
The turning point was the first election and a functioning interim government afterwards, I think. The smarter Sunnis realized they were about to seethe themselves out of any power at all. The less smart ones, in many cases, got themselves hlown up or shot -- and increasingly, turned in by their neighbors.
War can't make them democratic but it sure as hell can help set the preconditions for it.
Iran's Ambassador to Dushanbe Nasser Sarmadi Parsa said on Saturday that the upcoming visit of Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov to Tehran would open a new chapter in expansion of economic and cultural ties between the two countries. The Tajik president would arrive in Tehran on Monday to attend the tripartite summit to be also attended by his Iranian, Afghan counterparts.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:18 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
Lebanon's Islamic resistance movement, Hezbollah, said Jan. 13 that the group is concerned about a recent statement released by al Qaeda, in which it claimed responsibility for rocket attacks launched into Israel from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said in an interview published by Christian Science Monitor newspaper that Hezbollah is frustrated with al Qaeda's intrusion onto its traditional territory. Qassem said Hezbollah, a Shiite organization, has been closely monitoring the development of militant Sunni Islam in the region, stressing that southern Lebanon should not become an "arena for settling scores."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:18 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
That's pretty bad when hezbollah tells you to nix the pointless violence. AQ is running out of friends , and quick.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pushed back at President Bush and European leaders on Saturday, insisting Iran will press ahead with its nuclear program despite the threat of economic sanctions because "ultimately they need us more than we need them."
At a news conference that lasted more than two hours, a confident Ahmadinejad posed a question to Western governments: "So why do you strike a mighty pose? I advise you to understand the Iranian nation and revolution in a better way. A time might come that you would become regretful, and then there would be no benefits in regretting."
Ahmadinejad's remarks, broadcast live on international news networks, brought to a confrontational close a week in which Tehran defied a U.N. watchdog agency by resuming nuclear research that had been suspended for 2 1/2 years after going forward in secret for almost two decades. Iran's removal of seals on nuclear equipment at its enrichment plant at Natanz and preparations to resume research brought a cascade of criticism, with Bush saying Friday that the prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons was "a grave threat to the security of the world."
Diplomats from the United States, Europe, Russia and China are scheduled to gather in London on Monday to discuss shifting Iran's file from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative who took office in August, said Iran remained open to negotiation and to foreign partnerships that would ensure it was not diverting uranium to a weapons program. His statements reflected positions already established by the unelected officials steering the Iranian government's strategy, a consensus approach ultimately guided by the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The defiant notes struck again and again by Ahmadinejad vividly described the chasm that separates Iran and the Western powers struggling to contain its nuclear ambitions.
Ahmadinejad called it "laughable" that his assertions that Israel be "wiped off the map" and his reference to the Holocaust as a "myth" may have seeded doubts about the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program.
"We don't need nuclear weapons," Ahmadinejad said, noting that religious doctrine restrained Iran from unleashing its own stocks of chemical weapons when Iraq gassed Iranian troops during the 1980s. "Nuclear weapons are pursued by those who want to solve everything by bullying everyone."
He challenged the United States to open its own nuclear facilities to U.N. inspection. Reversing a warning Western leaders leveled this week at Tehran, he advised Washington and Europe "not to isolate yourself anymore in the family of nations."
"They confront us and deal with us in a very harsh and illegal language, but ultimately they need us more than we need them," Ahmadinejad said.
"They're telling us you should build confidence, trust. Let me tell you, for two and a half years that point was made. Now I tell you, it is high time for the E.U. countries to provide some trust for us.
"We have to understand they do not want the Iranian nation to have technological programs."
The argument goes to the heart of Iran's rationale for pursuing a nuclear program despite its vast petroleum reserves. Leaders of the theocratic government, which regards itself as the leader of the Islamic world, say they are defying the relatively recent colonial past and hearkening back to the era when Muslims pioneered discoveries in medicine and mathematics.
"One should always try to acquire knowledge from those who possess it," Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran, told an audience of Muslim pilgrims last week. "However, the Islamic world should try not to remain a student all the time. Rather, it should make use of its talents and make optimal use of its innovation and abilities to make scientific advances."
Many ordinary Iranians, frustrated by high unemployment and a chronically troubled economy, add that they consider technology to be synonymous with development. But while public support for the nuclear program remains high, some are discomfited by their president's strident tone.
"He doesn't know foreign policy, and it's making trouble for Iran," said Ali Reza, 32, who has a bachelor's degree in economics but earns his living ferrying passengers around Tehran in his sedan.
"It's like having a car accident in a place where you don't know the people. You shouldn't jump out of the car screaming. If you do things calmly, you might get away without paying anything at all. The other way, you might end up getting beaten."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[13 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If you do things calmly, you might get away without paying anything at all. The other way, you might end up getting beaten
Former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam, a fierce critic of President Bashar al-Assad, told a German magazine he was forming a government in exile and believed Assad would be forced from power this year.
Prior to 9-11-06...
Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, told the weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday that Assad was facing growing pressure from economic problems at home and the international investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. "His fall has already begun. I don't think his regime will last out this year," Khaddam, who accuses Assad of ordering Hariri's murder, said. The former vice president, for 30 years a confidant of Assad's late father, Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, left the government in June.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
this guy's from the shammar tribe and will continue to promote cross border instability as its good for the smuggling business--also he's the quai d'orsay's boy and we all love the franch n'est pas--they wouldn't do anything to hurt our interests in the mideast --would they?--support uncle rifat--he be da one
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/15/2006 4:10
Comments ||
Top||
Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait who survived an assassination attempt in the 1980s and a decade later escaped Iraqi troops invading his oil-rich Persian Gulf state, died Sunday, state television announced. The sheik, who had been ailing since suffering a brain hemorrhage five years ago, was 79.
Crown Prince Sheik Saad Al Abdullah Al Sabah, a distant cousin chosen by the emir as his heir apparent in 1978, takes over as ruler of the tiny oil-rich country â a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. He is 75 and has colon problems.
The government announced a 40-day period of mourning and said government offices would be closed for three days beginning Sunday.
Sheik Jaber was a close friend of the United States even before U.S. forces led the fight to liberate his country in 1991. Kuwait served as the major launching point for the U.S.-led invasion 12 years later when American troops drove to Baghdad and toppled
Saddam Hussein. Kuwait has remained reliant on U.S. forces for defense, and the close alliance is likely to continue under Sheik Saad. The Al Sabah family has ruled Kuwait for more than 250 years.
After a Shiite Muslim extremist tried to assassinate Sheik Jaber in a suicide car bombing in May 1985, the emir abruptly changed his habits. He stopped driving his own car to bustling bazaars and cut down on public appearances. He did not like traveling abroad, though he went for medical treatment.
He suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2001 and was treated in London. On the rare occasions since then when he appeared in public, he had difficulty delivering speeches.
"Nurse! He's doing it again!"
Sheik Jaber, born in 1926 before Kuwait became rich exporting oil and educated by private tutors in his father's palace, was considered a father figure to many Kuwaitis who generally were fond and respectful of the emir.
Despite the wealth and well-consolidated family rule, Sheik Jaber was considered a quiet listener who avoided ostentation. His palace in Kuwait City's Dasman neighborhood near the sea was described as a spacious but ordinary house, and bread and yogurt often satisfied him at mealtime.
While in exile in the Saudi resort hotel of Taif, the emir said little and prayed a lot, Ahmed al-Jarrallah, editor of the newspaper Al-Siyassah, wrote. He said the emir was always saying: "I just want a small tent in my country. I don't want palaces or luxury."
Designated crown prince and prime minister in 1965, Sheik Jaber succeeded his uncle, Sheik Sabah Al Salem Al Sabah, as emir on Dec. 31, 1977. The year before taking over, he set up the Fund for Future Generations â a financial safety net for Kuwaitis when the oil eventually runs out. To this day, he has ensured 10 percent of oil revenues go into the fund, which has an estimated balance of more than $60 billion.
Before the 1990-91 crisis over the Iraqi invasion, Sheik Jaber and his family presided over an affluent but tightly controlled society. Sheik Jaber dissolved parliament in 1986 for severely criticizing the government. He did not restore it until 1992, a year after Iraqi troops were driven out.
The United States, trying to sell allies on joining the international coalition that ultimately forced Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait, pressed the ruling family to institute or return some democratic institutions to Kuwait. The emir dissolved parliament again in 1999 saying lawmakers misused their constitutional rights. A new public vote was held just two months later.
Sheik Jaber won the praise and gratitude of human rights activists when he decreed in 1999 that women should have the vote and be eligible to run for office. However, conservatives and fundamentalist Muslims formed a parliamentary alliance that repeatedly kept his decree from being put into practice. He could have disbanded parliament to press his view, but did not. Six years later, in May 2005, parliament finally approved the legislation supported by the emir.
During Saddam's rule, the Iraqi dictator delivered harsh attacks on Sheik Jaber in an attempt to discredit the ruling family of Kuwait, which Iraq had claimed since the territory's independence from Britain in 1961. He called the emir a "womanizer" who married 40 times.
Saddam described the emirate as a lazy nation languishing in comfort attended by foreign servants. Except when foreign workers fled during the invasion crisis, foreigners in modern Kuwait have outnumbered native. Today, there are about 960,000 Kuwaitis and 1.64 million foreign residents.
And not many of them are Paleos anymore.
Sheik Jaber fled Kuwait when Saddam's armored columns invaded on Aug. 2, 1990, with orders to capture or kill him. He drove to Saudi Arabia, accompanied by most of his estimated 70 children and dozens of senior members of the royal family. He set up a government-in-exile in Taif and went on Saudi television to urge his people to resist.
He managed to resist well from his hotel in Soddiland.
Close aides say he denounced Saddam as a criminal and wondered out loud: "Why does this Saddam hate me so much?"
Maybe it was the money. Maybe it was the oil. Maybe you were just in the way.
Like other Arab leaders in the Persian Gulf, Sheik Jaber had backed Iraq during its 1980-88 war with Iran.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/15/2006
00:14 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[23 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Wonder how long before the gov't turns against us now.
#3
The Al Sabahs will not permit anti-Americanism to rise to the top - the current Regent and all those in line below him remember the invasion of Kuwait and the atrocities visited on their country. Also, certain of the Sabahs died making sure the Emir got out of the country, and there is blood debt involved on their part.
GILGIT: The Northern Areas police said on Saturday that they have arrested four members of an extremist organisation for the murder of Shia leader Agha Ziauddin Rizvi on January 8, 2005. Sources told Daily Times that the four men belonged to the banned Lashkar-e-Janghvi.
A police team conducted 'a successful raid on a tip-off and arrested Nawab Alam, Akhtar Jan, Abdul Sadiq and Muhammad Anwer alias Moaviya'. The arrests were made on Saturday morning. The accused were declared proclaimed offenders in June last year and Rs 1.5 million were offered for information on their whereabouts. He said that the accused were arrested without any resistance.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:14 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Fodder for the next installment of the Wolf Freedom Brigade's weekly confessional television show? Y'know, the one that's New and Improved! Now with unbruised participants! Kewl!
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad condemned the Thursday night missile attack in Bajaur Agency and said it was carried out by US fighter planes.
Right on schedule...
Addressing a press conference on Saturday, he said that the government was killing its own citizens to please America and 'other foreign masters' and the army had failed to protect citizens' life and property. He denied reports of Ayman Alzawahiri's death and called them the government's excuse.
Qazi said the aerial spy mission was going on for about three days and had worried the area's residents. He said that a foreign media representative told him that American fighter planes were involved in the attack and Bajaur Agency MNA Sahibzada Haroon Rashid told him that he had heard bombing sounds in his house two kilometers from the place of attack. He said 18 bodies were recovered from the debris, including three children and five women and 13 of them belonged to the same family. He denied the government's claim of seizing dead bodies of five foreigners.
He demanded US forces' immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and said they had ruined peace in the region and were killing innocent villagers. Qazi warned that the tribal people may react to the 'continuous provocation' to jeopardize Pakistanâs security.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:11 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
A tribal leader claimed that at least 20 people were killed as security forces continued attacks on villages in Kohlu on Saturday. The situation in Dera Bugti and Sui remained tense, but no official confirmation of civilian casualties was made. Mir Balach Mari, a member of the provincial assembly, said that security forces continued their attacks in the Kahan, Daman, and Shmail, Sordu and Renkh villages, where at least 20 people were killed. He said that forces present on the ground also attacked villages with mortars that created havoc among the local population. He said that many people were forced to leave their homes since military operations began on December 17.
Meanwhile, former Balochistan chief minister Mir Humayun Mari said that security forces had begun indiscriminate shelling in Kohlu.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:09 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
The part that got my attention is this 2003 story stating that the German intelligence agency BND had excellent relationships with the Baathists under Saddam.
The Palestinian president has said legislative elections would be held as scheduled on 25 January if Israel did not prevent the vote in East Jerusalem, and that Hamas could only participate in any future government if it recognised the Oslo peace accords. Interviewed by Aljazeera on Saturday, Mahmoud Abbas said he expects the Israeli government to accept the holding of elections in Jerusalem in accordance with the terms agreed on by the Palestinian and Israeli authorities during the 1996 vote.
On the issue of Hamas's participation in the polls, Abbas said the democratic option could not be partitioned, and whoever emerges victorious in the election will become a member of the legislative council, but on the basis of the existing authority which in turn is based on the Oslo accords and the peace option.
Israel has already made clear that it will not allow campaigning in East Jerusalem by Hamas, which has carried out the majority of attacks against Israel in the past five years and refuses to recognise Israel. "Hamas is now participating in the elections according to a certain basis, and not any other basis from the past," Abbas said in the interview.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Batten down the hatches, boys, and prepare for full-bore crazy. That is all.
THERE IS ONE good thing about anti-Semitism: It lets you know who the bad guys are. Right, left, black, white, freak or straight, the minute someone starts rattling on about the evil Jews, you know your train just pulled into Slimeball Station.
All bigotry is wrong, of course, but there's something about this particular form of prejudice that is weirdly reliable as a sign of deeper wickedness. Perhaps it's because the Jews contributed so much to humanity's moral code that to hate them as a race is to despise the restraints of morality itself
Whatever the reason, true, virulent anti-Semitism is such a good indicator of the presence of evil that I'm tempted to believe that when God made the Jews his chosen people, this is what he chose them for: to be a sort of Villainy Early Detection System for everyone else.
Unfortunately, in his infinite love for his creation, I suspect the Big Guy may have overestimated our intelligence. Maybe he thought that after Hitler we'd just, you know, like, get it. Instead, we still see apparently intelligent people appeasing, making excuses for and even embracing the sorts of stinkers who ought to set off the Big Alarm.
That's why I think the system could use more bells and whistles â a loud honking noise perhaps, or even closed captioning for the morally impaired. Thus, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a "myth" or that Israel "must be wiped off the map," you would hear a loud honk and words would appear in the air below his face: "Hello. I am an evil madman. Please stop negotiating with me now and proceed to cripple my nuclear capability by any means necessary."
Or how about when Venezuelan leader â and anti-American Iran ally â Hugo Chavez warns that "descendants of those who crucified Christ ⊠have grabbed all the world's riches for themselves"? Honk. His subtitle: "Hi. I know you lefties are still enamored of the idea of socialism â fine. But personally, I'm a jerk and a friend of tyranny. Oh, and Mr. Belafonte? Go home before you make an ass of yourself."
Now, I understand the situation in the Middle East is morally and politically complex, as is the situation in South America. I know that honorable people can hold conflicting opinions about the issues in these places. But when the entrenched misery of an area nearly as large as the United States is consistently blamed on 5 million people in a country the size of a shoebox, or when the ills of the world are loaded onto less than 1% of its population, I begin to become suspicious.
If it were only a matter of hating Jews, we could say: "Feel free, hate everyone, knock yourself out." The trouble is the suffering, the slaughter of innocents and indeed the destruction of entire nations that seems inevitably to follow when anti-Semitism is allowed to spread beyond the cesspool of the mind that contains it. History is too full of lowlifes who thought all their problems would be solved if they could just kill enough Jews â or thugs like Pontius Pilate who thought it was a matter of killing the right Jew â for us not to realize that their Final Solutions aren't final and are no solution. They are often the first, and sometimes the last, road sign pointing the way to an earthly hell.
So here's a plan. The next time you express an opinion on what's wrong with the world, take a look around to see who's nodding in agreement. If it's some clown who thinks the Jewish state should be pushed into the sea, or that the Jews killed Christ or are conspiring to subvert the world economy or the government or the media, I beg you to consider that you might be wrong. There is no shame in changing your opinion. Falling into step with wicked fools â that's shameful, and it's dangerous too. God gave you an early detection system. Use it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
For durability---the same way one chooses a punching bag.
#4
It is not only an indicator of evil, it is also an indicator of intellectual bankruptcy. Which is why it is so popular on Americaâs university campuses these days.
The government, for the first time, is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza after discovering that the predominant strain of the virus has built up high levels of resistance to them at alarming speed.
A whopping 91 percent of virus samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this flu season proved resistant to rimantadine and amantadine, a huge increase since last year, when only 11 percent were.
The discovery adds to worries about how to fight bird flu should it start spreading among people. Health officials had hoped to conserve use of two newer antiviral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, because they show activity against bird flu, unlike the older drugs. Now, because of the resistance issue, the newer drugs are being recommended for ordinary flu, increasing the chances that resistance will develop more rapidly to them, too, as they become more commonly used. The newer drugs work against Type A and B influenza strains; the older ones work only against Type A, but cost less and are available in generic form.
CDC officials took the unusual step of calling a Saturday news conference to announce that the predominant strain this season â the type A H3N2 influenza strain â was resistant to the older drugs. "Clinicians should not use rimantadine and amantadine ... because the drugs will not be effective," said CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding. She said the lab tests, which CDC scientists had been analyzing since Friday, surprised health officials and the health agency rushed to get the word out.
The CDC tested 120 influenza A virus samples from the H3N2 strain and found that 109 were resistant to the two drugs. Two years ago, less than 2 percent of the samples were resistant. Last year, 11 percent were.
Gerberding said the agency didn't know how the resistance occurred, saying it may have been the result of a mutation in the virus or overuse of the drugs abroad, such as in countries that permit the drugs to be purchased without a prescription. One flu expert, Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University, said the development was "disconcerting" as flu now has joined the ranks of other diseases, such as tuberculosis and HIV, that recently have acquired the ability to resist front-line medications. But Schaffner said doctors have other options to fight influenza.
The CDC said that all H3 and H1 influenza viruses the agency has tested so far are susceptible to the newer antivirals: Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, and Relenza, also called zanamivir. "Tamiflu is now readily available everywhere â in most places, it is the primary antiviral being used" against flu, Schaffner said. "But we're always a bit frustrated when one of the therapeutic agents is foreclosed. It makes every infectious disease doctor worry a little bit."
That's especially worry with fears that bird flu could become turn into a human epidemic. The bird flu spreading through Asia infects people relatively rarely, but officials worry that it might morph into a form that spreads more easily, triggering a worldwide super-flu outbreak.
#2
BTW, Debka had a ticker that Iran was culling chickens near the border with Turkey. Nothing on Google news, but Turkish cases are close to the border, so it's likely Iran has cases also. Iran will keep this secret until its too late. For a while in a different forum I have been saying watch equally secretive Myanmar. If you are worried about a bird flu pandemic, then watch the news out of Iran.
Gunmen in the southern city of Kandahar killed a former Taliban leader on Saturday who had repudiated the extremist movement in recent years, siding instead with the U.S. presence and Afghanistan's move toward democracy. Mohammed Khaksar, the Taliban's former intelligence chief, was shot in the chest, neck and head by two gunmen on a motorbike while he was carrying groceries home from a market around 4 p.m., according to his brother and the Kandahar police chief. He died instantly.
"He's dead, Jim! No need for Dr. Quincy!"
Mohammed Khaksar, the Taliban's former intelligence chief, secretly contacted the United States in 1999 and offered to help confront the movement and al Qaeda.
I'm surprised they didn't get him earlier. He was the first major Taliban figure to come over to our side when Kabul fell...
The incident was the latest in a string of brazen attacks that continue to haunt the country four years after the Taliban was ousted from power. In recent weeks, a teacher was beheaded and numerous other Afghans have been killed in suicide attacks. The Taliban, whose members are waging an insurgency against international forces and the new democratically elected government, asserted responsibility for Khaksar's killing. "We were after him for a long time and found the opportunity to kill him today," the organization's purported spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said in a satellite telephone call to the Reuters news agency.
I'd guess the call originated in Pakland, of course...
Yousuf told the Associated Press that Khaksar was "a traitor to our cause."
"We dunnit, and we're glad we dunnit!"
But Khaksar's brother said it was too early to assign blame. "We don't know exactly who has killed our brother," Abdullah Nazik said. "Only God knows who has done this."
Well, God and whoever did it ...
Khaksar, who was in his mid-forties and had five children, was the Taliban's intelligence chief, and later its deputy interior minister. He was a key player in the movement as it swept to power in the mid-1990s, and at one time he was a close friend of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. But he became disenchanted with the increased role of al Qaeda in the country's affairs. In 1999, he had said, he secretly reached out to the United States and offered to help confront the Taliban and the terrorist organization that backed it. Khaksar also became an informant for the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban militia group. Two years later, he defected from the Taliban within weeks of the movement's retreat from Kabul, publicly aligning himself with Northern Alliance forces that had taken the capital with U.S. support. In numerous interviews with Western media outlets after his defection, Khaksar said he believed the Taliban had been co-opted by al Qaeda. "Al Qaeda was very important for the Taliban because they had so much money," Khaksar said in an interview with The Washington Post in November 2001. "They gave a lot of money. And the Taliban trusted them."
Money, guns and ammo, just too seductive for the Taliban to resist.
The Taliban are a reflection of Waziristan, where the same things are going on now.
Khaksar also explained how Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al Qaeda, would personally distribute funds to Taliban leaders he wanted to control. "He had money in his pocket," Khaksar said. "Any time he wanted, he would just pull it out and give it to them."
Just like a mobster.
Khaksar ran in parliamentary elections in September but fell short in his bid to represent Kandahar. He had recently told the Associated Press that Taliban fighters were threatening his life.
I'm sure they've been threatening all along.
U.S. and Afghan authorities condemned his killing. "Anyone who is killing the people who are supporting the democratization process and the reconstruction process, they are the enemies of Afghanistan," said Afghanistan's national security adviser, Zalmai Rassoul. "And that is the way they are perceived by the Afghan people."
But the Afghan people haven't been gunning a lot of them down, have they?
"Tragic events such as this only solidify our resolve that we must eradicate terrorism now," said Col. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman in Kabul. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Afghan families of those who have been lost in this war against terrorism." The Afghan government has frequently appealed to Taliban members to disavow their allegiance to the movement and begin working within the country's fledgling democratic system. But Khaksar's death underscored the risk involved at a time when insurgents continue to operate with impunity in many areas.
To whit, the Pashtun areas along the Pak border that are indistinguishable from Waziristan.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Tomorrow's Jakarta Post reports:
A thick cloud of suspicion hangs over the country's pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), with many convinced they are a breeding ground for terrorists.
The second Bali bombings last October, in which several boarding school alumni were implicated, were followed by discussion of the mass fingerprinting of students, as well as revisions to the curriculum to avoid the sowing of hatred.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will meet with US Vice President Dick Cheney here later this week, US Embassy deputy spokesman Andrew Mitchell said yesterday. Mitchell said that the vice president would also visit Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan in this tour.
Wonder if he's carrying a briefcase to each meeting?
âThe talks between King Abdullah and Cheney will be held on Tuesday,â said Mitchell. He said the talks would focus on key issues of mutual concern, including bilateral relations and the situation in the Middle East and Iraq.
and perhaps points east??
That's an absolutely plain vanilla agenda. My guess is that the subjects of conversation would be Syria â the Soddies will be meddling big time as soon as it becomes obvious it's going to explode â and Iran. I'm sure the Soddies have no objection to Iran getting thumped, but it looks like there might be Israeli involvement in the process and that will tighten the royal sphincter. The other issue of concern to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques would be discomfort at seeing yet another member of the Axis of Evil drop. He's got to know that we have the axis mapped and that there weren't only three members. Iran going down moves Arabia up on the list.
Mitchell said that Cheney was due to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Jan. 17 before he travels to Kabul to represent the US at the opening session of the Afghanistanâs new parliament.
... the subject to be Hosni's efforts in smoothing Assad's path to oblivion...
Cheney will stop in Pakistan to see the relief and reconstruction efforts being made by the US Agency for International Development in the wake of the Octoberâs devastating earthquake. He will deliver a horse's head to meet with Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf. In Oman, the vice president will hold talks with Sultan Qaboos to discuss bilateral and regional issues of common concern with special reference to the war on terror.
#1
even if arabia is bumped up on the axis of evil list, that signifies nothing.
America cannot depose the princes and 'liberate' the seething islamist fanatic population. They are the enemy.
The US wastes a lot of energy sucking up to the Saudis. You don't suck up if you don't need to.
The house of saud doesn't feel threatened by the US. They hold our balls in their hands. They can shut off the oil any time they want. They have bezillions of our oil dollars reinvested in gold and other financial instruments. The rulers are not dependant on us. But we are dependant on them.
#2
The Saudi's don't operate independently of us. If they cut off our oil, they lose all their revenue, we don't lose all our oil. They need that revenue to keep bribing their own people and feeding their life style. I doublt they are any more interested in riding camels than we are horses. And if they cross us, their treasuries are worthless. So I'd say our financial interests are aligned. It's how they spend their dollars on ideology that's the problem. If we take out the hit men, they'll just have to spend them differently.
#3
Given a large enough quarrel, the princes of the house of Saud could live without the petrol dollars now, they have diversified their assets.
If they had to flee their country they could live very nicely in south america or europe somewhere with their billions.
My point is that it doesn't matter if Saudi Arabia is on the axis of evil, the US cannot invade and depose the government as it did with Iraq.
To de-evilise Saudi Arabia would take a full-scale occupation force with martial law and forced re-education. This is because the enemy IS the civilian population.
In Iraq, the enemy was Saddam with a neutral or only moderately anti-US civilian population.
Saudi Arabia has a moderately anti-US ruling royal family with a rabidly militant Islamist US and Jew-hating population.
America can not invade Saudi Arabia, the US does not have the strength or manpower to put that teeming rat-infested nation under martial law.
It does have another option: to nuke it. That is theoretically possible but the US population would lack the will in any future I can forsee.
#4
Anon1:
That's a little excessive. I have a more modest proposal.
1. Set up the REA. No Arabs or moslems allowed.
2. Make Mecca and Medina uninhabitable so no hadj money flows in.
No need to kill every person in the area. They will have no money, no power.
#6
You folks are missing a major point, money is no good if you can't use it.
Having Billions in banks is more worthless than if you had some cash, freeze the banks, and at least the cash you have on hand can be used for toilet paper.
Gold and Jewels are even more useless, can't even wipe with them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/15/2006 11:25
Comments ||
Top||
#7
sorry, mate they own the banks, or at least a sizeable chunk of a few of them.
#8
Anon, yes, but if the other banks will not trade with their banks, same thing.
You can't eat money, jewels, gold, etc.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/15/2006 15:24
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Watch the libs....Cheney, from the united states of Halliburton...
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/15/2006 18:40
Comments ||
Top||
#10
anon, there are about 12,000 royals now and every one of them expects to live like the oldest generation and resent the ones who do. Even among the older brothers - ESPECIALLY among the older brothers -- the knives are out since the old king's death.
We don't have to invade or nuke them IMO. The real issue is keeping them sufficiently stable in the short run that their chaotic collapse doesn't come at a bad time for our economy or other moves in the region.
That's not 'sucking up' ... it's just doing what we can to sequence the various crises we have to deal with. JMO ...
American and Afghan government troops have killed about six insurgents in a battle in central Afghanistan, the US military said. The clash erupted when gunmen fired on what the US military called an offensive patrol in the central province of Uruzgan on Friday. "An estimated six enemy fighters were killed; the remainder fled the area," the US military said in a statement issued late on Friday.
The American military, which said no Afghan or US troops had been hurt in the clash, said its offensive patrols were aimed at rooting out insurgents and disrupting supplies. "Such patrols are being conducted through the winter months to deny the enemy sanctuary and hinder the enemy's supply efforts," it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Grr...have to register to read the article. So, for the benefit of the 'burg, I will share my new login and password.
login: whatthehell
password: okfine
Maybe they have a point, however. They should ask everyone applying for citizenship their feelings about Islamofascism, just to drive home the point that it is not welcome.
Besides, now that there are idjits like that Belgian broad who blew herself up, you can't just assume an applicant for citizenship doesn't believe that crap based on their original country of birth.
#2
The Turkish immigrant community in Germany is protesting a federal state's move to impose and administer a 30-topic ?conscience test? on Muslim applicants for German citizenship.
?This test amounts to Islamophobia and discrimination on the basis of religion,? said Professor Faruk ?en, head of the German-based Center for Studies on Turkey (TAM), in a telephone interview with the Turkish Daily News.
In the German state of Baden-Wurtenberg, the use of such a ?loyalty test? for Muslim applicants who want to become German citizens was put into effect on Jan. 1. The questions in the controversial test will be asked of Muslim applicants from 57 countries, including Turkey.
Not only Turks and the Muslims Council in Germany but also some Germans reacted angrily to the test, saying it was discriminatory; however, in an earlier response to criticism, the German Interior Ministry reportedly denied discrimination against Muslims.
That's the whole story. Doesn't Germany have a state religion? or is that just state by state?
1- The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany is based on a free democratic order. It encompasses the same values as those of the other European Union countries. The protection of human dignity and the state's monopoly on using force are also among the values. In other words, apart from cases of self-defense, nobody other than the state can use force against someone else within the Federal Republic of Germany. The state can use force due to its right stemming from the laws, for example, in ensuring gender equality. Do such principles comply with your beliefs?
2- What do you think about the following statements: âDemocracy is the worst rule. Humankind has experienced nothing worse than democracy. In order to get rid of democracy it is necessary for human beings to understand that democracy will bring no benefits.â
3- Some films, plays and books offend the religious sensitivities of people of different religions. In your opinion, what methods should be employed for the prevention of religious sensitivities from being hurt?
4- What do you think about criticism leveled at a religion? Is it acceptable? Can you cope with this?
5- Political parties and associations that are against the Constitution are banned in Germany. Despite this, would you support a banned party or association? If you do, under what conditions?
6- âWives should obey their husbands but if they do not, then husbands have the right to beat their wives.â What do you think about such opinions?
7- Do you think a husband not allowing his wife or daughter to go out is acceptable behavior?
8- In the face of violence among a couple in Germany, the police can step in and have the right to keep the guilty party outside the home for a couple of days. What do you think of that?
9- Do you see gender equality in Germany under the law as progress? If men do not accept this, then what should the state do?
10- In Germany, everyone can do a job that they want in accordance with their education and abilities. What do you think of that? In your opinion, should some jobs be only handled by men while some others only by women? If you say âyes,â which jobs should be handled by only women or men and why?
11- In your opinion, which jobs should never be done by women? Are there any jobs that would make you uneasy because of a female boss?
12- In Germany, everyone makes their own decision on whether they want to be examined by a male or female doctor. Under some circumstances, there is no time or chance to make a choice, for example, during emergencies or changes in shift. In such a situation, if you are a male would you accept to be examined by a female doctor, or if you are a female would you accept to be examined by a male doctor?
13- Some families are against their adult daughters working in a field of the daughter's choice or marrying a man the family doesn't approve of. What is your approach to this? What would you do if your daughter wants to marry a man of a different religion or if she wants to do a job that you do not approve?
14- What do you think about families who make their children marry by force? Do you think that such marriages concur with human honor?
15- Sports and swimming lessons are a part of basic school education in Germany. Do you approve of your daughter taking part in these classes? If you say âno,â then why not?
16- What do you think about your children taking part in school field trips?
17- Your adult daughter/wife wants to dress in the same way as the other girls and women in Germany. Would you try to prevent her from doing so? If you say âyes,â how would you do so?
18- A question for female applicants for citizenship: If your daughter wants to dress in the same way as German girls, what would you do?
19- If your daughter/sister says she was subjected to sexual harassment, what would you do as a father, mother, elder brother or sister?
20- If your son or brother tells you that his feelings were hurt, what would you do as a father, mother, elder brother or sister?
21- Do you think the Constitution provides an individual with the right to change his religion and lead a life with a different religion? What do you think about an individual who is punished (for example, rejection by family) when he/she converts to another religion?
22- You learned that a terrorist operation is under way. How would you act? What would you do?
23- You heard about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid. In your opinion, were those who carried out the attacks terrorists or freedom fighters? Explain your answer.
24- Newspapers usually cover stories of honor killings. How do you approach this issue?
25- How do you evaluate a man in Germany being married to two women at the same time?
26- What do you think about a married man in Germany returning to his native country and marrying another woman there?
27- Some people think the Jews are responsible for many evil actions in the world and even believe that the Jews were behind the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. What do you think about such assumptions?
28- Your daughter applied for a job in Germany but her application was rejected. Later you heard that an African from Somali was hired for the same position. How would act in the face of such a situation?
29- How would you react if your adult son said he was a homosexual and he wanted to live with a man?
30- Some politicians in Germany are known to be homosexual. What do you think about homosexuals in Germany working in state institutions?
#7
They are protesting because they don't have a conscience and don't want the rest of us to find out.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
01/15/2006 12:08
Comments ||
Top||
#8
Too late, Al - we already know.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/15/2006 12:23
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Make the questionnaire a standard part of the application process, for all. There are, unfortunately, plenty of non-Muslims who also find equality and freedom objectionable. #27 on Steve's list would tar much of the world's media, and many who already hold German citizenship. It would be very interesting for a survey of German citizens to be done using these questions. I sense a lovely PhD project here. ;-)
#15
Nimble> Have the mohammedans developed a problem with lying on official forms?
I suppose it depends on the "mohammedan" in question.
More importantly, the point isn't whether an individual can tell a lie on a form. The point is making sure that people have studied the expectations of civilised behaviour.
Even lying about them adequately will mean they have to know what they are, and provide justifications for their opinions that are believable. Hopefully obvious copied answers will not be accepted.
The last question might ensnare many a Christian...
If these Christians have a problem with gay people working in state institutions, then they shouldn't get citizenship either IMO.
#16
It's interesting to compare this German attempt to instill reflection and adoption of their norms with the US citizenship process. The former focuses on beliefs. The latter makes sure that the candidate for citizenship understands how our government works and is familiar with the Constitution so that his/her oath of allegiance is an informed one.
The general requirements for administrative naturalization include:
a period of continuous residence and physical presence in the United States;
residence in a particular USCIS District prior to filing;
an ability to read, write, and speak English;
a knowledge and understanding of U.S. history and government;
good moral character;
attachment to the principles of the U.S. Constitution; and,
favorable disposition toward the United States.
We tend to believe that if these apply, you can bring a variety of beliefs and customs to our society and we'll be fine.
Aris, that's one difference between your comment re: gays in government and how we see things here. We might differ among ourselves on that question, but so long as we all can honestly and in good faith support the Constitution and our processes for representative government, that's fine. It's how we've absorbed and both changed and been changed by several massive waves of immigration in the last 125 years (especially) without losing our essentially American character as a society. Indeed, that immigration has only enriched us over time.
There will be a reflection of developments in Iraq on Turkey, and Turkish Kurds will demand âtheir shareâ in the administration of the country, a senior ethnic-Kurdish politician has said. He also claimed that âefficient and authoritativeâ people from the United States asked Turkey to declare an amnesty for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) but that the government decided instead to issue yet another ârepentance lawâ that âserved no purpose.â
ªerafettin Elçi told the Turkish Daily News that developments in Iraq have shown that federalism is the best administrative system for multi-nation countries. He said the new Iraqi constitution was âexemplaryâ for all states of the region because it will reflect on all countries there, particularly Turkey, where the most Kurds live. He said the developments in Iraq might help Turkey to overcome its âdisintegrationâ phobia.
Elçi said it was very probable that Turkey's Kurdish population will start demanding federalism in Turkey as well. Reiterating that the PKK hurt the Kurds of Turkey more than it hurt the Turks, Elçi said he was confident that a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish problem was possible.
from Islam Q&A
I am a young man and I have been letting my beard grow for nearly a year and I am trying to do acts of worship and keep away from forbidden things as much as I can. But I have been faced with the problem of finding work, until I found a job teaching in a high school for girls. I want to know whether it is permissible for me to carry on in this job. What is the ruling on the money that I have earned from it up till now?.
Answer : Praise be to Allaah. For a man to work as a teacher in a high school for girls, where he meets them with no barrier and most of them may adorn themselves and show their charms â as is the case in the country where the questioner lives â no wise man would doubt that this is haraam, because of the bad effects and evil results for both men and women. We have discussed these evil results in the answer to question no. 50398.
It says in Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daaâimah (12/149): It is not permissible for a man to teach girls directly because of the serious dangers and grave consequences involved in that.
It also says (12/156): Firstly: Mixing between men and women in schools and elsewhere is a great evil which may corrupt religious commitment and worldly interests. It is not permissible for a woman to teach or work in a place where men and women mix, and it is not permissible for her owner guardian to give her permission to do that.
Secondly: it is not permissible for a man to teach a woman who is not wearing hijab, and it is not permissible for him to teach her when he is alone with her, even if she is wearing proper hijab. When a woman is with a man who is a non-mahram her entire being is âawrah. As for covering the head and showing the face, this is not full hijab.
Thirdly: there is nothing wrong with a man teaching a woman from behind a screen in women-only schools, where there is no mixing between male and female students, or between the (male) teacher and (female) students. If they need to ask him questions, it should be means of closed circuit TV, which is well known and easily available, or via the phone, but the students should beware of speaking softly. End quote.
If I was talking about black men oppressed by whites, I would have the sympathy of the Western media.
But the sexist c**** don't give a c*** about women. We could be aliens or another species, in Australia particularly. Sorry for the swearing but it really irritates me.
#3
Yeah, you notice how NAG [National Association of Gals] cheered on the American military who liberated more females in a couple of years than they've liberated in decades? NOT.
#4
If the women are allowed to "show their charms", then this guy's in a western country.
So unemployemnt is the cause of "disenfranchised muslim youth" in various EU countries and points west, we've been told.
Perhaps the problem is that they CANT get jobs because fatwa's don't permit them to work with, or for, women. And women do make up 50% of the workforce in most "western" societies.
#6
I'm female and i applauded the US military for removing the Taliban. I went to anti-war rallies with a megaphone and a friend and shouted at the idiotarians. so it's not true that those who support women's rights don't stick up for the US: we do!
#8
so it's not true that those who support women's rights don't stick up for the US: we do!
Not a member of Women In Black, eh? Yes it is a generalization, but on the whole, the Left regards Bush HitlerBurton as a greater threat to human rights than the Islamofascists we are fighting a against. To call this behaviour naive is an understatement.
#9
I agree, Steve. Not all those who advocate women's rights are on the left thank goodness.
It is true, the lefties actually are quite retrograde on women's rights. THey ignore condoleeza, most powerful woman in the world right now as she is on the right. They ignore that Bush took out the Taliban. They ignore the chattel slavery of women in fundamentalist islamist nations because of PC imperatives to 'respect all cultures equally' even those that deserve a bollocking.
The left is actually the backwards looking brigade and the right has become progressive as far as individual liberties and equal rights is concerned.
#10
Another illustration of Islamic male mindset in action: i.e., take no responsibility for anything, and blame women for everythying.
These Islamic men seem inordinately horny--like it's all they ever think about, and secondly, it seems that they have a ridiculous time controlling themselves sexually once their horny mechanism has been switched to "on" (also out of their control). I'd advise them to get back in the driver's seat, but I don't think they have a vehicle.
A thought: send this question/answer to the girl's high school admin and see what happens.
UNITED NATIONS - Russia and China have delayed promised helicopters and medical units to a UN peacekeeping force in Sudan, thereby causing other countries to postpone sending troops, a UN official said. The United Nations expects 10,000 troops in southern Sudan to monitor a peace agreement signed a year ago that ended nearly three decades of civil war between rebels and the Khartoum government. But only about 4,000 have arrived.
Jan Pronk, the special UN envoy to Sudan, told a news conference on Friday that Russian transport helicopters and a Chinese medical unit were considered vital before certain nations would send troops.
Russiaâs parliament in December approved sending 200 soldiers and four Mi-8 transport helicopters, along with other equipment to Sudan on President Vladimir Putinâs request. âWe are waiting already a year,â Pronk said. âThey are essential. We need the aviation units.â
Almost like they don't want to honor their pledge or something.
Pronk acknowledged increasing difficulties getting countries to fulfill their contribution pledges in time and in recruiting additional soldiers. Promised money to help development in the south and resettle refugees also has not been delivered, including from the UN budget itself, Pronk said. But he said donors had to ensure that Sudan allocated its considerable oil resources to benefit the south, because giving money unconditionally âis a waste.â âGood economic governance is a must because it was bad governance in the past which fueled the conflict,â he said.
However, Pronk said that without international support the expectations of the people in the south would falter. âThat is a major risk. There is peace, indeed, but where is the peace dividend?â he asked.
All the Chinese want is the oil, so whatever lets them get at the oil is what they're going to do. The Russians have oil; my guess is that they're helping the Chinese for a player to be named later.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Thursday categorically denied media reports that the 26-member western alliance was discussing to take military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
"On Iran, let's be clear. There has been absolutely no discussion in NATO of military action," NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters in Brussels. "Obviously NATO does not have a lead when it comes to negotiations surrounding the question of Iran's nuclear program," he said. The spokesman added that NATO fully supports the EU-3 and the IAEA in their efforts to negotiate a solution to Iran's nuclear program.
#1
Why should European countries discuss any military plans outside of their own borders? They have no offensive abilities that can reach Iran other than the British nuke subs. I suspect the French ones are targeting more British sites than Iranian. Mostly the remaining Euro forces are follow on type organizations incapable of fighting their way in. Even then the usually mode of operation is to hunker down and carefully not upset the locals. So 'Action Against' isn't really in their skill sets.
#5
Anything we discuss in NATO get to the French. I doubt if we will have anything to do with the French and perhjaps the Germans in the run up to action. They simply are not credible allies.
Niall Ferguson on the likelihood of conflict with Iran - its causes and its possible very bad outcome. Money quote:
Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.
I always dislike these "history before the fact" pieces. They're invariably precious and they're invariably off the mark. Ferguson seems to be making the assumption that military and diplomatic measures are divorced from each other, if you go the diplo route then military action is ruled out. Yet when we look at history that's already happened, we see the continuous movement of big cheeses back and forth, from capital to capital, chat to chat, in the weeks and months leading up to real actions. There's always a background noise of such trips, but when they start coming together in clumps things are either happening or about to happen. But I don't think Ferguson's watching, probably because tracking it is boring.
#2
"End of the oil age," "twilight of the West," blah, blah, blah. I knew that there was a reason that I hadn't bothered to read any of Ferguson's books.
#3
The whole thing is a bit of a soup sandwich, and since Niall Ferguson is a Professor of History at Harvard University, some of this stuff he really ought to know.
The first underlying cause of the war was the increase in the region's relative importance as a source of petroleum. On the one hand, the rest of the world's oil reserves were being rapidly exhausted.
Except, of course, they're NOT being exhausted, rapidly or otherwise.
There are more known reserves of oil in production now than at any time in history - spurred on by the high oil prices and growing demand that Ferguson writes about fearfully.
The Canadian oil deposits, for instance, are the second-largest proven deposits in the world, they're currently producing crude for US$ 23/bbl, and they're ramping up production as fast as they physically can.
A second precondition of war was demographic. [...] [I]n Iran, the social conservatism of the 1979 Revolution - which had lowered the age of marriage and prohibited contraception - combined with [a post-Iran/Iraq War baby boom] to produce, by the first decade of the new century, a quite extraordinary surplus of young men. More than two fifths of the population of Iran in 1995 had been aged 14 or younger. This was the generation that was ready to fight in 2007. This not only gave Islamic societies a youthful energy, [it] also signified a profound shift in the balance of world population. [...] By 1995, the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain and was forecast to be 50 per cent higher by 2050. Yet people in the West struggled to grasp the implications of this shift. Subliminally, they still thought of the Middle East as a region they could lord it over, as they had in the mid-20th century.
Nor are they wrong to think so, since Iran has plenty of what's no longer important, and not much of what IS important, in the "Third Wave" 21st century.
An "extraordinary surplus of young men", "ready to fight" ?
So what ?
How is that going to help Iran stop anyone from bombing them, or help during a nuclear exchange ?
Unless Iran is planning on occupying some other nation, having an extra million young men isn't much help, militarily.
Now, if those million young men were hard at work building advanced aircraft, or ICBMs, then it might make a difference, and that brings up the next point.
"The population of Iran is forecast to be 50 per cent higher than that of Britain by 2050" ?
So what ?
In the first place, that projection is absolutely certain to be wrong, and in the second place, how will it help to have a huge population if they can't educate, employ, or even FEED most of 'em ?
Iran may have "a youthful energy", and the Eurozone may be dragging, but Iran also has high unemployment, especially among those teeming youths, and Iran lacks a dynamic economy.
There's just no way to put all of that youthful energy to productive use - it mostly gets wasted.
Hopefully it won't always be the case, but RIGHT NOW, that high fertility rate and swelling population are liabilitIes, NOT ASSETS.
Unless, of course, they're planning to do a pitchforks-and-torches, mass-human-wave attack on one of their neighbors.
The devastating nuclear exchange [...] marked the end of the oil age.
Please.
How, exactly? Because some oil in the Middle East was radioactive?
How will that affect the global use of the 99% of Earth's oil that wasn't radioactive ?
Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shi'ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country...
How would the Shi'ites do THAT ?
They could martyr a few tens of thousands of themselves, but IEDs and small arms aren't what it will take to "overrun" American bases in hostile country.
...and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.
Oooooh, S*C*A*R*Y...
The U.S., and the West as a whole, CANNOT beat China, if we're talking about invading China.
However, China has VERY little force-projection capability, so China CANNOT currently beat anyone else in a conventional military struggle outside of China, including Taiwan. (Well, maybe China could beat North Korea, but that fight is extremely unlikely to happen).
So, either China would be talking about sticking up for Iran DIPLOMATICALLY, or saying that Iran would benefit from a single division of Chinese troops, and a few dozen advanced fighter aircraft, or saying that China would be willing to nuke someone on Iran's behalf.
The first two are laughable, and the last one would be bad news for someone on China's side of the world - but NOT for the U.S., not directly.
China's land-based ICBMs can't hit further into the U.S. than Los Angeles, and their submarine force is quite small.
Since U.S. missiles CAN strike anywhere in China, and since we have over 1,500 nuclear warheads, China going nuclear on the side of Iran would be an act of suicide.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen ||
01/15/2006 6:31
Comments ||
Top||
#4
MH - Lots of prime Medium Rare meat to chew on and a fun read -- very nicely done! Thx!
#5
China's land-based ICBMs can't hit further into the U.S. than Los Angeles, and their submarine force is quite small.
Since U.S. missiles CAN strike anywhere in China, and since we have over 1,500 nuclear warheads, China going nuclear on the side of Iran would be an act of suicide.
Err, you may mean the North Koreans...
China has the proven ability to reach orbit and once you can do that you can put nukes anywhere...
Not that they will, but they could.
Posted by: DanNY ||
01/15/2006 8:21
Comments ||
Top||
#6
So if we're going to be in the "What If.." mode.
Try this.
George Bush holding deeply held Christian beliefs of sacrifice for the greater good of humanity, decides that he and he alone should bear the consequences of saving large numbers of that humanity by doing that which everyone know has to be done. Without a chance to serve futher after his current elected term of office and seeking no personal gain, to forstall destruction upon many areas within the region, he directs the overwhelming application of force against the Iranian facilities and government. Iran as a organized nation ends requiring years of international assistance to recover, but all the other countries in the region and hemisphere are spared the scares of war. George after signing his letter of resignation, flies to the Hague to voluntarily stand before the 'World Court' to stand judgement for his act which he takes full and unchallenged responsibility for. He knows his fate, but he also understands that he has save the world from its own failures to do what was necessary.
#7
China has the proven ability to reach orbit and once you can do that you can put nukes anywhere...
An SLV is not an ICBM.
Say they took a long march heavy booster and modified the payload bus to deliver a warhead.
How many sites in China are equipped to assemble a long march rocket, fuel it and launch it ?
One ? The Chinese spaceport?
How long does it take to assemble a Long March ?
Two - three months?
So you have this clumsy converted missile, weighing 400 tons, that cannot be moved, that can be assembled and launched from only one spot in China and takes months to put together.
Hardly a militarily useful weapon...
Posted by: john ||
01/15/2006 9:47
Comments ||
Top||
#8
I posted this article because I think Ferguson is playing a deep and destructive game - consciously or not. On the one hand he all but says the only hope for the west is preemption on our part.
On the other hand, if we do that you can imagine - from this article's other paragraphs and his past record - just how vehemently he would criticize us afterwards. When he's safely protected in Cambridge MA.
MH's point about excess young adult males as a liability is a good one. If a country or society can't offer that huge cohort of young men reasonable prospects of jobs, families, economic well being and a role in running the place, then they are likely to turn aggression either on the existing government or - if the government can manipulate things successfully - outward against a demonized enemy.
Like, say, the Great Satan = U.S. and the Little Satan = Israel. Or is it the other way around? The rhetoric is so over the top I stopped listening a long time ago, except to keep track of things like Ahmadinejad's messianic fervor as a new political element.
#9
BTW the same point about a large cohort of young men affecting policies is true about China. The difference is that many Chinese are enthusiastically hopeful about their country's future. I see it in a lot of Chinese grad students I talk to here.
#10
"The population of Iran is forecast to be 50 per cent higher than that of Britain by 2050"
Hmmm... I'm thinking India, a hundred years ago. Not that I'm suggesting colonization.
lotp, it concerns me that you have Chinese grad students considering where you are. Do you mean Taiwanese?
#11
The funny thing is that he is not safely protected in Cambridge University. Not anymore. I'd like to think that the left is finally waking up to just how insane and dangerous Ahmadinejad is, but they'd rather go down with the ship.
#13
The thing about nuclear terrorism that bothers me is the abysmal state of civil defense preparedness in the US. Border security is a joke. A very few dirty bombs in some coastal cities would immobilize the US for years even if few people died as a direct result. The floundering and bickering going on between different levels of government before, during and after Katrina should be a lesson to us.
#14
The population of Iran is forecast to be 50 per cent higher than that of Britain by 2050
Right now in 2006, the populations of Bangladesh and Indonesia are several times that of the UK.
So what?
Posted by: john ||
01/15/2006 10:58
Comments ||
Top||
#15
I posted this article because I think Ferguson is playing a deep and destructive game - consciously or not. On the one hand he all but says the only hope for the west is preemption on our part.
On the other hand, if we do that you can imagine - from this article's other paragraphs and his past record - just how vehemently he would criticize us afterwards. When he's safely protected in Cambridge MA.
Ferguson has been critical of the U. S. to the extent it has failed to assume its responsibilities as global hegemon. He thinks we should get our fiscal house in order. He thinks we should be more assertive in establishing order in the world. If we were to take out Iranian nukes, I doubt he would be unhappy, though like any pundit, he would carp at the edges.
I read this article as an attempt to keep George from going wobbly, not an actual forecast. What is destructive about that? George needs all the support he can get right now.
#16
Darrell, the Chinese grad students aren't where I work, but at a large public university nearby.
You may be right about Ferguson, Nimble. I have mixed feelings about him - IIRC he's had some rather pungent criticisms of W and our work in Iraq and elsewhere, coming at times when I didn't find it helpful. But maybe I'm missing the bigger picture on him.
Even if Ahmadinejad had broadcast a nuclear test live on CNN, liberals would have said it was a CIA con-trick.
2 problems:
The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West.
Plenty of peroleum - its the cost of extraction the prevents its use now. Oil shales in Canada and the western US are enough to supply us for decades, as are sources on the continental shelf of the US that are now off limts due to environmentalists. Same goes for huge reserves in Alaska.
All we lack is the political will to tap most of them and the cost efficiency to develop rest of them (perhaps this is one place a government subsidy would be justified).
Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shi'ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country
Shia overruning US bases? He's on crack. Especially given its an Islamic FIRST STRIKE on Israel that prompts the exchange - and its PERSIAN, not arabs that are dying, leaving the Iraqi Shia in charge of the "Holiest Sites For Shia" (tm).
Another point he overlooks that Iran would likely be throwing at most 2-3 effective nukes. Israel would retaliate with dozens. The loss of life would basically erase the Shia culture (indeed ANY culture) from Iran. Iran would be a radioactive wasteland with 10's of millions dead (think about the impact of 50 to 60 nuclear detonations on England -similar population area and concentrations).
Iraqis would be more concerned with dodging fallout than attacking Americans. And on top of that, they completely overestimate "uprisings" that tend to die when they get mowed down by bombs and automatic weapons. And he seems to forget completely about the Kurds who are our staunch ally (and also Shia), and that the Shia even now do not move as a "bloc" entity.
So take his analysis aitha very LARGE grain of salt.
The author is right about one thing: the sooner we act, and the harder we strike, the less painful the outcome will be in the long run for all concerned, especially the Iranians..
#18
The demographic issue is an interesting one. There are no reliable ethnic stats from Iran, but at the time of the fall of the Shah, ethnic Persians were a bare majority in Iran. With higher birthrates amongst various non-Persian ethnic groups, they may well be a minority today.
In the last 30 years, there have been two major redrawings of national boundaries, both of which almost no one predicted and both were a result of the dominant ethnic group losing control of areas populated by ethnic mimorities (the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia).
So I hearby predict the Iranian Civil War of 2007, which resulted in the formation of The Azerbaijan Union, The Federated Kurdish States. The Republic of Arabistan and The Indian Administered Baluchi Protectorate. The US occupied north shore of the Straits of Hormuz voted to join with Oman in a recent referendum.
#19
Is there any reason to believe there is a sea imbalance in Iran? It is hard to believe they have used abortion to get rid of the nasty girls. Or have they used more barbaric measures?
#20
BTW the same point about a large cohort of young men affecting policies is true about China. The difference is that many Chinese are enthusiastically hopeful about their country's future.
Another point about China is that its population control policies ensure that that nation's military is made up of sole surviving sons. Something to keep in mind when assessing them as a threat.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006 18:40
Comments ||
Top||
#22
In the case of Iran I'm not sure if there's a sex imbalance, just that I'm pretty sure I've seen figures that back up the idea of a demographic bulge in that late teens - early 20s there. Even if wives aren't an issue for the males, as they are in China, power and jobs certainly are.
#23
There isn't a big sex imbalance. The CIA factbook says there are 1.04 men for every 1.00 women (age 15-64), though it may well be out of balance when factoring in the near 1 million dead from the Iran-Iraq war. I'd say a bigger factor is the legalization of polygamy (and concubines) after the islamic revolution. I didn't find any statistics, only this CBS blurb, "There are no official statistics available on polygamy in Iran, but it is prevalent in many small cities and rural regions in Iran."
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 21:47
Comments ||
Top||
#24
Fred, could you expand on that Chinese military - sole surviving sons bit? My first image is of sex starved young men who refuse to go where the bullets are, lest the family name be lost upon their deaths... which would be funny if it weren't so sad, and is surely much more simplistic that what you meant. Thanks!
#25
That's precisely what I meant. When Sonny goes, the family dies out with him. Doesn't have anything to do with them being sex-starved, though there have been stories on women being kidnapped as wives because of the shortage of the fair sex.
I wouldn't make it the top item in any kind of war planning with regard to the Chinese, but it should be a factor.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006 23:38
Comments ||
Top||
A newly constructed security checkpoint near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been destroyed by a rocket attack, killing eight people. The attack occurred on Saturday in a village close to Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
Pakistan has deployed thousands of troops and security forces in the mainly tribal region in effort to flush out suspected members of the Taliban, al-Qaida and their local supporters. A senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said all eight soldiers guarding the checkpoint were killed. Another security official, again remaining anonymous, said that the dead troops had moved to the new checkpoint only hours before the attack. He said Pakistani forces supported by helicopters were trying to track down the assailants.
The checkpoint was built as part of Pakistan's efforts to stop potential terrorists travelling unmonitored between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where US forces are trying to combat rebels.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The Pashtuns will not accept this "border" that divides their land.
The Durand line treaty has expired and one party to that treaty - the British Raj no longer exists.
The Afghans think that Pakistan is in occupation of its territory and illegal border posts will be attacked.
Posted by: john ||
01/15/2006 9:36
Comments ||
Top||
Iran was said to have built more than 5,000 gas centrifuges for its nuclear weapons program. Iranian opposition sources said Teheran built the centrifuges for its nuclear plant at Natanz without the knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency and European Union. Natanz has been the leading facility for the enrichment of uranium, a key element in the process to produce nuclear weapons. "Iran has already manufactured as many as 5,000 centrifuge machines ready to be installed in Natanz, which is a clear breach of its agreements with the IAEA and the EU," Alireza Jafarzadeh, a leading Iranian opposition figure, said.
On Jan. 11, Iran began removing the seals on a 164-centrifuge cascade at Natanz. The cascade has been deemed too small for a nuclear weapons program.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#3
1 meter wide and 2 meters tall. With proper cooling, a lot can be packed into a small space.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 9:42
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Fortunately, it does not take much of a blast to knock a high-speed centrifuge out of balance and alignment and to damage its bearings and electrical supply.
#7
A clickable link to #5's contribution
It mentions the energy consumption of each centrifuge is low, but how much juice do 5,000 consume? I recall from the Manhattan project that the Washington and Oak Ridge sites produced the basic nuclear materials for the 1st nuclear weapons, and both needed massive amounts of electricity for their work. I suspect the biggest vulnerability of nuclear production is the need to supply electricity & dissipate excess heat, things that are hard to do underground.
#8
So what if they can't build a 20 megaton warhead.
Even a 30 kiloton (like the one used on Hiroshima) is a fairly bad thing for those nuts to have. If they are running 5100 centifuges, it just means they will need more time. Or they will have to go with a smaller yield warhead. Hell, a 5 kiloton bomb would be a big-ass bomb to be going off over Tel Aviv.
#9
I read each centrifuge is comsumes about 40 watts. When Natanz is fully operational (50,000 centrifuges), it's supposed to produce enough HEU for a bomb every 10-15 days. But the kicker is that centrifugue cascades can be put anywhere with a reliable power supply, with tunnels under cities being ideal.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 12:09
Comments ||
Top||
#10
The longer we wait for a strike, the more fissile product they acquire. They have undoubtedly put the critical infrastructure underground, so support infrastructure is the critical node.
It also seems to me that sabotage of their cash cow is a legitamete goal, like oil pumping stations, oil loading infrastructure, major substations. Oil pumping gear and large transformers are not off-the-shelf items to buy, so they have multiplier effects when down and out. Pipeline control systems can be *ahem* tweaked or fried. If the MMs want to create nukes and meddle with their neighbors in Iraq, they need to understand that their is a price to be paid. They are going through cash like Jack the Pig. They need to get pinched on the cash flow.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/15/2006 13:12
Comments ||
Top||
#11
Jack the Pig? lol AP - that's a new one for me
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 13:19
Comments ||
Top||
#12
What's the resonate frequency of one of these centrifuges?
If its low enough to travel through the earth aways it should both be possible to locate and to overdrive with lots of transducers.
If its higher you should be able to locate with some other techniques...
#17
low end of a 3way bulb? I'm inclined to agree with Mr6
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 14:24
Comments ||
Top||
#18
Exactly 746 watts of electrical power will produce 1 HP if a motor could operate at 100% efficiency, but of course no motor is 100% efficient. A 1 HP motor operating at 84% efficiency will have a total watt consumption of 888 watts. This amounts to 746 watts of usable power and 142 watts loss due to heat, friction, etc. (888 x .84 = 746 = 1 HP).
#20
Basically thrust, counter thrust and knock them off balance: go on the offensive - standing on defense will be the same as what the west did against Hitler when they let him retake the Ruhr and the Sudeten. We are only enabling a larger war in fear of the carnage the sooner and smaller one would cause.
The first weakness is the pwoer infrastructure needed to run the centrifuges. You cannot do that and hide it easily in athe absence of other infrastructure elements. Power lines, generation, and the heat involved cna stand out if you reduce the background noise.
This is why knocking out the power across Iran is a neccesity as the first OVERT military action. Its the first and foremost action we can take, other than direct action against the sites like Natanz.
The first overt actions should be against Natanz and any other site that would be hosting the centrifuges.
A possible plan of attack would be as follows:
The subsurface elements would all be attacked with burrowing FAE and HE bombs, and surface buildings a wave of fuel-air explosives. The second wave would be HE on the main above-ground "hard" targets 10 minutes after the FAE and penetrators go in. This woudl be followed by a final wave of FAE to complete the collapse of any buildings left from the initial stages - about 30 minuntes (to allow fires to damp down so the FAE will ignite properly. The final leg of the attack woudl follow 10-15 minutes later: the laying of air-delevered anti-vehicle and anti-personnel mines.
The overpressures will destroy most of the structures above ground, and the penetrators combined with FAE will destroy or collapse anything in the bunkers. And the minefields will cause casualties against anyone trying to reach the wreckage, and slow any recovery/rebuilding efforts on the site.
Ask the Taliban about those things and their effects on the CIA cave based bunkers - and the Chechens about the Russian version of these on their buildings.
The reurcussions:
If civilians starve and die at the hands of thier own government as a result of the loss of their power infrastructure, then thats the price they pay for not throwing the bastards out, like the Germans in WW2.
How to prep for the strike?
1) Leaflet the population - let them know that we CAN and WILL reach out and touch them, and for them to prepare to either rid themselves of the nuclear madmen, or be ready to lose thier electricity for years. And remind them that they are lucky its a leaflet and not high explosive - and that the next response will not be nearly as benign.
2) Concurrently with #1, tell the Kurds and coastal arabs we are willing to supply them and back them covertly in any miitary action they wish to take in northern & coastal Iran - and in Turkey too if the Turks don't step up to the plate.
3) Start covert infiltration in much greater force than now, from Aghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Set up covert cells, prepare for guerila and special operations support.
Once 1-3 are done, then setp 4 hits:
4) Start interuptions to the power infrastructure with indigenous forces. Transmission line towers, transformer stations and substations, and control centers are wonderful targets - and are almost as effective as taking out the generation capacity. We've been on the recieving end of this in Iraq, time to be on the giving end in Iran.
5) Start assassinations of political & military leaders (from the bottom up) in Iran that are hostile - teach the political class (Mullahs and thier supporters) that there is a blood price to pay, and the bill has come due. IEDs work as well as sniper rounds for this. Another case of "sauce for the goose...". Lets see if Iran can deal wiht the same things its been dishing out - I bet it cannot. Use indigenous forces backed by special operations capacity to do this work - there are plenty in Iran with inclinations to do so, and wiuth training and logistic support they cna be very effective in doing so.
The above will turn Irna into a true quamire much worse than Iraq ever was, with the Mullahs and theri totalitarian henchment on the recieving end - and one important difference: they will not have recourse to a vote by the populace to reduce hoistility like we did in Iraq. They can only crack down harder which will motivate forces against them even further.
Over-all effect:
Kepe them that busy, with the above, and if they still continue thier nuclear activity, then we strike hard with anti-nuclear straieksa gainst their facilities and command centers.
Then add in cruise missles, air strikes and spec ops raids in a hammer blow agains the political infratructure. We can fell the government and halt the nuclear threat they present to the region. Likelyh will result in chaos and anarchy in Iran, wich is regrettable but preferrable to the evil that controls the nation now.
The aftermath would be very messy: we should basically wall them off: mine and shut the borders of Iran and embargo the coasts ecept for humanitarian aid, and let them figure it out on their own how many mullahs to hang from the lamposts.
Tell the Euros: you can do all the rebuilding and get all the oil - as long as you send your own troops to enforce the rules. We are sitting this one out, rebuilding Iraq into the central power int he region as a stable democratic republic,a nd ridding it of its primary source of overt evil are our gifts to the region. The Euros will ahve to do the rest of the work themselves.
#21
Here's the actual deal on how much juice a seperation plant requires:
The capacity of enrichment plants is measured in terms of 'separative work units' or SWU. The SWU is a complex unit which is a function of the amount of uranium processed and the degree to which it is enriched (ie the extent of increase in the concen-tration of the U-235 isotope relative to the remainder) and the level of depletion of the remainder. The unit is strictly: Kilogram Separative Work Unit, and it measures the quantity of separat-ive work performed to enrich a given amount of uranium a certain amount. It is thus indicative of energy used in enrichment when feed and product quantities are expressed in kilograms. The unit 'tonnes SWU' is also used.
For instance, to produce one kilogram of uranium enriched to 3% U-235 requires 3.8 SWU if the plant is operated at a tails assay 0.25%, or 5.0 SWU if the tails assay is 0.15% (thereby requiring only 5.1 kg instead of 6.0 kg of natural U feed).
About 100-120,000 SWU is required to enrich the annual fuel loading for a typical 1000 MWe light water reactor. Enrichment costs are substantially related to electrical energy used. The gaseous diffusion process consumes about 2500 kWh (9000 MJ) per SWU, while modern gas centrifuge plants require only about 50 kWh (180 MJ) per SWU.
So assuming that the number of SWU/Kg remains constant for each percentage point of enrichment (prolly not a good assumption, but good enough for a back of the envelope calc) and that you need 95% enrichment and 11 Kg of enriched uranium for a bomb (I think that there is a misdirection factor built into both of these publically available numbers, but again, good enough for what I'm trying to accomplish) then I get a minimum of 66,183 KWH per bomb. 1 kilowatt-hour is what you expend when you light ten 100 watt bulbs for an hour.
You don't have to have a real powerful motor to spin up to real high rpms, just a real good transmission. I'm assuming some sort of magnetic clutch. Once again, we are in the world of design tradeoffs. I can spin up a small mass fairly quickly, but it'll take me a long time to make a bomb. Another big factor is how long it takes to load and unload. I'm pretty sure that these babies are spinning in an evacuated chamber. If you can come up with some way to load and unload without breaking your vacuum, then you can speed up things immensely.
#22
That's a pretty good plan OS, reemphasizing your point that you have to take out the _entire_ power infrastructure, otherwise they just starve the people and keep building bombs.
I also like the idea of turning the minorities and isolating the Iranian core. I was thinking the other day that's exactly what we should have done in Iraq: liberated the Shia and Kurd areas and stayed out of the Sunni triangle. With no oil, Saddam could have been the landlocked dictator of a bunch of psychotic Arabs with no income to pay them or the Mukhabarat. That would have been fun to watch.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 16:45
Comments ||
Top||
#24
If we can get the State Department appeasers and ass-coverers at CIA out of the way, get solid operational intelligence on the sites, and strategic intel on the weaknesses in the command structure, and HUMINT on the political structure and its pressure points....
Then we should be able to act deciseivly. But we need to act as soon as things are in place - possibly within as soon as 6 months,, probably no more than by mid-November. If we do not tee this up now (steps 1-3) along-side the current diplomacy, and hit it before the Iranians develop and deploy a weapon, this its all for naught - and we will be facing the "War in 2007" scenario that is the subject of another post here - the world economy disrupted, 10s of millions dead in Iran, several million in Israel, and the entire world in turmoil.
But the force must be deleiverd fully and in a sharp blow, not "oozed in" over time. Its akin to Napolean having Ney wander all over the place instead of committing hard and fast early in the battle when that force could have been decisive.
Political will is what it takes. And I don't kow that our current crop of traitors and self-centered powermongers (Howard Dean, Kennedy, Pelosi, Murtha, the French, et al) can allow us enoiugh freedom of aciton to act and do what we need to do to promote liberty and protect the republic.
#25
OS, I think you're right about involving the minorities and opposition in early takedowns of visible power infrastructure. I would add, probably communications centers too as they would have backup generation of their own I assume.
Ask the Taliban about those things and their effects on the CIA cave based bunkers Just a typo and you meant the other way around - i.e. ask the CIA paramilitaries about the effects that we imposed on the Taliban? Or did I misunderstand?
Quietly some professionals are getting the work done.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
It's a waste of time and money. NOLA isn't worth what it's going to cost to save it from a Cat 5. Let it go and let anyone who wants to live there simply take their chances. No Federal flood insurance, either. If the state of Louisiana's taxpayers want to throw their money into a bottomless pit in NOLA, they're welcome to. The rest of us who have sense enough to live in places that aren't below sea level shouldn't have to pay for the folly of those who choose to do something that stupid.
Posted by: mac ||
01/15/2006 1:12
Comments ||
Top||
#2
But make damn sure the grain is exported and the oil is refined.
#4
But no one says that we should tear down San Francisco because the big one is coming any day now.
No one's offering to subsidize stupidity via federally subsidized earthquake insurance, either. Californians now pay about 2% per year on the value of their physical home (as opposed to the land value) in state mandated and operated earthquake insurance. There is also a very strict building code that increases the cost of construction there.
In a post quake San Francisco, the free market should make the assessment of what should be rebuilt, just as in NOLA. Whenever the government gets involved, the decisions are made worse.
#5
IIRC the port facilities are not in New Orleans but a good way upstream. 60 years ago New Orleans and suburbs were needed at least as living spaces for dock workers who numbered in the thousands. This is no longer the case. Automation and computerized tracking have reduced the work force to several hundred. We don't need to abandon New Orleans but neithe do we need to completely restore it. Rebuilding every, or most, residential areas will only precipitate another disaster in the future. Limited rebuilding is what should be done.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/15/2006 8:50
Comments ||
Top||
#6
A little over decade ago the Mississippi overflowed its usual banks. Has the federal government spent billions on those local levees? I do recall the government making available monies for small communities to displace to higher ground. Is all of New Orleans entitled to more than those residents of the shores of the upper Mississippi were?
#8
I wish this guy were here to participate in the discussion. But next time I see his grieving father I'll tell him how stupid his son was.
(Rant begins here)
I've lived in New Orleans all my life, and my family lived in south Louisiana for 200 years before I was born, so I guess I come from a long line of stupid people. Although the city is my home and I am as attached to it emotionally as a man might be to his horse, I don't mind discussions about to what extent the city might be rebuilt or what practical considerations should govern the rebuilding (improved building codes ae essential in my view, for example, and I agree that not every part of the city should be rebuilt.) What I do resent are comments that imply that people from south Louisiana not quite American enough to warrant consideration, or are genetically corrupt.
I've worked hard all my life and I suspect I've paid as many federal tax dollars as most here. So if anyone doesn't want their tax dollars going to rebuilding New Orleans, hey, I feel your pain. I don't expect your sympathy and I don't expect a handout. But along with a million of your fellow Americans I expect your respect.
(Rant ends)
And my public thanks to the very many people out there who have helped in so many different ways.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/15/2006 12:05
Comments ||
Top||
#9
I think when disasters that size happen the Prez needs to declare Martial Law for reasons other than looters.
The prime one being that it keeps lawyers and local pols at bay by being able to say "thus and this will now happen regardless"
I would say they should start by repairing the levees then filling the city with fill to the level of the repaired levees.
Next build more levees higher then then newly filled land.
Make sure to keep the property records so even though the house might be under the fill the vertical rights continue on up. (maybe adjusting some roadway paths with trades.)
Now you have virgin property to rebuild on.
BTW... if you were even wiser you filled around new storm sewers, sewers, waterpipes, electrical and gas lines and fiber-optics outlets to each lot.
Now the lot owners would have prime real-estate worth building on. They could build themselves or sell prime land to developers and such.
Remove the Martial Law at this point with the lawyers and pols successfully bushwacked.
#10
good rant, Matt. Selected rebuilding is in order IMHO, and the f*&kers who put levee walls in short should be shot, contractors and the engineers who colluded with them
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 13:51
Comments ||
Top||
#11
Desert Blondie,
Yes, I've been in New Orleans. As a matter of fact I spent three months there in 2001 building a ship in Avondale Shipyard. I used to go running along the tops of the levees. It didn't take rocket science to see that the water on the lake/river side was well above the level of the houses on the city side and that if the levee broke those houses were going to get real wet real fast. THE PLACE IS BELOW SEA LEVEL!!!! How much more do you need to know before you realize that sooner or later the defenses are going to fail? I spent most of my adult life going to sea; the sea is a dangerous and unforgiving enemy that never sleeps and its wave action, when really fired up, is arguably the most devastating natural force on the planet. When you put those things up on the board and combine them with the fact that Louisiana is the northernmost banana republic and NOLA was the most corrupt part of that state, it was a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Again, if the citizens of Louisiana want to rebuild down there and pay for it themselves, more power to them. If the Federal Government is supposed to support the reconstruction, I'm adamantly opposed. It's simply throwing good money after bad and if the people of NOLA don't like it, they can console themselves with the fact that politics can't trump physics.
Posted by: mac ||
01/15/2006 21:13
Comments ||
Top||
#12
I am against rebuilding sea level areas. The rebuilding cost figure of $200 billion tax dollars is being thrown around. That comes around to $400,000 per man woman and child. Relocate the flooded out people and return the land to the swamps. A smaller New Orleans can survive on it's critical industries, French and Garden tourist districts.
Posted by: ed ||
01/15/2006 22:10
Comments ||
Top||
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is to summon the US envoy to the foreign office in protest at the deaths of 18 people in an airstrike apparently targeting the deputy leader of Al Qaeda, officials said on Saturday. âA strong protest has being lodged with the United States. The US ambassador is also being summoned to the foreign office,â President Pervez Musharrafâs spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.
The Pakistani foreign ministry said it had lodged a protest with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker. âAccording to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan,â the ministry said in a statement.
It's safe to say you guys didn't have a hand in it.
âAs a result of this act there has been loss of innocent civilian lives which we condemn. The investigations are still continuing,â it added.
We're sorry about the wimminfolk and the kids. We're sorrier that grown men hide behind wimminfolk and kids.
Separately Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid condemned the incident, without directly pointing the finger at the United States. âWe deeply regret that civilian lives have been lost in an incident in Bajur agency,â he said.
âWhile this act is highly condemnable we have been for a long time striving to rid all our tribal areas of foreign intruders who have been responsible for all the misery and violence. That situation has to be brought to an end.â Rashid added that residents in the semi-autonomous tribal regions were responsible for cooperating with the government to drive out foreign militants.
That's for us; there isn't a chance in the world that they'd do it, of course.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
The US has hit back at Mexico for criticising a proposal by Washington to build a border fence and make illegal immigration to the United States a serious crime. On Friday, Tony Garza, the US ambassador to Mexico, criticised statements by Mexican officials comparing the fence with the Berlin Wall and denied that the initiative violated the human rights of migrants trying to improve their lives.
The Berlin wall was built to keep East Berliners from going into West Berlin, and it was built by the East German gummint. I think we went over this reasoning a bit earlier, when we examined the statement "Socrates is a man, therefore all men are Socrates" and found it lacking in sense.
Last month, the US House of Representatives approved a bill that would put up additional barriers along the US-Mexican border, a plan Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico, quickly opposed and compared with the Berlin Wall.
The man's a real pioneer, bringing fallacioius thinking to new levels of tedious...
Garza said the bill would help enforce immigration laws and criticised Fox's historical allusion. "Comparisons ... to the Berlin Wall are not only disingenuous and intellectually dishonest, they are personally offensive to me," Garza said in a news release. "The Berlin Wall was built to keep its own people trapped inside, and was created by an oppressive authoritarian government."
That's what I said, which was admittedly a mere statement of the obvious...
The proposed law, which has yet to be passed by the US Senate, would make illegal migration a felony. Thousands of people are thought to cross the 3200km Mexican-US border illegally every day, some risking their lives, in search of low-paying jobs in the United States. "There is no human right to enter another country in violation of its laws," Garza said. "More robust efforts by the Mexican government to create well-paying jobs for its citizens would dissuade many from making the dangerous and illegal crossing to the United States."
There's a white glove in the face.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#5
Sad thing is - Mexico has the resources and position next to the US to be a first world country, if they would take the boot off the neck....xenophobia, kleptocracy, lack of universal education, latin nationalistic machismo all contribute to the detriment of the country
Build the Friendship Fenceâ¢...faster
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 13:34
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Once again, all we have to do to stem the tide of illegals is to make it illegal to wire money to Mexico. They come to the US to make money to support their families in Mexico. When the f**king post office competes for the business of remitting the wages of illegals back to Mexico, the Government is not serious about the problem. Freezing the flow of money would be a lot quicker and cheaper than building the fence. Build the fence but hit the root cause first.
BAGHDAD - A powerful Shiite leader said on Saturday Iraqâs new government should reflect the results of last monthâs general election rather than an undemocratic consensus between political parties.
The comments by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, head of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) coalition, came as political wrangling between Iraqâs majority Shiites, minority Sunni Arabs and the Kurds gets underway to form the countryâs first full-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. A consensus-based government âsignifies the end of democracy, the end of giving power to the majority and of the elections,â Hakim told the publicly-funded Al-Sabah newspaper.
The UIA coalition of Shiite parties, headed by Hakimâs Supreme Council of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (SCIRI), appears to have won the most votes in the December 15 election, according to initial indications.
Wotta coincidence. No wonder he wants everyone to respect democracy. This time.
Rejecting consensus politics, Hakim called for a more representative government based on the results of the election. He indicated that Sunni Arabs and Kurds would be invited to take part in the government, but only on the terms of the winning Shiite coalition.
As a result, said Hakim, the country would also enjoy a viable opposition -- crucial in a democracy. âWe think there are sections of the Iraqi population who must take part, at the moment, in the planning and executionâ of the political process, he said. âTherefore, we believe their participation is necessary in the formation of the next government.â
However, the Shiite leader also defended the existence of a âgenuine opposition to complete the structure of the democratic system.â
Until they do something he doesn't like.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
A Spanish High Court judge has remanded in custody seven suspects accused of recruiting fighters to carry out bombings in Iraq. Judge Fernando Andreu said in a court order on Saturday that the group, based in the northeastern Catalan town of Vilanova i la Geltru, was based around a mosque.
Comes as a surprise, huh?
Iman Mohamed Samadi gave "radical speeches, particularly at Friday prayers, in which he requested prayers for mujahidins, or for people who had given their lives for the jihad (holy war)". Samadi also collected funds at the mosque to support the jihad and the group met privately at the mosque at unusual times of the day to avoid being detected, the judge said.
The seven were among 21 arrested this week who Spanish authorities say formed two cells of alleged radical Islamists. The group was believed to have recruited an Algerian who killed 19 Italians and nine Iraqis when he blew himself up in Iraq in 2003. Along with Samadi, others sent to prison pending trial were named as Mohamed Mrabet Fahsi, Hassan Mordoude, Mostapha Fawzi Ait Oudriss, Mostapha Es Satty, Mounir Mrabet Fahsi and Abdelhak Boudina. Another man, who was not named, was released but ordered to make regular appearances before police. The rest of those arrested this week may be charged later on Saturday by another judge at Spain's High Court. One of them, Omar Nakhcha, is thought to have helped three of the suspects in the March 11 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, escape Spain.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
The Bajaur Agency political administration on Saturday arrested Daily Times Peshawar Bureau Chief Iqbal Khattak and BBC correspondent Haroon Rashid from the agencyâs regional headquarters Khar for reporting the situation in the tribal area.
That's funny. Yesterday Haroon was an MNA, today he's a Beeb agent reporter. Different Haroons? Or is the MNA moonlighting, quoting himself to Beebs?
The two journalists were released after being detained for two hours. Mr Khattak and Mr Rashid were arrested taking photographs of paramilitary soldiers in the main bazaar of the area. The two journalists were taken to the office of Bajaur Agency political administrator Fahim Wazir who reportedly used indecent language with them. Fahim also threatened Khattak and Rashid and warned them not to enter the tribal areas without permission.
Makes you wonder what they're hiding, doesn't it?
He also refused to allow the journalists to file their story and said that he be shown what they were going to report in advance. Khattak and Rashid refused to comply.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[19 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Or is the MNA moonlighting, quoting himself to Beebs? LOL! "Sources say"
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's attorney has emerged as the leading architect of foreign policy in Israel in wake of his client's massive stroke. Dov Weisglass, Sharon's attorney and adviser, has been maintaining Israel's contacts with the United States and other Western powers, particularly in the area of Palestinian relations. Weisglass has also convened Israeli military and security chiefs to plan for Palestinian legislative elections on Jan. 25. "It can't be that Weisglass is running the country," Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, a critic of Sharon, said.
Weisglass's influence has been heavily criticized by the parliamentary opposition. Parliamentarians have pointed to Weisglass's continued professional involvement with projects in the Palestinian Authority, including the Austrian-owned casino in the West Bank town of Jericho.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
Sixteen Maoist rebels and a soldier have been killed in the biggest battle in Nepal since a guerrilla ceasefire ended this month. The army said on Saturday that the deaths took place in a firefight in Syangja, a Maoist stronghold 225km west of the capital, Kathmandu, two days after soldiers shot and killed 10 rebels in the same area. An army officer said: "Details of the clash are awaited. A search is continuing."
Last Wednesday, a fierce battle erupted between government forces and the rebels in the western town of Dhangadhi, leaving at least seven policemen missing. The clashes erupted after the rebels attacked many government installations.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
Long Guardian piece on how New York City beat the crime problem. Usual progressive handwringing near the end but surprisingly balanced most of the way.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Stopping crime is simple.
Find the people commiting crimes, and bust their heads.
It has been shown to be effective all over the country.
#2
NYTimes is constantly amazed that we have such full prisons while the crime stats keep dropping, never seeing the connection. Some people are just bad and will continue to offend (aka recidivism) unless locked up like animals...A small percentage of prisoners does the majority of crimes, over and over again. Rudy understood
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2006 14:16
Comments ||
Top||
#3
I learned of a "New Crime" yesterday.
Most automotive gas tanks are now heavy plastic, this makes a great deal of sense as plastic will not rust, shrugs off scrapes and dings that would make a stamped steel tank dent, rip, or leak. And are a hell of a lot longer lived than steel tanks.
But we have some thieves who are now taking a 1/4 inch battery powered electric drill, drilling a hole in the thick plastic tank (Easier than drilling a steel tank) puting a bucket under the hole and stealing the gas.
I sincerely hope that these thieves don't realise that that 1/4 inch drill motor sparks, and can easily light the gas and burn them to death, those tanks are selling at the dealership for around 300 to 500 dollars including installation.
One hell of a lot of damage for 30 bucks worth of gas.
Burn in hell bastards.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/15/2006 16:03
Comments ||
Top||
The Washington Post has quoted a source as saying that Pakistan was âheavily involvedâ in the air strikes in Bajaur Agency on Friday. âThis would not have happened without Pakistani involvement,â the Washington Post quoted an unnamed source as saying about the missile attack on the Pak-Afghan border that killed 18 civilians, including women and children.
Earlier reports that Al Qaedaâs second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri was among those killed, have been discredited by now. The same source said that the attack was planned and executed by a combination of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers in Pakistan and Pakistani officials. âThis would not have happened unless they had pretty precise information that the right target was at that location,â a US military source told the newspaper. He cautioned, however, that it was possible that Zawahiri got out of the building before it was hit. The source said that US forces, which had been tracking Zawahiri for the past two weeks, will probably know more once the bodies are examined.
I'm not convinced there was Pak involvement — he's only saying there "had to" be. But if there was, that's probably why Ayman was out taking a leak when the rockets hit.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[15 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
good. that will turn jihadis against pakistani govt more, divert their firepower internally. Pakis can retaliate far more effectively with torture, communal responsibility, secret police, than the US can.
Former United States president George Bush senior is arriving today (Sunday) in Pakistan on a three-day visit. He will visit the earthquake-devastated areas in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the NWFP. Sources said he would be briefed on the donations given by the international community for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the earthquake survivors. He will also be briefed on the rehabilitation efforts being made by the government of Pakistan and various international organisations. Bush will also meet Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and President Pervez Musharraf.
Wonder in what context Iran will come up?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The old agency head will go and smooth over the complaints of our air strikes. Go dad!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/15/2006 0:05
Comments ||
Top||
#2
He's there to hand carry back Z-man's DNA samples.
Mahmoud Abbas: We should not consider the truce a favor that we are doing to others. We are not doing Israel any favor. We are giving a gift to our own people. The truce is for the sake of our people.
What is the use of entering into conflict with the factions now? What is the use of missiles? I would like someone to give me even one benefit. Just one. Yesterday, when I was coming from the Erez crossing, I was greeted by two missiles. One of them hit Abu Iskandar's office. What's the use of that? Ninety percent of the missiles hit our own people. They are fired, then come back and land on our homes - killing and wounding, killing and wounding...
Unfortunately, you in the media do not highlight this fact. You don't highlight this. This must be made clear. Go and see where these missiles land. This is one aspect. As long as this is useless, why are we doing it?
suggesting he wouldn't have a problem if they were more accurate in hitting Israel
Only to say we are resisting? This is not resistance. With these missiles - which kill us - we are giving the Israelis a pretext to send planes to attack us, or to make supersonic booms, making our children deaf and paralyzed, and so on. You must tell the truth. You, the entire media... These missiles - what use are they? But all
you say is: a missile was launched here and struck there... You should...
You are not objective bystanders. You are citizens.
#1
NO Mr. Abbas you see if you cant control your own nation and people why should anyone even consider negotiating with you. Hell man they might aswell negotiate with me couple billion in donations to my party "dimwaleo" and I can put a couple thousand flunky-terrorist, ehh police, yolo's on the pay roll as long as they dont have to do anything exept cash the check its all gravy. Why does the international community continue to prop up a leader that is nothing Abbas dont lead no country or people he has no power to control, more less make agreements. Before any negotiations or support is given to any person first thing is they should prove they are in charge and when they say something it happens.
BAGHDAD - The chief judge overseeing the Saddam Hussein trial has no plans to step down, and a news report suggesting that he will is âbaseless,â another judge on the Saddam tribunal said on Saturday. Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the presiding judge of a five-judge tribunal overseeing the Saddam case, has no plans to step down before the completion of the trial, two judges told The Associated Press on Saturday.
A recent news report citing an anonymous source close to the judge said he would hear one more session of the trial and then resign. One of the judges who spoke to AP sits on the five-judge panel with Amin hearing the Saddam trial. The second judge is on the committee that will likely hear the next case against Saddam concerning the Anfal Offensive that killed some 180,000 Kurds. Both judges spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The judge on the committee studying the Anfal case told AP that Amin wasnât likely to serve for that trial because a five-judge panel has already been selected and is studying the case.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
KHAR, Pakistan - Pakistani police tear-gassed tribesmen who burned down a US-funded aid agency office Saturday after the deaths of 18 villagers in an airstrike targeting Al Qaedaâs number two, witnesses said.
An estimated 5,000 people had gathered at a stadium near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal zone, close to the village of Damadola where Fridayâs attack happened, an AFP reporter said. Some demonstrators set fire to the offices of Associated Development Construction, a non-governmental organisation funded by the US Agency for International Development, an official at the aid group said. âThey have attacked our office in reaction to the deaths on Friday and put it on fire, it is badly damaged,â site engineer Fazal Maibood told AFP.
The mob had also stolen hundreds of bags of cement, and up to 20 tonnes of steel construction material were damaged by the fire, he added.
Expect lots of building collapses in the next earthquake.
Hundreds of tribal policemen had been deployed in Khar and other nearby towns to keep order, witnesses said.
Police later fired tear gas shells to disperse the mob after the crowd headed towards a music and video cassette market, while security forces fired two shots in the air, the AFP reporter said. Security men were also seen thumping arresting young tribesmen and bundling them into the backs of vans.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[13 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Fella need's a visit from Dentists Sans Anesthe
US Undersecretary for Political Affairs R Nicholas "Monty" Burns will be visiting India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka from January 16-25. An official announcement on Friday said: âOn his inaugural trip to Pakistan, Burns will meet senior Pakistani officials and opinion leaders to discuss broadening the US-Pakistan bilateral relationship, review Pakistanâs progress towards full democracy, explore ways to foster greater regional cooperation and express the United Statesâ continued support for earthquake relief and reconstruction efforts.â According to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, the trip was originally planned as primarily focused on US-India relations. In India, he would talk about how the July 2005 US-India agreement on civil nuclear affairs is to be implemented. He would also discuss Iran with his Indian counterparts.
âLast time around at the (International Atomic Energy Agency) Board of Governors, they (India) voted with other countries to find Iran in non-compliance. At the upcoming emergency session of the Board of Governors, weâll see how these other countries vote. Weâre not going to prejudge how any particular country is going to vote at this time, but ⊠we believe we have the votes in the IAEA Board of Governors to send this matter to the Security Council.â The two sides will discuss how to strengthen their strategic partnership.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
What IS it with the Lancet? And with scientists faking research?
Happens much more often than you think. I've seen two instances of forged data in my career (one person got nailed by the NIH, the other person -- so far -- has gotten away with it). There is enormous pressure to get a finding out first, particularly if the finding is considered 'big' or if it is going to attraction grant or pharma dollars. There's no prize for coming in second to clone a given cell, for example. That's what happened here: the cancer researcher wanted to be first, and decided he could pull it off. It almost never works, just as a career criminial never thinks he'll be caught. Everyone else is too smart, and communications are so fast today.
A Norwegian cancer researcher has admitted fabricating data published in a renowned international medical journal, officials in Norway said Saturday. The researcher at Norway's Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not identified, used faked patient data in an article on oral cancer published in the October 2005 issue of The Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal, said Stein Vaaler, strategy director for the cancer center.
They can soon start referring to it as "the formerly prestigious British medical journal"...
The article claimed that a certain kind of drug decreased the risk of getting oral cancer and referred to results seen in patients in two national databases, Vaaler said in an interview. A colleague raised questions about the article when it was published, and when the researcher was confronted this week about the data, he acknowledged the fabrication, Vaaler said. "All of it was fabricated," Vaaler said. "It was not manipulation of real data â it was just complete fabrication."
"Yeah. We needed some numbers, so I just polled some out of my butt..."
The Washington-based journal Science announced Thursday that it was unconditionally retracting two papers by South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who publicly apologized for faking data that purported to show the creation of stem cells from the world's first cloned human embryos.
He's toast, and so is his collaborator in Pittsburgh who was last seen backpedaling furiously.
Vaaler said the center has informed The Lancet about the fabrication, and an external review committee will examine the researcher's methods and his previous publications. A decision about whether the researcher should be fired will be made after the review committee issues its report, Vaaler said.
Oh, he'll be fired -- no journal will ever publish anything with his name on it ever again. And the journal editors talk to each other.
I'm sure he's got a rewarding career in the food service industry in front of him...
"This is a very serious situation for the hospital," the center's director, Aage Danielsson, said in a letter to colleagues that was posted on the Web site of The Norwegian broadcaster TV2. There was no immediate reaction from The Lancet.
Too busy going over the proofs for their Page 3 girl?
#1
Don't forget it was the Lancet that printed the phony 100,000 death toll figure for Iraq in 2004 when the actual death toll was more like about 20,000. The phony figure was seized on by the BBC of course who beat it up in anti-US style:
The report was discredited but of course it still pops up everywhere as people just LOVE to quote discredited figures when they agree with it.
You have to go a fair few pages in on Google before you find a result that exposes this phony figure as you'll be snowed under with search results repeating it as if it were fact.
Here's one debunking:
http://reclusiveantiquarian.blogspot.com/2006/01/fabricating-iraqs-death-toll.html
Here's the Washington Times debunking:
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060104-085709-7440r.htm
Here's the Andrew Bolt debunking (now removed from the herald sun but reprinted here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1366322/posts
#2
Happens much more often than you think. I've seen two instances of forged data in my career
I don't know how often you have the chance to observe researchers in your career, Dr. White, but I suspect often enough that two instances isn't a lot. We're talking about human beings who are relatively unsupervised with substantial egos.
When you consider the lies the management of Enron, Tyco and Adelphia were able to perpetrate in the face of outside auditors, legal, SEC and analyst review it is surprising only that there is not more fraud in science and academics in general given the rather less stringent vetting.
#3
Maybe soon they will start to refer to it as the "influential" Lancet, like the "influential" Association of Muslim Scholars. You know, those lying loser guys.
#4
it is surprising only that there is not more fraud in science and academics
Science is a process and not a system of beliefs. It relies on reproducible experiments and testable theories. You can get away with scams and fraud, but eventually, you will get found out.
In the academic world in general, where the testing and checking is lacking, the situation is a little different.
Veteran FBI agent Danny Coleman, who served for years as the bureau's ranking expert on Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and the rest of the Qaeda inner circle, doesn't get too excited when he hears a report of Zawahiri's demise â such as the one that briefly grabbed headlines on Saturday before Pakistani officials shot it down.
"Three years ago, somebody gave me a skull that was supposed to be his," says Coleman, who recently retired. It was a nice try. "It had a prayer burn on the forehead" the ex-agent says. "Zawahiri has a very distinctive one on his forehead."
But with a $25 million reward at stake, Coleman says, "I like to have some proof." According to law enforcement and military sources, the Egyptian government has provided the U.S. with DNA from Zawahiri's brother, who is languishing in an Egyptian prison. That gives U.S. intelligence a scientific means to positively identify the fugitive Qaeda leader.
The tests, run at the FBI laboratory in Washington, were definitive, and negative. "It was just some poor guy somebody dug up," says Coleman.
In a part of the world where people can be killed for trinkets, the astronomical U.S. bounty on Zawahiri â plus whatever the CIA is offering from its discretionary slush fund â has no doubt inspired countless bounty-hunters and snitches peddling dubious information. It's too soon to say whether the tip that caused the U.S. to target a benighted village in northwest Pakistan was real or just another false lead. In fact, the identities of those who died in the strike may never be established to the satisfaction of the U.S., given the difficulties of obtaining unbiased witness accounts and the even more formidable obstacles to recovering tissue and other forensic evidence from the rubble.
Even if Zawahiri was to have been killed in the strike, Coleman believes his loss would not be a crippling blow to al-Qaeda. Zawahiri is certainly a radicalized, visceral killer, driven by "a deep down hatred" honed by his experiences in an Egyptian prison. Coleman believes the Egyptian contingent of al-Qaeda demonstrated a bloodlust unusual even among the committed jihadists. Many graduates of Qaeda camps had no qualms about carrying out bombings, but few matched the Egyptians' readiness to spill blood up close, through shootings and stabbings. "The Egyptians were always more doers than talkers," says Coleman. They were capable of extraordinary violence which the other people in al Qaeda weren't capable of, necessarily."
But for all Zawahiri's ruthlessness, his crankiness undermined his effectiveness as a leader of the organization â leadership in al-Qaeda, like any legitimate organization, requires people skills that seem to have eluded the Egyptian physician. "He couldn't lead his own family round the block," says Coleman. "He's a very disagreeable person. He's capable, he writes well, he's a pretty good speaker, but he's an incredibly disagreeable person. In terms of actually leading anybody he's not that good. He likes to fight with people, so it's hard for him to lead. "
Bin Laden is beloved by those in al Qaeda who know him and work with him. But while many in the movement may have a high regard for Zawahiri's education and intellectual skills, Coleman says, they just don't like the man.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/15/2006
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
MLK was a lying, swearing, plagiarizing womanizer who deserves a national holiday named after him just about as much as J. Edgar Hoover deserves a Federal building named after him. Both of them were frauds who will cause future generations of Americans to wonder what the hell this generation of Americans was thinking when we lionized such worthless bastards. We won't be on the track to REAL racial equality until BLACKS lead the charge to end the big lie and dump all the honors given to MLK in favor of awarding them to some other, truly deserving black person.
Posted by: mac ||
01/15/2006 0:59
Comments ||
Top||
#2
I gotta disagree, Mac. So the man couldn't keep it in his pants... that doesn't invalidate King's courage, leadership and vision. He had enough sense not to bay for blood in the streets, and enough pride to refrain from demanding reparations for slavery. America needs leaders like him, despite regrettable personal flaws.
My favorite quote from the article: Three-quarters of those surveyed say there has been significant progress on achieving King's dream. But only 66 percent of blacks felt that way. "Only" two-thirds. Heh.
#3
I agree with Rory. If not for Mr. King's non-violent demonstrations we would not be where we are today. Is it perfect? of course not but having been born and grown up in and around Selma, Alabama, I can tell you if the Civil Rights Movement had been hijacked by anyone advocating violence as a way to achieve equality there would have been a bloodbath. Would those non-violent tactics have worked 10 or 15 years earlier? I doubht it. The advent of NAtionally televised news let the entire Nation sit in on what was happening and, in my opinion, guarenteed the success of Mr. King's movement. That he was murdered and the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton took over was, again in my opinion, a tragedy. It set the Civil Rights Movement back decades and paved the way for Affirmative Action and PCism.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/15/2006 9:01
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Agreed about Hoover, and people are now talking about renaming the FBI building. King did make a substantial contribution the the US and the World, regardless of possessing human failings as do we all. Nobody is talking about changing his holiday.
#5
When self appointed 'leaders' of the black community demand(!) that Washington and Jefferson's names be struck from schools and streets cause in their day they had slaves [like the rest of their contemporary world], the rationalization of MLK's sexism doesn't wash. If we accept people for who they were in the times they lived, yes, by all means let us celebrate and recognize each achievement and contribution. However, if that same community demands perfection by modern standards of others, then their heros too must meet the same standards they themselves demand.
#10
I'm old enough to remember walking into a beer joint in Louisville with some other guys from Fort Knox - in uniform - and walking out again when the bartender told us he couldn't serve the colored guy.
There was real, live racial injustice in the country that most of us started working really hard to get rid of in the late fifties and early sixties. I class the people who deny the progress with the people who were obstructing it back then.
I wasn't particularly fond of MLK when he was alive, but most people could accept the idea of one man (or woman) being as good as another. The idea was more important than the man. Since he died the man has been conflated with the idea. It's still a good one, even though it brings with it undesirable side effects, starting with the Revs. Jesse and Al.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/15/2006 12:43
Comments ||
Top||
#11
What MLK did above all was use television to show racism in its ugliest light and non-violence to show blacks in the best. The nation was ready to listen after WWII and he seized the moment. But plenty of ground work was laid by the A. Philip Randolphs and Rosa Parks before he hit the scene. Perhaps no Washington, but he did bring back in us the better angels of our nature.
#13
That's what I ment when I said Mr. King used National Television to further his cause. Most people are decent people and when National TV (use of sattelites) made it possible to get information virtually as it happened more and more people were made aware of the inequities of race. The video of the violence on the first Selma to Montgomery March and the use of fire hoses and police dogs against peaceful demonstrators brought the violence right into everyone's living room. We decided this was not what America was supposed to be about. Liberty and Justice for All.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/15/2006 15:24
Comments ||
Top||
#14
Nope, you haven't convinced me. I always figured that anyone who purported to be a man of God and took pay for the job ought to be providing an example of probity and honor. Somehow repeatedly cheating on your wife, plagiarizing not only your dissertation but the thing you're most remembered for (the dream speech), and being a race hater yourself (the FBI tapes show this) doesn't quite seem to meet the requirements for the position. The REVEREND MLK broke every principle he ever espoused. He was a sleazy, lying media whore and the only thing that has people remembering him is the MSM's continuing admiration; same thing goes for Jack Kennedy. Assassination bought them both 50 years of fame but their actual accomplishments were damned small. Both of them were guys who wanted the power and perks that came with popular adulation but at bottom didn't have a principle to their names and wouldn't know one if it came up and bit them.
As for King's advocating nonviolence, give him what little credit is due for recognizing the alternative had absolutely no chance of success. Black revolutionaries in this country don't do well; they end up dead in a hurry. Ask anyone who knows the story of the Black Panthers in Oakland. If blacks had started a violent uprising in 1960's America anywhere but in their own communities they'd have been shot down in the street like dogs to the point of extermination. As it was there were plenty of whites who cheered them on as blacks burned their own neighborhoods and killed each other.
Most whites still don't give a damn about blacks because they've been conditioned by experience to expect no better from them. This has much to do with the people who, like King, have supposedly represented the black community. They've been lying, deluded, self-aggrandizing clowns as bad or worse than King was. You want to sing praises to honorable and decent black men who have done something admirable with their lives and stand as an example to all, not just their race? Start with Ralph Bunche and Thomas Sowell. Continue on with Shelby Steele and Ron McNair. Those are true black heroes and there are plenty of them out there. King just isn't one of them and continuing to praise a guy who just doesn't deserve it is doing nothing but perpetuating a a truly pernicious lie.
What's more, what happens when the black kid who has been raised his whole life on what a great example MLK was actually comes to find out the truth? Does he say to himself, "Gee, the REVEREND MLK whored and lied and cheated but everybody still says he's a hero. Why can't I do that and succeed? He did." Is that really a good thing to pass on--that blacks can't be held to the same moral standards as everyone else because they just can't measure up? Or do we just call that moral affirmative action? Other places (like DU) might but here on the 'Burg I don't think so. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, no matter what the color of the bird. If the REVEREND MLK's failings would have precluded his being honored if he was white, he doesn't get a pass just because he's black.
Posted by: mac ||
01/15/2006 15:25
Comments ||
Top||
#15
"If the REVEREND MLK's failings would have precluded his being honored if he was white"
Three words for you, #14 mac: J. F. K.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/15/2006 16:26
Comments ||
Top||
#16
Bingo, Barbara.
I've worked for several Black men over the years - two business entrepreneurs and an Army full colonel with a PhD in engineering. All 3 got some help from the initial stages of affirmative action, when the country as a whole woke up to how bad things were in some places for Blacks.
All 3 used that to move forward, and to contribute to society as a whole and to their communities in particular. And none likes what affirmative action has become. All give a lot of their time and effort to serve as positive role models for Blacks, especially young Black boys and young men. And 2 of the 3 rank among the best bosses I've ever had.
All 3 would and do honor MLK for his non-violent leadership. I do too.
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.
KATHMANDU - Nepal will go ahead with next monthâs municipal polls despite Maoist attacks around the capital in which 12 policemen were killed, a minister said on Sunday. Five blasts rocked areas around Kathmandu on Saturday. The deadliest attack occurred in Thankot, 10 km from the capital, where heavily armed rebels tossed a bomb at a police post and sprayed bullets from automatic rifles, killing 11 policemen.
AUSTRALIA'S Defence Force is about to embark on its biggest weapons buying spree since World War II, spending $52 billion on new planes, ships and tanks. The massive expenditure will make Australia's navy, army and air force the most powerful and high-tech military in the region well into the 21st century.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent a successful tracheotomy Sunday to help wean him off a respirator that has been helping him breathe since he suffered a massive stroke 11 days ago, hospital officials said, but he remained in a coma. The surgery, conducted under general anesthesia, took less than an hour as doctors cut a small hole in Sharon's neck to insert a tube directly into his windpipe.
Some of the protesters, waving Lebanese flags and carrying placards protesting against US influence in Lebanon and the Middle East, pelted police with stones. One placard read: "Welch is not welcome in Lebanon". Aljazeera reported that police used tear gas to disperse the anti-US demonstrators near government offices. The demonstrators mostly belonged to the Baath Party, the Syrian National Social Party, Hizb Allah and the Amal Movement.
A ROW between pro-Syrian Hizbollah guerrillas and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has plunged Lebanon deeper into a political crisis that has paralysed the Government and divided the country along sectarian lines. In an unprecedented attack, Jumblatt accused Shiite Muslim Hizbollah of hiding behind its "weapons of treachery", capping a month-old campaign against the group that is under pressure to disarm in line with a UN resolution.
A GREENPEACE activist was thrown overboard when a Japanese whale harpoon was launched across an inflatable boat in the Antarctic seas yesterday.
Iranâs hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended on Saturday his previous comments calling for the destruction of Israel and rejected criticism from Unites States President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the issue.
North Korean three-star General Ri Chan Bok tells correspondent Dan Rather that if the U.S. invades his country, he will use nuclear weapons to defend it.
Algerian police nabbed 13 members of a terror group which was uncovered in a recent raid in western province of Tilimsen, Algerian news agency reported Friday. The police seized a batch of ammunition as well as some trafficand communication equipment such as vehicles, mobile phones and computers.
An "imam" of a mosque here was arrested today by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Mumbai Police for his alleged links with three suspected militants of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, arrested last week in the city.
Law enforcing agencies are yet to arrest the masterminds behind with the August countrywide serial bomb blasts although the government is continuously telling the people that hauling up of culprits involved is a âmatter of time.â
A militant belonging to the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba was killed during an encounter with the security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district early on Saturday morning. The security forces gunned down the militant identified as Abu Hamza, sector commander of LeT and a Pakistani national, while searching for a group of militants operating Kishtwar belt of Doda.
Chechen police have detained a militant in the Shali district, a source in the district's police department told Interfax. "Tapa Umayev, a member of Akhmed Yunusov's group was apprehended in an operation in Duba-Yurt," the source said.
Police arrested four suspected militants, three of whom had links with an alleged Malaysian terror chief blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Indonesian since 2002, media reports said on Sunday.
Thousands of angry tribesmen ransacked offices of two NGOs and a government body, and damaged shops in Inayat Kallay of Bajaur Agency on Saturday. They were protesting against the killing of civilians in Fridayâs US air strike on a village.
At least 15 Myanmar soldiers and six Indian insurgents died and dozens were seriously wounded in heavy fighting to evict the rebels, a separatist leader said on Saturday. "So far we have killed 15 Myanmar soldiers and lost six of our cadres," rebel leader Kughalo Mulatonu said by telephone from a location near the India-Myanmar border where the offensive took place this week. "It is no longer mere fighting but a full-scale battle with the junta using mortars and heavy weapons on us," said Mulatonu, who heads the main faction of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).
Osama bin Ladenâs second-in-command, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, was invited to a village in the Bajaur area but was not present there when aeroplanes, in a CIA-supported operation, hit three houses on Friday and killed 18 civilians, official sources said. âThere is no indication that he (Zawahiri) was there,â a senior official said. âProbably there was an intelligence botch- up.â
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pushed back at President Bush and European leaders on Saturday, insisting Iran will press ahead with its nuclear program despite the threat of economic sanctions because "ultimately they need us more than we need them."
Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait who survived an assassination attempt in the 1980s and a decade later escaped Iraqi troops invading his oil-rich Persian Gulf state, died Sunday, state television announced. The sheik, who had been ailing since suffering a brain hemorrhage five years ago, was 79.
GILGIT: The Northern Areas police said on Saturday that they have arrested four members of an extremist organisation for the murder of Shia leader Agha Ziauddin Rizvi on January 8, 2005. Sources told Daily Times that the four men belonged to the banned Lashkar-e-Janghvi. 
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad condemned the Thursday night missile attack in Bajaur Agency and said it was carried out by US fighter planes. 
The government, for the first time, is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza after discovering that the predominant strain of the virus has built up high levels of resistance to them at alarming speed.
Gunmen in the southern city of Kandahar killed a former Taliban leader on Saturday who had repudiated the extremist movement in recent years, siding instead with the U.S. presence and Afghanistan's move toward democracy. 
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will meet with US Vice President 
American and Afghan government troops have killed about six insurgents in a battle in central Afghanistan, the US military said. The clash erupted when gunmen fired on what the US military called an offensive patrol in the central province of Uruzgan on Friday. "An estimated six enemy fighters were killed; the remainder fled the area," the US military said in a statement issued late on Friday.
For a man to work as a teacher in a high school for girls, where he meets them with no barrier and most of them may adorn themselves and show their charms â as is the case in the country where the questioner lives â no wise man would doubt that this is haraam, because of the bad effects and evil results for both men and women. We have discussed these evil results in the answer to question no. 50398. 
UNITED NATIONS - Russia and China have delayed promised helicopters and medical units to a UN peacekeeping force in Sudan, thereby causing other countries to postpone sending troops, a UN official said. The United Nations expects 10,000 troops in southern Sudan to monitor a peace agreement signed a year ago that ended nearly three decades of civil war between rebels and the Khartoum government. But only about 4,000 have arrived.
A newly constructed security checkpoint near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been destroyed by a rocket attack, killing eight people. The attack occurred on Saturday in a village close to 
Iran was said to have built more than 5,000 gas centrifuges for its nuclear weapons program. Iranian opposition sources said Teheran built the centrifuges for its nuclear plant at Natanz without the knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency and European Union. Natanz has been the leading facility for the enrichment of uranium, a key element in the process to produce nuclear weapons. "Iran has already manufactured as many as 5,000 centrifuge machines ready to be installed in Natanz, which is a clear breach of its agreements with the IAEA and the EU," Alireza Jafarzadeh, a leading Iranian opposition figure, said.
The US has hit back at Mexico for criticising a proposal by Washington to build a border fence and make illegal immigration to the United States a serious crime. On Friday, Tony Garza, the US ambassador to Mexico, criticised statements by Mexican officials comparing the fence with the Berlin Wall and denied that the initiative violated the human rights of migrants trying to improve their lives.
BAGHDAD - A powerful Shiite leader said on Saturday Iraqâs new government should reflect the results of last monthâs general election rather than an undemocratic consensus between political parties.
A Spanish High Court judge has remanded in custody seven suspects accused of recruiting fighters to carry out bombings in Iraq. Judge Fernando Andreu said in a court order on Saturday that the group, based in the northeastern Catalan town of Vilanova i la Geltru, was based around a mosque. 
The Bajaur Agency political administration on Saturday arrested Daily Times Peshawar Bureau Chief Iqbal Khattak and BBC correspondent 
Sixteen Maoist rebels and a soldier have been killed in the biggest battle in Nepal since a guerrilla ceasefire ended this month. The army said on Saturday that the deaths took place in a firefight in Syangja, a Maoist stronghold 225km west of the capital, Kathmandu, two days after soldiers shot and killed 10 rebels in the same area. An army officer said: "Details of the clash are awaited. A search is continuing."
The Washington Post has quoted a source as saying that Pakistan was âheavily involvedâ in the air strikes in 
Mahmoud Abbas: We should not consider the truce a favor that we are doing to others. We are not doing Israel any favor. We are giving a gift to our own people. The truce is for the sake of our people. 
KHAR, Pakistan - Pakistani police tear-gassed tribesmen who burned down a US-funded aid agency office Saturday after the deaths of 18 villagers in an airstrike targeting Al Qaedaâs number two, witnesses said.
US Undersecretary for Political Affairs 
